A Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS

A novelization of a scene from an episode of Doctor Who. There may be spoilers- you have been warned.

We burst through the large metal doors, hand in hand. I hear them defiantly slam shut as we finally catch our breaths, safe (for now) from whatever horrid creature we left behind us. I’m still gasping from our sprint, but I take a second to survey our surroundings. The rock-strewn ground we’re standing on catches me off guard. This doesn’t look anything like an engine room, even one belonging to a TARDIS. Yes, things do get pretty strange in here, but not usually this strange. The floor suddenly drops off indefinitely into a hazy abyss. No, this definitely doesn’t look like an engine room. I don’t know what to say, so I state the obvious. “We’re outside.”

“No, we’re still in the TARDIS.”

Well there goes the obvious. The Doctor sounds sure of himself, as usual, so why does he look so confused? I stare down past my feet, trying hard to see the bottom of the chasm. I can’t, so I kick a pebble over the edge and wait for a sound in reply, in an attempt to judge the abyss’s depth. That’s odd; I don’t hear it hit the ground. I look back up, and across. I can’t see what’s on the other side, either. Too much mist. I decide to give stating the obvious another shot. “There’s no way across.” This time I know I’m right. I glance at him, and sure enough, the look on his face confirms the feeling of my heart sinking right into my stomach. Simultaneously, we realize we’re still gripping each other’s hands. I let go. “So, what do we do?” We need a plan. Lucky for us, he always has one. “Time for a plan. Do you have a plan?”

 “Well, no. No plan. Sorry.”

 A part of me is in disbelief, convinced that he must be lying, as he usually is (Rule 1, the Doctor lies.) But as he paces along the edge of the cliff with a look of pure frustration spreading across his face, it becomes clear that for once in his long, long life he’s telling the truth. I start to get frantic. The TARDIS could explode any second unless we reach the engine room. The actual engine room, not this sort-of-inside-sort-of-outside hypothetical engine room. “If you don’t have a plan, we’re dead!” I shout. My voice echoes down the walls of the chasm. Okay, that’s a bit frightening. He stops pacing and looks at me intently. He doesn’t appear hurt by my outburst, just curious.

“Yes, we are.” He takes two steps closer. He’s close enough that I can clearly see the plaid pattern of his funny blue bowtie. “So just tell me.” I’m confused. We’re about to be blown to bits any moment now and it’s okay to start asking ambiguous questions?  What happened to finding a plan?

“Tell you what?” I’m also a bit nervous. The look on his face is serious, not anything like a 12-year-old stuffed in a man’s body. This worries me.

“Well, there’s no point now.” He motions his arms wide around him, displaying the cliff and our lack of a way out of this scenario. “We’re about to die, so just tell me. Tell me who you are.” Now this really confuses me. I don’t know how to respond.

“You know who I am.” I finally say.  At least, I think he does. Sure, we just met maybe a month ago, but you do learn quite a bit about a person when you travel with them on potentially life threatening adventures through space and time.

“No, I don’t. I look at you every single day and I don’t understand a thing about you! Why do I keep running into you?” He steps even closer and his eyes run me up and down, as if he’s desperately trying to collect and calculate every single detail of my existence. This question baffles me more than the first. His staring makes me feel self-conscious. I tuck a strand of hair that falls loose from my bun back behind my ear.

“Doctor, you invited me. You said-” He cuts me off, thinking hard, pacing again like our lives depend on it. No, pacing because our lives depend on it.  

“No, no, no! Before that! I met you in the Dalek Asylum. There was a girl on a shipwreck and she died saving my life. And she was you.” He points at me again, on his last word.

“She really wasn’t!” I exclaim rudely. I’m very, very confused. I would remember this sort of thing, right? I, of all people, would know if I died? He stops and faces me again, his voice rising.

“Victorian London.” He looks at me expectantly, as if I’m supposed to be following all this. I’m not, so I just stare back with a look that hopefully shows my incomprehension. “There was a governess, who was really a barmaid, and we fought the Great Intelligence together.” He inches forward, and I become unsettled. We’ve been through more than our share of near death experiences, and yet, I’ve never seen him this frustrated. “She died, and it was my fault, and she. Was. You.”

