"Ah, up those stairs, first corridor on your right."

I blinked at the word, 'corridor,' but then remembered that he was British. A British alien. So cool...! Then I hesitated, halfway up the first step. "Which door?"

He pulled a lever, and a soft sound came from the hexagon. "All of them!"

"All of them?"

"All of them!" He grinned. "That whole section of the TARDIS is the wardrobe!"

I grinned, then frowned. "Section of the what?"

He looked up at me and giggled a bit. "TARDIS. T-A-R-D-I-S. It stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"Cool!" I ran the word and its abbreviation through my mind. Wait... "Time?"

Shrugging, he replied casually, "It also travels in time."

My jaw dropped a bit. "No way!"

"Yes way!"

"That's... What?! Wow!!!" He laughed at my reaction, making me giggle. "That's amazing!"

"Yeah, I think so too," he replied, looking up at me with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Well, I'll be right back! Um, on the right, right?"

"Right!" He answered.

I ran up the stairs, nearly tripping over my flip-flops. Turning towards the hallway on the right, I saw at least a dozen or more different doors, each painted a bizarre color. Which one should I try first...?

The red one. That voice again...!

"Why?" I asked quietly, but I got no reply. Nevertheless, I walked over to the bright red door and opened it. 

I had never seen so many shoes in one place before. They were stacked on shelves scattered all throughout the long and rectangular room. The end of the room was visible, but far off and straight ahead. The shoes seemed to be sorted, first by color, and within each little section, they were arranged by the type of shoes.

Being a bit of a shoe geek, I grinned and jumped over to the orange section. "Thanks, uh, whoever you are...."

A pair of black and orange running shoes caught my attention, and I blinked in surprise. They were my size!

I had a pair almost exactly like these in my closet. After kicking off my flip-flops and putting the shoes on, I double knotted them. Jumping up and down to test them, I found them satisfactionarily bouncy and comfy. 'Satisfactionarily.' Probably not a real word. Oh, well. I grinned.

Skipping the whole way, I went back to the, er, main room. "I got shoes!" I announced, bouncing down the stairs two at a time.

"Great!" The Doctor said, but his voice was strained. I noticed that he was struggling to push a lever, but was getting a bit of resistance. He let it go, and the lever slammed down, causing the room to rock a bit.

"Can I help?" I asked quickly.

"You can't fly the TARDIS!" He shouted, trying to pull the lever back into an upright position.

"I could try. Besides, you just have to tell me what to do." I stood next to him like an excited pupil.

He rolled his eyes a bit. "Fine. Pull this lever up!"

I eyed the lever he'd been struggling with, then tried as hard as I could to get it to go up, but it wouldn't budge. "Why does this have to go up anyway?" I asked the Doctor.

"Because that's the lever that puts us in the future!" He shouted, trying to pull down another lever.

"And that one?" I pointed at the one he was working on.

"Gets us into the past!"

I blinked. "So, you're trying to turn that one off, and this one on."

"Yes, but they're stuck!" He exclaimed.

"Like trying to drive forward when the car is stuck in reverse," I mumbled to myself, then kept pushing the lever up. It still refused to budge.

Finally, I let go, and saw the Doctor do the same. The levers weren't moving a bit. He sighed and hit the hexagon with his right hand in frustration, making him yelp in pain, grabbing that hand with his other one.

I bit my lip to keep from laughing. "You okay?"

"Oh, just fine," he grumbled, cradling his hand.

Concerned, I walked over to him. "Let me see."

He hesitantly let me look at his hand. It didn't look damaged, but the Doctor was holding it tenderly, which meant it was still hurting him. "You hit it pretty hard," I remarked, still trying not to grin or giggle.

I held his hand in the palm of mine, and touched it gently. He winced and pulled it back.

"Sorry," I said quickly. "I didn't mean to–"

"It's alright," he mumbled, then glared at the 'past' lever, which was still activated. "I guess we're going into the past then."

"Yeah," I thought out loud. "You said you had to go to England, and obviously in the future, but a quick detour to the past won't hurt a bit! This is a time machine. Whatever problem you have to deal with will still be there whenever we can get to it."

"We?" He looked at me questioningly, and I sensed challenge in his voice.

I gulped a bit, then replied. "Yes, we. You and me. Us. The duo." I nodded. "Right?"

The Doctor nodded and smiled. There was that sprinkled donut look again. Why did he think I was so special? "Got any ideas?" He asked me.

A grin spread across my face. "Anywhere?"

"Absolutely! One condition, though."

"And what's that?" I asked.

He stepped a bit closer to me, and I noticed that he wasn't holding his hand anymore. It had stopped hurting. "It has to be spectacular," he whispered, and I felt myself shiver in excitement.

"Well... oh, I don't know." There were so many places I could choose from! How could I pick just one?

"Can... can we go to another planet; not Earth? Wait! How about your world?" I grinned in excitement, wondering what it would be like.

The Doctor's eyes flashed with something— sadness? pain? —but he hid it quickly. "Why not somewhere else? If we're not going to your world, why go to mine?"

"Because I want to see it," I said quietly, frowning.

"Ah, there are worlds more spectacular!" He said dramatically, but I heard a catch in his voice. I frowned even more. The fact that he was deliberately avoiding the subject of his planet was telling me that he didn't want to go there, and the glimpse of sadness in his eyes had told me that something very bad had happened to it. Or, perhaps, to him.

"What happened?" I asked simply.

He turned to me, confused. "What do you mean?"

I bit my lip slightly, then continued. "What happened on your planet?"

His eyes flashed again. "Why... why would you think something's happened to it?" He turned to the hexagon, pushing random buttons. "I just said I didn't want to go there, that doesn't mean..."

"Doctor!" I interrupted him, and he froze. "I can tell."

He turned back to me slowly, and for a moment I thought that this wasn't the same happy, clumsy man I'd first met. His eyes seemed years older, worn with pain and grief. "Tell what?" He asked quietly.

"I can tell something happened, Doctor. Can you tell me?" I questioned him.

He shook his head and started to turn away, but I stopped him.

I moved towards him and hugged him tightly.

He tensed a bit and looked down at me. "What are you doing?"

"Comforting you," I said plainly. "Something happened; I don't know what; but you don't want to talk about it, and if it's that bad, you need a hug." When he didn't react, I started to feel unsure of myself, but to my surprise, he hugged me back!

I grinned, then squeezed him tightly and let go. He was smiling down at me, the dark grief in his eyes gone, and replaced by a soft light of happiness. I'd done my job; he was happy.