Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who
A/N: I got bitten by the inspiration bug and decided to write this three shot AU of the Doctor's Wife. Expect Chapters Two and Three…when I manage to finish Chapter Two. They'll be varying lengths, but this is the longest.
/
The Doctor walked through the twisting corridors, reaching out for the minds of the Time Lord's he could sense hovering at the edge of his telepathic awareness. For some reason it felt like they were warning him away, to run, but why would he run away from them?
Eventually he came across a small blue cupboard. "Well they can't all be in here" he murmured, opening the doors. Inside sat a dozen or so Time Lord distress signal boxes, all crying out for help that never came. The Doctor's jaw tensed; in a fit of sudden rage, he began tearing the boxes out of the cupboard, knocking them to the ground. They switched off, but didn't break...and then the Doctor realised that he could still sense Time Lords.
He stared at the empty cupboard, and noticed a tear in the back. It was hard to spot, being just as dark on the other side…he poked it and his finger went right through. The Doctor stepped back, his hope restored, and sonicked the whole wall. With a grinding sound, it swung inwards, and he choked on the terrible smell that emanated from the chamber beyond.
"Stay back!" a hoarse voice cried from within, "I'm armed!" The Doctor's eyes adjusted to the dim light; to his horror, he saw a blood-stained, dusty cell, with a Time Lord and two Time Ladies cowering at the back. A black haired and grey eyed Time Lord, the Corsair, was holding a metal rod at him, his right arm a bandaged stump. He recognised the other two as well; Romana and Chancellor Flavia.
They recognised him, the Corsair lowering the rod. "Doctor?" Romana breathed, staring at him disbelievingly. She'd regenerated, into a brunette with light brown eyes, and Flavia was black haired and dark brown eyed. "I'm sorry" the Doctor got out, "I'm so sorry...come on, all of you, come with me!" he urged, holding out his hand.
The three of them hurried out of the cell, the Doctor closing the door behind them. Auntie and Uncle approached, and all of them tensed up. "I was just admiring your Time Lord distress signal collection. That's what the Ood translator picked up, cries for help from the long dead. Nearly thought I had no friends here…how many Time Lords have you lured here the way you lured us, and what happened to them all?" he demanded.
Auntie and Uncle looked nervous; no, terrified. Good. "House, House is kind, and he is wise..." Auntie began. "House repairs you when you break! Yes, I know!" the Doctor shouted, making them step back. "But how does he mend you?" He scanned Uncle. "You have the eyes of a twenty year old" he stated. Uncle smirked. "Thank you".
"I mean it, literally. Your eyes are thirty years younger than you are, your ears don't match, your right arm is two inches longer than your left, and how's your dancing? Cos you've got two left feet. Patchwork people" the Doctor spat, "you've been repaired and patched up so often I doubt there's anything left of what used to be you".
He caught Romana's eye and said in a gentler tone, "I had an umbrella like them once". He was pleased to see her mouth twitch into a brief smile. The Doctor turned back to Auntie and grabbed her arm...or rather, the Corsair's missing arm. "Oh, it's been a great arm for me this. Yes, um, I got his arm, and Uncle got one of the kidneys".
The Doctor looked at the Corsair, who nodded sadly, and shoved Auntie away from him. "You trapped my friends...and hurt them...that's enough to make anyone angry, God knows what it will do to me. Basically...run!" he yelled, making them jump. Auntie fled, and Uncle turned at the archway, saying "Poor old Time Lords. Too late...House is too clever". Then he too left.
Just then, the sound of a ringing phone echoed through the chamber. The Doctor pulled his mobile out and put it on speaker. "Hey! No sonic screwdriver, also the door seems to have locked behind us. Rory thinks there's a perfectly innocent explanation, but I think you tricked us" Amy accused him, and he winced.
"Time Lord stuff…needed you out of the way" he said. "What, we're not good enough for your smart new friends?" Amy scoffed, but suddenly something occurred to the Doctor. "The little boxes and smelly room will make you angry...how could she know?" he wondered aloud. "Doctor, what are you talking about?" asked Amy.