“You’re scaring me.” My voice breaks. He looks exasperated. I don’t like it. He points again, still staring me over as if he’s a mad scientist and I’m his rare specimen.

“What are you, eh? A trick? A trap?” He shouts. I’m positive I’ve never been this perplexed in my entire life. Why can’t he see that I don’t understand?

 I cry out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” I let out a gasp as I feel myself tilting dangerously backwards off the edge of the cliff. I hear loose rocks striking against the walls; tumbling, falling, plummeting to meet whatever lies below. My heart races as he reaches forward and pulls me upright. He hugs me. My eyes water and I can’t seem to get enough air, no matter how hard I gasp. I almost died.

“You really don’t, do you.” He finally responds, his voice softer now. Still curious, but gentle. Well that’s a quick change of opinion. I wish I knew how his Time Lord mind runs. I swallow and take a deep breath, pulling away from him. I wipe my trembling hands on the skirt of my dress.

My voice shaking, I say “I think I’m more scared of you right now than anything else on that TARDIS.” He places his hands on my shoulders.

“You’re just Clara, aren’t you?” I still don’t understand, but he seems to finally be getting that I’m not a ghost from his past. That I’m just me. His facial expression changes to one of relief, almost. He laughs, pulling me tight in another hug.

“I don’t know what the hell this is about, but the hug is really nice.” He suddenly pulls back and stares me right in the face, his nose inches away from mine.

“We’re not going to die here.” He whispers. Okay, another change of opinion. I still think that’s unlikely, as I listen to an ominous bass rumble rising from somewhere beneath our feet. The TARDIS is still hurting, and there is still no way across the chasm. “This isn’t real.” He looks around us. “It’s a snarl.”

 “A what?”

“What does a wounded animal do? It tries to scare everyone away.” As he speaks he picks up a small rock and tosses it down the abyss. “We’re close to the engine. The TARDIS is snarling at us, trying to frighten us off.” He pauses, his face drops to the dark seriousness once again. “We need to jump.” That’s it, he’s officially lost it.

“You’re insane.” I protest.

“We’ll cross a portal into the engine.”  How he gets all this information from hugs, I’ll never know.

“How can you be so sure?”

 “Well, I can’t.”

“Okay, well, that’s watertight.” I say under my breath. We back up against the large metal doors to give ourselves room for a running start. Despite my reservations, it’s either dying on the spot or potentially not dying down at the bottom, so I decide the jump is probably worth the risk. His hand finds mine again. With the other, he points at me in mock discipline.

“Hey now, Clara” he shakes his pointer finger at me, “I have piloted this ship for over nine hundred years. Trust me this one time, please.” I look at him and raise my eyebrows; a slight smile plays across my lips despite our tricky situation. He does the same. “Okay?”

“Okay.”

“Ready?” We stare straight ahead and I take a deep breath trying in vain to calm my thundering heartbeat. I try not to envision us hitting the ground and squashing out flat like pancakes. Or us just tumbling down, down, down, like in that story my mum used to read to me when I was just a little girl. What was the name? The one with the rabbit hole? Anyway, it’s too late to back out now. I nod.

“Geronimo.” I hear him whisper to himself, and for a split second I can’t help but smile. We run forward fast, the gaping mouth of the abyss rushing towards us. Time feels like it’s slowing down. Either that or my mind is flipping through all of the pages of my life as rapidly as it can, trying to touch each tender moment one last time. It pauses on an image of my mum’s smiling face, lovingly looking down at her only child. I would do anything to see that face again. My thoughts surge back into real life. We reach the edge, and it finally hits me. This is it.

We jump. We scream. We fall.  

Author's Note

DISCLAIMER-I do not own the characters. They are, as well as most of the dialogue, from BBC's series Doctor Who. Everything else is my interpretation of a scene (taken from the episode A Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS) from a specific point of view.