AN/ This is the moment when the child used the TARDIS phone to call the Doctor in "The Empty Child" told from the TARDIS' POV. Part of my TARDIS 100 series. Doctor Who and the TARDIS are copyright the BBC. One Shot. Thanks to LilCosette for betaing. Hope you enjoy.
For Molly Fran and Eleanor Rose.
I find it amazing how much people depend on sound. It tells you about the world around you and therefore helps you navigate through life. Blind people depend on it more than most. Even I depend on it to a degree. Sometimes it can calm you. Other times it can scare you.
We were chasing an old Chula war ambulance. It was mauve and dangerous. The Doctor slaved me to it and so I was forced to follow. I would have preferred it if he had not done that and I let him know my displeasure by throwing sparks at him. I think I burned his hand, but I wasn't upset about it. I considered it payback. Being slaved to this ship was extremely taxing on me, especially when it jumped time tracks. I was dragged along, unhappy, but not afraid. Mauve and dangerous? Bah. How about blue and dangerous?
I landed in London during the middle of the Blitz. The Doctor was too distracted to find out what year we had landed in. He and Rose left to ask around about the ship, which had landed around here about a month before. I was left to sit and brood, waiting patiently for them to return, as always.
It did not take long for the Doctor to come back. I could easily sense his approach. He was looking for Rose, and stopped to remark to a cat how he wished the one day find a companion who finally got the "whole don't wonder off thing."
That's when it happened.
A cold shiver, like ice water, tingling down my side.
I was being taken over.
No, wait…not completely taken over, just my outside phone.
As part of my disguise as a 1950's police public call box, I have a phone in a panel on my outside door. It does not work and it was never meant to.
That is why it felt so odd when it started ringing against my will.
Riiiiiiiiing
The Doctor was just as puzzled as I was. He put the cat down and walked over to me.
Riiiiiiiiing
Frowning, the Doctor flipped open the little panel on my door to reveal the phone.
Riiiiiiiiing
"How can you be ringing?" the Doctor demanded. "What's that about, ringing?" I had no answer for him.
Riiiiiiiiing
The Doctor reached into an inside pocket for his sonic screwdriver. There are few problems the sonic screwdriver can't fix. "What am I supposed to do with a ringing phone?" he asked, indignantly. It was not very often the Doctor received a phone call, especially from something that should not be sending calls to that phone in the first place.
"Don't answer it," a new voice warned him. "It's not for you." The voice was human: female in her late teens or early twenties. She sounded calm. It was the type of calm that came from one who lived in and accepted fear on a regular basis.
Riiiiiiiiing
The Doctor paused from his examination of my phone. I sensed him move a few steps towards her. He was curious and suspicious of her.
Riiiiiiiiing
"And how do you know that?" the Doctor asked.
"'Cause I do, and I'm telling ya, don't answer it."
Riiiiiiiiing
The ringing was beginning to annoy me now. It was like an itch I couldn't scratch. It was also a little bit spooky. I couldn't figure out what was causing it, and although I tried, there was nothing I could do to make it stop.
"Well, if you know so much, tell me this, how can it be ringing?" The Doctor moved back to me, momentarily turning his back on the girl.
Riiiiiiiiing
"It's not even a real phone." The Doctor continued. "It's not connected, it's not…" When he looked back, she was gone.
This only served to unsettle the Doctor more. I sensed his growing fear and this fuelled my own nervousness.
What was going on!
Riiiiiiiiing
The Doctor stared at the phone and put away the sonic screwdriver. He shrugged and hesitated, looking like he had never answered a phone in his life, before reaching for the receiver.
Riiiii-
It was an old-fashioned phone. You held the receiver to your ear and spoke into a separate piece attached to the phone box, or in this case, me. The Doctor felt very silly, like he was using a child's toy phone.
"Hello?"
Silence. Only a faint crackling on the other end. I could hear both sides very clearly.
The Doctor waited for a response. When he received none, he tried again. He kept the tone light, probably to help ease his own nerves.
"This is the Doctor speaking. How may I help you?"
Then a voice forced its way through the speaker grill. "Mummy?"
The Doctor stiffened, his grin vanishing. Another cold shiver washed down my side. I recognised the way the voice was coming through. It was Om-Com, like a Chula. This didn't make any sense. I could detect a few Chula ships near by, but no actual Chulas themselves. Plus this was another human's voice coming through, only male this time and very young. A child.
"Mummy?"
"Who is this? Who's speaking?" the Doctor asked the voice.
"Are you my mummy?"
"Who is this?"
"Mummy?"
I could faintly feel the Doctor's mind as he tried to make some rational sense out of all this. The supernatural does not bide well with him. "How did you ring it? This isn't a real phone. It's not wired up to any…"
"Mummy?" the child interrupted. If I didn't know any better, I'd say the child sounded afraid too. That made sense if it was a child looking for his mother, but there was still something…wrong about it.
I sent my own message to the child It would be incomprehensible to a human, but it basically told him to go away and to stop using me as a method of communication. Whatever it was, it got the message and hung up.
The Doctor looked at the ear piece and the phone, still just as puzzled as before. He sent his thoughts to me.
"Did you do this?"
I assured him that I had nothing to do with it. The Doctor opened my doors peeked inside, thinking that maybe this was a trick being played on him by his companion.
"Rose? Rose, are you in there?"
She wasn't there. I told him that she didn't have anything to do with this either.
There was a crash further down the alley way and the Doctor ran off to investigate it, pausing only to close my door and the panel on my phone. He left me alone to ponder this strange and frightening occurrence and to watch out for any more incoming On-Com messages.