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There was mud between his toes and a bruise darkening across his upper cheek. For once, Graham wasn’t entirely sure they’d won.
Ananxes V had been a beautiful, gleaming city-planet, before they’d dropped in. Buildings rising from the ground, mirrors catching in the sun. They’d left it in shattered pieces, slipping on glass, the earth rising from its fault lines like a poison. Regime deposed, and mud in his shoes. All in a day’s work. Today, it sat sour in his gut.
“I think the TARDIS has a hot spring tucked away somewhere,” the Doctor tempted, mud-caked boots traipsing towards the console without a care. She was just as rain-drenched as the rest of them, hair already curling damply towards her face, but if it bothered her, she didn’t let it show. Her eyebrows climbed good-naturedly as she continued to dangle what was, in fact, a rather poor consolation prize before them. Like distracting a baby with a rattle, Graham thought, a bit uncharitably. Look over here, and don’t look behind you. “And a spa. Waterslides, probably. Check next to the boating lakes, that’s usually where they like to be. Or is it under the karaoke buses? Well, you’ll find them.”
Graham watched Ryan’s face fall dimly, where he was stationed near the stairs. Yaz was already half-way up them, hands wringing out her water-logged braid, displeasure written in the corners of her mouth.
“Okay,” he said, hesitantly. There was a tear in the knee of his trousers, mud caked on his hands, from where he’d fallen. A whole planet made of slipping hazard, and he hadn’t said a word, but Graham knew none of it had been easy. “You’re not coming? Only you’re a bit—” He gestured vaguely, lips pressing together. “Y’know. Muddy. Like the rest of us.”
“Oh,” and her nose wrinkled, “I’ll sort it in a mo’. Be along shortly. I should get us off this planet, before the ground disappears.”
Ryan accepted her usual excuses stoically, and trailed after Yaz up the stairs. Graham caught the edge of their murmured conversation as he drifted closer, watched her turn absently towards the console.
“Everything alright, Graham?” she wondered mildly. “I could find a salve for your face, if you like. I mean the bruise on your face, not your—well, you know what I mean.”
He didn’t have to see her to know her face would be scrunched up like no tomorrow.
“Ta, thank you very much,” he said, feigning offense. “Not all of us was born blessed with great looks, but I’ve done alright for myself, haven’t I.”
She turned, a tad reluctantly, but there was a hint of fondness crawling across her face.
“I’m serious about the bruise,” she said. “Are you sure?”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, though it was tender to the touch. He shuddered to think what his face was going to look like tomorrow, all swollen up and mottled. “Nothing broken.”
“Good.” Her shoulders straightened. There was tension lurking in her jaw. She wanted him desperately to leave, he sensed. She always wanted them to leave, lately. It was why he made an extra effort to hang around, sometimes, instead. “Now, stop dripping mud in my TARDIS and go get washed up.”
“You’re dripping a fair bit of mud yourself,” he pointed out, gesturing to her boots, the sleeves of her coat. The sleeves of her coat—
“Oi,” she protested. “It’s my ship. I’m allowed to drip.”
It was funny, he thought to himself for the briefest of moments. The soil on the planet had been so dark it was nearly purple. The Doctor’s sleeve was soaked in orange.
“Doc,” he said, before the thought could be properly vetted. “My god, but your blood’s an awfully funny colour.”
For a moment, she only blinked at him incredulously. Her mouth opened, as if to voice another protest—and her eyes chanced upon the sleeve he was looking at.
“Oh,” she said faintly, raising the arm in question to better scrutinize her palm, where a shard of shattered mirror had splintered through, left a fault line seeping rust. “Look at that.”
Graham glanced behind her at the console, the TARDIS doors, smeared faintly with darkened orange, and wondered sickly how she’d failed to notice.
“It’s only shallow,” she reassured quickly, unalarmed. She tucked the hand away back into its offending sleeve. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Should probably get it stitched up though,” he ventured. “Shouldn’t you?”
“Have to fish the glass out first.” Her nose wrinkled again at the thought. “But there’s an app for that.
“I could help,” he offered, swallowing nauseously. “Looks nasty, Doc.”
“Nah.” She waved him off with her other hand, half-turning back to the console. “I’ll sort it. You best clean yourself up.”
Graham swallowed again, heart heavy. He thought of the soil erupting through the planet’s cracks, the way the ground had fractured and shattered. He thought of the city they’d left behind in pieces to be consumed, and how, today, it had been good enough.
Sometimes, all you could do was leave before you were swallowed, too.
“Alright, sure,” he allowed, backing away. A hot shower did sound lovely, now the thought was nestled in the back of his head. Something scalding to clear away the day. “But you take care of yourself now, Doc.” He still had to try. “Maybe we can all sit around some sandwiches, later.”
She didn’t even look up from the console. “Oh, yeah,” she lied, cheerfully. “Sounds great.”
The rest of the TARDIS yawned before him, as he climbed the steps. He never knew which way to go—he’d learned the hard way that the best way to go about it was just not to think much about where you were going, and think more about where you wanted to be going, and let the TARDIS take care of the rest.
Behind him, the lights dimmed to a more somber blue. He left the Doctor to her gloom.
Ryan could have sworn the waterslides were right next to the fishing pond, not the boating lakes or the karaoke buses, like the Doctor had said. The TARDIS always led him to them through the pool in the library, across the abandoned mini-golf, wound him through a shortcut round the arboretum, where they were wedged in across from an exact replica of the British Museum’s dinosaur wing. Well. He couldn’t say for sure. Maybe it was the actual wing. Ryan didn’t understand how the TARDIS worked, and at this point, he was far too afraid to ask. Better to just let it guide his feet where they needed to go, and not bother with too many questions. It wasn’t like the Doctor would answer them, anyway.