"Stay put, stay exactly where you are" he ordered, and heard Amy say "We don't have much-" before he switched the phone off. "Come on!" he called to the others as he ran through the corridor. "Doctor, who could know?" asked Romana. The Doctor ignored her, and kept searching the corridors until he found the bitey woman from before sitting in a cage.
He strode over and demanded, "How did you know about the boxes? And the room? You said they'd make me angry, how did you know?" The woman opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Ah, it's my thief. And your friends. You found them, that's good". The Doctor glared at her. "Who are you?" he asked.
"She snuck us food sometimes" muttered Flavia, speaking for the first time. "No, the one before did", the woman looked sad for a moment; "Do you really not know me? Just because they put me in here?" she asked the Doctor. "They said you were dangerous" he replied, and she rolled her eyes.
"They also said House was nice. Not the cage, stupid. In here", she put a hand on either side of her face, "they put me, in here. I'm the...oh, what do you call me? We travel. I go-", and then she made the sound of a dematerialising TARDIS. The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "The TARDIS?" he asked incredulously. "Time and Relative Dimensions In Space - yes, that's it. Names are funny...it's me. I'm the TARDIS" she smiled.
The Doctor scoffed. "No, you're not, you're a bitey mad lady! The TARDIS is...up and down-y stuff in a big blue box" he said dismissively. 'Up and down-y stuff?' Romana mouthed at the Corsair, who could only shrug. "Yes, that's me" the mad woman agreed, "a Type 40 TARDIS. I was already a museum piece when you were young, and the first time you touched my console, you said"-
"- I said you were the most beautiful thing I'd ever known" the Doctor finished. He'd almost forgotten about that… "And then you stole me, and I stole you" she continued.
"I borrowed you"
"Borrowing implies the eventual intention to return the thing that was taken...what makes you think I would ever give you back?" she asked. The Doctor turned back to face her. "You're the TARDIS?" he asked dubiously, "my TARDIS?"
"My Doctor. Oh! We have now reached the point in the conversation where you open the lock" she said, standing up and stepping back. The Doctor blinked and sonicked the cage, allowing the bitey mad woman who was apparently his TARDIS to step out. She stared at him curiously and he swallowed. "Are all people like this?" she asked suddenly.
"Like what?" asked the Corsair, and the Doctor jumped; he'd almost forgotten the others were there, except he couldn't forget. "So much bigger on the inside" answered the TARDIS lady. "I'm...oh, what is that word?" she asked in frustration, "it's so...big! So complicated...it's so sad".
The four Time Lords were extremely confused, which was saying something. "Why pull the living soul from a TARDIS and pop it in a tiny human head? What does it want you for?" the Doctor wondered aloud. "It doesn't want me. House eats TARDISes" the TARDIS lady shrugged. "House what? What do you mean?" he asked, wishing she'd just give him a straight answer.
"I don't know, something I heard him say" she replied, pointing at the Corsair. The Corsair looked bewildered. "When?" he asked, and she replied, "in the future", as though it were obvious. "Um...House eats TARDISes" the Corsair tried. "See, there you go" the TARDIS lady nodded. The Doctor tried to speak but she pressed a finger to his lips. "What are fish fingers?" she asked randomly.
"When does he say that?" the Doctor asked in confusion. "Not him, you, any minute" she replied, and he pushed her hand away. "Of course!" he exclaimed, figuring it out, "House feeds on rift energy and TARDISes are bursting with it - and not raw, lovely and cooked, processed food…mmm, fish fingers" he smiled at the thought of his favourite snack.
"Do fish have fingers?" asked the TARDIS lady. The Doctor shook his head, "But, you can't eat a TARDIS, it would destroy you! Unless, unless…"
"Unless you deleted the TARDIS matrix first" Romana nodded. The Doctor chuckled mirthlessly. "So it deleted you" he said to the TARDIS lady, who turned to Flavia, for some reason and said "But House can't just delete a TARDIS' consciousness, that would blow a hole in the universe", then to the Corsair, "so it pulls out the Matrix, sticks it in a living receptacle", and then to Romana, "and then it feeds on the remaining artron energy".
