Title: Amends

Rating: PG

Summary: The newly regenerated 10th Doctor makes peace with the Tardis after years of mutual silent treatment.

The Tardis was silent - completely still, completely serene. The Doctor stood in the doorway for a long moment as the icy air outside whipped past him and into her console room. Then, with a smile on his face, he stepped forward and closed the doors behind him. His Tardis - the one constant in all of the changes of his lives. Newly regenerated and still feeling awkward in his new body, she was the only sentient creature in the universe he knew who understood all that he was feeling. The hope and excitement, the relief and the tiniest little bit of fear...

His eyes traced her curves, all the way up to the domed ceiling, as if he had never really seen her before. And he hadn't; not with these eyes. He'd regenerated in this room. He'd woken up in here, following a regenerative crisis that he hoped never to experience ever again. He remembered the past few days in bits and pieces, when the adrenaline overruled the chemical imbalances in his brain and brought him back to himself for a brief moment. He remembered the searing pain when he'd first realized the process was going wrong, and the way he'd thrown the emergency switch to send them careening through the Vortex at ten times the speed of safe travel. He'd pushed her further, faster than she'd ever been designed to go. And she'd gotten him to safety.

"Thanks for that, by the way," he said offhandedly as he headed past her console, toward the doorway leading back into the hallways. Not that he thought his words themselves signified anything. She was a sentient time ship; spoken language had little meaning to her. When she communicated, it was through impulses and feelings - a flux in the artron energy link between them to release specific chemicals in the brain or call up certain pictures, memories, scenarios...

He paused in the doorway as he felt, very suddenly, that subtle shift inside of him. For just an instant, it caught him off guard. He hadn't realized it until that very moment, but it had been a very long time since he'd felt her say anything to him. But he was certain that slight flux in his train of thought was not his own doing. He'd learned over the years to be highly sensitive to that sort of thing. There were, after all, an awful lot of creatures in the universe with telepathic - even hypnotic - capabilities.

Slowly he turned, and his eyes lingered for a moment on the softly glowing time rotor before he took a few slow steps forward. Had it come from her? That twinge of... he wasn't even sure what it had been. For too long, she'd been silent. It was like hearing a language he'd not used in centuries. Well, alright, it hadn't been quite that long. But her communications had always been a bit vague and hard to define to begin with. They were even harder to understand when he was exercising his abilities to understand her for the first time in... well, it was decades, at least.

"What is it?" he asked quietly.

But no answer, no impulse, no emotion came. He stood still for a moment, waiting. But there was nothing. Finally, patiently, he slid his jacket off of his shoulders - leather jacket over pajamas; he must've been quite a sight! - and tossed it on the jump seat. It was a bit too warm in here. And a bit too silent.

Running his tongue along his teeth, he let his eyes wander over the familiar controls. The dents in her console where he'd gotten a bit carried away with the rubber mallet. His last incarnation had been like that. Prone to anger, and careful to hide it. But not from her. She was a part of him, as reliant upon his existence to experience the universe as he was on hers. There was no hiding anything from her...

"Is that why you came back?" he asked hesitantly. The words might mean nothing to her; but the concepts, the pictures behind them would. After nine hundred years, he knew how to talk to his ship. "Why you let Rose come back? You didn't want to sit on a street corner and die in 21st century Earth?"

There was a hint of accusation in his tone. He heard it, but he didn't try to curb it. He wasn't angry. But he still wasn't exactly sure how to feel about what she had done. What she had enabled Rose to do...

"Don't get me wrong; I'm glad to be alive. Glad to not have to worry about the Daleks again anytime soon and you..." He broke out into a full smile at the memory - an army of Daleks dissolving into atoms. "You were magnificent! I've never seen anything like it. I can't imagine how long you've wanted to do that..."

His smile slowly fell as his thoughts drifted to Rose - the tears streaking her cheeks, the pain in her kiss. The Doctor swallowed as he lowered his head, dropping his eyes to the console as he rested his hand on the edge of it.

"But you could've killed her."

The memory hit him so hard, it might as well have been his own. It wasn't, of course. He hadn't been here when Rose had opened the console and looked into the Tardis. But he could see it as if he had been. He could feel it - the bonding of one of the most powerful sentient creatures in all of space and time to a frail human body. But not a true bonding. The Tardis hadn't bonded to her. If she had, there was no way Rose would have survived.

"I know she was willing," he said quietly. "She opened the hatch; you didn't force her to do that. I just don't really understand why you didn't kill her. And I would feel a lot better knowing that. Knowing what, exactly, you did to her."

