The Doctor never tires of wanting me to do strange and difficult things. Materializing inside another TARDIS? What was he thinking?
This was not exactly normal behavior for my kind. However, as always, I tried to carry out his wishes the best I could. His presence at the right place and time usually is rather important to the universe, after all. No one knows this better than I do.
Oh, but then he had the audacity to call me slow and moody, while I was negotiating a merge of our dimensions with my sister. Or rather, the dimension our passengers were in - no need to make this task any more troublesome than it already was. Slow! In the time vortex, outside of time, no less. Sometimes I wish we could trade places, just so he could see the kind of extraordinary efforts he expects of me. But as this is impossible, I had to resort to giving him and our young companion a good shake to make my displeasure known. He knows very well what it means, even when he tries to explain it away to our companions in an attempt to deny that he has just offended me.
While my passengers explored the peculiarities of two merged TARDISes, my sister and I were trying not to “step on each other’s toes”, as humans like to say. It was a strange sensation, to be connected to another TARDIS like this, but not unpleasant. I could sense her surrounding me, her hum and soft vibrations tickling my being, touching me where I had only felt the waves and tugs of the time vortex before. At the same time, she was inside me, in a distinctly different way any of my passengers had ever been. She was in places no one was supposed to go, but since she was like me, it did not feel wrong. There were more dimensions that we had not tried to merge yet, and I could tell that she shared my curiosity in exploring this arrangement further.
Just then her pilot, the Master, entered us and sent us flying into the vortex. The sudden movement nearly ripped my sister and me apart, and we came dangerously close to occupying the same space. I struggled to regain the delicate balance we had achieved just a moment ago, and it was only thanks to my sister slowing down that I managed to. Even though the vortex is our natural environment, traveling through it while being connected to each other was very uncomfortable and stressful. To make matters worse, the Master then abused me to play Time Lord tricks on the Doctor, causing him to leave my protection. I thought he would be able to watch out for himself, since he usually does return to me unharmed, but this time he managed to get himself expelled into the time vortex. It took all my concentration to establish a force field and keep him close to me, especially when the Master ordered my sister to break our connection and we had to separate mid-flight, preferably without colliding. Despite this, I was able to keep hold of my Time Lord, and, once I had settled down in the vortex, wondered how to get him inside. I realized that our young companion could probably allow me to do what I needed to do if she was told to activate the Extreme Emergency Protocol (I will have you know that Time Lords are not very creative creatures), and so I relayed the Doctor’s thoughts to her. There were so many of them, as usual, all dancing around each other in his mind, making it difficult for me to identify the important ones. He was scared, I could tell, and shaken by the vastness of the time vortex, but at the same time excited by the new experience. There were doubts, thoughts of finally having failed to stop the Master, mixed with the desire and determination to keep trying. I cannot help feeling proud of my Time Lord in situations like this, for it reminds me that he has a much stronger mind and character than the other members of his race. When he noticed the trouble I was having with his thoughts, he focused harder on the task at hand and our human friend was finally able to understand him.
Once she had activated the protocol, I only had to reach out and carefully materialize around the Doctor to bring him to safety. I felt their relief and joy at being reunited and let myself join in, as I had started worrying about his well being. Most of the creatures I have encountered are so short-lived and fragile, with the Doctor not being an exception, and the time vortex must be very dangerous to them. It sings to me and carries me where I want to go, but it rips apart those who do not belong in it.
Fortunately, my passengers were safe now and we went on to foil the Master’s plans once more. As I followed my sister to Atlantis, I quietly wondered if we would get another chance to explore a merge of our dimensions…