She turned to the Doctor last of all and beamed. "They were about to say all that. I don't suppose they have to now" she smiled. The Doctor nearly smiled back when he realised something else. "I sent Amy and Rory in there, they'll be eaten. Amy!" he called them on the mobile, running off, "Amy! Rory! Get the hell out of there!"
Romana stared at the TARDIS lady. "Are you really his TARDIS?" she asked her, and she nodded. "Yes; you drilled a hole in my console, don't do that again, please. We should probably follow him, shouldn't we?" she suggested, brushing past them all and making her way down the corridor.
They found Auntie and Uncle in one room and the Corsair raised his metal rod to defend them; but then the TARDIS lady sat down and said they should just wait until the Doctor came back in five minutes. The Time Lords and the patchwork people eyed each other warily.
Sure enough, five minutes later the Doctor walked back in, looking agitated. "It's gone!" he told them, ignoring Auntie and Uncle. "It's been eaten?" asked Flavia. "No, it left. Not eaten, hi-jacked, but why?" he asked. He didn't know and he hated not knowing. "It's time for us both to go, an' keep together" Auntie said all of a sudden.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Go? What do you mean 'go'? Where are you going?" the Doctor demanded. They couldn't leave until he'd gotten a chance to punish them. "Well, we're dying, my love. It's time for Auntie and Uncle to pop off" she answered. Uncle shrugged. "I'm against it" he mumbled.
Auntie sat down next to Uncle and gestured to the Doctor. "It's your fault, isn't it, sweets? Cos you told House it was the last TARDIS". The other three Time Lords looked at the Doctor in alarm. "House can't feed on them if there's none more coming, can he?"
"So now he's off to your universe to find more TARDISes" explained Uncle. "It won't" the Doctor bit out. "Oh, it'll think of something" Auntie assured him, before keeling over with a groan. "Actually, I feel fine" said Uncle, standing up...and promptly dropping dead. Good riddance to bad rubbish the Doctor thought coldly.
"Doctor? What did he mean, last"- Romana began, but the TARDIS lady interrupted. "We need to go to where I landed Doctor, quickly" she announced. "Why?" he asked, exasperated. "Because we are there in three minutes. We need to go...now!" she cried, running off, only to stop with a cry of pain. "Ow!"
They all stared at her in concern. "Roughly how long do how long do these bodies last?" she asked the Doctor, who scanned her. "You're dying" he said, reading the results. The TARDIS lady rolled her eyes. "Yes, of course I'm dying", she snatched the sonic off him. "I don't belong in a flesh body. I could blow the casing in no time. No, stop it, don't get emotional. That's what the orangey girl says. You're the Doctor. Focus" she ordered, holding out the sonic.
"On what? How? I'm a madman with a box, without the box, stuck down the plughole of the universe on a stupid old junkyard!" he shouted, and then realised, "Oh".
"Oh what?"
Suddenly the Corsair gasped as the same thought occurred to him. "You mean" - the Doctor spun round and pointed at him. "Yes!" he cheered. "Yes what?" asked Flavia. "It's not a junkyard, don't you see? It's not a junkyard!" the Doctor grinned excitedly. "What is it, then?" asked the TARDIS lady.
The Doctor ran over to her. "It's a TARDIS junkyard! Come on...oh, sorry, do you have a name?" he asked the TARDIS lady, who looked over her shoulder at Romana. "Seven hundred years, finally he asks" she said to the Time Lady in a long suffering tone. "So what do I call you?" the Doctor prompted her.
"I think you call me...Sexy" she smirked. The Doctor went red. "Only when we're alone" he whispered, embarrassed. She tilted her head and replied, "What's your point?" The Doctor tried several times to speak, and finally got out, "Oh never mind! Come on, Sexy". He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the corridors, leaving the others to follow them.
They climbed up on top of a big hill. "Valley of the half-eaten TARDISes. Are you guys thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked. "I'm thinking that all of my sisters are dead. That they were devoured, and that we are looking at their corpses" the TARDIS lady said sadly. The Doctor glanced at her. "Ah, no, sorry. That's not what I was thinking" he admitted.