There was no answer. He hadn't really been expecting one. With a sigh, he paced slowly, around the console, thoughts wandering. Her relationship - such as it was - with any one of his companions had never been particularly friendly. In more recent incarnations, it was even less so. Whereas she had once just seemed not to care one way or another for the humans - and others - he brought onboard, it probably wasn't an exaggeration to say that she'd detested Charley. And while the similarities between Charley and Rose were obscure, they were certainly present. So what was it about Rose that made the Tardis protect her?

He paused as he considered that question. Maybe it wasn't Rose at all. Maybe the Tardis was the one who'd changed. Perhaps, in a way, the events of the past few decades - the destruction of war, the hopelessness of death, the lack of anything that simply felt good had made her more mindful of the things that were precious.

But there was nothing except silence in the room and in his mind. Taking a deep breath, he turned toward the console and leaned forward, resting his weight on it.

"You used to talk to me, you know," he whispered. "Once upon a time, you used to talk to me every day, all the time; I could always feel you. I felt your energies, your strength and you felt... Well, I guess I don't know what you felt. I like to think you felt something. I know I felt every time that you hurt. I felt it - really felt it. Like my own pain. I suppose that's the thing about a symbiotic relationship. Even one as dysfunctional as ours."

He lowered his eyes again, watching his hand as he trailed his fingertips lightly along her console. "Seems like forever since I've felt that from you. We've both been broken for a very long time, haven't we?"

He could feel her, shifting inside of his mind - a telepathic link that used no words, no known language. He didn't need one. Just her presence there filled a void, covered a gaping wound that had been lying open for far too long. The problem was... she filled it with salt.

A hundred million ships on fire, an entire planet burning and screaming in pain. He could hear them - all of them - in his mind. The pain and anger, the fear and betrayal. The sadness. The deep and burning sadness. What right did any living being have to cause so much death and destruction?

There were tears burning his eyes. Suppressed emotion welling up after too much silence. Fury and frustration and helplessness. He blinked the tears away as he looked up at her still, glowing time rotor. "Yes, I killed them," he whispered. "And you were right there. You watched with me. Watched them all die, felt them. You felt as betrayed as they did, and as angry as I did. And that's when you went silent, wasn't it? You haven't spoken to me since."

The emotions were growing, burning in his chest. He balled the confusion up into anger - perhaps the most easily manageable of the things he felt - pushed himself upright, and glared hard at the console.

"But that wasn't the beginning of it, Tardis. That might have made you hate me; it certainly made me hate myself. And I know I took out a lot of my anger on you - the part of me that I could objectify and blame because without you, I would've died with them."

He wasn't supposed to survive. He wasn't supposed to survive the destruction of Gallifrey. He never should've survived. But the Tardis, whether by her own will or a will that was forced upon her by fate and time itself, had saved him. He remembered the feelings he'd felt as he'd realized that he was still alive, the impotent anger that he'd vented on her, destroying anything that he could get his hands on in those first few moments of rage. Then he sank down, lower and lower, into the pits of despair. And since that day, if he was really honest, he'd probably hated her just as much as he'd hated himself.

"The Time War ends."

"Yes," he finally whispered. "You're right."

He ran his hands down his face. The Tardis' words through Rose's mouth echoed in his thoughts, and he swallowed hard as he took a deep, shaky breath, letting the emotions die down again.

"And I'm ready for it to end. I'm so, so ready for it to end. I'm ready to stop thinking about it every bloody day, stop dreaming about it at night. There's no penance to be had, nothing I could ever do that would make up for it. And I'm ready to stop being angry. To stop smiling when people can see, to stop pretending, to stop lying..."

He let the silence linger for a moment, the stillness in the room as his words echoed, testament to the man he would be. He knew almost nothing about himself right now. But he knew these few things would be.

"But that isn't going to fix you and me," he said quietly. "The Time War might have amplified our problems, shut you up tight and even tied you to the whipping post, but that isn't where it started. It was long before then, wasn't it? Because we've been broken for a very, very long time."

As the memories of war and blood and fire faded, even older memories slowly surfaced. He brought them to mind for her, and she answered in kind. Her own "memories", such as they were.

"Come on, Tardis, old girl, you want to fight? Come and have one!"

He swallowed harder as he looked up again at her time rotor, as if he could somehow look her in the eye. The tone of her emotion was anything but accusatory. It was full of pain and regret as his own words echoed in his mind, filling him with guilt.

"Show yourself to me! Let's make a fair fight of it! Or I might have to get really angry and do you some harm." Bristling with anger, he stalked around her console, fists clenched tight. "I mean, okay, I can't open the doors and get out or else the universe falls - pretty standard stuff, really - but I can hurt you! Really hurt you. With just a little tweak of my mind..."

The Doctor let his eyes slide closed as he bowed his head. He hadn't been totally responsible for those words, he knew, or the actions that had followed them. Just as she had not been totally responsible for her callused response. She'd stood sneering at him in a corporeal form as he willed her destruction, one hall, one room, one corridor at a time.

