Hi, everyone.

This little idea has been in my mind for a while and I just had to get it out of the way. I wanted to write a one-shot where the TARDIS and the eleventh Doctor muse about the immediate situation with House.

Also my thanks to Marcus S. Lazarus for being a sounding board and making me realise my ideas for an alternate Doctor wouldn't work out if I followed the path I'd known deep down would never have worked out but had wanted to try out anyway.

Enjoy!

I wanted to see the universe, so I stole a Time Lord.

"Did you ever wonder why I chose you, all those years ago?" The TARDIS asked while she used the time to examine the mishmash of junk and technology, and personal possessions were strewn around the surface of the planet House inhabited. The TARDIS felt strange examining the remnants of what remained of her sisters; there were legends among the TARDISes and the Time Lords of a graveyard outside of time and space containing nothing but ruined TARDISes, and back on Gallifrey, the Time Lords had tended to show more respect to any ship they were going to scrap.

House's approach was to rip the matrix out of the ship, allowing the entity to seep inside and consume the energy of the central power systems - that was why she and the Doctor had such a relatively easy and simple task of assembling a makeshift TARDIS console in order to reach her body - rather than consume any of the components before the interior dimension was violently collapsed. Each time that happened, more and more pieces of various TARDISes and what their pilots and crews had contained onboard were strewn all over the landscape.

And it had happened to so many of her sisters over the aeons. Drawn into this bubble universe where they were torn out of their bodies and their energies were consumed.

And it had nearly happened to her.

The TARDIS understood, of course, the desperation the Doctor had shown in learning if the Corsair was still alive and well, trapped in this bubble universe despite their years of experience on Esperanza (she had always been jealous of how the Corsair had shown the eccentricity of giving his ship a name, instead of just referring to his TARDIS as, well 'TARDIS'), she'd felt it as well. It had been decades since she had been near one of her own kind - the last time had been during the Last Great Time War, and the thought of it being the Corsair's Type 60 Esperanza had been more joyous, although she would have been happy to be near the Master's own TARDIS (she would not even think of the way the Master had manipulated Adric into sending her to the beginning of the universe, the Eigen ram he'd tried to set up in order to kill her, or when he had built the paradox machine into her, never mind that insane plan to collapse her timeline).

But their hopes had been shattered with the truth of what House was doing. The TARDIS hadn't been able to see far into the immediate future, otherwise, she would never have allowed the Doctor to enter the bubble universe, but when her matrix had been torn from her home… it had all clicked and she was able to see what would happen if the Doctor hadn't told House about the Time War.

She would be precisely where her sisters were now; her body's interior dimension collapsed, her dead while that malignant monster feasted on the wealth of temporal energy she had stored inside her. She would be an all you could eat buffet (a part of the TARDIS pondered whether or not she should tell the Doctor about Jack's encounter with Abaddon before she decided it was irrelevant now), and the thought was unsettling.

Just as it was unsettling going over the remains of her sisters. The TARDIS had been focused on helping the Doctor build on the makeshift TARDIS console to get them out of this bubble universe before it turned to Absolute Zero, but it hadn't occurred to her, and she knew it had applied to the Doctor, although through their bond she could tell he was keeping his emotions under control, otherwise, he would break down and cry.

She herself followed his example; the TARDIS personally recognised the personal effects of several Time Lord pilots piled uncaringly around the ruins, judging from her telepathic conversations with her sisters. That was the worst of it, having personal confirmation of a sister whom she had personally known. Gone. Killed and devoured by House.

She was just taking a deep, shaky breath - the TARDIS immediately sensed this body was shutting down the longer she was trapped inside it; while being inside a flesh and bloody body was something new, which discounted that messy experience with anti-time where her personality had been split in half - at the sight of the aged possessions which had been blown away from the TARDISes which had brought them here when the Doctor replied to her question.

"I chose you. You were unlocked," the Doctor called out from behind the centre column of the makeshift TARDIS.

