The Time of Change

The Fear of Falling

My eyes flutter open without my consent, and I try to shut them once more. They don't listen to me. I groan and shift onto my side, my fingers wrapping around a clump of silken white sheets. Flashes of a dream flit through my brain; I can clearly make out my foster mother's face. I wonder why I would have dreamt of her.

    I throw my legs over the side of the bed, stretching my arms high over my head. Something in my lower back pops satisfyingly. Rubbing my eyes beneath my glasses, I allow my gaze to wander around the room once more before they settle on a photograph right next to me. I touch its frame with my fingertip. My own face beams up at me, mid-laugh, and I feel something warm and pleasant swell in my chest.

I pick up my boots, and through muscle memory, my feet carry me back to the hallway. I stop at the Wardrobe Room and shed the clothes I wear. Blindly I select a pair of ripped jeans and a white tee-shirt, along with the leather jacket from yesterday, which I am now officially claiming as mine. I slip on the clothes, zip my boots up over my ankles, shake out the messiness from my hair, and start toward the stairs into the main room.

The Doctor is silhouetted against the greenish-blue light of the TARDIS's controls, his hair tousled and his jacket haphazardly thrown over the panel. The air in here feels heavy and thick like cold custard, and it worries me for a moment.

His voice shatters the quiet. "Sleep well?" he asks without turning around.

I nod, forgetting he can't see me. After a brief reevaluation of my IQ, I answer, "Yeah, thanks. Did you?" He doesn't respond, confirming what I already thought. "Doctor, you need to sleep," I implore, walking up to him. "It isn't good for you." I pause. "That wasn't your room I slept in, was it?"

"What gave it away— the Orrery or the sticky notes with Circular Gallifreyan?"

"Okay, I can make an educated guess at the second thing, but what the heck is an Orrery?"

He half-smiles like he's trying to repress it. "A mechanical model of the heliocentric solar system."

"Oh. Well, why didn't you just say that?"

"Bit of a mouthful, innit?"

I laugh but immediately feel guilty as what he said sinks in. "I'm sorry I stole your bed," I tell him. "I don't even know how I ended up there. I just—"

    "No, don't be silly," he interrupts with a wave of his energetic hand. "I hardly ever sleep anyway. I'm fine. I really don't need it more than once every few months." I furrow my eyebrows at him skeptically, opening my mouth to respond, when he anticipates my question with terrifying accuracy: "Yes, just like rechargeable batteries."

    I smile, and he returns it. I wander around the console once as he unhurriedly flips a few switches on the other side. When I make it to the temporal flux, I gaze down at it, thinking about everything and nothing all at once. The quiet in here is peaceful.

    Suddenly, a question comes to mind. I look up at him and just stare for a moment before he feels my eyes on him. "What?" he inquires, curious.

    "Why are you English?"

    He seems flabbergasted. "I'm sorry?"

    "Why are you English?" I repeat, leaning on the console. "Gallifrey had its own language, so why do you have an English accent? I mean, there's no Britain in space... Is there?" I turn my gaze upward and stare at the top of the cylinder where it merges with the high ceiling. There are different metal tiers surrounding it. The sight brings another idea to my head. "Not only that," I go on, "but... 'Time and Relative Dimensions in Space.' That—It doesn't make any sense that you named the TARDIS in English. That acronym wouldn't work in any other language!"