"Don't waste my time, Tardis, or I'll take your interior apart, piece by piece!"

"Please stop doing that." The condescending tone made him even more furious.

"No! How much of this can you take?"

"Me? I'm infinite, Doctor. I can reconfigure myself as much as I like."

"Good, because this makes me feel really good!"

It was not him, but the memory was his. The guilt was his. Not only for what had happened that day, but for all the steps that had led them to that place, where he hardly recognized her voice anymore. For a consciousness lacking a concept of time, she was doing a remarkable job of piecing the events together in his mind. All of the barbs and jabs and anger exchanged between them...

"Where's Charley Pollard!"
"Who?"

"Don't play games with me, ship!"

Some of the words had been ludicrous. The sheer amount of viciousness that had exchanged was something that neither of them could justify. Infected by the insidious essence of anti-time, the Time Lord and the Tardis had nearly ripped each other apart. But even in the midst of what amounted to demon possession... the truths had not been fabricated. Her bitterness, her feelings of betrayal.

"How many adventures did we share? How many billions of miles did we travel together? How long was it before you betrayed me?"

Indignant and angry, the Doctor glared. "I never betrayed you."

Separated from the memory by years of pain and loss and grief, it was still as fresh to him now as it had been two incarnations ago. She made it so. The wounds, for her, were as fresh as they had been even back then. She was timeless. Time could not heal her. He opened his eyes and let them fade out of focus as he rubbed his thumb softly over her porous skin.

"I remember," he whispered as she brought the memories back in force.

"What did you think you were doing when you piloted me around an exploding time station! Did you ask my permission? Hmm? Did you stop for one moment, one millisecond, to consider me? When you laid your life down for the girl, you laid mine down too. Couldn't kill her, though. Couldn't sacrifice the blessed Charlotte. But me? Me, your oldest, most steadfast friend. That's a different matter. Never mind, dear old Tardis. Had a good in ends, didn't we old girl, old thing?"
The Doctor's eyes lingered on a crack in the console panel, and he traced it lightly. "We never did make amends, did we?" he asked quietly. "Separated in the Divergent Universe, I looked for you... I don't even know how long. How do you measure time in a place like that? It felt like centuries. Every moment felt like centuries. Stripped of my senses and forced to survive in bleeding agony. I can't even tell you how that felt. And without you... It was like missing an enormous piece of me..."

"Can you imagine what it felt like when the time station detonated inside of me? When those fires of anti-time raged through my heart? It hurt! But that was nothing. Nothing to knowing you'd abandoned me."

He paused as he looked up again, letting his eyes run over her again. "And you were there, too, weren't you?" he realized, the epiphany hitting him with the force of a Mack truck. "You don't feel time the way I do, but you do feel it all the same. And you felt every minute of that loneliness, that separation."

"Pull yourself together, Tardis!"

"Pull myself together? Pull what together? Look around me! A dirty smoldering hulk, a box for your dirt, your clutter, your junk.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, genuine and sincere. "I must have seemed like such an... an ungrateful controller in that lifetime. Too cruel and uncaring to be a friend."

"What is your idea of friendship, Doctor, I'd really like to know."

"Friendship is... Well, it's... it's caring for somebody more than you do yourself."

"Fool," she scoffed. "That's not friendship. That's love. Blind, heedless, love."

The Doctor's posture straightened, as much as he could in his bonds - the bonds she had manacled him with. But he didn't interrupt.

"Shall I tell you about friendship? Friendship is standing shoulder to shoulder in the face of life and death. Friendship is there when love's candle has burned and guttered. Friendship stays loyal when the enemy is at the gate. Friendship is never sacrificed. Never surrendered. I was your friend, Doctor. Your Tardis. Your friend-ship."

It was as close to venting - an over spilling of emotion to clear the air between them - as anyone could have come. He could feel her sadness, her frustration. He could feel her tears on his cheeks, her memories in his mind. Not just Zagreus, not just the Divergent Universe, but all that he had put her through...

The memories came so fast and furious now, his mind could hardly keep up. He shut his eyes. He let her ravage his emotions. He let her speak her mind, let her vent her frustrations. So many things about that lifetime had been so painful for her. He'd lost track of how many times he'd had to repair her console room - or she had, when the damage was too extensive for him to fix. Blown up by countless weapons from the inside, hit by time torpedoes, clawed at by starving Vortisaurs, ripped apart by the forces of anti-time. And then, in the midst of it all...

"You're jealous," he realized, shocked. "You're jealous of Charley."

"Like they say, Doctor. Hell hath no fury like a Tardis scorned."

The Doctor's jaw tightened, and he glared viciously at his friend-turned-enemy. "Then bring it on. Bring it on! You call this a dungeon? Where's the rack, the whip, the iron maiden? Flay me alive, why don't you? Then beat me!"

