The TARDIS feels the pain of the sharp disconnect, as the other Doctor forces her out of his mind—and she's never been forced from a Doctor's mind before. The mental/physical shock of the disconnect and the emotional shock of the rejection disorient her, both sensations are new and painful, and she loses the divisions between herself and her Doctor, loses the trick of sorting his so-small self out from her greater being.
S/he panics, sitting up in his/her/the Doctor's body, still tied to the table by electrodes and bio-reads, non-artron energy sifting up in a dense aura around him/her. It. Them.
(His vocabulary is so limited, but it's all he can encompass, and it's all they can use, like this.)
They feel the Doctor near them, the familiar sound of the drums, but they're too strong. They've felt the Doctor like this, before, and they know how much it hurts, and that the Doctor needs their help, when the drums roar like that.
They hurt too. They are meant to go by two names but they cannot force themselves to name one part differently from the other.
Perhaps they hurt because the Doctor hurts. After all, they are linked.
They know this logic is wrong. Part of them knows that they are the Doctor and they are the TARDIS, but they feel that this is not true, not entirely.
They are frightened, but this is how they are meant to be.
This is how they are whole.
They rip themselves free from the hooks of the table, and stand, disconnecting electrodes from their chest and back, and the little pains as the bio-reads snag out of their skin are both new and familiar, a terrible violating foreign sensation and a meaningless little physical twinge, one of life's many small but necessary discomforts.
They say the Doctor's name, their words thick with the not-artron, in their throat, in their lungs. Not "the Doctor," his assumed title, but his name, his real name.
Because the TARDIS does not think of the Doctor even with a word, but only with the understood truth of him, and if they must use a word, they will use the one that has been him since he began, the one he keeps closest to him.
They say his name and move to touch him.
"It's alright. Hold still. Let me help." They talk like he talks, because they are using his mind and his body and anything else is too much, but they are frustrated by the smallness of the words. They are not enough.
no subject
S/he panics, sitting up in his/her/the Doctor's body, still tied to the table by electrodes and bio-reads, non-artron energy sifting up in a dense aura around him/her. It. Them.
(His vocabulary is so limited, but it's all he can encompass, and it's all they can use, like this.)
They feel the Doctor near them, the familiar sound of the drums, but they're too strong. They've felt the Doctor like this, before, and they know how much it hurts, and that the Doctor needs their help, when the drums roar like that.
They hurt too. They are meant to go by two names but they cannot force themselves to name one part differently from the other.
Perhaps they hurt because the Doctor hurts. After all, they are linked.
They know this logic is wrong. Part of them knows that they are the Doctor and they are the TARDIS, but they feel that this is not true, not entirely.
They are frightened, but this is how they are meant to be.
This is how they are whole.
They rip themselves free from the hooks of the table, and stand, disconnecting electrodes from their chest and back, and the little pains as the bio-reads snag out of their skin are both new and familiar, a terrible violating foreign sensation and a meaningless little physical twinge, one of life's many small but necessary discomforts.
They say the Doctor's name, their words thick with the not-artron, in their throat, in their lungs. Not "the Doctor," his assumed title, but his name, his real name.
Because the TARDIS does not think of the Doctor even with a word, but only with the understood truth of him, and if they must use a word, they will use the one that has been him since he began, the one he keeps closest to him.
They say his name and move to touch him.
"It's alright. Hold still. Let me help." They talk like he talks, because they are using his mind and his body and anything else is too much, but they are frustrated by the smallness of the words. They are not enough.