"No, you were thinking you could build a working TARDIS console out of broken remnants of a hundred different models. And you don't care that it's impossible" she finished, looking up at him. "It's not impossible as long as we're alive. Rory and Amy need me. So yeah, we're gonna build a TARDIS" he grinned, heading off into the valley.
/
Before the Time War began, Flavia had never left Gallifrey, and she was perfectly content with that. Then she'd become a renegade, ended up on a homicidal asteroid with a penchant for chopping bits off people and sticking them on others, been rescued by another renegade, and was currently helping said renegade in a mad scheme to cobble together a TARDIS console.
"I can't believe the Doctor does this all the time" she said to Romana as they searched for wires that weren't too frayed. "I can" her fellow Time Lady replied. They looked up and watched the Doctor bickering with the TARDIS lady like a married couple, going on about not being reliable and talking or some other nonsense.
The Doctor switched from cross to excited to concerned faster than a set of traffic lights. "This incarnation is very strange, isn't it?" Flavia said thoughtfully. Romana shrugged. "I've seen worse" she replied, before smiling. "Here we are!" she said triumphantly, holding up the cord she'd been teasing out of a mess of other wires. They got up and went over to the Doctor.
Flying the makeshift TARDIS was surprisingly less terrifying than it should have been; probably because anything beat being imprisoned on House. Of course Flavia wasn't about to start whooping and cheering like the others, and she was very glad when they landed inside the Doctor's TARDIS and stopped being thrown about. The Doctor ran to embrace a red haired human, and the TARDIS lady suddenly wobbled. The Corsair helped her sit down.
"Not good. Not good at all...how do you walk around in these things?" she asked plaintively. The Doctor came over and crouched down, giving her hand a squeeze. "We're not quite there yet...just hold on" he told her. His human friends were staring at Flavia, Romana, the Corsair and the TARDIS lady with wide eyes.
"Doctor, are they…?" the red haired girl said curiously. "Yes! Time Lords!" he grinned. "Amy, Rory, this is Romana, Flavia, the Corsair and...well, she's my TARDIS. Except she's a woman. She's a woman and she's my TARDIS" the Doctor rambled. "She's the TARDIS?" asked Amy, eyes wide. "And she's a woman! She's a woman and she's the TARDIS" he repeated, grinning stupidly.
Amy looked at Romana. "Did he wish really hard?" she asked with a smirk, and the Doctor blushed. "Shut up, it's not like that" he protested. The TARDIS lady got to her feet. "Hello, I'm...Sexy" she greeted. The Doctor glared at his companions. "Still shut up" he warned them.
"The environment has been breached. Nephew, kill them all" House's voice echoed through the TARDIS. Nothing happened. "Where's Nephew?" wondered the other human, Rory presumably. "He was standing right where you materialised" Amy told them, and Flavia grimaced. "Ah; well, he must have been redistributed" the Doctor answered.
Amy raised an eyebrow. "Meaning what?" asked Rory. "You're breathing him" explained the Corsair, and the humans gagged. "Another Ood I failed to save" the Doctor sighed. "Doctor, I did not expect you" House commented in a chilling tone. "Well, that's me all over isn't it? Lovely old unexpected me" the Doctor replied nonchalantly.
"The big question is, now that you're here, how to dispose of you? I could play with gravity" House suggested, increasing the gravitational pull and dragging them to the floor. They struggled against the pull until House released them, toying with them. The TARDIS lady collapsed and the Corsair caught her. Rory moved over and began taking her pulse. "Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke".
They all gasped for breath as the air rushed out of their lungs and the room. "You really don't wanna do that!" the Doctor managed to get out. The air returned, and House asked "Why shouldn't I just kill you now?"
"Because then I won't be able to help you" replied the Doctor, much to his fellow Time Lord's alarm. "Listen to your engines. Just listen to them. You don't have the thrust and you know it. I'm your only hope for getting out of your little bubble, through the rift, and into my universe. And mine's the one with the food in! You just have to promise not to kill us. That's all, just promise".
