Doctor Who_ Hope - Mark Clapham [2]
In the ships console room, its apparent centre, stands the ships captain, a man called the Doctor who is more of a man than he once was. While once two hearts pumped within the Doctors chest, now only a single pulse beats beneath his ribs. Fortunately for the Doctor, his second heart allows him to survive the death of the first. Less fortunately, much of what separated him from the common humans around him seems to have gone with his now cold heart. Though he would never admit it, considering himself something of a libertarian, he has always felt like a lord, walking amongst lesser beings for a hundred years. Now he is just another man. His appearance belies this humbled status an aristocratic figure with a noble bearing, sharp blue eyes and flowing chestnut curls, the Doctor wears finely pressed clothes as he stands at the TARDISs central console, deep in thought. As he thinks, he rubs his newly shaven chin, unconsciously searching for his recently departed beard.
Fitz Kreiner is a different matter. He lies on a sofa near where the Doctor stands, and he has never been bothered by being considered a lesser man, or even less than a man. While he occasionally embraces the extraordinary, Fitzs lanky stature and shabby dress sense show him to be a twentiethcentury everyman. While the Doctor prowls the console, determined to control where the TARDIS may land next, Fitz is accustomed to travel. He appreciates the journey, wherever it may take him.
Away from the console room, down twisting white corridors, are a number of rooms, and in one of these the TARDISs other passenger stirs in her sleep, pushing towards wakefulness.
Anji Kapoor woke up slowly, her conscious mind gradually lifting itself out of that dark, warm place inside her head where dreams took place, and letting her senses take in her environment. Anji tentatively stuck her head out from under the covers, eyes and ears open. There was a soft machine hum in the background, and glowing circles embedded in the walls around her. She was in the TARDIS. Home. What a relief.
She grinned sleepily at the thought that the TARDIS was now her home, her idea of familiarity, of safety and comfort. The whole idea was ludicrous. The TARDIS was, after all, an alien time machine; dozens of glowing white, futuristic rooms packed into a little blue telephone box. Not what shed ever imagined as her dream home. But, compared to all the places shed been of late, this alien call box was home. Or at least a better, safer place to wake up than a stormlashed wasteland in the path of a citymachine, or in the attic room where an Ogres mother had made dresses for several ugly sisters, or any of the other places she had woken up in the past few months.
Anji wondered how long she had slept. There was no day and night in the TARDIS, no windows for the sun to shine through. It could be whatever time Anji wanted it to be.
Anji decided that whatever time it was, it probably wasnt time to get up. Besides, she knew that a vital skill for getting through periods of intense exertion was being able to totally relax when the opportunity arose. When under pressure at work, shed always found the time for a long hot bath in the evening, usually on a Thursday night when Dave was busy wading through his comics.
Dave. The thought of him made Anji tense with guilt, as if she wasnt allowed to be content without him. It had only been a matter of months since her boyfriend had died, the man she had lived with for years. Surely, lying in a warm bed, she should still feel