Possibly, · I'm · Insane

Title - Glitter, Two Hundred Years Later (1/1)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - bouncy_castle79gave me this prompt in response to this meme. The original story can be read here. She got the first ficlet to come out of this meme, for being my incredibly patient BFF.

The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.

 

The TARDIS was being difficult.

The Doctor crawled underneath the grating, toward the troublesome wire that had become disconnected and was making the TARDIS lurch in its Vortex orbit. He was not, he thought, young anymore, and neither was this particular body young anymore, not by a long shot, and it was really very inconsiderate of the TARDIS to make him squirm and wriggle his way under the very tightest-squeeze portions of the grating when he was, one had to admit, not quite as spry as he once had been, and he thought uncharitable thoughts and the TARDIS hummed in indignation. Possibly commiseration over the fact that neither of them was as young as they had been, but the Doctor’s back was aching and he was not in the mood to commiserate.

Maybe, he considered, briefly, it was time for a regeneration. But the truth was that, well, he’d always been rather fond of this incarnation of himself. It was the only version of him his children had ever known, not to mention the grandchildren. He was loath to be rid of it.

He was by now farther under the TARDIS grating than he’d been in years. It was dark and cramped, and he could barely see, and he squinted at the offending wire, which was silhouetted hanging in front of him. He put his hand down to lean on it, placing it in a pile of…something. Something that felt like…He couldn’t place it. Sawdust, maybe? But where would sawdust have come from? He wondered, with a sinking feeling, if something terrible was leaking, and what that might be, that would leak something that felt like sawdust.

Taking the sonic screwdriver out of his mouth, he aimed it in the direction of the pile of something, and was startled when its feeble light caught…glitter. A small, heaping mound of what looked to be bright pink glitter. He held his hand up in front of his face. By the light of the sonic screwdriver, he could see that his hand was covered in the stuff, light dancing across it.

He froze, staring at his hand and remembering, with a sudden vividness, glitter. He’d not thought of glitter in years, but everything rushed back to him in that moment: the way Athena and Fortuna had carpeted the TARDIS with it, and it had been constantly underfoot, clogging all of the TARDIS’s equipment. They had practically eaten and breathed glitter in those days, it had been everywhere. They had added a glitterize setting to his sonic screwdriver, and tried to bedazzle the console room, and he had found it a constant battle against his girls and their desire to make the TARDIS “pretty.” “TARDIS,” they had called it in those days. No “the” necessary. Just TARDIS, like she was a close, intimate friend of theirs, and he supposed she had been, one of the few constants he’d given them during that childhood they had had. And when had that childhood flown by? How had he found himself so far removed from the time when his girls had been little that it had taken him a moment to recognize where the glitter must have come from?

He sprawled awkwardly under the grating, looking at the glitter clinging to his hand and heaped on the floor, and thought of the time when the girls had thrown the TARDIS a birthday party. And the time he had tried to please them by bringing them to that silly glitter planet and they’d ended up running for their lives as usual. And the time he had bought them that absurd glitter plant that he’d turned out to be allergic to, sadly. He wasn’t sure how long he laid there, remembering, before he came to himself and leaned over and fixed the wire. And then he crawled out of the space with as much difficulty as he’d crawled into it, finally, with relief, pulling himself up above the grating. He sat in the captain’s chair and looked again at the glitter on his hand, before leaning over and picking up the TARDIS phone.

“Theenie,” he said, when she answered. “I’m thinking it’s time for a visit.”