The road less travelled...

Title: Finding A Way Home – Important Introductions
Author: katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: Verity meets the other woman in the Doctor’s life.
Word Count: 3614 words
Characters: The half-human Doctor, Verity and the TARDIS.
A/N: Written for the 27th Travellers’ Tales with the prompt ‘rooftop’ and the 41st Travellers’ Tales with the prompt 'gold'.
A/N 2: Dedicated to time_converges, who asked ever so nicely for more in this ‘verse.

“Here we are!”

The Doctor opens the door to the bedroom with rather more of a flourish than he’d intended, but Verity is seemingly too entranced by the space he has just revealed to notice.

“Oh!” she breathes, stepping into the room and then turning back to face him, an expression of concern on her face. “Is this really for me?”

“Don’t you want it?” he demands anxiously. “I thought – the TARDIS thought you’d like it!”

“No, I do!”

She turns back to stare at the room, which is, the Doctor has to admit, rather more opulent than some of the rooms other companions have had with its large bed, pillows piled high at the head, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves crammed with volumes, and one door leading in to a walk-in wardrobe while another on the opposite wall reveals glimpses of an ensuite. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling to see that rich purple fabric, matching the coverings on the bed, is pinned from the cornices to meet in one central point where a small chandelier descends into the room.

Verity’s hands slide around his arm and she gives a gentle squeeze that reveals her delight. “I really do!” she exclaims. “I’ve dreamed of rooms like this. Only – well,” she gives a rather awkward laugh, “my whole flat is about the same size as this room. If I got lost, you might never find me!”

“We-ell,” the Doctor tugs on his ear with his free hand, a teasing tone in his voice, “if you’re worried, I’m sure there’s a boxroom or something that we can kit up for you.”

She laughs, the tension fading, and then releases her hold on him to explore the space that the TARDIS has decided will be hers. The Doctor leans against the doorframe, watching as she looks around the ensuite and then peers into the wardrobe before turning back to him with a confused expression on her face.

“You told me I didn’t need clothes,” she reminds him.

“You don’t,” he agrees. “The TARDIS will provide you with anything you might want, based on where she thinks we might be going on any particular day.”

“Then why do I have a wardrobe at all?” she asks practically.

“Well,” he arches an eyebrow, “human females shop, don’t they? Or is Donna an exception to that rule?”

Verity smiles and looks a bit sheepish, so that the Doctor suspects Donna might have some company next time they land on a planet with markets or shops. He makes a mental note to ensure that such a place also has something to keep himself and the other Doctor occupied for the necessary hours.

For now, though, he leads her out of the room and into the hallway that will take them into the other rooms on the TARDIS that Verity had asked so eagerly to see.

Apart from a sharp mental nudge at his sentient blue box, he decides to ignore the fact that the door of Verity’s room has been placed rather prominently next to his. The door beyond that leads to the nursery, and then the bedroom belonging to Donna and the other Doctor end the currently occupied sleeping chambers on board.

He dismisses these with a nod and a simple ‘Bedrooms’ before guiding her further along. They stop briefly in the kitchen, but there’s nothing to excite much interest since he decides that now is not the time to introduce her to the array of sonic-enhanced gadgets.

She really doesn’t need to see the laboratory, the wardrobe (although it could be fun to let her and Donna loose in there later), the cricket club, boot-cupboard, bathroom, sickbay, workshop, cloisters, power rooms, or a long list of others.

The large, heavy glass double-doors that lead to the garden are already standing open.

“In here,” he says, guiding her across the threshold.

Verity stops short – he was expecting it, so he’s able to stop in time without pulling her over – and stares at the massive space that has opened up around them.

Trees tower high above their heads, including some of the tallest in the universe, which put the largest redwoods on Earth to shame. Ivy twists and winds its way up many of the trunks, the thickness of the plant suggesting great age. At the feet of the behemoths are smaller plants, ferns and herbaceous perennials of differing sizes and in a million shades of green.

Any hint of a room, other than the doors behind them, seems impossible to see. The roof is so far away, it might as well be sky, and only glimpses of it are visible through the thick foliage in any case.

Verity turns and glances back into the hallway behind them which, for all its generous proportions, suddenly looks tiny.

“Bigger on the inside,” he explains quickly before she can utter a word.

“Oh,” she says, pink heightening her cheeks as if she wishes she had realised this for herself.

