It was a quiet night. If it was night at all. The lights in the TARDIS were never anything but bright, and against the sharp white walls, the effect was blinding more often than not. The Doctor seemed to have the ability to sleep wherever and whenever they were, regardless of the bright lights, but Ian had spent more than one sleepless night wandering the corridors, making sure never to wander too far. The ship was like a maze, and he was certain someone could get lost in its depths and never find their way out.
Perhaps someone had. He didn't know how many people had traveled with the Doctor before him and Barbara. Perhaps that was their fate.
But after a while, the lights would start to dim, in certain places, anyway. Usually wherever Ian and Barbara happened to be when they started to feel tired. Ian had had cause before to wonder if the ship was alive in some way. It seemed almost to sense their feelings now.
Well, whatever time it was, or maybe no time at all, it felt like evening, those spaces between when they left one planet and landed on another. Ian knew enough now to find his way to the kitchen to make himself and Barbara a cup of tea, which was always on hand even though he had yet to see the Doctor pick up any food. Perhaps he'd taken enough before he'd left Earth, or his own time. Ian didn't think it had been very long since they'd left, but he couldn't be sure. Time travel messed with one's sense of time, and he had no idea how long they'd been gone.
In any event, Ian found his way to the kitchen, despite thinking that the kitchen hadn't been in this corridor last night (whenever last night was) and he concluded that the ship was helping him along. Perhaps she was getting used to them traveling with the Doctor, Ian thought. All ships, of course, were "she." But this one felt like it more than most, perhaps because he knew she had tried to tell them of their near destruction at the beginning of time. But she was the Doctor's ship, not theirs. She hadn't felt so welcoming in the beginning, though Ian hadn't been so happy to be there either.
Perhaps not anymore, though. Ian was a scientist, or had wanted to be one before he ended up teaching science in school. There was something fascinating about seeing it all firsthand, doing things no human had ever dreamt of.
"You couldn't sleep either?" Barbara's voice cut through his thoughts.
Ian turned around, smiled, held up the tea. "Somehow I knew you'd be joining me." They had done this often enough, just the two of them. Sometimes, lately, the Doctor joined them. More often Susan, but most of the time it was just them, the only two humans, trying to make sense of their new lives.
Barbara must have been thinking along the same lines, because she took the tea, smirked a little, and said, "Us two humans, having tea like we're in the sitting room instead of…" she trailed off.
Ian was silent as he stirred the sugar in, then said, "So you suppose he isn't human either?" They'd talked about it before, wondering whether the Doctor was human and from a far distant future or an alien, from another world entirely. They'd never come to a conclusion.
"Oh, I'm not sure it matters," Barbara said. "He's so much more advanced than us either way. But, yes. I suppose I don't think so. I know he looks human, Ian, but-"
"But nothing. You're right. He knows too much," Ian said. The Doctor had knowledge that seemed impossible. He knew something of many of the worlds they landed on, and the science he understood was so advanced it seemed to Ian like magic.
"Oh, but then I just keep going around in circles with it. You know, it doesn't mean he isn't human," Barbara said. "Any human from the future might advance as far, I suppose."
"Inventing time travel? Don't you think we'd have noticed if time travellers ever came to our time?" Ian asked.
"No, you're right," Barbara said. "I guess I just wanted to make him seem a little more...well, friendly, I suppose. Like us. But he isn't, is he?"
"No," Ian said. "It's not so much what he knows, it's what he doesn't."
"What he doesn't let on, you mean," Barbara said. "He always seems as if he knows more than he's letting on. As if we're too stupid and primitive to understand."
"No. No, that's not it," Ian said. "He knows things he's not letting on, but it's not because he thinks we can't grasp it. He's afraid. Something's after him. Or someone."
"Worse than the Daleks?" Barbara asked.
"If the Doctor is afraid of them catching up to him, they might be," Ian said. He couldn't imagine what could be so bad, though, that the Doctor would be afraid of them. He wasn't willing to give their kidnapper much benefit of the doubt, but he had to admit the old man had courage. He had never seen their strange, alien pilot back down from a problem he thought he could solve, whether that involved long treks through dangerous swamps or facing a murderous mob.
And he thought he could solve every problem. It would have been arrogance, if he wasn't so often right.
"Sometimes I wish they would. Perhaps then we could go home," Barbara said.
Ian shook his head. "I'm not so eager to see what the Doctor could possibly be so afraid of. Who knows what they would do to us?"
"Yes, you're right," Barbara said. "You don't seem to dislike it so much anymore."
"What? The travelling?" Ian said. He shrugged. "It's not like we can just hop off and go back home. I might as well make the best of it, learn from it. You can't tell me you haven't enjoyed seeing 13th century China or Renaissance Italy up close?"
Barbara smiled. "Oh, alright, I suppose I have. If only he weren't so...so…"
"So what?" Ian asked.
"Infuriating!" Barbara burst out. "Does he have to lord it over us that he's more advanced? He isn't, so much, you know. You and I have figured things out more quickly than him before, and he doesn't know a thing about Earth history."
"Not that often," Ian said. "Face it, Barbara, he usually is right."
"Oh, I know," Barbara said. "But he is arrogant about it, and if he thinks he has any right to lord it over us after he kidnapped us, I'll show him what he can do with his advanced time travel knowledge." Ian frowned thoughtfully. "What? You don't think so?" Barbara asked.
"Well, you saw him on Skaro. He wouldn't give up until we were safe, and the Daleks destroyed. On Marinus too; he didn't stop until the keys were found," Ian said. "All those people are much safer for him than they were before."
"Oh, Ian, you know he only did that because he couldn't get out of it any other way," Barbara said.
"Maybe you're right," Ian said. "I can't help but wonder, though...he hated those Dalek things as much as any of us. Their fanaticism, their xenophobia...I just wonder if we misjudged him."
"Or if we're starting to see something he keeps hidden," Barbara said.
"Exactly," Ian said. "Those Daleks, when they questioned him. I thought he'd had it then, with the radiation and whatever they did to him, but he stood up to it better than I would have."
"You don't know, maybe his race is resilient," Barbara said.
"There's resilient and then there's standing up to torture," Ian said. He shook his head. "There's something to him, Barbara. I really think he could be a great man, if he let himself. Imagine what he could do with that mind of his."
"I'd like to see him fix the TARDIS and get us home," Barbara said. "Still, I suppose you're right. There is something to him...almost like you don't want to interfere. Like you know he'll be able to get you out of whatever he gets you into."
"That's it, though, isn't it. He usually gets us into trouble in the first place," Ian said, laughing. "Still, I wouldn't mind seeing what he becomes. It's like we're...I don't know, watching someone great at the very start of things."
"You've been out here too long," Barbara said.
"Maybe I have," Ian said. "Still, nothing else for it. We'd better get used to it. At this rate it'll be years before we get back home."