EDIT [26/03/2019] It was pointed out that a small typo in the story changed the whole use of incense candles completely!. lol

Chapter 2

The TARDIS

For the next few days Raven hid in this machine that she had learnt was called the TARDIS. 'Time And Relative Dimension In Space'. Or sometimes 'Dimension(s) In Space' as the manual she found was a bit unclear on which one to use because it seemed to keep flipping from one definition to the other.

The Doctor never suspected she was even in here with him. The place was so large that when she first arrived she'd tried to get lost in its interior, yet no matter how far she walked she always ended up back at the control room. There was a twisted logic to the way the place was structured and she eventually figured it out so she could find a place as far away from the control room as possible. The ship was so large surely the Doctor would never find her.

It was as she experimentally opened a door that she found a room decorated almost to her personal taste. Which was weird. It was dark, Gothic and depressing. The place had a bed, a bunch of books, incense candles, herbal teas. It's like someone had rummaged around in her mind and made this place for her. She didn't go in, she was sceptical, it felt like a trap. She turned a few more corridors and turned to another door. It was that room again?! Exactly the same one, down to the titles of the books. But she had left that room 2 turns back. She shut the door walked a bit further and opened another, but it was the same room again! What was going on?!

Resigned to her fate she walked into the room and made herself comfortable. It was in here that she found something called the Type 40 Time Travel Capsule manual propping up a coat stand she was using to hang her cloak up.

As she read it she found the book itself was in a strange, alien language that she couldn't read. But as she tried to read it the words seemed to reassemble themselves into English, a language she understood. As she read she found that some pages had the words 'Time Capsule', 'Time Travel Capsule' and 'T.T. Capsule ' scribbled out and the word TARDIS written over the top in the most illegible handwriting she'd ever seen.

As she read on she realised that the TARDIS was a sentient machine, it had a consciousness and it was supposed to tune into the mind of the people inside it and maybe provide for them. Which meant the TARDIS had produced this room for her. It dug around in her head, found out her secret tastes and put them on display. She hated that. It made her feel like her dark and private secrets weren't so private now.

The TARDIS manual, or what she could understand of it, was written in a strange grammar she couldn't wrap her head around. The book must be translated into English directly. For example, "Real-world interface deactivate first but not before aligning the zyton crystals to maximum configuration of the vortex frequency after successful materialisation engage real-world interface first." Raven spent longer than she liked trying to decipher the logic of that one statement before realising it was nonsense, and a paradox. In order to deactivate this real-world interface you had to follow a sequence that activated it first? What was the point of it all?

After digesting what she could from the TARDIS manual without getting a headache, she decided to find a place to drink and eat. Again the TARDIS provided, leading her to a Victorian style kitchen where she opened cupboards and found... a piping hot meal ready to eat?! This place was insane. But she took the plate thankful for anything but the tasteless stuff back at the temple. The food was sweet and full of tastes she'd never dreamt of before. Things like this were a luxury on Azarath.

She went back to the cupboards and opened another. A plate of steaming battered fish with sliced potato boiled in oil and peas on the side sat there ready to eat. A label under it read "Fish 'n Chips" there was a label under the plate she had picked up earlier, it read "Full English Breakfast." In the next cupboard something called "Jacket Potato" next to that "Spaghetti", next to that "Seabass", steak, Christmas dinner, thanksgiving dinner, Coco-pops. It's like every meal you could think of was in this room.

Raven just rolled her eyes at it, she wasn't impressed at all. To her it just showed a lot of wasted focus that could be better spent elsewhere. But then again her own books had said the Time Lords had turned science into an art, so maybe she was looking at everything through the wrong frame of reference. Too bad she wasn't an artist. To bad for them, not for her.

She left the kitchen and tried to make her way back to her room. But as she opened the door she found herself in a vast room filled with clothes! She stepped in and again nearly tripped over the hem of her Azarthian robes.

