He was thirteen years old. Or was he a day? Had he been staring for a million, gazillion years?
It felt as though he had been born this way. Born staring at the beautiful, squibbly, magical thing in front of him. Sometimes he liked to think that it was blue, but that didn't begin to cover it. It was the kind of blue only a Tardis could be, the kind of blue that promised things. Beautiful adventures. Amazing disguises. Right now it could barely be contained in words, but he knew that a few swift movements to the consul would change that. It would become whatever he wanted it to be.
"Hey! You there!"
The Guardian called to the little Time Lord from over the red sea of grass.
"Get back in line or it'll be the end of your garden privileges!"
The little Time Lord blinked, trying to block out the words. It couldn't be. They could never be separated. He was in love. In the midst of a field of its sisterkind, he knew that the Tardis in front of him was the sexiest thing he had ever seen.
And then the guardian was behind him, warm fingers pressing against his head from both sides, feeling his thoughts.
"Why, you naughty, naughty thing!"
The rest of the class was looking now, eyes of all different heights and ages all peeking around at the troublemaker.
"You want it for yourself! You want to take it away! How could you think such things, with all the generosity that has been provided you…"
The Guardian's voice was hoarse and tipsy-turvy, like a punch-drunk parrot. The little Time Lord thought that might be because of the teacher's very recent regeneration from a woman to a man. He'd heard it said that the process came more gradually for some people. He just wished the Guardian would hurry up and lose the fingernails. They hurt.
"Yeah!" Came a shout from a skinny blonde in the midst of the crowd, "What makes you think you're all ready for travel? I heard what they said about you. You're not a warrior or a corsair or anything, you're just a doctor!"
A couple people echoed, "Get back where you belong, Doctor!"
The little Time Lord spun around. The Guardian's hands relaxed as the stray pupil took a few strides back into place.
He probably shouldn't have let his guard down.
"Oi!" called out the little Time Lord to his mocking audience, "Watch, you lot. Doctors'll be the ones we'll end up needing. Who wants to be a stupid old warrior? No need to move around then. War always comes to you."
The Guardian clasped his hands to his head, ornate golden fingernails digging into his own cheeks for once.
"Don't ever say such things! What if it happened? What if you called down destruction on us all?"
The skinny blonde shuddered a gasp.
The little Time Lord just looked back at the love of his life, still sitting there. Waiting for him. She was moaning now, making those slight, airy, orgasmic sounds again. A little smile wrinkled his face when he thought of what the Guardian would say if he chose to have another go at reading his mind. Oh, to shock, to awe, to ruin appetites and spoil boring thoughts!
Well, maybe not spoil appetites. That was taking it a bit far, but the little Time Lord thought that the details were largely beside the point. All he wanted was…
But the group was moving on again. The Merchant had joined them, and was rambling on about something so absolutely, abysmally pointless that the little Time Lord didn't even bother trying to pay attention. Instead, he slipped to the back of the line.
Then he left the line entirely, and was trotting softly, slowly, back out into the field. The wind ran its wild fingers through the little Doctor's hair and he wondered how the wind was different on other planets. The feel of it must change from place to place. From time to time…
He felt a chill go through him as he touched it. Then he suddenly burned. The door wouldn't open. He pushed with all his might. The Guardian might turn around at any moment. The Merchant might sprint over and pry him off his property.
Then he pulled, and within seconds he was inside. Inside the biggest, bountifullest bigness you could possibly imagine. And all those buttons and levers. Glowing. Calling him in, oh, she was such a bad girl…
It took less than a second for the Doctor to realize that he didn't know what the hell he was doing. And it took an even smaller fraction of that less-than-second for him to realize that he didn't care. It was just borrowing, after all. He would bring it back someday.
The class outside had noticed his absence by this point, of course, but it was too late to do anything about it now. If the Doctor had been listening more closely, he would have heard a most amusing commotion. Everyone was screaming. The little blonde had nearly fainted from envy. The Merchant was as red as the landscape. The Guardian was reading his own thoughts in a frantic attempt to keep himself from a state of emotional collapse.
But the Doctor wasn't watching, either. The only thing that mattered to him, the one thing that remained, clogging his every sense, was that noise. Those raspy, intoxicating footsteps of the Universe.
