This is a bit more serious in tone than the first part, but there'll probably be a return to silliness and shenanigans next time. Probably.
The Battle Sister's Bodice – II
There was a moment of transition, vertiginous and alarming. Anina held tightly to the Doctor's hand while the sensation faded. She had instinctively closed her eyes, like a child afraid of monsters under the bed, and she mentally scolded herself for her weakness.
Whoever this strange man was, he clearly meant her no harm and…
She opened her eyes and blinked in wonder.
"This is the TARDIS," the strange young man was saying. "She's my ship…well, I say 'ship'…"
No longer paying attention to the Doctor's words, Anina took a step forward and another. She was vaguely aware of her boots making a clattering sound on some sort of metal ramp, but her attention was almost wholly focused on what she was seeing.
She had entered what she had at first thought to be a cavern. Its walls were a sandstone colour and the shimmering light that splashed gently on them was suggestive of the rippling reflections of starlight on the surface of a lake. As she took another tentative step forward, she realised that the space she was entering was constructed, artificial. In its centre, was a roughly circular structure – a large translucent pillar whose interior glowed with a nimbus of sea-blue light. The central section of the pillar was encased in a bulging outcropping of a substance that she couldn't identify. Its uneven surface had been smoothed by the passage of time and it was the same off-yellow colour as the ancient bones of the holy saints she had once been allowed to see in the crypts deep below the convent. This bone-like substance seemed to house a bewildering array of dials and instruments. She assumed they were how the strange little man, who had shattered the sanctity of her quarters so dramatically just a short few moments ago, controlled the operation of this… vessel. The whole structure was accessed by a short flight of metal stairs and she saw, as she took another slow step towards it, that there were other walkways leading off from the control hub into deeper hidden recesses of the…
Another wave of vertigo rushed through her and she grabbed at the nearby metal railing.
"Yes, well," said the Doctor, "it affects people like that sometimes. I could use words like 'dimensionally transcendental', if you like, but most people prefer to just say…"
"Bigger on the inside than the outside," said Anina. "It's bigger…"
She looked up at the roof of the impossibly large room, but realised it was veiled in shadow.
The Doctor was talking again.
"… right! Brilliant!" She found that, if she concentrated on his eyes, the troubling sensation of dislocation subsided. "You're very good. I can see we're going to get on marvellously."
And he let go of her hand, haring off to the central column and its strange instrumentation.
Anina frowned. She was a Sister of the Adepta Sororitas, devoted to the God-Emperor of Man. Everything that had happened in the last few moments – the appearance of the strange blue box, in which, apparently, she was currently standing; the unexpected disintegration of her armour; the odd behaviour of this bizzarely-attired man – was, she realised, something for which her lifetime of training and service had left her completely unprepared. The realisation was not a comfortable one.
She looked up again. The Doctor was scurrying around the central pillar structure, his slender fingers stabbing down at switches or reaching out to twist brass dials with none of the reverence usually displayed by a priest of the Adeptus Mechanicum.
"Who... are you?"
"I told you. I'm the Doctor." He pulled savagely at a particularly recalcitrant lever.
"You're not... You're not an Inquisitor." It was a statement not a question. Anina may have been steeped in the teachings of her Order – teachings that emphasised obedience and duty above all else – but she wasn't stupid. Her bolter was still in her hand, its weight familiar and reassuring. She raised it now. "This place... it's xenos tech... you're..."
"Alien?"
"Yes." The bolter's solidity was a powerful counterpoint to her unreal surroundings. Fear the alien. Words first heard when she was barely able to walk, reinforced by countless repetition and long hours spent in meditation in her cell, echoed in her mind. Her hand tightened on the bolter's elaborately decorated grip.
The Doctor paused, hunched over the far side of the circular console. He straightened slowly, his eyes suddenly sombre.
"And that matters to you."
Her forefinger slid across the bolter's trigger. Its brass coating was worn and dull. Her hand was perfectly steady now. Duty had replaced uncertainty. Dogma had provided a reassuring stability.
"Yes." Her voice was flat, emotionless.
The Doctor smiled, sadly. "Well, it doesn't to me." He took a slow step towards her, moving out from behind the central column. He stood in front of her, hands thrust into his trouser pockets. "Anina..."
She raised the bolter defiantly. "Do not..."
"Besides," he said, his face twisting into a mask of exaggerated outrage, "you're wearing my jacket! I mean, you can't kill me when you're wearing my jacket, can you? I mean that's just not... right, is it?" He leaned towards her. "How old are you, Anina? Eighteen? Nineteen? I can show you a whole universe of space and time, wonders on the far edges of the galaxy and beautiful, lovely people and ice cream and black pudding and Laurel and Hardy and Southport pier on a wet Wednesday afternoon. Let me..."
The bolter dipped a fraction. "You lied to me."
He shook his head, vigorously. "The psychic paper encouraged you to lie to yourself, I'm afraid. But, I'm telling you the truth now." He held her gaze for a moment. She felt, in that instant, the bolter's weight in her hand, dragging it down. He turned away from her, back to the circular console. "There's some spare clothing in a closet over there." He indicated a walkway leading off into the interior of the ship. He flicked a switch and the same elephantine roaring that had led her to her cell only a few moments before began to rumble around her.
Anina had never been quite so comprehensively ignored before. She looked at the bolter in her hand for a moment. Scriptures sacred to her order were inscribed along its gleaming barrel. The violence of many decades saturated it. She felt it in every fibre of her being.
She came to a decision.
The lining of the Doctor's jacket was comfortable and it was with some reluctance that she shrugged out of it, leaving it on a nearby railing. Her skin was tingling as she left the bolter on the console and walked off in the direction the Doctor had indicated.
From behind the translucent column, his face bathed in a ghostly blue glow, the Doctor watched her go. Her bare back was criss-crossed with dozens of thin scars; across her shoulder blades was tattooed a strange double-headed eagle symbol. Eventually, she faded from sight and the distant sounds of hangers rattling on wardrobe rails drifted lazily towards him.
But, the thoughtful look on his face did not disappear. If anything it deepened, the lines etched on his face thickened by the shadows cast by the oscillating light in the TARDIS' central column.
"Well," he muttered to himself. "There are some people who would argue that when you're investigating a temporal anomaly, travelling with a living, breathing chunk of it isn't really all that good an idea, but..." He set a brass-cogged device embedded in the panel in front of him whirling with a wistful flick of his finger. "... seeing as most of those people are dead..." The Doctor let out a long, troubled sigh. "Oh, nun with a gun. What am I going to do with you?"
The TARDIS groaned its way through the space-time vortex while somewhere in the past the impossible, ludicrous, wonderful universe prepared its answer.