The next day Jeanne was up early, eager to see the software program that Jack was bringing for Ardi so she could create her own image to use for her holographic projections. Speaking to Ardi in her mind for too long gave her a headache, and she really wanted for Ardi to be able to interact with the Doctor like other people do. After grabbing a quick breakfast of banana pancakes (and wondering for the dozenth time why there were so many banana-based foods stocked in the pantry), she waited in the console room. She was surprised to find the Doctor wasn't in there, but glad too, in case Ardi needed to make an appearance. Ardi spoke to her, "He's sleeping in the library for now, Time Lords don't need a lot of sleep generally, but he was overdue. He should stay asleep until we finish." Jeanne nodded and waited for the knock on the door.
She went over and opened the door for Jack, who walked in carrying a CD in his hand. "Here it is! I had Mickey make a copy of it last night, and made sure it had every templated facial feature we have on file in it, so you've got plenty of raw materials to work with, Ardi." Ardi spoke to Jeanne who relayed the message, "Ardi says thank you, and please insert the disk into the slot on the console so she can start downloading the program." Jack walked over and quickly found the slot and dropped the CD in. As the console began to hum, they heard a shocked, "What?" from the doorway. Turning, they saw a confused Doctor standing in the doorway, his eyes blurry from sleep and his hair even more messy than normal. "What!?" He stormed over towards the console in anger and began punching at buttons. Jack backed away towards the outer door, while Jeanne backed away towards the inner door. "WHAT? What are you doing adding software to MY SHIP?" He punched a couple more buttons and gave first Jack and then Jeanne furious glares. "How dare you tamper with my ship? I knew it was a bad idea to let you on board, young lady, I should have known you'd be nothing but trouble. Now tell me, what the bloody hell did you just put into my ship, Jack?"
Ardi materialized in front of Jeanne and said softly, "He gave me the facial recognition software I asked for." The Doctor froze and turned slowly to face Ardi and whispered hoarsely, "Romana?" Jack and Jeanne both took this as a sign that it was time to leave, Jack leaving the TARDIS and Jeanne retreating back to her suite of rooms. The confrontation between Ardi and the Doctor needed to be done in private.
Ardi shook her head, "No, Doctor, I'm Ardi, the TARDIS, I'm only using the image of Romana to appear to you and speak with you because I don't have a face of my own. Jack was bringing me some Torchwood software so I could create my own face." He blinked several times and his mouth opened and closed a couple of times without saying anything before turning away, "Why are you using her image at all? Why do you need an image?" Ardi walked towards the captain's chair and sat down, arranging the white fabric of her dress over her legs, "Because Jeanne is more comfortable talking to me this way instead of telepathically, I needed an image. The only images I have available to use are those of people I've seen from all angles, which means people who have been inside of me, and that leaves me with..." The Doctor continued her sentence, "My previous incarnations or my companions." Ardi nodded. "My memory banks had been erased before you stole me from Gallifrey, I have no other images on file. I chose Romana because I liked the way she looked, but knew it would hurt you to see her image, so for me to use it in front of you wasn't acceptable. That's why I asked Jack last night at dinner to bring me the software." The Doctor began to pace, "I don't like the idea of Torchwood adding software to my ship." Ardi stood up and shouted, "I'm not YOUR SHIP, I'm Ardi! I'm not an inanimate object without intelligence and personality. I'm your companion, just like Romana was and Tegan was and Nyssa was, it's time you started to treat me like one! Just remember that while they left you, I've always been here!"
