bigapplesauce | Bringing home strays [closed]

Daine had been about to ask whether all three of them were really going to pile in - the TARDIS was a large crate, to be sure, but not that large - and then she sees the inside, and her mouth snaps shut as she comes to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

It's huge. There's more than enough room for the three of them; an entire Rider group could fit comfortably, ponies included. How? She leans back a little, confirming that the outside of the TARDIS ends in a corner less than an arm's length away from her, then peeks back inside, eyes wide. It's like stepping into a completely different realm.

A not-so-small part of her wants to step back into the Ramble, where things make sense. But Daine's no coward, and the TARDIS was nice in her dream. It'd be rude for her to refuse to go in, and she feels silly enough for allowing herself to get walloped by the kitten in the first place. So she takes a few cautious steps inside, though she can't stop herself from trembling a little.

"In we go!" chirps Andrew cheerfully when Daine pauses in the entryway. He's busied with making sure she isn't having a collapse or something, as it takes him a moment to remember she might be surprised by the size of the interior. He follows as she steps inside, holding onto her arm just in case, glances about, and stops in his own tracks.

"You've changed it," he says, brow furrowing. He looks to the Doctor. "No, you couldn't have -- she's changed it. TARDIS?" he calls, raising his voice. "Going to come talk to us?"

Give her a moment; as soon as she sensed the group coming near she slipped into her humanoid form, but Daine's disbelief at her interior distracted her for a bit. She just loves new people being impressed with her.

Once they're properly inside, she appears at the top of the stairs and comes down to greet them. She smiles, glad to see Daine isn't visibly hurt. "Andrew, Daine, hello." She even reaches out to give Andrew a mental greeting, though she doesn't know if he can actually sense it. His presence is as vaguely unsettling as ever, but him being from the same universe as her is strangely comforting. It's something familiar in the slightly jarring reality that surrounds her.

"Either her or future me," he answers with a shrug. He hasn't asked. He might later erase his memories of this version of the room anyway, so that he'll be surprised when it happens. More fun that way - like watching Daine's reaction to it.

The Doctor smiles at the TARDIS, though he mostly greets her mentally, and shares some details of what's been going on. Would probably be best to check if Andrew's alright as well - for all they know, this whole splitting business could be burning up his life energy or something, and even if he doesn't seem adversely affected by it, it's best to make sure.

It's magic, Daine decides, despite knowing the TARDIS's attitude towards the term. Magic, at least, is something Daine can handle - and trying to figure out how this could work without magic makes her feel a bit sick. As long as she doesn't think about how small the TARDIS is on the outside, she should be all right.

When the TARDIS's human form appears, Daine's surprised - how can she take two forms at once? - but she manages a brief, wobbly smile. "Hullo."

Stepping into the TARDIS used to feel like coming home -- now the experience is rather hollow, like visiting your childhood home only to find that it's been renovated by strangers. Andrew can't feel the TARDIS until she specifically reaches out to him -- but then he brightens at the muted brush against his mind, willing back a return message. '♥,' he manages, sending it along the connection she initiated.

Attention returning to Daine, he asks, "Alright?"

Naturally the TARDIS first returns the Doctor's greeting and scans Andrew at his behest, finding nothing wrong with him so far. Then she sends a hum of contentment towards Andrew, glad that he's able to manage this much of a connection, but secretly still quite sad for him being so terribly limited. She doesn't really want to think about what it must be doing to him to have the Doctor's memories and personality but not be able to really communicate with her, while at the same time she knows it would just make it so much more uncomfortable for her if he were able to. It's a mess she prefers to avoid.

So she turns her attention to Daine, who doesn't seem to be dealing all that well with her interior dimensions. She can't quite tell if it's a normal reaction or an effect of the incident with the rift energy, and her expression grows a little concerned. "Shall I examine you here? Though the medical bay would provide more precise readings concerning your physical state." She might be getting ahead of herself, but really it's the Doctor's job to warn humans and deal with their confusion, not hers.

Daine's fallen through a rift into a world entirely different from her own - she should be fine with some transdimensional engineering, right? The Doctor mostly leaves the looking after Daine to Andrew, since he's the one who knows her, and probably the one she feels most comfortable with.

It does occur to him that Daine might think it involves a conventional physical examination. "Don't worry, it's nothing invasive. It's more like you tried to do with that kitten," he tells her, skipping up the steps and pulling off his coat, throwing it over the railings, going to fiddle with the controls to keep himself busy.

