trans_9 | Spring Cleaning, Round 2 [Backdated to just after podpop]

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Spring Cleaning, Round 2 [Backdated to just after podpop]

Who: The Doctors, their assistants and friends, some visitors [Open], and the Master.
Where: The TARDIS, the blue police box located in the Hangar.
Summary: Somebody's made a mess of the old ship. The Doctors are very unhappy. Time to dig in and clean up! Also, there's some necessary hashing-out of titles and ownership between three men who happen to be the same person. And a bit of a problem arises...
Warnings: Possibly mild swearing on Nine's part.

The Doctor and his immediate successor with the long coat had run straight from the Observation Deck when they'd learned where the TARDIS was and gotten their bearings. They'd been whisked through the uncomfortable transport tubes, spilled into an arsenal of ships, and been left to search. Luckily, as diminished as their abilities were, they could still sense the old girl. It wasn't long before she was found.

They wasted no time in opening the door, winding up in a console room that could never fit inside the seemingly small exterior of the police box without some serious dimensional shifting. It was a wide space, well-lit, but definitely not the room the two new arrivals were used to.

Here, they'd finally find this other Doctor the other crew members have told them so much about. And with any luck, they'll have some answers too.

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"I'm sure it's safe," Barbara hesitantly said as a shower of sparks errupted from a wire dangling over a section of railing up ahead. Time for a subject change...."I hope that he doesn't travel with women and that floor." Or Scotsmen, for that matter.

It took him a moment to catch on to that. When he did, he let out an abrupt laugh.

"I think he has a woman with him. But I'm sure he didn't have that in mind. Positive, in fact. It's just a way to polish his image. It's 'modern'. Never mind how relative that is." Said the Doctor who wore black leather.

"Anyway, I've got more important things to do than look up skirts. We're here to look for damage. We'll both have trouble seeing it since we're not used to this layout, but we'll manage."

"Glass floors are far better as metaphors, than actual floors," Barbara muttered but it didn't bother her all that much.

"Yes! I was here with Ian and we felt that the TARDIS was strangely warm. Why is that? What happened?"

"Can't argue with that. One of you will find a way to break it someday." He shook his head, leading her to the opposite end. Here, at least, she was safe from the glass floor.

"They haven't told me how yet, but the Master got in. He damaged the TARDIS's systems and set some monsters loose. I'm here to fix that."

"Alright," she replied, accepting just as readily as someone might accept a cup of tea. "What are we looking out for?"

"Robot parts. Like...like Daleks," he tried, saying the name rather reluctantly. "Though I'll have someone's head if any of them got in here. And damage that was left. Skid marks, burns, broken things."

The first hallway they entered seemed structurally sound. The old girl was clearly doing her best to heal, but the signs were still there. He placed a hand against the wall, quietly humming an assurance.

"I had heard there were Daleks just before I arrived. Did this Master let them in? And why would he do that?" Barbara broke her optical inspection of the TARDIS' interior and self repairs to look over at the Doctor curiously. She'd never head of the Master before, and she wondered why someone would want to be referred to as a 'Master'.

"The Master isn't a slave driver, is he?" Barbara didn't much fancy ever becoming a slave. Some were treated very poorly indeed!

"They were here. In the TARDIS." That was a Major Problem. No. No no no no no. His mind fixated on precisely that point, that supreme violation. There were Daleks in the TARDIS. In his TARDIS. Whoever had released the things would pay dearly.

The mention of the Master brought him out of a round of obsession. That was right. Barbara hadn't had the 'pleasure' of meeting the Master yet. He needed to keep her safe.

"He'd like to be. The Master's a Time Lord, like me. We go back years. Centuries. He's gone mad, and he's extremely dangerous," said the pot, calling the kettle black.

Barbara arched a scrutinising eyebrow at the Time Lord. He could be mad if he so chose. In fact, Barbara was hard pressed not to think of him as a boarder line lunatic half the time, which dented her opinion of how truthful the Doctor was being about this 'Master'. But she said nothing and instead looked back at the corridor.

"Right. So, what are we looking for? Broken things or debris which needs to be thrown out?" she asked and walked forward with confidence.

The Doctor was all too aware of his relationship with the Master and the Daleks both. Pouring salt in that particular wound would be a problem at the moment---but surely the moment would come sometime.

"Right you are. Like that mess," he pointed, noting a pile of twisted metal in the corner. It was swiftly pulled aside and packed away. "I'm getting my bearings as well. No telling how this other Doctor will have twisted things around."

"Surely it can't have changed that much?" Giving the TARDIS a makeover was one thing, but changing the rooms about was just plain impossible.

She thought while standing inside a police box that was impossibly large inside.

"Sometimes she moves the rooms around. Spring cleaning. That, and I don't know how much further along he is. All of this," he gestures with his arm, "changed over at least seven hundred years. That's when you were here last."

Time changed everything and everyone. He pushed aside another pile of debris, though there was no clearing all of it too easily. It would take some tricky maneuvering to move to the next room. "You all right?"

"Of course I'm alright," the experienced historian chittered as she stepped over half of a Dalek's casing blocking the majority of space in the confined hall. "We should actually do something with all of this junk. Do you have a dust bin we could put it all in and carry it off somewhere."

"Sure. I'll just round one up. Don't move."

He disappeared around a corner to do this, appearing with a large box held over his shoulder a few minutes later. First to go in was the Dalek casing, tossed down with extreme vigor.

"Daleks. In my ship. Who knows what else."

