#so what’s a ship that’s designed to cycle through its passengers like cogs in a machine really care about giving them a nice view

[quietwingsinthesky]

if i ever end up writing even’s actual first encounter and adventure with the doctor, one of the running themes is going to be how there aren’t any windows on the ship.

which doesn’t seem like such a big thing at first, but that’s from our point of view, or the doctor’s, because we (and him) know the size of the universe. we know what space is, maybe not entirely, but enough to know the shape of it, yeah? we know what stars look like even when their light is a trillion years and miles away. but there are no windows on this ship. and even has never seen the night sky, has never seen a star or a planet or just the empty space that’s separated from them by feet of metal and a great deal of luck. even has lived their whole life inside, and space is not a thing they can see or touch. it’s an abstract threat beyond their walls. they could not imagine the enormity of it if they tried.

they don’t know the shape of the ship either. imagine someone let you run through a maze and then told you to draw it. you could draw the corridors you walked through and the dead-ends you ran into, but could you for certain say that you ever found the edges of it? that know the walls on the outside look like the walls on the inside? how big is it? and really, what you should be imagining is that your maze is one of a dozen different mazes all tied together with rubber bands, and none of you actually know what the whole thing looks like, and you don’t have time to talk through the walls to figure that out because if you stop moving for too long, the food dispenser at the end won’t give you anything despite reaching your goal because you were too slow, better try harder next time, stop talking and start running.

even isn’t surprised that the tardis is bigger on the inside. it doesn’t hit them until the doctor lets them see the ship they were on from the outside. like a farewell wave, opening the doors of the tardis as she orbits the ship, and even takes in the shape of it first. (they can’t figure out where they lived, where they worked, from the outside. they don’t recognize any of it.)

but then they see everything else, beyond the ship, while the doctor is standing behind them and saying something reassuring, ‘they’ll be alright without you, don’t worry about them, we fixed everything’, absently, kindly, because he knows they need a moment alone to say goodbye but someone has to stand at the controls and the silence gets to him a little too much. doesn’t see that even’s eyes are so, so wide staring beyond the ship at the universe around it.

it’s too big. they panic. they shut themselves inside the tardis.

that’s what gives the doctor pause. makes him waver, here, because even’s good companion material, they’ve got that spark in them that makes them want to help, whatever it takes, (this is what will undo them, eventually.) and he doesn’t want to leave them there. but you can’t just take something out of its natural habitat and expect it to flourish. that’s how you get wilting leaves and patchy coats and enough stress to kill something from heartbreak alone.

‘i can take you back,’ he offers. it’s the last time that’ll ever be true, but if he knew that when he said it, it’d be a very different kind of story. so he doesn’t.

even is shaking. tearing up. scared. elated? hiccuping on little gasps of air. the stars are beautiful, and terrifying, and now that even knows they exist, they can never go back to before they knew.

the doctor is cruel like that. he wants to show you the universe.

but here’s what’s true now and will be true forever: even doesn’t want to go back. i mean, god, could you blame them. one day, in a few years/decades/centuries/after the long way round to the end of the universe and the short trip back, he’s going to tell them that they can either say to his face that they’d rather he’d left them on that ship or they can stop adding it to his list of sins. they won’t be able to.

so they say no.

and they pull the doors back open just a crack, wide enough for one eye, small enough to shut again with the tremble of a hand. and they peek back out at the universe they’ve been living in. they don’t notice the ship, as the tardis breaks her orbit, speeding further and further away to a destination its passengers will never see.

that’s why there are no windows on the ship. well, that, and it wasn’t very well-designed in the first place.