Daine blinks. Some of what the TARDIS says goes a bit over her head, but she understands enough to reply, "Here's fine." She's not sure how much of an exam she really needs; her headache eased on the walk over, and she suspects her current unsteadiness is due to being in TARDIS, and would only get worse if she wandered much farther from the door.

The Doctor's reassurance isn't terribly reassuring, but Daine makes an effort to at least appear less nervous. Still, she can't help asking, "It won't take long?"

Andrew does his best to hang onto the wispy connection between himself and the TARDIS, but unless she keeps it alive, he won't be able to stop it from disappearing. He's doing his best not to think about how she feels about him -- he's never gotten the impression she sees him as her pilot, which hurts when he lets himself remember that he still sees her as his ship.

"Come up to the console and sit down," he suggests to Daine, not getting why she seems so weak in the knees just now. That interaction with the kitten must have been rougher on her than he'd thought, if she's still this wobbly-looking.

While the Doctor is at the console he can have the readings she took of Andrew and also the ones from the small spike in rift energy earlier. To Daine she confirms, "It won't," and starts the physical examination without waiting for permission, displaying the results on the console as they come in, because it's not like the girl will notice it anyway. But Andrew seems to think she ought to sit down, so she'll wait with any mental intrusions until she's a little more stable.

The Doctor watches the readings carefully - it's nice to get some specifics on Andrew's biology too. A metacrisis between two different races, well, results are impossible to predict accurately. He makes sure the Daine readings replace Andrew's before they make their way up to the console, though. She might not be able to read it, but he will, and if he's anything like the Doctor (which of course he is), then he won't like the Doctor snooping in his biology. Daine's biology, however, that's totally different.

Daine allows Andrew to lead her up to the console and sinks onto the chair. It's comfortable, at least, and she gives him a grateful little smile. She's glad that he's here with her.

It's probably just as well she can't interpret the readings; she might object to having them displayed for all to see. As it is, she just eyes the console with polite bafflement, unable to imagine what any of the instruments are for.

Andrew at least feels a bit less useless from having accomplished the task of sitting Daine down. He glances at the console, tongue touching the roof of his mouth, and wishes he had a pair of brainy specs on him. He'll have to go out and buy a pair later. The readouts look like normal human from where he's standing, at least. He leans on the railing beside the chair and gives the TARDIS -- rather than the Doctor -- an expectant look. "Find anything yet?" he asks, not bothered about letting Daine know the scans have already begun.

Andrew's question and look are making the TARDIS feel a bit as though she was a voice controlled model, how he's telling her interface what to do and expecting results from it, rather than the console. Honestly she vastly prefers the old-fashioned way, since she wasn't constructed for this (except for the emergency interface), and she rather thinks the Doctor intuitively knows to still use her console for everything important even with her humanoid form standing right next to it. Of course she'd given out plenty of information verbally before, and she'd allowed Ianto to request some destinations when he was staying with her because he couldn't use the controls, and in these special circumstances the Doctor is relying on her to do things for him even when he's out and about. But it's still a somewhat uncomfortable position to be put in when it's not actually necessary, like right now, and she gives Andrew an inscrutable look. "I have found plenty of things, but none relevant, I think." Really, she only provides the readings, evaluating them is the pilot's job.

Then she turns to Daine, because the Doctor has given the commands for a mental scan. "I will examine your mind now." And because it's a medical scan, she doesn't have to worry about avoiding any boundaries like she had out of politeness last night. She begins mapping out the girl's mind and displays the results on the console, including the strange animal influences and that curious wall shutting off a part of her mind. She probes it a little to get a better idea of it, but awaits instructions on whether or not to try to see what's inside.

It's a force of habit, too, using the controls when he's actually there. He prefers doing something, rather than let her do all the work, and he's sure she wouldn't want to anyway. But given he's currently occupying the space in front of the screen, it would be difficult for Andrew to butt in as well. Or perhaps he's simply forgotten how to control the TARDIS, you never know.

And he's quite curious about that wall, though after a few moments consideration, he decides not to look inside - not without discussing it with her first, anyway. It's none of their business, it could have bad consequences, but primarily because it doesn't look to be recent, and thus not relevant. Mostly he's looking for damage or rift-related mysteriousness, but there doesn't seem to really be any.

"Nothing worrying," he informs Daine and Andrew.

Daine had felt a bit indignant upon realizing the examination had started without so much as a by-your-leave, and her mood isn't improved by the TARDIS's cursory announcement that she's going to poke through Daine's mind. Her ma hadn't raised her to fight healers, but at least the healers back home treated you as a person and not just a thing to be examined.