She decided she'd had enough of them and she took her cloak off and hung it up before ripping off the top layer of her robes and tossing them aside leaving just one layer and no skirt to trip up. She was going to pick up her cloak and walk out when she noticed that there weren't just male clothes in here, but female clothes too, and some might even fit her.

She began going through all the coat hangers looking for something to replace her robes. She moved a brown, frock coat and something landed on her feet and rolled out. It was a scarf, very long and of many colours. Raven bent down to pick it up, and the colours triggered something in her mind. A memory of a man with a funny shaped face, long nose and long curly hair staring down at her smiling, sticking his tongue out and tickling her nose, then played peekaboo with her using a similar-looking scarf. She didn't know who this person was, but she must've been very young when it happened. It was a distant memory.

She picked up the scarf and put it back before looking through more of the clothes but it was difficult finding something that was just 'her'.

On the wrack she suddenly she came across some Azarath robes, they were exactly her size, and wait... these were her old robes! How did they get here?! She pulled them off the wrack, balled them up and tossed them aside. That's when she found it. It was the perfect replacement that'd give her the comfort she wanted. It was a black leotard, full-length arms with black jewel decorations on the back of the hands. Next to it hung up on the rack was a belt of the same black jewels as were on the leotard and weirdly they both matched the broach that was on her cloak. These things must be Azarathian in nature. She'd never seen them at the temple before but they were almost the opposite of what she'd be expected to wear, and she liked them.

Taking them off the hangers she quickly stripped, changed into them and looked in a full-length dress mirror. The clothes were definitely 'her' she decided. It did reveal her hourglass figure more but she didn't choose these clothes to be modest, she needed clothes that were practical to her meditations and a skin-tight leotard meant she could feel connected with the world around her without actually being naked.

Next to the mirror she found some blue, flexible boots she used as a replacement for her own footwear and some wrist bands which she put on to break up the outline between her arms and hands. She called her cloak to her with her powers and slipped it on. She now looked perfect.

She got lost trying to find her way back to her room and eventually stumbled upon the control room again. Clearly the Doctor was out. This was the perfect time for her to check out the library in here. She looked through all the books, the treasure trove of books. Books to her hearts content.

She pulled volumes off the shelf, both factual, fictional, scientific, spiritual. Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, A Brief History of Time, basic science, telepathy made easy. A pack of books by some guy called Oolon Colluphid titled 'Where God went Wrong', 'Some more of Gods Greatest Mistakes', 'Who is this God person anyway?' & 'Well, that about wraps it up for God'. She thought those books might be interesting reading, considering what she is.

Raven collected as many books as she could carry with her psychokinetic powers. She took the books from random places on the shelf so the Doctor didn't realise he had a stowaway on board, and she took them back to her room where she read and meditated, read and meditated, read, eat, drank and meditated.

Not once did she hanker for any kind of company. She'd felt utterly alone her entire life so she was used to her own company. There were a couple of times she considered trying to talk to the Doctor and reveal her presence, but no. If there was one thing she knew about people it's that they were judgemental, stupid and often followed groups that encouraged people to fear what they didn't understand, and would always find ways to hate her. She couldn't trust the Doctor and as far as she was concerned she had no reason to ever leave the TARDIS, so she lived deep in the bowels of the Time Machine.

Best if she stayed hidden, she decided, from everyone, from the universe, forever.

To Be Continued...

Authors notes: In the first chapter I wrote Ravens robes as being impractical and uncomfortable to reflecting her growing discomfort living in Azarath, and I thought it was a cool idea that now she was free and defining herself that she should have a similar scene where she picks out clothes that would define her like the Doctor usually does after also means the clothes she wears in the TV show she got from the TARDIS.

If you haven't guessed from the flashback, this isn't the first time Raven has met the Doctor, but he was different and she was too young to remember.

The four books from Oolon Colluphid are fictional books from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a well loved sci-fi comedy show from the 70's and I thought was fun to include them considering Raven is technically the anti-Christ in a lot of ways, and I did not mean to give offence to anyone's religion.