who_contest | Refusing to Listen to Radio 4 is Self Care ("Element" challenge entry)

Title: Refusing to Listen to Radio 4 is Self Care
Rating: PG, probably?
Genre: Headcanon
Word Count: 381 (limit 500)
Pairings or Characters: Sixth Doctor, Dr Evelyn Smythe, The TARDIS, implied TARDIS/Other TT Capsule
Spoilers: None
Warnings: None
Summary: The Doctor is investigating why the TARDIS refuses to connect to Radio 4 and makes a surprising discovery.

The Doctor was humming a little happy tune to himself. Evelyn tried to identify it: Shostakovich, maybe?

Evelyn glanced up from the book she was reading - Rival Queens by Professor Kate Williams, which they’d picked up on a recent visit to her home in Sheffield - to see what he was up to. He was armpits deep in a tangle of wiring behind one of the TARDIS’s roundels, deep concentration wrought on his face. It was odd really; people seemed to think of the Doctor as stoic, but he wore his emotions like the pattern on his coat: the boundless curiosity next to the righteous fury at injustice; the fierce joy at and thirst for knowledge next to the responsibility he felt to solve every problem he came across. And the love. A huge, powerful love for the universe and everything in it. Gallifrey. The Earth. The TARDIS. Even for Evelyn herself.

She smiled a little smile to herself as his head went in behind the roundel too. There really wasn’t a problem in the universe he didn’t think it was his duty to fix, from interstellar war to the TARDIS refusing to connect to Radio 4. Still, she was glad it was the latter that was occupying his mind at the moment. His happy curiosity and synergy with the machine made Evelyn feel he was really in his element.

“What is it Old Girl? What’s the...Oh! Ohhhhh”

The Doctor’s head appeared, his face a mask of wonder. His shoulders came next, moving slowly and carefully, then his arms, until Evelyn could see that in his hands, cradled gently, was a silvery-grey cylinder, about 8 inches long and 3 inches diameter, attached to many wires at both ends. It had a sort of rounded rectangle shaped depression in one side, and there was a glow emanating between the edges of the depression and what Evelyn was now thinking of as the outer shell. In fact, the depression looked for all the world like a tiny door.

“It must have been when we were on Gallifrey! The old girl must’ve...” the Doctor breathed, his voice as filled with wonder as his face, gazing at the little cylinder.

“What is it, Doctor?”

“Evelyn, did I ever tell you how new TARDISes are made?”