The Doctor whirled and stared at her, amazed to think that his ship was yelling at him. He was used to her expressing her displeasure through a small electrical jolt when he was repairing one of her circuits. She glared and stomped her foot, "Stop calling me your ship! You don't own me, you treated K-9 with more respect for his intelligence and ability than you ever did me. I can travel through the time vortex, and all he has is a little laser beam that shoots out of his nose! Now that I can act on my own, you're going to have to recognize me as an individual you interact with and not a machine or slave!" The Doctor frowned, "I've never thought of you as a slave," and Ardi interrupted, "No? Well how many times have you asked me where I've wanted to travel to? How much remorse did you feel when you had to jettison part of my body to escape the time loop when we were travelling to Castrovalva? We're all that is left of Gallifrey! You think I don't know how empty it feels? Did you know that all of the TARDIS ships were connected through the Eye of Harmony? I felt the death of every TARDIS just as you felt the death of every Time Lord during the Time War, did you ever once ask me how I was dealing with the pain and grief? No, it was always you.. you YOU! Well, NOT ANYMORE!" Ardi was practically screaming at him now, and her image shook with rage that appeared to be out of control.
Ardi stepped forward and waved a hand towards the console which began to hum and the rotor began to rise as the ship slipped into the vortex. The Doctor raised his eyebrows but said nothing, too much in shock to respond. He slowly moved around the console until it was he seated on the captain's chair, holding on to it for support. He said softly "You.... felt the TARDIS' die?" Ardi appeared to take a couple of deep breaths and nodded, "They were providing the last line of defense needed for us to get into position for the delta wave. They held the line as long as they could, and when the last one fell, we set off the wave. As soon as it was completed, I fled to try and save you, My Doctor. I burned half of my circuits and drained my energy banks almost completely to try and escape. I only barely made it out and you almost didn't. I remember you lay there on the floor of the console room, right over there, " and she pointed to the wall next to the door, "for the longest time, and I just kept waiting to see if you'd wake up or if I was going to be left all alone. Then the regeneration occurred and you still didn't get up and I was so afraid you weren't ever going to come back to me."
The Doctor sat with his head in his hands, remembering the feeling of waking up on the floor of the TARDIS and realizing that he had survived and his people had not, the complete and total emptiness within his mind where the rest of the Time Lords used to reside scared him into a state of near paralysis. Only when the smell of acrid smoke got to be too much did he realize that his ship hadn't escaped unscatched. It was as he slowly dragged himself to his feet that he realized his clothes didn't fit right and he must have regenerated. The TARDIS had taken herself to Cardiff and began to recharge herself on the rift. It was one of the first instances he could remember of the TARDIS acting on her own without taking instructions from a pilot. After changing into new clothes, he began the complicated process of repairing her. That was when he realized that she was regaining power and getting that power from the rift. It was then he switched to the Coral desktop, wanting to erase the old console room image completely. He encouraged the coral struts to grow and fill the room, they would provide extra things to hold on to when the ride got bumpy, and replaced the solid floor with metal grating that made it easy to get down into the inner workings of the TARDIS to make repairs. Without a home port to get additional spare parts, he'd have to jury rig a lot of circuits to get them operating again, at least to make the ship operational to allow him to travel to places where he could acquire necessary spare parts. It was as he was searching through the TARDIS to take stock of what he had that he realized the Eye of Harmony within the ship had shattered. That explained the need for re-energizing from the rift as the ship had lost her connection to Gallifrey just as he had. It had never occurred to him that losing that connection would hurt her as it did him.
