Chatterbox: Inkwell

Because, for the first time in ages, I have finished a story! Slightly fluffy Doctor Who oneshot, no title yet; synopsis is: "Set soon after 'The Beast Below.' Amy explores the Tardis, and the Doctor makes tea." No warnings I can think of, gen unless you're squinting. (Uh, except for the everpresent implied Doctor/TARDIS.) 

I'm considering putting this one up on my ao3 (about time I put something up there, amirite), and so I want to polish it up as much as possible. AS SUCH, I could do with some criticism - especially whether I got their voices right in the dialogue. Title suggestions would be nice as well, please and thank you. 

*

The Doctor urges Amy to explore the Tardis, to do so on her own (“You should come with me,” she says. “What if I get lost?” “You won’t get lost,” he says, “she’ll show you around.”). She thinks he probably knows what he’s doing, at least most of the time, so she does what he says. She wanders up and down corridors (so many corridors) and finds all manner of strange rooms. Her first real discovery, though, is the library. She knows what it is before she enters, because of the sign affixed to the door, urging her to be silent and turn her books in on time, and (this last printed in slightly desperate italics) not to interfere with the nature of causality. Another sign tells her that if she smokes she will be beaten. 

Inside, it is so much grander than she ever imagined, so much grander than her confused impressions, left over from when she was seven, of books floating in a big swimming pool. The bookshelves go up so high she cannot see the top, and go on for so long she cannot see the ends, twisting and turning in an endless labyrinth of literature. There are several big balls of yarn by the door, presumably for the purposes of not losing your way. She browses the shelves. The Doctor’s books are in all languages and alphabets, many of which she suspects are not human at all. The English books are of all sorts, from science fiction to treatises on Shakespeare’s sonnets to the Sandman comics to children’s books about talking pigs. Harry Potter novels are shelved next to medical textbooks. She wonders how - or if - the books are organised. She takes down a book at random - a volume of Eliot - and opens it, and is more surprised than she should be to find that it is autographed, with a note thanking the Doctor.

And yes, there’s a swimming pool, a huge round thing in the middle of the room, with gold edges and water a shade of blue normally only found in dreams. She thinks about diving in, but then thinks, no, don’t be stupid, because the beauty of the pool nearly made her forget that she can’t swim. She leaves in a hurry after that. 

She finds other things, as well. She opens a door onto a grassy hillside where butterflies whirl through the air, thousands swirling everywhere, of every imaginable colour and size, covering the grass and landing on flowers and dancing together into colourful clouds, their wings making a noise like a gentle breathing. 

There is a greenhouse, warm and humid and, well, green. Plants seem to pour out from the walls. There is a laboratory, filled with machines she doesn’t recognise and is a bit too frightened to go to near to. 

Eventually, she stumbles across the Doctor. He is in a little kitchen, cosy and yellow and inexplicably sun-filled. He's putting the kettle on and singing - badly - in a language that's almost certainly not Earth, let alone English. The tune seems familiar, though, and after a moment she recognizes it: it's "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen", of all things. 

"Hello, Amy Pond!" he says. He says it as if he is announcing a miracle, as if the presence of Amy Pond is a wonder on par with the creation of light, and he could not be more pleased. 

"What were you singing?" she asks. 

"Oh, just an old Venusian lullaby. Do you like it?" 

"It's strange," she allows, looking at the various items scattered across the circular table. There's his screwdriver and an open pack of jammy dodgers, a bag of jelly babies and a recorder, a banana and some rather wilted celery, a few battered paperbacks and a box of tea bags. There's a blue plastic cup full of daisies in the centre of the table, and she idly wonders who put it there; it doesn't really seem the Doctor's style. She picks up a black jacket covered in various interesting patches, left draped over the back of a chair as if by someone who's just been in here and will come back in a moment. "Hey, whose is this?" 

He turns. "Don't touch that," he says sharply, and then, penitent: "It's Ace's. Ace McShane, well, Dorothy really, girl who used to travel with me.” He rambles on. “She left it here. I’ve been meaning to return it, actually. You'd like her; she blew things up. I was Scottish then, you know." He says this last in a truly awful imitation of Amy’s accent, but the expression on his face is so like that on the face of an excited nine-year-old that she doesn’t have the heart to criticise him just now. Instead, she changes the subject. 

"Yeah, about that," she says, “what do you mean, you 'used to be Scottish'? Like, those faces the Atraxi showed you, are those all past Doctors? Is 'Doctor' like, an inherited title? Oh, oh, does the new one get all the memories of the old one?”  

“No. Yes. I mean, Time Lords, when we die, we sort of change. It's called regeneration - every cell in my body changes, and I get a new personality as well. This is my…" He pauses as if counting, and the teakettle starts to scream cheerily. "…Eleventh, and there goes the kettle!” He whirls around and turns off the stove. "Tea?" 

She nods, distracted. "You're saying you've been eleven different people?"

"I mean, all of them were still me. I’ll show you photos sometime. You know, I met you right after my most recent regeneration - crash-landed right into your garden.” He grins. "I've known you all my life." 

Amy isn't quite sure how to respond to this. 

"Do you think I imprinted on you?" he asks, as if it is a perfectly ordinary thing to ask someone. He starts ransacking the cupboards for tea bags. “Ducks do that, you know. Amelia Pond, tell me honestly: Do I look like a duck to you?” 

"They've over here," she says, tossing the tea bags to him. "Seriously, how old are you?" 

"About a week." He dives for the box and falls over, yelping. He grins at her. "All together, about nine hundred and seven." 

"Really?" 

"No," he says. He climbs up. "No, closer to fifteen hundred, actually. I'm not entirely sure how old I am, to be honest. Lost track.” He sounds, to Amy’s mind, entirely too flippant.  

“Are you joking,” she says, “are you joking. What is the matter with you.” She puts her head in her hands so she won’t have to see his perplexed face. 

"Is this about my bow tie again?" he asks suspiciously. 

"No," she says, muffled. She lifts her head. “It’s just you don’t know how old you are, you’re an alien space squid Gandalf thing and you’ve just made me tea and there’s a room in your house that’s made of butterflies, are you a mad alien butterfly rancher, where did you get all the butterflies, where did you get the hillside, why do you keep a hillside in your house, are the butterflies real, how are they real, how is this room real, how is there sunlight coming in the windows when we're in deep space, how do you have windows?” It’s all so overwhelming, bookshelves and butterflies and greenhouses, the realisation that this is her life now, wonderful and also every so slightly terrifying. 

He walks over and puts his hands on his shoulders. "Amy, stop. Breathe.”  

"Just answer the question!" she snaps. 

"Oh. She's psychic." 

"Who's psychic?" 

"My ship, of course! What she's doing is going through our minds - your mind, mostly; she knows me well enough by now that she doesn't need to - and extrapolating from available data to create a safe and comforting environment.” He looks concerned, suddenly. "I hope you don't mind. Is it all right? Is the room all right? Because I can ask her to change that for you if you don't like it." 

"Of course it's all right, don't be stupid." She shakes her head. "It's nice. Very... yellow." 

"'The color yellow,'" he muses, as though tasting the words and finding them to his liking, "'is a mystical experience shared by everybody.'" He grins up at the ceiling. "I like it, too. Thanks, dear." 

*

Uh, yes. Other notes: The butterfly room is not my invention; I got it from the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Vampire Science, by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman. Likewise, the Venusian lullaby is from the Third Doctor episode "The Curse of Peladon." The quote at the end is from, naturally, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.