Guess who's back. *smirks*
"My love, I think you should sit down." Meta gentle pulls me to the side as our nephew, the Doctor, works with Idris, his TARDIS.
"I'm fine Meta truly. I just feel a bit tired. That's all." I try to stand up again but he sets me down.
"If you're tired you should rest. They both are doing just fine without us. When everything is calmed down again you're going to take a nice rest and then I'm going to check you over to find out what's wrong."
"I'm sure it's nothing," I say as I brush a stray hair back from his face.
"It may be nothing but you are my everything. So let me fuss." He kisses my hand and smiles softly at me.
"Right. Okay, let's go. Follow that Tardis," the Doctor announces as we step into the makeshift TARDIS, but we are met with silence. "Oh no, come on. There's rift energy everywhere. You can do it. Okay, diverting all power to thrust. Let's be having you." The loud creak and the sparks make us all jump.
"What's wrong?" Sexy asks as the Doctor and my Professor start to panic slightly.
"It can't hold the charge. It can't even start. There's no power. I've got nothing," the Doctor complains.
"Oh, my beautiful idiot. You have what you've always had. You've got me." Sexy kisses her finger, and transfers golden energy to the console, causing us to dematerialize.
I hold Sexys hand as our boys fly the rickety contraption shouting at each other about getting a lock on them and then trying to figure out how to phase into a TARDIS with the shields up.
"Sexy can get a message to them so they can lower the shields for us," I say turning to her. "Contact the pretty one."
The Doctor is in his element and exclaims, "Yes! Contact Amy."
Sexy closes her eyes and reaches her mind out, connecting with Rory and allowing the message to be heard on the interface of our temporary transport. "Hello, Pretty."
"What the hell is that?" Rory gasps.
The Doctor barges in. "Don't worry. Telepathic messaging. No, that's Rory."
"You have to go to the old control room. I'm putting the route in your head. When you get there use the purple slider on the nearest panel to lower the shields," Sexy instructs him.
Meta looks at me with an odd expression. "The pretty one?"
I smile. "Don't be jealous."
"I'm not jealous. Just...territorial," he defends himself.
Once Sexy finishes relaying her directions to Rory the Doctor asks, "How's he going to be able to take down the shields anyway? The House is in the control room."
"I directed him to one of the old control rooms," she answers.
After a slight debate about how one can archive rooms that haven't even happened yet, Sexy informs us that the shields are down.
A moment later and we are stumbling into the control room that I spent many years traveling in.
Sexy falls, clutching her stomach and I catch her. "Not good," she says. "Not good at all. How do you walk around in these things?"
The Doctor looks on concerned and then turns to Amy. "We're not quite there yet. Just hold on. Amy, this is, well, she's my Tardis. Except she's a woman. She's a woman, and she's my Tardis."
"She's the Tardis?" Amy repeats.
"And she's a woman. She's a woman and she's the Tardis."
"Did you wish really hard?" Amy asks with a smirk.
I snicker as the Doctor retorts. "Shut up. Not like that."
Idris chooses that moment to introduce herself. "Hello. I'm Sexy."
"Oh. Still shut up," the Doctor exclaims. Meta and I snicker.
The voice of the House echoed in the room. "The environment has been breached. Nephew, kill them all."
Rory looks around. "Where's Nephew?"
"He was standing right where you materialised," Amy informs us.
"Ah. Well, he must have been redistributed," Meta says sadly.
"Meaning what?" Rory asks.
I let my respiratory bypass system kick in. "You're breathing him," I say.
"Oh, come on," Amy exclaims as she pulls her shirt over her nose and mouth.
"Another Ood I failed to save," Meta sighs. I reach for his hand and he grasps it and looks at me. I mouth the words 'it's okay,' and he nods.
House's voice rings out again. "Doctor. I did not expect you."
"Well, that's me all over, isn't it? Lovely old unexpected me," he says with mirth.
"The big question is, now you're here, how to dispose of you? I could play with gravity," House says as we all hit the deck from the force of the change.
"Or I could evacuate the air from this room and watch you choke," he says.
Meta interrupts him. "You really don't want to do that."
"Why shouldn't I just kill you now?" the voice that was far softer than it had any right to be said.
Meta smirked. "Because then we won't be able to help you. Listen to your engines. Just listen to them. You don't have the thrust and you know it. Right now we're your only hope for getting out of your little bubble through the rift, and into our universe. And ours is the one with the food in."
"Water, water," Idris gasps in my arms and I stroke her hair to calm her.
"You just have to promise not to kill us. That's all, just promise," the Doctor chimes in.
Amy looks incredulous. "You can't be serious."
"I'm very serious. I'm sure it's an entity of its word," the Doctor stated.
Rory kneels with me and feels Idris's forehead. "Doctor, she's burning up. She's asking for water."
"Hey. Hang in there, old girl. Not long now. It'll be over soon," the Doctor soothed.
"I always liked it when you call me old girl," Idris smiled. She looked at me a little desperately. "My confidant. It's so small in here. I can't remember everything. You remember don't you? You know the water."
I nod at her. "I know the water."
She nods back at me. "That's good. The water is important. So is red. Red is important. Such a vibrant color."
Before I can question the color red, we are sucked out of the room and deposited back into the control room.
I hear my husband's voice ring out. "Yes. I mean, you could do that, but it just won't work. Hardwired fail safe. Living things from rooms that are deleted are automatically deposited in the main control room. But thanks for the lift."
The House answers. "We are in your universe now, Professor. Why should it matter to me in which room you die? I can kill you just as easily here as anywhere. Fear me. I've killed hundreds of Time Lords."
I feel Meta's memory of being the one to end it, the Doctor when he believed himself to be alone. "Fear me. I've killed all of them."
Idris grasps Rory's arm. "The only water in the forest is the river. In the forest."
"I don't understand. There isn't a forest in here," Rory tells her.
The Doctor plays along with his uncle. "Yeah, you're right. You've completely won. Oh, you can kill us in oodles of really inventive ways, but before you do kill us allow me and friends Amy and Rory to congratulate you on being an absolutely worthy opponent."
Amy chimes in. "Congratulations."
"Yep, you've defeated us. Me and my lovely friends here, and last but definitely not least, the Tardis Matrix herself, a living consciousness you ripped out of this very control room and locked up into a human body. And look at her," Meta continues.
Idris goes limp in my arms and Rory speaks up. "Doctor, she's stopped breathing."
"Enough. That is enough," House says.
"No. It's never enough. You forced the Tardis into a body so she'd burn out safely a very long way away from this control room. A flesh body can't hold the Tardis Matrix and live. Look at her body, House," the Doctor says.
I can hear the scorn in House's voice. "And you think I should mourn her?"
The Doctor shakes his head. "No. I think you should be very, very careful about what you let back into this control room. You took her from her home. But now she's back in the box again, and she's free."
Golden energy comes from the frail body and flows into the console, compressing House down into nothing as he begs for mercy. I look up at smile. "You see House? That's your problem. Size of a planet, but inside you are just so small."
Moments later, his cries are cut off, and he is gone. The TARDIS sends a projection of Idris to talk to us from the stairs. "Doctor, are you there? It's so very dark in here."
"I'm here," he says.
"I've been looking for a word. A big, complicated word, but so sad. I've found it now," she says.
"What word?" Meta asks.
"Alive. I'm alive," is her answer.
"Alive isn't sad," I tell her.
"It's sad when it's over. I'll always be here, but this is when we talked, and now even that has come to an end. There's something I didn't get to say to you...I just wanted to say hello. Hello, to all of you. It's so very, very nice to meet you." And with that, she is gone.