A/N: We're going to pretend that the TARDIS is unable to delete rooms. Takes place sometime during series 5. Feedback always welcome.
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"A door, once opened, may be stepped through in either direction."
-Doctor Who, "The Girl in the Fireplace"
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The Doctor likes to show off.
He looks for any excuse to bring travelers onto his ship, giddy at their awe - "It's bigger on the inside!" - and bounces around the center console, pulling switches for effect, rattling off figures and numbers and stories.
TARDIS; stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space. Creates a psychic field, which is why you can understand me and Amy can understand you. Careful! Last time I touched that I ended up in Pompeii. Nasty business. Now, over here -
He tells them there are 220 rooms on the ship. They may change size, shape, location, and even contents, but there are always 220 rooms.
And here is where he lies, because Amy knows there are 221 rooms. She's counted them herself, meticulously and more than once. She places an innocuous sticker on each one and keeps tally on a piece of paper, because the Doctor has never lied to her before and realizing he has done so now - about a door - hurts like nothing else. The TARDIS ceases its restless moving of rooms whenever she does this, and it is as though the ship wants her to find the Doctor's secret.
Rory has counted, too, and they spend many hours speculating together. The question becomes not what the Doctor is hiding, but which door is the extra one?
It is Amy who voices the question aloud one night; had she known it would be that easy, she'd have done it weeks ago, because the next morning there is an extra door in the hallway. She doesn't notice it at first as she stumbles down the stairs, still groggy with sleep, but Rory mentions as they climb the winding stairs to their hallway after breakfast that something looked off to him that morning. They pause at the end of the long corridor, and Amy sees it then. The balance is off; the hallway is no longer symmetrical.
"There's an extra room," she says suddenly, and counts again to be sure - 13 on one side, 12 on the other.
They don't have to wonder which one is the extra; it stands out now that they know it is there, even though it's painted the same shade of blue as the rest of the doors. Amy recalls the Doctor telling her about the psychic field, and wonders whether the ship is directing them to it. She ignores Rory's cautious Maybe we shouldn't go in and strides over to the door, grasping the unusually warm handle.
"What are you doing?"
The Doctor's voice is low and tinged with danger. They both jump and turn to face him.
"How did you find this place?" he asks, unusually stern.
Amy shares a glance with Rory, gives the Doctor an apologetic look, and pushes open the door.
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"Rise and shine, Rose!" The Doctor has never had any sense of personal boundaries, and after a year of traveling - well, she thinks it's been a year; her linear sense of time has been disrupted what with one thing and another - Rose is used to his unorthodox way of waking her. He darts into her room this morning as he does nearly every morning, throwing open the door with barely-controlled excitement. She groans and pulls the sheets up over her head; he snatches them away from her. "Come, now, this is no time for a lie-in! You won't believe where we just ended up."
He is gone in a flash and she dashes after him in her pajamas, laughing all the way to the control room.
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"It found us. What have you been hiding?" Amy ignores the look of warning the Doctor shoots her and Rory's hand on her arm. She tugs gently away from him and strides into the room deliberately, taking in the simple furnishings. There is a bed in the far corner, with wooden posts and a pastel quilt. A lamp on the bedside table casts a soft yellow glow, softening the white of the walls. There are clothes strewn on the floor - a blue jacket, jeans, a red skirt, one lone shoe - and a dog-eared book on the table. Amy touches the warm wood and draws her hand away quickly. Whoever lives here hasn't been gone long - the surfaces are clean and free of dust.
"Who is she?" Amy asks quietly. She does not look at him. "And why have you been hiding her?"
"There's no one else here besides us," the Doctor answers in that same low voice. "I promise you that."
Rory has come into the room now, too, but the Doctor still lingers on the other side of the door.
"This room belonged to an old friend of mine," he adds finally.
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She comes down the stairs of her own accord one morning, a rare occurrence. The Doctor, fiddling with the controls as always, suppresses a smile and prepares to tease her.
"Well, look what we have here! Given up on sleeping half the day away for once? Good, because you will not believe what I - blimey, you look awful!"
She gives a muddled giggle and sniffs, crossing her arms across her chest in an effort to ward off chills. She has wrapped herself in an oversized sweatshirt nicked from her mother's closet on their last trip home and her hair has been hastily pulled back out of her face. The bruised skin under her eyes betrays her exhaustion and when she speaks her voice is thick with illness.
"'S just a cold," she says, flashing him a smile and settling herself in his chair, which he has abandoned in his enthusiasm. "So tell me - where are we now? What's gotten you so excited? Must be good!"
"Oh, no," he says, seizing her arm and pulling her out of the chair. "It's nothing that can't wait. C'mon, bed for you!"