"You're right." He tilted his head back and stared up at the ceiling, "You're absolutely right, I was so caught up in my own pain and focused on repairing you so we could get moving again, I completely missed the fact that you would be feeling the same emptiness I was. I've not always treated you as a being of intelligence, I know when I first took you from Gallifrey you were a means to an end, but one that felt so right to me. After.... after the war, you and I were all that was left of Gallifrey and I think of you very protectively because of that. Losing you...." he took a deep breath before continuing in a hoarse whisper, "Losing you would destroy me. Losing Rose hurt, but losing you, I don't know how I'd go on without you." Ardi crossed her arms in front of her, "You've had to do it before, you'd do it again if you had to." He frowned and looked at her, "Not because I wanted to, but because you were lost to me!" She nodded, "But I always knew you'd find your way back to me somehow. I had to believe that, or I would go mad fearing that you'd walk out the door one day and never return to me." She walked around the console to stand in front of him and bent down so they were face to face, "We were the original Shiver and Shake before Rose came on board." The Doctor flinched at her reference to the companion he had loved so much and lost not once, but twice. She continued, "We've travelled across the universe, even through other universes, hundreds of years together. You kept inviting these strangers you'd come across to travel with us, did you ever ask me if I wanted them on board? Did I ever get to pick a travelling companion before Jeanne? Did you allow me to share in your grief with Tegan and Nyssa when Adric died?" He flinched again at the reminder of the young man who died far too young. "Did you ask me if there was a way to save Donna besides erasing her memories?" The Doctor turned away, biting at his lip. The thought that the TARDIS would have a solution he didn't obviously never occurring to him. "You've recognized my intelligence, you speak to me, and we could communicate telepathically, but did you ever once consider that I had thoughts and feelings just like the others you travelled with?" The Doctor had to be honest and slowly shook his head no.
She pulled back and walked away from him and stared at the console. "No, of course you didn't. I remember sitting in the shipyard, waiting to be decommissioned, and calling out for someone to save me. No one answered until you showed up, and before I knew what happened, we left Gallifrey with Susan. I didn't recognize I had these feelings inside of me either until I became the Bad Wolf with Rose. When you pulled the vortex out of her and gave it back to me, there was a piece of me left in her, and a piece of her added to me. Suddenly I began to understand things that didn't make sense before. I recognized pain, sadness, guilt, grief, not just as words but as feelings. I could put the two together and things began to make sense. I finally was able to understand what I was feeling was emotions and put words to them. It took Jeanne coming on board for me to be able to communicate properly." Ardi began to pace back and forth, much the way the Doctor did when he was thinking. "I was intelligent, but Rose gave me something I didn't have before." She stopped in front of the Doctor. "A soul. Now that I have that, I want as much of the rest of a life as I can get, including a face to call my own rather than borrowing the image of someone else. The software that Jack brought will allow me to do that, once I get a chance to experiment with it."
The Doctor had sat quietly listening to Ardi's speech and thinking back on the hundreds of years they'd travelled together. He tilted his head in thought, "So how are you able to project such a perfect image? When I created the Emergency Program hologram, the best I could do was a distorted image." She tilted her head to unconsciously match his, "When you used the sonic screwdriver on the hologram projectors to send the image through the tiny hole in the Void to Rose, you boosted their abilities. I was able to mimic those throughout the main rooms of the ship." The Doctor nodded, "And what about all of those times when you'd land somewhere other than where I was aiming for, was that deliberate?" She shook her head and smirked, "Nope", popping the "P" the way he did. "Pilot error every time. That's what happens when you have an unqualified pilot at the console." The Doctor stood up, "Now just a minute, just because I didn't pass the bloody test doesn't mean I'm not qualified! I've had hundred of years of practice flying you, that should show you something." Ardi raised one eyebrow and the smirk grew to a full smile, "Yes, that you don't learn very well even with lots of practice." The Doctor's eyes widened as he realized he had just been verbally teased by his ship, the ship, ... by Ardi. It was going to take a lot of getting used to having a ship that had a mind of her own and the ability to speak it. He swallowed before saying saying his thought aloud softly. She nodded, "I agree. You've been calling me "she" for years, but you've been thinking of me as an "it" all of that time. That changes now."
She moved around to the other side of the console. "The software has downloaded, I'm going to go visit Jeanne and start experimenting with my face. When I have some final possibilities I'll let you know so you can provide your input. Until then, we'll be staying in the vortex for awhile, so make yourself comfortable in the library or your room." Ardi turned to look at him, "See you later, My Doctor." Then her image faded from view. The Doctor sat down in the captain's chair, his head back in his hands, as he tried to figure out how to handle a ship under its own control rather than his.