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“Hyperspanner.”
Romana picked a hyperspanner out from amongst the Doctor’s tools. “You’re missing an anodyne screwdriver.”
“Yes, yes, I know … hyperspanner.”
She tossed it down in the vague direction of the Doctor. It was hard to tell where he was, really. “There’s no need to be rude. I’m surprised, that’s all.”
“By what?” he grunted, fiddling with two crossed wires. She could have solved it herself, but it was more amusing to watch him work through the TARDIS’s faults himself.
“Normally your equipment is quite complete, if positively outdated.” She took a jelly baby from the bag left out on the console and bit off its head. Barbaric, but satisfying. She took another one. If you just dodged the yellow ones, they were rather moreish.
“Soldering iron,” he said, by way of response. This time she didn’t throw it at him; she didn’t feel the TARDIS would appreciate being lightly burnt. Instead she passed it to him and felt his fingers graze her own, the full chaos of his mind melting into her own for a fleeting second. “And I’ll thank you not to pry!”
“You’re the one who walks around entirely unguarded,” Romana said, reaching for another jelly baby. “It’s hardly my fault if I see something, then.”
“You called my possessions outdated!” the Doctor cried, as he finally caught up with what she’d been saying. “My TARDIS, too! Don’t you worry, old girl, don’t you worry … youths these days, they think that two hundred years of life experience makes them entitled to judge their elders … haven’t seen anything … antiquated pile of junk … bah! What would you know about antiquated, hm, Romana?”
“I’ll say nothing except that I was an archivist,” Romana called down to him, idly taking another jelly baby, “and even I don’t recognise some of the sonic devices you have up here.”
“Yes, well, the Academy doesn’t teach anything worth knowing, and you did skip antiques…”
“Aha! So you admit it, your TARDIS is an antique.”
“With age comes wisdom,” the Doctor said, jamming two wires together. Romana winced as the TARDIS beeped in irritation, and ate another jelly baby to distract herself from the smell of time and toasted almonds. They were one and the same; baffling, all things considered. How could time have a smell? Well, it could and it did. “My TARDIS is really more of a vintage than an antique. A fine wine that must be aged to be truly enjoyed.”
“Ethanol is a poison that the Gallifreyan body happens to be better at metabolising than most other species,” Romana intoned.
“Poppycock! Besides, didn’t your House specialise in ethanol production, back in the day?”
“Maybe ten thousand years ago,” Romana sniffed. “It’s so uncivilised, slowing down one’s metabolism just for the sake of inebriation.”
“Oh, yes, and I’ll wager you were the lives of the party, in your Academy days,” the Doctor said. He soldered several loose ends together with a crackle and Romana sighed.
“Partying or no, I wish you’d just let me take over the maintenance,” Romana said, descending the stairs to the TARDIS’s insides.
“If you think you can do a better job than me, you are more than welcome to try,” the Doctor said. “This is tricky business, Romana, tricky business indeed.”
“Very well,” Romana said. “Pass the intelligent knife, if you please.”
He begrudgingly pushed a knife into her hand and she ran the other across the tangled knot of wires that currently constituted the TARDIS’s guts, searching for the knot that was giving the poor thing such trouble. She dipped into the psychic matrix of the TARDIS and—ah, there. A twist between the sixth and thirteenth dimensions, where a shoddy landing had jammed the two together. In the fourth dimension, that of spacetime, this manifested as a twist in two copper wires, angrily fighting each other to exist in the same place. Romana nicked at the crossroads where the two wires met and they flew angrily apart, unwilling to remain together; it separated the dimensional twist but didn’t resolve it. The TARDIS thrummed mournfully, her dimensions grazed; Romana sent a psychic twist of reassurance and felt the TARDIS melt a little, retreating. Just a little further … a little further … she leant forwards with the solder that she only now realised the Doctor had handed her, the prying hypocrite, and brought the tears in the TARDIS’s thirteenth dimension together, sealing off the injury and, if not healing the TARDIS, then at least ironing out the worst of her suffering. The TARDIS beeped loudly in relief. In fairness, the Doctor probably hadn’t been prying on her mind, but listening through his psychic link with the TARDIS; still, it was an uncomfortable feeling, to have her mind almost-read without warning.
Romana sat back, panting but smug. “Dare I say I told you so?”
“I’d rather you didn’t,” the Doctor muttered.
“It’s a classic injury,” Romana said, “and this is why the correct upkeep of a time machine’s helmic regulators is so important. One never knows when they could slip and lead to this sort of dimensional entanglement.”
“I’m fairly sure you made all of that up,” the Doctor said, taking the stairs two at a time. She followed him dutifully back up to the console. “Jelly baby, Romana?”
“Yes, please.”
“Good heavens!” he gasped. “You’ve eaten them all! There’s none left, not even the yellow ones that taste bad!”
“Oh, have I?” Romana said. In retrospect that did make sense. She hadn’t really been paying attention to how many she took. “My sincerest apologies, Doctor.”
“Ah well,” the Doctor said. “It’s nothing that can’t be fixed with a quick trip to London.”
So that was where he got them from. It ruined the mystique somewhat, to know that they didn’t just spontaneously appear fully formed in his pockets, but then that was a rather ludicrous supposition unsupported by the evidence. Even if it was more fun.
“Which you can safely do, now that I and not you have fixed the TARDIS’s dimensional slippages,” Romana said.
“I could kiss you!” the Doctor said. “Thank Rassilon for such tender mercies, etcetera, etcetera.”
“If you wish to kiss me, you are duly invited,” Romana said.
“Very well,” the Doctor said, and kissed her. It really was quite shocking how he kept his mind exposed like that all the time; she could see not just his mindscape but also his thoughts, running around and crashing into each other as they attempted to corral each other into some semblance of order. It was like herding cats, she thought, and then wondered why she’d thought it, since she’d never heard of herding cats before now; probably the Doctor’s psychic interference again. Not only was his psychic shielding a disgrace, his tendency towards the tactile was positively risqué and it really was not appropriate for him to have his arms round her waist like that, but then she wasn’t complaining. When he at last pulled away it was merely to say, “You taste like jelly babies.”
“I know,” she said, and laughed. “But not the yellow ones.”
There were certain advantages, it had to be said, to a life lived non-linearly. Irritating though he might be at times, Romana had absolutely no intentions of returning to Gallifrey—and the trappings of Time Lord life—any time in the next few centuries.
Who could possibly want that, when there was the whole universe to explore?