Taking pity on her, he ignores her embarrassment and leads her along a narrow path between the trees to the place where the garden opens out to reveal vast vegetable patches, bordered by fruit trees. Away to one side are flower beds, both neatly manicured and growing wild.

All around them are signs of life: butterflies and insects and even a few species of bird can be seen and heard in the cavernous garden. Several swoop down to investigate the newcomers to their private Eden, and the Doctor laughs as one alights on Verity’s head.

A sudden squeal from behind them causes the birds to scatter in obvious fear, but Verity turns with an exclamation of delight to look at the little white creature running towards them.

“Oh, it’s Addy!”

The Doctor smiles. “I wasn’t sure you’d remember him.”

Verity, who had dropped to one knee so that the Adipose could scramble into her lap, smiles up at him. “I don’t suppose,” she suggests in teasing tones, “that too many people forget meeting their first alien.”

The Doctor arches an eyebrow. “Second,” he corrects her. “Actually, third. Well, fourth if you count Donna.”

She waits patiently for him to finish. “The first alien who didn’t look human,” she amends her original statement.

“Ah.” He has to agree with her there. “Well, yes, I suppose so.”

Verity straightens and seems about to say something when Addy, who has slid off her knee, takes hold of tiny handfuls of her pants, clearly doing his best to pull her in a certain direction. She casts a confused glance at the man beside her.

“What...?”

“He wants to show you something.” The Doctor jams his hands in the pockets of his pants and nods in the direction in which the small, grunting ball of fat is trying to pull Verity. “Come on!”

He strides off, following Addy, who has released his hold on Verity and is now running away down the path. Out of the corner of his eye, ready to stop and go back to her if she hesitates too long, the Doctor watches Verity. She stares after him for a moment, wide-eyed, clearly unsure exactly what she should do. Her eyes flicker across to Addy, who has stopped and now looks back as if making sure that he is being followed.

Verity seems frozen to the spot, but as Addy gives a rather impatient squeak, she wakes out of her reverie. She glances back through the trees at the doors and the hallway beyond, and then puts her shoulders back and gives herself a little shake, as if remembering that she had chosen to look for the Doctor, and after all, following an alien through a bigger-on-the-inside garden wasn’t that strange, was it?

Just as the Doctor is about to stop and wait for her to catch up, he hears rapid footsteps and feels Verity’s hand slide around her arm.

He decides not to bother pointing out that the TARDIS is a long way from the weirdest thing she will see while she’s travelling with him.

Instead he guides her through the garden in the wake of a small white ball of sentient fat over to a part of the garden covered in low-growing green leaves with numerous buds just visible.

“Oh, pansies!” she exclaims, and sinks onto her knees, brushing her hands over the ground-covering plants.

She starts back with a yelp as the buds suddenly spring to life, opening to reveal a perfect gold flower, each petal rimmed in black.

The Doctor stares for a moment before turning stunned eyes on Verity. “No way!”

“Wh-what did I do?” she stammers nervously.

He considers her for a moment. “Fond of gardening, are we?” he says at last, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.

Her eyes are so wide that he wonders idly if they are about to pop out of her head. “How did you know?”

“It’s them.” He waves a hand at the blooms, bobbing in the gentle breeze, and then kneels down beside her. “They aren’t pansies – not what you think of as pansies anyway. They react to touch: the better a gardener, the brighter the colour of flowers. See?”

He lightly touches the plants in his turn. Verity exclaims again as the flowers close tightly into buds and then blossom once more, only this time they are different shades of pink and purple.

“Oh!”

Verity leans forward to look closer, inadvertently touching one of the closest plants, which closes and opens to reveal flowers that look as if they have been painted with gold. They even glitter in the reflection of unseen lights. Those affected by the Doctor’s touch might be pretty and more closely resemble flowers found on Earth, but there is no denying that the gold ones are a work of art.

“These,” he tells her, gesturing at the flowers, but careful not to touch them, “have never been this colour before. Blue, and green, and yellow, and even silver, but never gold. Never,” he glances at her out of the corner of his eye, “anyone good enough to make this happen.”

The Doctor sees a glow in Verity’s eyes which he suspects is pride at the knowledge that there is something she can do better than him. She doesn’t speak though, only slipping her hand through his arm and then, while he’s still wondering exactly what she’s thinking, she leans forward again.

This time, when her hand touches the leaves, the flowers that bloom are different again. The edges are still black, and the tops of the petals still glitter, but the undersides are pink or purple or, in some cases, both.

