DOCTOR WHO

A MEMORY IS BUT A DESTINATION

WRITTEN BY ZARIUS

The family had nipped out to lunch, leaving the Doctor alone with her ship, and with her thoughts.

And she still had something to say, and to someone.

"How?" The Doctor said aloud, knowing the ship, alive and sentient, could hear her.

"What have you been keeping from me?"

The TARDIS hummed gently, almost purring, trying to sooth The Doctor's shot nerves.

"No, no I'm not taking my medicine; this diagnosis of mine isn't going to be remedied with simple ASMR. This concerns my life, our life. You once asked me why it took me 700 years to ask you whether or not I stole you, or you stole me.

Did you choose me because we'd danced through time before? A little tango through eternity, you and 'Ruth? You and me? I can't remember, but you? You must have, and you've been keeping it from me. You've strung me along all this time and you never clued me in. You never reacted to landing in Gloucester funny, you never once rang the cloister bell, you never alerted me to the small notion something was waiting there for me that I maybe didn't want to learn about. I probably would have anyway, but I could have been a bit more prepared.

You know, it just occurred to me...the day I stole you, or you stole me, it almost wasn't to be, I had my hearts set on another ship, I was pointed in your direction by a splinter of an old friend, did you have something to do with that? Did you somehow speak to the Clara born of Gallifrey so she knew what to recommend to me?

I thought to myself, 'she can't be me, Ruth could not be me, because her TARDIS was in the shape of the police box, but that happened after we stole one another, when we landed on Earth in the 60s and blended in with what were the norms of society at the time. You took your form, the circuit broke, and that was the end of the beginning.

But then I remember exactly where I found you that first time, the repair shop on Gallifrey. The repair shop, you were being fixed, your chameleon circuit was being fixed, and those engineers obviously were making progress, they restored you to your original type 40 shell. I didn't remember you, somehow, and had to be pointed in your direction by the splinter of an old friend, Clara. Did you tell her to recommend yourself to me? Obviously you thought I needed reminding, because I couldn't remind myself.

Perhaps your memory is as faulty as your knackered navigational drive...maybe both of ours is, and maybe that's why we're so good together, because we're both so lost we help each other out of the dark, but I never thought you'd be so hell bent as to keep me there.

A memory is but a destination, and you've never been very good at sticking the landing on those, and now, now I'll never know how much of that is you or me, we're both as unreliable as one another"

The TARDIS dimmed its interior lighting to a deep and moody blue hue, to signify just how hurt it was, and in its own small way, to encourage The Doctor to forgive it.

Perhaps she would, if she chose to remember the good times, not the lines of history she'd lost.