The Time Lord's Apprentice

In The Tardis #3

Peyton is lost, again. All she wanted was to use the bathroom and go back to bed. She wanders the grey corridors, trying to find something familiar.

The TARDIS is incredibly creepy at night. It almost sounds like the time machine is breathing. The cold hallways all look the same to her, every so often there will be a door breaking the monotonous environment. Most of them are locked.

Peyton starts to feel a little anxious. She has never been this lost before. She has been travelling in the TARDIS for almost a year now, it is a little embarrassing that she is still getting lost. In fact, she hadn't gotten lost in a very long time. She begins to wonder if the TARDIS was purposely concealing the way back to her bedroom.

Peyton turns yet another corner and sees the dim lights of the console room in the distance.

She walks hurriedly down the hall, pulling her dressing gown tighter around herself. She's ended up at the lowest entrance to the room, she looks up and sees the console through the glass floor above. To her surprise, the Doctor isn't tinkering away at the electronics of his ship anywhere in the room as she expected. Maybe he does sleep. 

Peyton thinks she's hearing things, but she could swear that the console almost hums at her presence. The lights seem to brighten slowly, making the room seem less eerily lit and more inviting.

The slap of her slippers on the metal stairs cuts through the silence as she makes her way up to the deck, trailing her fingers along the balustrade. Peyton smiles to herself, she's hardly up here without some form of chaos going on, it's nice to embrace the calm, almost serene atmosphere of the TARDIS.

Standing by the controls of the time machine, an overwhelming sense of clarity comes over her. Gazing down at the expanse of buttons, dials, and levers before her, Peyton's hands subconsciously come up to rest against them, careful not to apply pressure and send the TARDIS into a wormhole.

The Doctor had been slowly teaching her how to fly the TARDIS for a while, introducing her to a single aspect of the ancient machine at a time. But there was something different about being here, alone.

The Doctor isn't peering over her shoulder or guiding her hands. An overwhelming emotion with no name surges through her body, shooting up her arms like electricity. Peyton's chest swells as if it's being pumped full of helium, but her head is profoundly clear.

Peyton's lips break into a smile, drawing her hands back from the interface. She drops her left hand on the edge of the console and begins to walk around it, dancing her fingers across the metal surface. It feels right. It feels... powerful.

Peyton finds herself with her back to the stairs leading upwards and toward the bedrooms. She exhales aloud before turning to return to bed with the sight of the Doctor standing at the top of the staircase, leaning against the railing with his arms folded and smiling.

"Couldn't sleep?" He asks. He wasn't wearing his coat or his bow tie, his suspenders had been shrugged off his shoulders and hang against his thighs.

"I got lost," Peyton says sheepishly, leaning her hips back against the console. "Or maybe the TARDIS got me lost."

"She has a habit of doing that," the Doctor pushes himself off the railing and he walks down the stairs toward the blonde-haired girl.

"Taking you not where you want to be, but where you need to be." Peyton laughs. "River says you just say that because you can't fly her properly."

The Doctor's face tightens into one of offence. "I taught her how to fly! Or, I'm going to. She has got to stop chattering in your ear, she'll turn you against me in no time."

They both laugh softly together as he comes to stand next to her, leaning as she does with their backs against the console. Their shoulders brush just slightly as they fall into a comfortable silence.

"It's the Gallifreyan blood in your veins," he muses after some time. "Your connection to the TARDIS that is. It's your evolutionary call to become one with her and travel the stars. Those two hearts in your chest, they both long for it. They have all your life, haven't they, Peyton?"

She only answers with a low hum, trying to picture what it would be like to one day pilot the TARDIS, as in, alone. The Doctor watching on as she does now. She wonders if she could, if the Time Lords hadn't been destroyed. Would her father be here as well, would he have taught her how to fly?

"Can you tell me something about him?" Peyton asks, snapping herself out of her train of thought. "If that's okay, I know you don't like talking about him much. But tell me about when you were kids, before he was, you know..."

"Corrupted?" The Doctor supplies sadly.

"If you don't want to, that's fine-"

"You look like him, you know," he smiles melancholically. "I know I've told you before, but you really, really do. The version of him who fathered you, you have the same eyes."

Peyton averts her gaze shyly, but he places a hand on her forearm, bringing her attention back to him. He doesn't say anything for a while. His eyes seem to be searching her face for something, anything.

"We were friends, best friends. Koschei and I, that was the nickname I gave him. We were inseparable..."