She smiles and sits back with a satisfied, “Beautiful!”

Yes, the Doctor thinks to himself. Absolutely beautiful.

He doesn't quite trust himself not to speak the words aloud and scrambles quickly to his feet.

“Can't stay here all day,” he tells Verity. “There's still lots more for you to see. We can come back another time. It's not as if it's going anywhere.”

Verity's expression reveals her enthusiasm and she jumps up to join him. Addy, who has been trying to catch a dragonfly, gives up and runs to catch up with them.

There is actually only one other place that the Doctor wants to show Verity. After seeing the bookshelves lining the walls of her room, he suspects she may share his love for the room he is bringing her to now.

The room itself is not particularly exciting to look at – not, he suspects, what she may imagine if he tells her where they are going – but it’s almost as alien in its own way as the garden.

Verity follows him into the small room and stares around in confusion at the blank walls. The only sign of anything significant is a large round disc on the floor in the centre, lit with a series of spotlights.

Her fingers tighten slightly around his arm, but she is clearly trying not to let her anxiety come through in her voice. “What's this room then?”

“I think you'll like this one,” he promises, leading her across the floor to the disc. “Just stand there and I'll tell you what to do.”

She takes the place he shows her without argument, but there is avid curiosity in her eyes and, as he steps away, he appeases it.

“This is the TARDIS library,” he tells her, grinning as Verity stares around at the blank walls.

“The library?” she echoes. “Really?”

“What, you doubt me?” he demands in mock-indignant tones.

Verity studies him for a few seconds before realising that he’s teasing. She gestures with her hands at the space in front of her. “Well, where are the books then?”

“The TARDIS will produce them,” he promises, nodding earnestly when she casts a sceptical glance at him. “Really, she will. Focus on what you’d like to read – a genre, an author, a title, even a specific quote or character! – and it will appear. Oh,” he adds as it looks as if she is about to follow directions, “and you’d better close your eyes. It’s a bit weird at first.”

She closes her eyes with almost astonishing obedience, but the Doctor suspects she’s peeping through her lashes. He waits, picking up the very first hint of faint rustling, and then the wall in front of them seems to move.

Verity gasps.

“Don’t move!” the Doctor orders as the movement in front of her increases in speed, adding more gently, “It’s all right, it’s quite safe, no matter what it looks like.”

“But what is it?” Verity demands, her eyes wide as she turns to look at him over her shoulder.

“The TARDIS.” He grins. “She’s finding you something to read. This,” he nods at the wall, which has formed itself into rows of shelves, which are slipping past as if on tracks, “is where she keeps all the books – well, for convenience sake, I suppose. She’s got a lot of books. So she generates a space – it’s sort of like how the TARDIS itself is bigger on the inside, yes? Anyway,” as Verity gives a half-nod, “she stores them in one place and has to bring them here when someone wants something, and I think she likes showing off – don’t know where she gets that habit, actually – so instead of just bringing what she thinks you want, she shoots the whole lot past you first, or maybe it’s in case you change your mind or something. And once you’ve made up your mind and so has she – Gallifrey?!”

The shelves have come to a stop during his explanation and, over Verity’s shoulder, the Doctor has seen enough of the books in front of her to recognise those the TARDIS has delivered.

“Oh, she must be on the blink,” he groans, disappointed that she would choose this particular moment to misbehave. He is about to step forward and adjust the shelves, preferably with the largest mallet he can find, when Verity stops him with a light touch on his arm.

“No, I – I asked for this,” she admits shyly.

He frowns a little, looking down at her in mild confusion. “Why?”

Perhaps unable to meet his gaze, she looks instead at the row of titles produced by the TARDIS: illustrated volumes showing the mountains of Cadon, Lung, Perdition and the great twins, Solace and Solitude; the Caydonflood River and Lake Abydos, and even the Citadel and Olyesti; books describing the flora and fauna inhabiting all areas and climates of the planet; a multi-volume work on Gallifrey’s history; biographies of major figures. The Doctor suspects it might be every book the TARDIS owns on the subject of Gallifrey and the Time Lords.

“I want to learn about you,” Verity confesses at last, her voice little more than a whisper. “I always have.”

“Oh.” The Doctor mentally apologises to the TARDIS for his incorrect assumptions and arches an eyebrow, gesturing at himself. “You know, you could always just ask me.”