Romana really hoped this was all part of the Doctor's plan. "You can't be serious" said Amy, ironically saying what Romana was thinking. "I'm very serious. I'm sure it's an entity of it's word" the Doctor lied. The Corsair called, "Doctor! Your...TARDIS, her temperature is fluctuating, she's asking for water". The Doctor came over and knelt besides the dying woman, taking her hand.
"Hey, hang in there, old girl" he smiled, stroking her cheek. "Not long now. It'll be over soon" he murmured. "Always liked it when you called me, old girl" the TARDIS lady smiled at him. "You want me to give my word? Easy - I promise" said House. The Doctor looked up at the ceiling. "Fine. OK. I trust you. Just delete, ooh, 30% of the TARDIS rooms, you'll free up thrust enough to make it through. Activate sub-routine Sigma-9" he instructed.
"Why would you tell me this?" House asked curiously. The Doctor stood up. "Because we want to get back to our universe as badly as you do. And I'm nice" he replied. "Yes" House agreed, "I can delete rooms, and I can also rid myself of vermin, if I delete this room first. Thank you Doctor, very helpful. Goodbye, Time Lords. Goodbye, little humans. Goodbye, Idris" House mocked them.
There was a white flash, and they found themselves in a different control room. "Yes. I mean you could do that, but it just won't work. Hardwired fail-safe. Living things from rooms that are deleted are automatically deposited in the main control room. But thanks for the lift!" the Doctor said smugly. Romana smiled to herself...she should have known he wouldn't just let House win.
"We are in your Universe now, Doctor. Why should it matter to me in which room you die? I can kill you just as easily here as anywhere. Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords" House threatened. The smug expression on the Doctor's face was replaced by a cold one. "Fear me. I've killed all of them" he replied.
Flavia stared at the Doctor, confused and worried. No more TARDISes was one thing, but what did he mean, he'd killed all the Time Lords? "Yeah, you're right. You've completely won" the Doctor said suddenly, doing another complete one-eighty. "Oh, you can kill us in oodles of really inventive ways, but before you do kill us allow me and my friends to congratulate you on being an absolutely worthy opponent".
He started to clap, before grabbing Amy and pulling her up to stand beside him. They both applauded, Amy looking confused. "Congratulations!" she cried, before looking over her shoulder at the Time Ladies and shrugging helplessly. "Yep, you've defeated us, me and my lovely friends here; and last, but definitely not least the TARDIS matrix herself, a living consciousness you ripped out of this very control room and locked up into a human body and look at her!"
It was clear the woman was on the point of death. "Doctor, she's stopped breathing" Rory said sadly. Amy came over to them. "Enough! That is enough" House snapped impatiently. "No. It's never enough. You forced the TARDIS into a body so she'd burn out safely a very long way away from this control room. A flesh body can't hold the TARDIS Matrix and live. Look at her body, House" the Doctor ordered.
"And you think I should mourn her?" asked House. "No. I think you should be very, very careful what you let back into this control room" answered the Doctor, as golden energy flowed from the TARDIS lady's mouth and around the room. "You took her from her home. But now she's back in the box again, and she's free!" he cheered.
The energy swirled around them, diving into the console. House groaned in pain. "No! Doctor, stop this! OW! Stop this now!"
"Oh, look at my girl, look at her go! Bigger on the inside! You see, House?"
"Make it stop!"
"That's your problem. Size of a planet, but inside you're just so small!"
"Make it stop!"
The Doctor turned to his fellow Time Lords. "You guys can have the honour" he told them, and they looked up, ordering in unison, "TARDIS, finish the job". With a final cry of pain, House was destroyed, and the console room returned to it's natural warm hues. Idris' body disappeared...and then a holographic version appeared on the stairs.
"Doctor? Are you there? It's so very dark in here" asked the TARDIS lady, as the Doctor turned from the console. "I'm here" he said softly, smiling at her. "I've been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now" she murmured. "What word?" the Doctor asked quietly. "Alive. I'm alive" the TARDIS lady smiled. The Doctor shook his head slightly. "Alive isn't sad" he protested gently.
The others watched the exchange silently, Rory holding Amy close. "It's sad when it's over. I'll always be here. But this is when we talked and now even that has come to an end. There's something I didn't get to say to you". The Doctor hung his head. "Goodbye" he whispered sadly.