She protests weakly but he drags her away anyway and, back in her room, all but shoves her onto the bed.
"You seriously can't expect me to spend all day in this bed when there is something out there that has you bouncing all over the control room!" she tries, but he has seized the quilt and dragged it up to her chin. He then tucks it in under her shoulders and legs, and within seconds she resembles an absurdly colorful cocoon. "Doctor!"
"What?" he says, looking innocently bewildered. She gives a laugh that turns into a cough and dislodges herself from the confines of the quilt. She scoots over a bit and then pats the empty space beside her.
"There's no need to nanny me. I'm not going to keel over."
He gently settles himself next to her, stretching out so that his feet nearly hang off the mattress. He is all limbs, and she is reminded of an overgrown Daddy-long-legs. She rests her head against his shoulder as he pulls out his screwdriver and points it at the ceiling. The room goes dark, and the walls are suddenly awash with a thousand twinkling diamonds that swirl gently around them.
"Stars," she breathes.
"Yep," he says happily, obviously pleased with himself. "Your stars. The ones you see from your bedroom window at home, actually."
"Tell me about them," she says suddenly.
"Which one?"
"All of them; any of them." She shifts, curling around him. One of her hands rests on his chest; he wraps it in both of his. "I want to know everything."
So he picks a star and begins to talk, slowly at first, and then picks up steam like a train engine until he is gesturing madly and the room is positively quivering with his pent-up energy.
He keeps talking long after she has fallen asleep.
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"She used to travel with you." Amy knows she shouldn't have felt a stab of hurt, but she does anyway and hopes it doesn't show in her face. Nine hundred years of travel - of course there had been others. She knew that, of course, but to see it here - actually see that there were others, be forced to accept something that was once abstract and intangible - feels like a punch in the gut. There were others before and will be others after. It is a fact. "What happened to her?"
"I lost her."
"How?"
"It's a long story," the Doctor says shortly; a shadow crosses his features. He is good, for the most part, at keeping the memories at bay; better than he used to be, at any rate. "I was a different man then."
"So why keep her room like this?"
"Keeping this the way it was seemed the least I could do, after what happened," the Doctor says simply, and then his voice turns to steel. "I'd appreciate you leaving it alone. You weren't supposed to find it in the first place."
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She slips away after the happy reunion in the TARDIS, and after a few moments the Doctor excuses himself to "check on the engines." Jack gives him a knowing look and the slightest of nods; he'll keep Donna distracted.
He finds her standing in the doorway to her old room, gazing inside but standing just beyond the threshold.
"You kept it," she says quietly, hearing him approach and knowing it can be no one else.
"Yeah," he says, "I did."
"That's very sweet," are the only words she can manage to force around the lump in her throat. Her eyes travel over her old belongings – the clothes, the book she never finished, the quilt given to her by an aunt years ago.
"You - can take whatever you like. I just - there was no one to give it back to, after Canary Wharf. Didn't seem right to keep it anywhere but here," he says, as though he needs to explain himself. He leaves out the fact that once in a while, when the ship is too quiet and the memories too great, he slips into that bed for a moment's reprieve. It is only in this room that the memories quiet themselves; it is only in this room that her voice doesn't echo through his mind.
Am I ever going to see you again?
"No," she says firmly, and turns to face him finally. He raises an eyebrow in surprise.
"What would you like me to do with it?"
She shrugs. "Keep it. Get rid of it. Box it up and burn it. Whatever you like. This - this isn't me. Not anymore. The person who lived in this room died a long time ago."
She knows he is going to send her back to the parallel world. She will never again spend a night on the TARDIS; she read that in the look on his face down in the control room and does not relish the moment that is coming. It is good to not speak of it; it is better still to pretend - for a moment, for an hour - that it won't happen at all.
He wraps an arm around her waist in an uncharacteristic moment of affection and pulls her close.
The Doctor in the TARDIS with Rose Tyler.
As it should have been.
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Rory leaves the room first, quick and sheepish. Amy follows after several tense seconds, reluctant to leave the room because she knows that, once she does, the matter will never be spoken of again. The Doctor shuts the door behind them and pulls out his screwdriver, pointing it at the lock. There is a click; a moment later the door fades, melting into the wall.
"You got your answers," he says softly, though he may as well have been shouting. "You won't be able to find that door again, so don't bother trying. The TARDIS has hidden it away for good, now."
He refuses to look at them as he turns and walks back down the corridor. Amy doesn't know what possesses her to call after him, but she does, and feels Rory wince beside her.
"Doctor!"
He pauses, shoulders hunched and tense.
"What was her name?"
The Doctor looks at them over his shoulder, gaze steady and furious and just a little bit sad.
"Her name was Rose."
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