“Would you tell me?” she asks in return, and the question gives him pause for thought.

She’s picked on one area in which he’s usually somewhat circumspect, as he’s well aware. He remembers how Martha had to threaten him to get him to talk about Gallifrey, and yet here he is offering to tell her anything she might want to know.

Then again, if it came to her actually asking and him having to formulate an answer, he has to doubt whether it would really be as simple as that.

“Maybe,” he says at last, and sees her give a slight nod, as if confirming something in her own mind.

“That’s what I thought,” she admits, gesturing at the shelves. “That’s why I thought it might be interesting to see what else I could find out for myself.”

He can’t help admiring her creativity. Whereas Donna, if she wants to know something, will simply push until she gets an answer, Verity seems more likely to be a bit clever about it. He will have to watch himself in that case. There’s no telling what she might discover – perhaps more than he’s comfortable with her knowing.

The shelves in front of them fade away until the wall is once more blank and Verity turns to face him. “Is that everything?” she asks, and he wonders if there’s a note of disappointment in her voice.

“It’s enough for now.” He grins at her. “Otherwise I’m going to think you’re only interested in me for my ship.”

She laughs and slides her hand through his arm so that he can guide her out of the library and along the hallway to the console room.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she admits rather shyly. “I think there’s one or two more things that have caught my interest.”

He chuckles, gently freeing himself as they enter the console room and then stopping in front of the controls.

“Well,” he begins, “where do you want to go?”

Verity gives a slight roll of her eyes, as if the question is too big for her to answer. Then she gazes at the monitor, showing the TARDIS as a tiny flashing dot with a series of Gallifreyan letters running across the top.

“Where are we now?” she asks, glancing at him.

He grins. “Nowhere.”

She frowns a little. “How can we be nowhere?”

“Well,” he gives a slight shrug, “when I say ‘nowhere’, of course it’s impossible not to be anywhere – that is, we’re certainly somewhere. But it’s not a place that exists – no, I mean it’s not a place most people can get to, at least not without a time machine or a vortex manipulator or what-have-you, and they’re not exactly common. So I suppose you could say that, in one way, it doesn’t exist. Obviously, though, it does exist because we’re in it.”

“So what is it exactly,” she asks patiently when he finally stops talking, “this place that we are but we aren’t?”

“It’s called the vortex.” The Doctor walks away from the controls towards the white doors and opens them to reveal the swirling pink and yellow and purple lights outside. He waits for her to join him and looks down at her as he asks, “What do you think?”

“Oh!” Verity’s eyes have lit up the way they did in the garden, and her lips part with a soft sigh of obvious delight. “Oh, that’s beautiful!”

Leaning against the door, his arms folded, the Doctor tries hard not to look overly smug. He tells himself that it’s been a long time since he’s had anyone new in the TARDIS – probably since his adventures with Jackson Lake, actually. He’s forgotten how much he enjoys these moments. In fact, he bitterly regrets having lost the chance to see what Verity first thought of the inside of the TARDIS.

Still, at least he has this time with her now.

When he looks at her again, she’s still staring, clearly enraptured, at the moving light display outside.

“I don’t know how you can bear to leave this,” she says at last, her voice filled with awe. “If the Universe is better than this...”

“Oh, the Universe is pretty special in its own way,” admits the Doctor, lowering himself to sit on the threshold of the TARDIS and gently tugging on Verity’s hand until she looks down to see him.

“Is it safe?” she asks, gingerly lowering herself to join him, and he realises that it might be a bit scary to do what he’s doing.

“It’s impossible for anything to hurt you in the TARDIS,” he promises, adding, as he recalls certain events and conversations on the security of his blue box, “Well, almost.”

Verity finally settles herself next to him, her arm sliding around his as she says, “I’m starting to think you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘impossible’.”

He chuckles, but part of his mind has wandered off in a different direction. He can’t help but contrast this moment with a similar one – sitting with Donna as they looked out over the rooftops of London on the first day they met.

This feels very different.

“May I ask something?” Verity prompts, and he realises he’s been silent for too long.

“Of course!”

There is a rather anxious look in her eyes as she speaks. “Did – did my great-grandmother ever see this?”

“No.” There is a world of regret in the Doctor’s voice as he turns to look at Verity. “No, she never did,” he goes on, studying her features. “She never got to see all this beauty.”

Verity nods, turning her gaze back to the vortex.