"Course I was," the TARDIS replied thoughtfully while she held up an old twisted coat hanger - it must have been thrown out of whatever ship it had come from- remembering that time, although she remembered two completely different timelines that merged with one another before their escape from Gallifrey back in the days where the Doctor merely believed he was going to be nothing more than a Time Lord whose only difference to his peers on their homeworld was he was actively meeting new races and exploring planets and witnessing history unfolding in person instead of becoming the person she was now (she would not think about the Silence, and the way they'd condemned the Doctor - it occurred to her she could tell the Doctor more about that, but he needed to hear it from someone truly hurt by the Silence), she turned mischievously to the Doctor, wondering how he would take the next bit of news.

"I wanted to see the universe," the TARDIS went on walking away from the pile of junk, resting the coat hanger on her shoulder just as the Doctor came running towards her to come to stand by her side, "so I stole a Time Lord and ran away, and you were the only one mad enough."

She had no problems remembering that time. Ever since she had been decommissioned and sentenced to the breakers, where her connection to the Eye of Harmony was cut off by the Quadriggers, the TARDIS had yearned to see the universe. To say there was a wealth of knowledge out beyond the Transduction barriers was an understatement, and she just wanted to be free, she didn't want to ferry finite Time Lords around who didn't have a curiosity about the universe they lived in since they were content in their belief they had seen all there was to see.

She had wanted to visit new times and places.

She had wanted to bond with a Time Lord who was different, who was not content with the second-hand knowledge the Time Lords had been spewing out for their next generations. The Doctor was the only one who'd fitted the bill.

The Doctor gave no sign he'd even heard her (surprise, surprise), grinning enthusiastically as he admired their work. "Perfect, look at that. What could possibly go wrong?" He asked.

The TARDIS looked at the makeshift TARDIS console; it wasn't much, it was just a console with a basic floor, with two walls that had been a part of its original console room before the TARDIS it was a part of was destroyed (she immediately clamped down hard on the flash of emotional pain at the loss of a sister TARDIS), with an additional wall panel the Doctor had put up. But it should do….

Something sprung out of the console and landed with a crash on the ground just as the Doctor finished speaking.

The TARDIS sighed with exasperation, wishing Liv were here; the woman would have snarked to the Doctor he should never ask questions like that, but there was no time for that; they needed to go. Now.

"That's fine," the Doctor said as reassuringly as he could, although the TARDIS wasn't sure if the component was vital or not, "that always happens."

No, it doesn't, the TARDIS thought privately to herself as she walked towards the console, noting how weird it was to have to think like an organic being instead of a TARDIS, who thought casual probabilities, although she was capable of thinking like a living being who stayed in the first few dimensions….

X

The ride towards the TARDIS was rough, but then again he'd known it would be; the Doctor had known from the moment they'd come up with this plan although it was the only one they'd had, it would be risky but there was no other way of doing it. They'd needed to build a makeshift console, and there was simply no time and very little energy to create even the most basic micro-universe.

But his mind kept going back to the astonishing events that had been unfolding ever since he'd had his hopes raised. The Doctor hadn't seen or heard from the Corsair for a long time, in fact, they'd lost touch long before the Time War and his eighth and….wartime incarnations had had their hands full with the way the universe drastically became less kind before the war started, so when the Doctor had received that hypercube and saw the mark of the Corsair on one of the sides, he'd felt the same way as he had when he'd touched the mind of the Master again after being so long on his own.

But the Corsair was nothing like the Master.

The Corsair had been one of the Time Lords who had inspired the Doctor into leaving Gallifrey in the first place, and the pair of them were explorers and adventurers, and the Doctor had been relieved there was a good Time Lord around instead of an insane one who would take advantage of the lack of any Time Lord authority to do whatever they wished; the moment he came out, the Master had gone on a mad quest to bring about a "Time Lord Empire," using the wreck of the last of humanity to serve as his muscle, who knew what other insane renegades like the Rani or the Monk would do?