"And wear these," he added when he felt slightly better, tossing her some thick gloves. "Something might still be active."

The gloves landed on empty floor. What the Doctor may not have noticed was that Barbara went ahead a disappeared around a corner into another corridor.

You know that thing about companions and never staying put? That started in the '60s, y'know.

"Barbara?" That was funny, he thought he'd left her right around the corner. But there was no Barbara there. Oh, how could he be so entirely stupid? Of course his traveling companions wandered off on their own! The sound of him slapping his forehead might echo down a hallway or two.

"Barbara!" He snatched up the gloves, tearing off in the obvious direction. There could be a monster waiting for her, or worse. She was strong, but even he couldn't face some of these things alone and live.

Barbara had been following a long coiled thing which seemed to stretch for forever. She wanted to find the end so that it would be easier to gather but she'd become distracted when she noticed a door along one of the walls.

It was a dark wooden door with a small rectangular sign drilled into the surface. 'BARBARA WRIGHT' was written in small gold writing on the sign and, with no evidence to suggest otherwise, Barbara had to assume that this room was hers.

When she left the Doctor, she slept and dressed in a modest room she shared with Susan Foreman. There were ergonomic beds which flipped down from the walls, two small bedside tables for what possessions they had and a wardrobe for the more common clothes they wore. What she found behind the door was like a bedroom on Earth with a spring mattress upon the frame of a double bed, large pillows, embroidered curtains covering a window which presumably looked out to nothing, a large wardrobe, paintings, a photograph of the crew with a young blonde woman she didn't recognise, and a small ring box beside the photograph.

Draped across the bed was a roman dress. It was simply beautiful but she didn't recognise it. In fact, most of the things in the room she didn't recognise.

"I'm only in here," she called out to the Doctor, hearing his panicked cries from outside the room. Barbara held the dress up against herself and looked in the mirror.

This was just wonderful. The Doctor sprinted into the next hallway, ears listening for any sounds from Barbara. Where was she, where was she? Was there a monster waiting around the---oh, no. He was in a corridor with old rooms. Familiar names marked all of them, most people he hadn't seen for hundreds of years. He'd spend forever looking through these rooms if he started opening doors.

Weren't they removed? Apparently not.

But he'd heard her voice coming from this area. He was looking for Barbara Wright, Barbara...oh, there was her name! On a door. And that door was open. Clearly, that was the logical place to look.

He hovered in the doorway rather awkwardly. "...I wasn't sending you to your room, you know," he tried to joke.

Barbara smiled a little bashfully. "I found it by mistake. When did you have this done? I don't remember ever sleeping in a room such as this." It might have been a different Barbara, were she not also in the photograph in between Ian and the Doctor. "And I don't know where half these things have come from. Have you had two Barbara Wrights on board?"

"Oh, years ago. Sometimes...well, sometimes when you leave, you leave things behind." The Doctor wasn't sure how much he could say without causing trouble. Oh, he hated that River and the older Doctors were hiding things from him, but it was a necessary protection of time. Now he had to do the same to Barbara.

"Nope! You're the only Barbara Wright I've ever taken with me---so far. The older Doctors might know another, but it's not too likely."

He wouldn't say more without being asked. The things she was seeing were likely to cause trouble---fond if distant memories for him, but apparently not yet memories for her.

"Of course I left things behind. We were in the middle of a Dalek war when I woke up here." Barbara gently put the dress back down on the bed. "Not that I had a lot. Just a purse, some material from Ganatus on Skaro and a couple of trinkets from the Himalayas. I don't exactly carry that sort of stuff with me."

She frowned a little. If no other Barbara Wright had traveled on the TARDIS, then what was all this stuff doing in a room with her name on it? Maybe it was being used as extra storage space. And that was a wonderful feeling.

"Who's this?" she asked after another moment of looking around. The photograph with the three of them and the girl which sat on the table beside the bed was picked up and handed to the Doctor. "I know Ian and yourself, but I've never met her in my life."

The Doctor knew that face too. Vicki. The poor girl had lost her family at such a young age. And even back then, the Doctor had known a thing or two about feeling lonely. She'd been an interesting addition to life---even Barbara would admit that, no matter how roughly their relationship started.

But he couldn't just say that if Barbara didn't remember.

"I hate to take a leaf from River's book, but that would be a spoiler. The most I can say is that you would've known her if time hadn't been upended. A future friend. Maybe you'll still meet her someday."

"Who's River?" Barbara asked, turning to put the picture back. Her eyes lingered over the small ring box. She picked it up but left it shut, tapping the top of a finger on its side.

"Doctor," she hesitated a little, taking a step forward, "would I be able to live here? The sleeping quarters are horrid and all my things are here. It seems fair." Sort of fair, anyway.

"River Song. She's a 'future friend'. She knows the older Doctors. Just about every time I ask her a question, she says I can't know because it'd be spoilers."

The Doctor wasn't annoyed and frustrated by this, not at all! Nope. Er...maybe he was, yes. He pulled himself away from thoughts of River to look back at Barbara.

"It's not exactly a safe place yet. I know you're used to danger, but I want to know how many monsters I've got running around here first."

Barbara looked down at the ring box in her hand. The sleeping quarters were very much like a giant nose, as she'd been hearing since she pod popped, but the Doctor was right. The TARDIS wasn't very safe at the moment. "What about when all these monsters have been dealt with? Would I be able to stay?"

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fantastix - 2012-02-15 23:52 (UTC) - Expand

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first_in_time - 2012-02-16 08:25 (UTC) - Expand

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