The Doctor was quite pleased with himself after creating his Human Detector. It was based on the same principles as his Timey-Wimey detector, which was an amazing piece of work considering he only had materials from 1969 to work with in building it. With the pieces and parts available in his TARDIS workshop, it was a piece of banana bread to complete (he never liked that "piece of cake" expression; banana bread is so much more appealing). Having completed his work, he went back out into the corridor and returned to the doors to the console room. Finding them still locked, he activated his machine, which detected the traces Jeanne left behind when she passed this way. Following the chirping being emitted by the machine, he began to follow it through the corridors of the ship.
The TARDIS knew she had kept her Doctor occupied long enough. "Jeanne, the Doctor will be coming here very soon, he will probably be angry at me for inviting you to stay, but don't let him scare you away from me, please?" Jeanne shook her head, "No, I feel I'm needed here, and it feels so good to be needed again. He can be angry all he wants, he's not going to make me leave you." Ardi and Jeanne embraced and Ardi whispered, "Thank you." When they pulled back, Ardi turned back towards the entrance. "When he finds this room, I'll need to leave, this holographic image might upset him even more. But I'll still be here, you just won't be able to see me." Jeanne nodded in understanding. She was going to be Ardi's companion, but that would mean some level of interaction with this Doctor fellow, he'd just have to get used to having her around. She wouldn't get in his way if he didn't get in hers.
The Human detector worked perfectly, although he could tell the track had circled around itself at least a couple of times. *Poor girl must be lost* Finally the machine directed him to a set of doors. He grinned until he looked up to see which doors they were. He recognized the green doors instantly. *Oh now, why did she have to wander in HERE?* He turned off the machine, took a deep breath, and opened the doors. The garden looked as beautiful as ever, and he felt the familiar tightening in his chest at seeing this image of his lost homeworld. He set the Human Detector down in the corridor, he wouldn't need it in here. He entered the room and began walking through the garden. There was a small hill that had an excellent view; he could imagine Jeanne being entranced by it and he expected he would find her there. He emerged from the forest in front of the hill and stopped in shock. "What?" There was a gazebo sitting on top of the hill. "What?" There was a gazebo sitting on top of his hill. "WHAT?" Someone had put a gazebo on top of his hill in his garden! He began to stalk up the hill.
At the sound of the loudly exclaimed "WHAT?" coming from the bottom of the hill, Ardi allowed her image to fade. Jeanne shifted herself in the gazebo to be looking out over the garden, making it appear she was alone in the gazebo and always had been. At the sound of the Doctor reaching the top of the hill, she allowed her gaze to drift towards him. For the first time, she had a chance to really look at him. He was a bit skinny for her tastes, dressed in a rather nice brown pin-stripe suit with a tie. He was wearing Converse though, which shouldn't work with that suit, but somehow did for him. He had a head full of brown hair that seemed to have a mind of its own. It reminded just a bit of Michael's because he used to run his hand through it all the time when he was thinking, and it'd end up quite the mess. He had chocolate brown eyes that were right now blazing with quite a furious expression - and it seemed to be directed at her. *Oh oh*.
"WHAT is this gazebo doing in my garden?" He spoke softly, but you could feel the steel of his anger behind the words. She glanced up at the roof of the gazebo, and then around to the sides, and then laid her hand on the railing. "You mean this gazebo?" She hoped perhaps a bit of humor would defuse the situation. His eyebrows shot up, "How many other gazebos do you see on this hill? Of course I mean this gazebo!" She patted the railing a couple of times before standing and turning to face him. "I would say it's just sitting here. Would you expect a gazebo to be doing something more active like cartwheels?" One side of his mouth twitched upwards into a smirk before he got it back under control. She kept her smile hidden and flippantly asked "Was that a smile?". Suddenly his eyes darkened and his facial expression shifted from anger to sadness. The Doctor remembered all too well asking that same question of Rose right after his regeneration, when he was trying to tease her into responding to him like before he changed. *Oh this is a smart one, she is...*
"No, I would not expect a gazebo to be doing cartwheels, unless it was built on the planet Tarnaza, where they animate inanimate objects as a hobby. I also would not expect a gazebo to be sitting here in my garden on my hill, because this is an exact replica of a garden from.... my home, and there is NOT a gazebo in it!" She nodded, "Yes, so I understand. Ardi pulled the gazebo from my memory and put it here to make me feel more comfortable. You can take away the gazebo now, Ardi, since he doesn't seem to like it." Jeanne took a couple of steps out of the gazebo and as her feet touched the grass of the hill, the gazebo faded away as if it had never been there.
"Ardi? Who the bloody hell is Ardi?" The Doctor's forehead was scrunched in a frown of confusion. No one should be able to manipulate the images in the garden except for the TARDIS. Jeanne replied very matter-of-factly, "Ardi is the name of the TARDIS. She lead me here and we had a talk, and needed some place to sit and chat. So she pulled the gazebo from my memories and we had a chat." The Doctor's jaw dropped. "The TARDIS doesn't have a name - she's just... well, the TARDIS." Jeanne shook her head, "No, she didn't have a name, but she does now. I'm Jeanne the Human, you're the Doctor the Gallifreyan, and she's Ardi the TARDIS. Follow me so far?" She pointed to herself and him as she spoke, and then threw her arms open to encompass the garden when speaking of Ardi.