Her anger slowly died down, and he felt the burning in his chest subside. Very slowly, he raised his eyes again, moved his hand slowly over the console, comforting her as she ran out of memories to beat him with. She lingered on the memory of Charley, and he smiled sadly as he nodded in understanding.

"You're right, you know," he admitted. "I did love her. I loved her more than life itself. But I never treated you poorly on account of her. That Time Station... I did what I did because that's what we do. We save the universe, you and me; we save innocent lives. That's what we've always done."

She had settled into silence. Sulking? Emotionally spent? He couldn't tell. What did that even look like? He'd never in all his lives known a Tardis to be so expressive. But he was hearing her message loud and clear.

"Honestly, did you ever really think you had competition?" he asked quietly. "It was only a matter of time. If she'd lived a thousand years, it still would've been you and me in the end."

Another flicker of anger, but he cut it off before it had a chance to settle.

"But you trying to help that process along, helping her to disappear sooner, well... Let's just say you didn't do much for our relationship, either."

"I am Zagreus!"

"Oh, I know it wasn't you," he answered quickly. "The actions weren't you. You never would've thrown an innocent person out into the Vortex to die. But the emotion? That anger you felt then, that feeling of being betrayed? You still feel that. If you didn't, you wouldn't be bringing it up now."

There was no answer this time. He paused for a long moment and stood up straighter, shaking his head.

"But you know what I don't understand? Rose. We're right back where we started, aren't we? Because that's what I originally wanted to know. You're not jealous of her. If you were, you could've killed her instantly and you know I wouldn't have even blamed you for it. I wouldn't have ever known you could've done anything but kill her. So why didn't you?"

"I want you safe."

"So, what? She's a kindred spirit?"

"My Doctor..."

"She's not the first to feel that way. What makes her -"

"Listen!"

He paused. That wasn't part of the memory... He quieted, cleared his mind, and felt. He felt the anger dwindle, he felt the silence set in. He listened. He felt the Tardis' warmth, felt the safety she offered, and the feeling of being home. He felt... love.

They both loved him - Rose, and the Tardis. Perhaps, after all these years, the Tardis had learned to feel not only what he felt, but the positive energies of his companions as well. Maybe that was why she embraced Rose. He smiled as he considered it. If she could learn to feel the positive energies of his companions, feed off of the pleasure that they derived from witnessing the wonders of the universe for the first time, she would have a near-endless supply.

Or maybe it was simpler than that. Maybe it was still about what he felt, the love and the joy he experienced because of this young woman who had somehow woven her way into his heart. When he hugged her, he felt her warmth; when he looked at her trusting eyes, he felt safe; when he laughed with her, he felt like he was home. She made him feel something good after so many years of nothing but pain and loss and loneliness. She experienced the universe through him. She felt what he felt. And it did feel so good to love again. He hadn't loved anyone, hadn't cared about anyone or anything for so long...

"Including you," he whispered, stroking the Tardis console gently, caressing her scars - the dents and cracks his own hands had inflicted on her. "And I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."

In the silence that followed, he felt as much as he watched her lights dim. But he didn't have to ask why. The memory that came to him, creeping in on the corners of his awareness, was like a dream, or an illusion, and he felt himself caught up in it. The first time he had seen her, the first time he had circled her console.

"Can you fly?"

The eerie silence, as if he were inside of a tomb. She had been powered down for ages, her Time Rotor glowing dimly, like a dying ember. Was she dying? He leaned forward to press his hand gently against the time rotor, feeling her cool skin for the first time.

"Your controller left you ages ago, didn't he?"

Tracing his fingers down to the console, he caressed her lightly, smearing a path in the dust. His head remained bowed as he looked up, into her rotor as if into her eyes.

"Would you like a new one?"

The Doctor stroked his hand over her warm skin, and he smiled at the memory. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it's time to start over. New Doctor, new Tardis? Shall we change your theme?"

There was no response, just quiet stillness. He smiled faintly.

"No, maybe not," he said softly. "Not yet."

With the barest tip of his finger, he traced the circles on her console that he'd made in the dust all those years ago. He wrote his name into her flesh, marking her as his own, engraving himself on her even if the mark was invisible to the naked eye. He knew it was there. She knew it, too.

"You're still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he whispered lovingly. "My ship. My Tardis. My best friend. And I still want to see the universe with you. All over again, for the first time. Always new, always different... and always you and me."

Finished with his invisible tattoo, he looked up, kissed his fingers and touched them to the Time Rotor. She responded warmly, a soft whir and a tingling in his fingertips. He smiled as he withdrew his hand, and turned away, heading for the wardrobe room. In this new body, he needed a change of costume.

Things were going to be very different from now on.