She's about to complain when the TARDIS probes the wall. It's the first time Daine's felt anything intrusive - a sort of twinge accompanied by a sick feeling of uncertainty that she recognizes immediately, for all that she hasn't felt it in years. The blood drains from Daine's face, and she instinctively raises her hands to her temples. "Stop it!" she snaps, suddenly terrified.

The corners of Andrew's mouth draw down involuntarily at the brush-off from the TARDIS (or what feels like a brush-off, anyway). He never knows how to talk to her, it seems, as badly as he wants to be friends even if he knows she's not his ship anymore. It doesn't occur to him that she might be taking issue with him not using the console to ask her; he hasn't been in her console room since being dropped off in Pete's world, and he has this vague but pervasive feeling that either the Doctor or the TARDIS will chase him off if he tries to do anything with her controls.

He's distracted from his own troubles by Daine's sudden outburst, his attention snapping to her. "What is it?" he asks, glancing between her and the console, indecisive about whether he's going to try to get an answer from Daine or from the display.

The TARDIS just blinks in confusion at Daine's sudden and visceral reaction to her careful examination. Her mind is perfectly healthy and she hadn't done anything to it, so what's the matter?

"I'm sorry?" It's more question than apology because she knows she didn't do anything wrong, but the girl's fear and distress are undeniable, and she withdraws completely from her mind.

"Sorry, sorry," he says at the same time as the other two speak, turning to Daine to reassure her.

Good thing he hadn't made the TARDIS probe that wall further then. He doesn't know exactly what the problem is, but he can guess what it was about.

"It's alright, we've stopped, we're not going to do anything, promise," he says quickly, crouching in front of her to be on eye-level and make sure she's okay.

Daine hardly even thinks of the wall in her mind anymore; it's been there long enough that she'd begun to take it for granted. It never would have occurred to her that anyone in this realm would be able to find it, let alone poke at it.

Why was the TARDIS that deep in her mind in the first place? And Goddess, what else could they do to the wall? Crack it? Break it? If something happens to it, without Numair to replace it, what would happen to her?

She keeps her hands clamped over her temples despite the Doctor's reassurances. Her distress over the thought of losing the wall is a new and unwelcome layer to the pain she already feels over Numair's continued absence, and she has to take a few deep breaths and swallow past the lump in her throat before she speaks.

"Just - leave it be," she says tersely, glancing between the Doctor and the TARDIS because she's not sure where she ought to direct that particular request.

"What did you do?" asks Andrew sharply, looking at the Doctor this time -- or rather, at the back and top of his head, since he's busy talking to Daine. He doesn't wait for a verbal answer from anyone in the room, but stalks over to the console to look at the readout. For a moment he looks blank and a little panicked as he realizes he can't immediately tell from a glance what it says, but as his eyes flick over the screen, the familiar forms click belatedly back into place. It takes him longer than it should to find what must have set Daine off and look back over at her in confusion. What has she got in her head?

All this distress and muted panic is rather unpleasant for the TARDIS and a quiet unhappy sound rings through the room. She doesn't miss Andrew's difficulties with her console, but decides to focus on Daine first, her upsetness being the source of all this.

"I've left your mind, Daine," she assures the girl calmly. "I was only examining you; I will not touch the wall again." Though it is an interesting construct, and she'd rather like to know how Daine could even tell she was poking it. But she'll leave the questions to the Doctor, of course.

The Doctor nods, affirming the TARDIS's reassurances. "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with you after what happened earlier, so there's no need for further examination," he tells her. He might have questions, but not right now.

"How about some tea, eh? Or cocoa?" he suggests kindly, and glances back at Andrew, giving a nod towards the doors leading to the kitchen. His distracting and slightly accusatory questions aren't really helping.

He also sends the TARDIS some comforting vibes, to counteract Daine's distress. Everything's fine, not to worry.

Daine frowns. She hadn't felt anything when the TARDIS had gone into her mind in the first place (until she hit the wall, anyway), and can only take her word for it that she's not still in there. It's not that she thinks the TARDIS is lying to her, but being unable to tell for certain that she's telling the truth makes it difficult for Daine to relax. The wall is still in place, at least - she can feel that much. If she was calm enough to meditate, she could check it for damage, but that will have to wait until she's back at the base.

Despite her continued uneasiness, she doesn't miss how the Doctor's going out of his way to reassure her. She lowers her hands into her lap and straightens out of the defensive hunch she'd curled into. She might still feel like bolting back into the Ramble, but at least she doesn't have to look like she's about to. "What's cocoa?" she asks, grateful for the distraction.

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