*This human has the audacity to give MY SHIP a name!* The Doctor couldn't believe her nerve, he was just going to tell her off. That's when the question occurred to him - why had it never occurred to him to name his ship? He took a deep breath to calm himself down, "And what did you and Ardi talk about?" Jeanne began to stroll around the garden, not looking back to see if the Doctor would follow her. "Oh lots of things. Mostly we talked about lonely life can be when you're all alone. She doesn't like being lonely, and neither do I." She turned around suddenly, "Do you like being alone, Doctor?" He hadn't moved from where he stood before, and now turned slowly. "Yes, yes I like being alone just fine. And now if you don't mind, I'd like to return to my state of being alone by taking you home where you belong." He started walking back towards the entrance, but Jeanne didn't move. "Oh, no that's not necessary. I'm already home, you see." The Doctor froze and turned slowly to face her. "What do you mean?" She stood there on the hill, with a Gallifreyan garden as the backdrop and said, "Ardi asked me to stay here with her, and I said yes. I'm now her travelling companion." The Doctor's eyebrows shot up and he sent a telepathic shot towards his ship. WHAT?
"I am creating a suite of rooms for Jeanne on the opposite end of the ship from your rooms, Doctor. You may prefer to travel alone, but I do not. Since you have decided to deny me travelling companions, I've taken one of my own. Since you never found it necessary to ask me first whether they could come or not, I didn't find it necessary to ask YOU first if Jeanne may stay."
Jeanne and the Doctor both heard the TARDIS answer his question. Jeanne didn't react, but the Doctor turned pale and felt his jaw drop again. He knew his ship was telepathic and smart, and they had always been able to communicate on some level before. But it had never actually spoken to him before. "I don't understand, you've never spoken to me before, I never knew you could speak before, why now?"
"I'm speaking now because I need to do so. I learned to do so when Rose and I were the Bad Wolf. I left a piece of myself with her, and she left a piece of herself with me. The ability to speak was part of what she left within me, but I've only just learned how to do it thanks to Jeanne." Both Jeanne and the Doctor seemed surprised by this. "Jeanne has a latent telepathic ability. My desire to be able to speak to her properly and her receptiveness to my voice allowed me to finally speak. She's staying. If I have to, I will not unlock the doors to the console room until you agree to let her stay."
The Doctor looked around him in surprise. The TARDIS was speaking, taking action, making things happen, this wasn't like the TARDIS at all. This was.... "Ardi. She says your name is Ardi, do you... like that name?" "Oh yes, Doctor, I love having a name all of my own. I have an identity of my own. I have thoughts of my own. Now I can express them." The Doctor was both thrilled that his ship had apparently been able to evolve to a higher level of intelligence and knowledge, but also nervous. Having a ship that did what you told it to do was what he was used to - OK, they didn't always go where he meant to go but that was driver error, not the ship deliberating taking them to the wrong place. Now the ship could do things on its way, she wouldn't have to do what he asked if she didn't want to do so. She could go on strike or something. It was kind of scary.
The Doctor knew he didn't have any choice, if he didn't agree to the TARDIS' terms they'd float around in the Vortex forever. He took a deep breath, then nodded. "All right, she can stay - but she is YOUR companion not MINE. I'm not taking her sight-seeing around the universe, and she stays within the TARDIS unless it's an emergency. Agreed?"
Jeanne and Ardi answered together. "We agree." The Doctor nodded. "Well then, please follow me back to the console room so we can figure out where we are, Jeanne. It will take Ardi time to prepare your rooms. Hopefully the doors will be unlocked by the time we get back there." The Doctor led the way and Jeanne followed him, turning once to give a thumbs up back to the room in general, before turning around and hurrying to catch up. The Doctor walked swiftly down the corridor and she had to walk quickly to match his pace. He turned to glance at her, "Won't your family miss you while you're gone?" She missed a step and would have fallen if he hadn't reached out to grab her arm. Leaning against him for support, she looked up at him with unshed tears in her eyes. "No, no one at all to miss me, I'm all alone in the world now." The Doctor felt his hearts skip at her words. She understood loneliness too then. He then put a damper on those thoughts, reminding himself that he didn't need companions, they were more pain than they were worth. Ardi could learn that lesson the hard way if she chose to do so. He settled her back onto her own feet, and started walking again. "Alright then, allons-y!"
Author's Note: Thank you to NonyMouse for your review. I wanted to respond to your comment that Susan named the TARDIS the TARDIS. While it is true that in "An Unearthly Child", she tells Ian and Barbara that she created the acronym TARDIS, I would counter that other time travellers from Gallifrey also have TARDIS' and refer to them as such: as examples, the Master, the Rani, and the Meddling Monk (who has a newer model of TARDIS than the Doctor). The word TARDIS is not a name unique to the Doctor's ship, but a name given to a class of ships used by other Time Lords as the series continued. It's sort of like an aircraft carrier in the United States Navy. The USS Abraham Lincoln is a Nimitz-class super-carrier. The word TARDIS could be the equivalent of the Nimitz-class designation for the ship, while the real name of the ship is the USS Abraham Lincoln. I think you're right that the Doctor never gave her a unique name of her own, in part because in the early days, the Doctor didn't think of her as being alive (reference the comments he made in "The Edge of Destruction"). However, I believe the Doctor's understanding of his ship has changed over the years. #9 and #10 certainly seem to believe her to be alive in some sense of the word and not an inanimate object. Probably out of habit, he just continued to call her TARDIS, and certainly now that she is the only one, it would work as a name. But for the direction I wanted to take my story, I felt having TARDIS be sort of like her race and giving her a real name would work better.