"No. I just wanted to say, hello. Hello Doctor" the woman smiled, tears in her eyes, "it's so very, very nice to meet you". Tears sprang to the Doctor's own eyes. "Please...I don't want you to, please" he begged. The projection faded away, with a final whispered "I love you". The Doctor sniffled...then he felt Romana's mind touch his comfortingly, and smiled.
Rory stepped forward. "Doctor? Do you want me to show them to the med-bay? They look like they need it" he pointed out, gesturing at the Time Lords. Romana shook her head. "We're not hurt...we really just want to have baths" she sighed. "All the same, I ought to check that arm of yours" Rory said to the Corsair, "it's okay, I'm a nurse".
He beckoned them away, the Doctor waving them off as well. Amy lingered behind. "Are you okay, Raggedy Man?" she asked. The Doctor nodded. "You're still crying" she noticed. The Doctor turned and smiled at her, before kissing her forehead. "Run along, Pond".
/
After Rory had made certain they were all relatively unharmed, his wife Amy had shown them all to three sumptuous bathrooms. They showered and scrubbed and sprayed, eradicating the smell of House from their clothes and bodies. Then they burnt the clothes.
They had no idea where the wardrobe was, but the TARDIS had given them outfits anyway. For the Corsair it was a plain white, one sleeved shirt and black trousers, boots, a gun holster and a brown overcoat cut to three quarters length. Romana's outfit was a reiteration of the one her second incarnation wore, with more muted colours, and Flavia's outfit was a regal crimson dress with a golden belt, and a white shawl.
They returned to the console room to find the Doctor sitting in some sort of makeshift harness beneath the console room floor. "How's it going under there?" asked Rory, he and Amy having come to see what their pilot was doing. "Yeah, just putting up a firewall around the matrix, almost done" the Doctor replied as he fiddled with the wires hanging everywhere.
"They're not supposed to be sparking like that" commented Romana as she walked down the steps to his level. The Doctor pushed his ridiculous looking goggles up and pointed at her, opening his mouth to make a witty retort; then he stopped and stared. "What is it?" asked Romana, getting uncomfortable. "Sorry, I just...I missed - that outfit" he explained.
It was clear that he really meant to say "I missed you". Whilst they were cleaning themselves up, the other three Time Lords had been able to sense the Doctor's churning emotions, barely hidden behind his mental walls; delight, disbelief, nervousness, guilt, anger, sadness...along with the fainter emotions of his companions, which mostly amounted to curiosity about them and concern for them and the Doctor, which was touching.
"Are you going to make her talk again?" asked Amy, presumably referring to the TARDIS. "We can't" the Corsair told her. "Why not?" asked Rory, coming down the steps, and Amy added, "It's spacey-wacey, isn't it?" Flavia and Romana exchanged a look. "Well actually, it's because the Time Lords discovered that if you take an eleventh-dimensional matrix and fold it into a mechanical shell"-
He was cut off by a loud spark and snapped, "Yes, it's spacey-wacey!" Rory looked sheepish and dropped the wires he'd touched together. "Sorry...Doctor, at the end, she said something to the Corsair and I. We don't know what it meant" he told the Doctor, who asked, "what did she say?", standing up to reach another wire.
"The only water in the forest is the river. She said we'd need to know that someday" replied the Corsair. "It doesn't make sense, does it?" asked Rory. "Not yet. You okay?" the Doctor inquired, and Rory sighed. "No. I watched her die. I shouldn't let it get to me, but it still does" he admitted. Amy sat down on the steps and leaned on the railing.
"Letting it get to you - you know what that's called? Being alive. Best thing there is. Being alive right now, that's all that counts" said the Doctor, sitting back in the harness and swinging a bit. "Nearly finished. Two more minutes, then we're off. The Eye of Orion's restful, if you like restful. I can never really get the hang of restful. What do you think, dear? Where shall we take the kids this time?" he asked the TARDIS.
Romana noticed Amy's expression turn to one of surprise and asked, "Is something wrong?" The Doctor looked round. "Nothing" Amy waved her off, "it's nothing".
