The bark shavings curled and crumpled into black ash, igniting slender twigs. Slowly, the pyramid-stacked logs sparked to life, filling the room with golden light. River glanced from the fire to the semicircle of wooden chairs. A smooth-hewed table sat against the wall, already covered with a dissembled temporal inhibitor.
"Why can't you just work on that in the TARDIS?"
"You're the only one who can find me in there. What if we have an emergency?" The Doctor didn't even look up from his work.
""You could have reactivated the phone system. It worked fine while you were building the house."
"No, no. That was only a temporal solution. Communications must be synchronized throughout the entire ship, or you keep calling yourself—did that a few times, wasn't keen to mess with it again."
River sighed. "We can't keep popping into the TARDIS every time I want the clothes cleaned or you need more cables."
"Once I network the architectural reconfiguration system with a remote projector, that won't be a problem. Certain rooms will be rerooted to a separate, free-standing structure with self-sustaining architecture and only residual atron energy."
"And?"
"And….er…well, those rooms—not the console room or the architectural reconfiguration room itself, but the exported rooms themselves will anchor the transcendental shell, ground her as it were, convey the implication that her owners are committed to defending the location as for a good long while." He paused. "If you've changed your mind about staying, I'll give you a lift out, but it will have to be soon."
River pulled another chair up to the table. "You're notcannibalizing her. "
"No, no, of course not. I wouldn't—I couldn't—"
"Then why?"
He shook his head, refusing to meet her eyes.
"Tell me. You haven't been inside her for days. And even when you're working on her, you won't let me in to help. What's wrong?"
"Amy said once that this—stars and planets and monsters—felt like running away. I said that wasn't it at all, I was running to things. All those brief, brilliant, wonderful things—people," he corrected himself. "There's nothing left. Why not stay?"
River wrapped her hands around his. "But…"
"All those little days, River. The ones that separate the big ones, like the plastic wrappers in a biscuit tin. We've had breakfast in Paris, tea in Kensington Gardens, the premiere of Agamemnon in the evening. But a day that starts at midnight or sunrise or sunset— and ends twenty-four hours later, on the same planet, in the same time, just like everyone else…"
"We've had a few of those."
"Involving Daleks, Weeping Angels, or the Votaries of Perpetual Precipitation," he protested. "A day where nothing happens…"
"We're living next to a crack in the universe with the potential to unleash an unending war that would consume galaxies in seconds. I don't think that will be a problem."