Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter Eighty-One: ATMOS

"I can't believe I'm doing this!"

Watching from a distance as Donna pilots the Tardis, I give the Doctor's shoulder a comforting squeeze. Her hold on the throttle slips and the ship shakes. He winces. "No, neither can I. Ooh, careful." He leans past her, taking up a mallet and giving the bell built into the arch of the console a good whack. "Left hand down. Left hand down!"

She does as he says but her sudden movement causes us to lose balance once more. He attempts to steady her and warns, "You're getting a bit too close to the 1980s."

"What am I gonna do, put a dent in them?"

"Well, someone did."

I can no longer stay quiet. "Maybe it would help to take off the handbrake."

They both stop, turning around to look at me. "What?" the Doctor asks.

"You know, the handbrake, the lever just over there. The one that makes any type of vehicle move less. The one you always forget to take off." Rolling my eyes, I push it and give a triumphant gesture towards the pistons as their wheezing reduces. "Are you seriously telling me you haven't noticed that she sounds like she's struggling?"

"'The handbrake'," he repeats. His mouth gapes a little, his eyes blankly fixed on the contraption.

"Yes, darling. The handbrake." My sarcasm is too obvious this time for him to miss it and he gives me a disapproving look.

Donna frowns. "Hang on. In nine hundred years of travelling in the Tardis, you've never once noticed the handbrake?"

He waves her off, focusing on me again, his hands resting on his hips. I fight to suppress a smirk at the shrillness of his voice. "How do you know that's even a thing?"

I side-eye the console. It seems quite obvious to me that the idea of him asking is bizarre. "She told me..."

Blinking, the Doctor tenses his shoulders. "I didn't know she spoke to you."

"Who spoke to you?"

"The Tardis," we both respond to Donna's interruption.

"The Tardis can speak?"

I wince. "Well, not exactly 'speak'. She just sort of... hums and— Sorry, it's very difficult to explain. I thought she did that with everyone?"

Neither of them reply. They look to each other for answers but, obviously, the Doctor is dumbfounded and Donna has never shared this experience. With a sigh, she gives the console an affectionate slap and starts to pilot it again. "Well, then. I'd love to hear more of this little co-parenting discussion, but can we please continue before I crash us into Mordor or something?"

Before either of us can say a word, something begins to ring. The Doctor drops his mallet. We share a wary glance.

"Hold on," she gasps. "That's a phone!"

The only response she gets is from him grabbing the small device from a mesh pencil pot wedged between two levers. 

"You've got a mobile? Since when?"

"It's not mine." After this offhanded comment, he flips the phone open and leans back on the jumpseat to answer. "Hello."

——————

I linger in the Tardis once we have landed, fixing my appearance with the help of my reflection in the pistons' cladding. My attention is quickly drawn back to the glass box secured by a clamp to the console.

The conjoined heads of silver stare back at me. Every day, they grow angrier and angrier, sick of being trapped and out of use. Our separation doesn't do enough to stem the urge to take out the Coin and finally do what I set out to accomplish. But my promise to the Doctor still holds a weight in my heart. I can't let him down again.