"Pond, speak" the Doctor commanded. She gave a wry smile, and shrugged. "It's just...I didn't think we'd be staying. You've got them now" she explained, waving a hand at the Time Lords. "You don't need us little humans anymore". The Doctor stood up and walked over to the steps; Amy stood as well and went to meet him half-way.
"Oh, Amelia...of course I need you. And you are much more than just a little human" he told her. "Are you calling me fat?" she asked jokingly. "You know what I mean" said the Doctor, pulling her into a hug. She returned it, and when they'd pulled apart the Doctor said "House deleted all the bedrooms, I should make you two a new bedroom. You'd like that, wouldn't you?"
Rory whispered something to Amy, who said "Okay, Doctor, this time can we lose the bunk beds?" What is a married couple doing sleeping in bunk beds? wondered Romana. "Nah, bunk beds are cool. A bed with a ladder! You can't beat that" said the Doctor. Amy and Rory just looked pointedly at him. "It's your room. Up those stairs, keep walking till you find it. Off you pop!"
The humans turned to leave, but then Rory paused on the steps and asked, "Doctor do you have a room?" Amy tugged him off, knowing that the Time Lords needed some space. The Doctor continued to fiddle about with the wiring, avoiding the other's gazes. They waited two, three minutes, before the Corsair stepped forward. "Doctor" he said simply.
The Doctor stopped his machinations and sighed heavily. He stood up and beckoned them to follow him to the main level, leaving his goggles on the harness. The Doctor leaned against the console and faced them, feeling like he was facing a firing squad. Flavia stood right in front of him, with Romana on her left and the Corsair on her right, cutting off all his escape routes.
With a deep breath to steel himself, the Doctor began to explain. "The Time Lords and the Daleks went to War, raging across time and space; time itself became so twisted that Gallifrey was Time Locked" he explained. His voice was emotionless, but his weak barriers betrayed him. The others supposed he hadn't had to shield his mind for centuries.
"Rassilon decided to end the War using the Final Sanction...using a signal outside of the Time Lock to escape it, and using the paradox that caused to rip apart the Time Vortex, destroy the universe. A select few Time Lords would ascend to become beings of mere consciousness in the Void. You remember the Master? The link was inside his head, ever since he was eight, sent back through the Untempered Schism. A drumbeat...he's dead now. He's gone" the Doctor explained.
"I had four choices. Let the Daleks destroy the universe, leave my people to suffer trapped in hell in a Time Lock, let Rassilon destroy the universe, or burn my people and the Daleks alike. And the Daleks", his fists clenched, "they keep coming back. They keep...it's been about 150 years for me since Gallifrey was destroyed. All I've had are my companions, my TARDIS...and now you three".
He sighed and rubbed a hand down his face. "I suppose, technically...you are the last surviving member of the High Council, Flavia. If anyone has the right to punish me for what I've done, it's you" the Doctor told Flavia, who was surprised he was even suggesting it. His whole demeanour screamed of someone who'd done so much and was just so tired. Flavia thought for a moment, and then schooled her face into an impassive mask.
"Very well, Doctor. I hereby sentence you to a maximum of 150 years with no contact from Time Lords" she stated. The Doctor hung his head. "Doctor?" said Romana. He looked up at her, eyes full of barely hidden pain. "You've had 150 years with no contact from Time Lords" she reminded him, and the Doctor's eyes widened as he caught on.
"You...you forgive me?" he whispered disbelievingly. "I didn't say that" Flavia corrected, and the Doctor wilted somewhat… "but you saved us from House, and the universe from Rassilon. I think, just this once, you've earned a pardon" she smiled. The Doctor beamed at her, and suddenly darted forward and pulled her into a hug. Flavia stiffened in surprise. "Thank you" the Doctor whispered in her ear, before pulling away from the slightly stunned Time Lady and over to the console.
He reached out for the dematerialisation lever, only for it to swing down on its own. The Doctor laughed in delight, cheered and began to fly the TARDIS in his own madcap way. "Have you still not figured out how to fly this thing?" asked Romana as the room shock, even worse than when she'd travelled with his fourth incarnation. "This is the fun way!" he shouted back.