I do not own Doctor Who nor any of its marvelous characters. Please, enjoy the show :)
The Doctor quickly ran back inside the TARDIS, jumped some steps and went straight to the main console.
"Now, that... is... interesting!"
He said that to nobody and no answer came. It had been quiet in the TARDIS for quite some time, but it had been worse before. Much worse.
He pulled a lever, adjusted the screen, stepped left, pushed a button, went around the console, came back, un-pushed the same button, returned to the other side of the console, spun three set of copper wheels and started a small 'blender-engine-type-of-apparatus' on top of another panel.
Of course, that whole operation would have been easier with a couple of extra-hands around, but the Doctor traveled alone these days.
He had much to think about, and it had been a few months of thinking.
'Amy at Demon's Run', his greatest hour, his deepest failure. If not for River's support, how would he be now? Who would be the Doctor today? He had experienced defeats before. He knew how he reacted when thing went really sour, but things had not been this bad ever since the War. What happened after the Moment, after he regenerated...
"No use remembering it now", he shook his head. Much to do, much to check. Or, in reality, not much to check at all.
Static on the screen, unusual readings on the console. The impossible happened again, something was confusing TARDIS' sensor array and the multidimensional gravity span reader (the "blender-engine-type-of-apparatus").
"Hey, now! Play fair!", he scolded the moon showing on the screen, the second moon, the other moon, the copycat, the one that did not want to reveal its secrets.
He would have to go up there and ask her himself all the questions. He grinned like only a Cheshire cat would.
How could he not accept such an open invitation?
The Doctor turned left on the main console, climbed up the stairs, turned right and went through the gardens to reach his destination: the wardrobe room (as usual, a complete chaos). He did not go inside of it so often, it was more useful for the occasional companion he would pick up in some random occasion, always in life-and-death situations (the same old routine).
It had not been always like that.
In the beginning, the Doctor led a life of loneliness, and he was happy with it, 'thank you very much'. Well, not loneliness per se, when you carry your family around. But he kept them both for themselves, and that was good enough for him.
The habit of having others as guests in the TARDIS started, funnily enough, with a kidnapping, and became the sole thing that kept his soul from falling apart.
He needed friends. He needed the company. He needed people to boss around, to gloat over all thing he knew about, to criticize, to entertain, to lecture, to impress them, to impress him, to make him humble, to keep him on a moral leash.
And, from all species, he found that humans, those amazingly simple-minded humans, were exactly what the doctor prescribed.
Well, the other doctor. The "A" doctor, not the "THE" Doctor.
It took some time, but he found what he was looking for. He brushed off some of the pebbles still covering it.
His old spacesuit, borrowed indefinitely from the Sanctuary Base. That had been a close call, one of the closest in his entire life. He was ready to die for her, that day.
Rose. Forever young Rose.
'Not the time!'
He shook off those thoughts, those painfully happy thoughts. There were more important things to do now, a second moon on Earth's sky! How cool was that?
He noticed the boots. They still had that red dirt from Mars, too. 'Bowie Base One'. He almost died there too.
In reality, the Doctor pretty much almost died in so many different places it was hard to remember some memory without near-death experiences in it.
(Thinking about it, he reckoned how lucky he was to only had to regenerate ten times after so much trouble).
Bowie Base One. His soul almost died that day, if it were not the sacrifice of a woman (another human being hurt on his path), so that the Doctor could learn a lesson, a lesson he should have learned by now, after witnessing the sins of Rassilon first hand.
Rassilon, the timeless President. Had he not done so much good in the past, only to become an arrogant despot, desperate to avoid death at all cost? How close the Doctor had been of becoming twisted beyond salvation?
The price was so high, too high. And she paid it to save him.
He visited Adelaide's grave every year, in her honor. Would she forgive him, if she saw him now, who he became? Not a Time Lord Victorious, just a... 'a madman in a box'?
Who was he kidding, anyway? That was all in the past, a lifetime ago. He learned from his previous mistakes, and now he traveled once more through the stars, making a whole load of completely new mistakes. And today was the time to go for another walk with that old suit, to explore another mysterious wonder in outer space.
At least, that was the original plan, but, like always, things were not so simple.
'I'm too tall for the spacesuit', he reckoned.
The last time he wore it, he was indeed a little shorter. He would have to get a new suit to replace it.
He wondered how he confused things up after every regeneration, how he destroyed his most favorite scarf trying to find the Zero Room (luckily he had a dozen others, all exactly like that one), how he thought he was not himself but another new person (after the Cybermen, his first regeneration), how he forgot he could dance (rather spectacularly, he might add), how he tried to strangle Peri to death...
'I'm doing it again', he chasticized himself. 'No mopping. Don't. You outgrew the leather jacket phase a long time ago.'
Anyway, it wasn't his fault, he did get his senses confused after each and every time.
That made him stop and raise an eyebrow.
He was back at the console room, checking the screen.
"Confusion, huh?", he wondered.
The static, the misreadings, the "blender-engine-kind-of-apparatus" counter-spinning.
More buzzing.
"Oh, now THAT is interesting", he thought. He liked interesting things. When it got interesting, it got dangerous, and when it got dangerous, he got closer to finding out what was really going on.
"Only thing left... I need to experiment on a human's brain!"
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