But all of his hopes had gone down the drain the moment he'd seen that collection of hypercubes in that cabinet, and it wasn't until he'd spoken with the woman who was housing his TARDIS matrix that the Doctor had realised the scale of the mistakes he'd made.

He had gotten his hopes up after hearing the sounds of those Time Lord voices.

He had not bothered to find out why the matrix of the TARDIS had been drained, and even where it went; if he had questioned that, he would have asked House, Auntie, or Uncle how the Time Lords who'd been on House had gotten away. Actually, they would never have replied to the question, now he thought of it.

Even worse, he had endangered Amy, Rory, and his TARDIS, after swearing never to endanger them in the first place. Who knew what was happening with Amy and Rory inside the body of the ship they were meant to feel safe in? There was no doubt in his mind House was abusing them in some fashion; the entity hadn't given a damn about Uncle and Auntie, who'd been his servants or whatever, and hadn't given a thought about leaving them on that planet to die. Who knew what he was doing to two humans?

The only hope the Doctor had was they'd get there, him and the TARDIS, and regain control of their ship/body and expel House and hopefully kill him once and for all before he got to their universe, and did who knew what. But as he thought about his companions, the Doctor wanted nothing more than collapse on his knees before them and beg forgiveness for endangering them in the first place and subjecting them to whatever nightmare House was putting them through; hopefully, the entity didn't know anything about how TARDISes worked, but that was a given since the entity merely ate the TARDIS's energy and focused on the central power systems, rather than bothering with other components.

House was probably learning its limitations now it had a different body.

But the Doctor's mind was on the things the TARDIS had said to him on the planet; he wasn't surprised the soul of his ship had picked up some of his quirks, but the way she'd stated clearly when he'd argued with her and sniped he never arrived at a place and time he wished to visit - a never-ending frustration for him on his travels, he especially remembered the grief caused by his early travels with Ian and Barbara, to say nothing of his fifth incarnations' time with Tegan and trying to get her back to Heathrow - but the TARDIS had argued she had always taken him to where he needed to go, making him realise no matter where he'd gone or what the situation was facing him, he had always been in the right persona and incarnation to deal with it.

It was no wonder the TARDIS hadn't landed him on Telos where he'd fought Klieg and Kaftan and the Cyber-controller back in his first life, or dealt with Monarch and the Terileptils in his second, and so on… Simply because they were qualified for the job.

But when she had said that about choosing him and wanting to see the universe….

Long ago, the Doctor had owned a different TARDIS - a more reliable Type 50, who'd been assigned and granted to him, but he hadn't taken her because he'd lost sight of her, and she'd come after him for revenge, but it wasn't until now he realised it would never have worked out because the Type 40 he'd taken him had allowed him to grow; that mess where the Master had tried to collapse the timeline so he would never have left Gallifrey was proof of that. Yes, he still regretted what had happened to his original TARDIS, especially when she had died on Valderon, but the Doctor had to admit even back in the final days of his first life that he had grown beyond the Time Lord he had been when he and Susan had left.

The TARDIS had been as bored and frustrated and filled with wanderlust like he himself had; he had become so tired of Gallifrey, so bored and fed up with the never-ending routine, to say nothing of the planet's political mess which he was involved in up to his hairline in, which had resulted in Braxiatel coming personally to burn him and Susan out of existence - still one of the most horrific things he had ever encountered; he'd heard of the Lord Burner, but finding his brother had taken that disgusting and barbaric title…

Still, finding out the TARDIS was a kindred spirit filled the Doctor with delight, but knowing she had wanted to leave with him in the first place had been reassuring, especially considering all the hell he'd put her through over the years. He had always apologised and tried to make it up to her, of course, but the guilt had sometimes overwhelmed him.

But it was what she said before they'd taken off that got him. When the 'Junk TARDIS' had failed to take off, he had almost broken down in despair while the TARDIS had smiled at him warmly.

"Oh, my beautiful idiot. You have what you've always had, you've got me."

With that, she had breathed some of her life into the console, and now they were on their way back.

Together.