OC October: The Young TARDIS
The Young TARDIS, Doctor Who
Because I talked about Agape yesterday, and the TARDIS is just as much of an oc, here we go!
The young TARDIS that Susan Foreman found cowering in her front garden under the apple tree is a war model - its growth artificially accelerated and rushed onto the frontlines a good fifty years before it should have seen full service. When its pilot was killed in battle near the end of the Time War it panicked and bolted - and there's nothing that can bolt like a TARDIS. Instead of returning to base, it ran, looking for whatever TARDISes that don't trust anyone or anything look for, and found Susan's little complex knot of local spacetime, where it pulled the most best camouflage it could think of: a doghouse.
Susan's neighbors thought she'd adopted an especially skittish feral dog for some weeks, because they kept walking by and seeing her sitting by the doghouse under the apple tree, that had never been there before, gently talking to it. (All the neighborhood children wanted to say hi to Ms Foreman's new puppy! They were gently told no, it wasn't ready.)
TARDISes grow a bit like nautiluses, outward from a central single chamber, which in most TARDISes is the cloister room (they can jettison everything but this one room if necessary, or just sprawl onward through their own particular folding of spacetime forever). The older and healthier the TARDIS, the more rooms. When this one ran away from the war and came to Susan, it was so young and stunted from reaction to the forced growth that it only had three rooms - the cloister, which it had hidden, the control room, and an infirmary. It didn't add another until Susan brought Agape onboard, at which point it grew a kitchen.
The TARDIS ended up with Susan because it felt her personal paradox was comforting, but now it likes her. It likes her powerful mind and the considerable reach of her telepathy, her strong emphatic tendencies, the way she tries to keep it calm and runs it through the exercises for young TARDISes, is never angry when it gets upset and kicks her out or accidentally makes Agape's nightmares worse. (Susan worries sometimes about putting the TARDIS and Agape in the same psychic space. Agape seems to do the TARDIS good, and the TARDIS seems to be helping Agape, but they both have enough post traumatic stress issues and sufficient psychic damage that she gets afraid she's created a volatile situation.)
Like most TARDISes, this one has an impish sense of humor that comes out when it's not feeling too scared. Since it is very young, and has yet to learn the finer methods of messing with mostly corporeal Time Lord friends and random hominins (who may or may not be friends: Agape is, and when Susan takes Ping Cho along on a romantic vacation, the TARDIS decides she is too, but other travelers do not necessarily get this courtesy), it mostly expresses this by continually rearranging the kitchen cupboards. No one can ever find anything.
This entry was originally posted at http://tiamatschild.dreamwidth.org/128929.html. Please feel free to comment there using OpenID. Or here! It'll be read either way, is what I'm saying.
Because I talked about Agape yesterday, and the TARDIS is just as much of an oc, here we go!
The young TARDIS that Susan Foreman found cowering in her front garden under the apple tree is a war model - its growth artificially accelerated and rushed onto the frontlines a good fifty years before it should have seen full service. When its pilot was killed in battle near the end of the Time War it panicked and bolted - and there's nothing that can bolt like a TARDIS. Instead of returning to base, it ran, looking for whatever TARDISes that don't trust anyone or anything look for, and found Susan's little complex knot of local spacetime, where it pulled the most best camouflage it could think of: a doghouse.
Susan's neighbors thought she'd adopted an especially skittish feral dog for some weeks, because they kept walking by and seeing her sitting by the doghouse under the apple tree, that had never been there before, gently talking to it. (All the neighborhood children wanted to say hi to Ms Foreman's new puppy! They were gently told no, it wasn't ready.)
TARDISes grow a bit like nautiluses, outward from a central single chamber, which in most TARDISes is the cloister room (they can jettison everything but this one room if necessary, or just sprawl onward through their own particular folding of spacetime forever). The older and healthier the TARDIS, the more rooms. When this one ran away from the war and came to Susan, it was so young and stunted from reaction to the forced growth that it only had three rooms - the cloister, which it had hidden, the control room, and an infirmary. It didn't add another until Susan brought Agape onboard, at which point it grew a kitchen.
The TARDIS ended up with Susan because it felt her personal paradox was comforting, but now it likes her. It likes her powerful mind and the considerable reach of her telepathy, her strong emphatic tendencies, the way she tries to keep it calm and runs it through the exercises for young TARDISes, is never angry when it gets upset and kicks her out or accidentally makes Agape's nightmares worse. (Susan worries sometimes about putting the TARDIS and Agape in the same psychic space. Agape seems to do the TARDIS good, and the TARDIS seems to be helping Agape, but they both have enough post traumatic stress issues and sufficient psychic damage that she gets afraid she's created a volatile situation.)
Like most TARDISes, this one has an impish sense of humor that comes out when it's not feeling too scared. Since it is very young, and has yet to learn the finer methods of messing with mostly corporeal Time Lord friends and random hominins (who may or may not be friends: Agape is, and when Susan takes Ping Cho along on a romantic vacation, the TARDIS decides she is too, but other travelers do not necessarily get this courtesy), it mostly expresses this by continually rearranging the kitchen cupboards. No one can ever find anything.
This entry was originally posted at http://tiamatschild.dreamwidth.org/128929.html. Please feel free to comment there using OpenID. Or here! It'll be read either way, is what I'm saying.