What he really wanted, he thought, head pounding sourly, knees stinging, was a hot shower and then a few rounds of flinging himself mindlessly down a plastic tube until the day melted away. The TARDIS waterslides were the best. He never ever scraped himself on the sides, and there was no one else to worry about running into at the bottom, except for Yaz, sometimes. She’d scoffed at the waterslides in favour of the spa, on account of she was boring, and so it would be only him, and no one to cramp his style.
If he could only find the damn things.
He sighed, and placed his mud-cracked hands on his hips. “Are you havin’ a go?” he wondered vaguely at the ceiling. The Doctor talked to the TARDIS like it was alive, sometimes. He’d picked up the habit, despite himself. “I’m sorry about the mud, y’know, but I’m trying to get it off, so if you could just…y’know. Point me in the right direction?” He swallowed, resisting the urge to tap his foot impatiently. “I’ll just be on my way…or whatever.”
He waited for the instinct to drop into the back of his head. That was how the TARDIS went about it, after all. Nudged you in the right direction. Took care of your feet for you, so you nearly always ended up where you wanted to be—or at least, where you needed to be. Well. Where the TARDIS thought you needed to be.
“Hello?” he tried again, fruitlessly. God, and he’d been wandering about for ages like some idiot. Maybe the TARDIS was too busy to take him to the waterslides. Or maybe, he thought morosely, it had picked up on the Doctor’s mood and decided not to help him anymore.
He still wasn’t quite sure if it was something they’d done. Or worse, something he’d done, though he wouldn’t have put it past himself. Either way, the Doctor didn’t like to spend time with them, anymore. Time was—and he could remember a time, in fact, a few weeks ago, when they’d all gotten covered in purple slime on Manticooticaniverpolous, on account of the giant purple slugs that lived there—the Doctor would have herded them all together. She would have made sure they were alright, and then she would have made it fun, too.
These days, at least when they were all in the TARDIS together, she would barely look any of them in the eye. It was weird. And mostly, it was lonely.
“Oh my days,” he despaired quietly, knees still stinging. And on top of everything, he was well and truly lost now. The waterslides were nowhere to be seen, and neither was anything else, except for the corridor stretching out before him. No doors in sight. Nothing remotely recognizable. He reached for his phone, resigning himself to the embarrassing task of calling the Doctor to come and rescue him from the depths of her own ship.
Only—
“Ryan?”
He caught her reflection in the faint, golden gleam off the walls.
“How’d you know I got lost?” he wondered, as the Doctor rounded the corner, clean and dry and the most welcome sight he’d seen so far, today.
“I had a hunch,” she said, nose wrinkling with chagrin. “It’s alright, the TARDIS is in a mood. Corridors keep switching round, it’s nothing to do with you, the architectural configuration circuits have overloaded. Bet it was the mud. Thought I’d better come fetch you all.”
“Is it, uh. Is it safe?” He glanced nervously up at the ceiling.
She was still smiling warmly. “Perfectly safe. Just have to get to the console so I can fix it.” She extended a hand towards him. It was utterly clean. At least someone had found the showers, he thought dryly. “Let’s get a shift on,” she urged. “No time to waste.”
“I thought it was safe,” he said, taking her hand. She tugged him on, walking fast. Hand caught tightly in her grip, he nearly stumbled on the grate, but her pace didn’t relent.
“Well,” she said, head tilting in acknowledgement. “It is safe. Perfectly safe. It is a bit…” She tested the word on her lips. “Concerning. Concerning? What word do I mean? Worrying. It’s perfectly safe but it is a bit worrying.” She glanced towards him, teeth glinting white.
“So,” she said. There was something, Ryan thought, a little bit different about her. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. She smiled again. “Best keep up.”
She worked at the console until the lights dimmed so much she could barely see her hand in front of her. The TARDIS, putting her foot down.
“Oi,” she protested. “I said I’d sort it! There’s just—”
They’d taken off easily enough, despite the unevenness of the ground, but there was still—she’d felt a shudder, or a jolt, or a something that wasn’t meant to be there. The only thing to do about it, she’d already conceded to herself, was to take everything apart and look for the reason. And if, in the meantime, it gave her an excuse not to think about anything else, well—that was just a bonus.
“The friction contrafibulators,” she continued, squinting into the dark, “need to be…contrafibulated. Or maybe,” she wondered, leaning over the console searchingly, using touch more than sight to guide, “the parking brake needs greasing…”
The TARDIS shuddered, suddenly, throwing her off the console. She skidded sideways into a column with a strangled shout.
“What?” she demanded of the dark, shaking herself off. “Don’t be cheeky about it.”
The TARDIS groaned, obliquely. No words or impressions settled at the back of her head. Radio silence, then. This was a particular kind of sulk. She wasn’t particularly in the mood for it.
“Fine,” she breathed, a bit offended despite herself. “If that’s how it’s gonna be.” The silent dark of the console room taunted. “I’m sorry about the mud,” she tried. In the absence of movement, distraction, her hand was starting to throb again. She half-wished Graham had never pointed it out. It was far easier to ignore things when you didn’t realize they were there in the first place. That was one of the better rules. Now, it was going to tug at the back of her head until she fixed it.
Apparently, the TARDIS was going to remain on strike until she fixed it as well, so maybe it didn’t really matter. She was going to have to do something about it no matter what.
“Is everything alright?” she tossed at the ceiling, brow wrinkling. “I really am sorry about the mud.”
Dead silence.
“Talk about a cold shoulder,” she muttered, shuddering as a phantom chill overtook her. Her scowl deepened as she tore her gaze from the ceiling. She knew what this was. She was being shepherded. The ambient light of the corridor beckoned, warm and inviting against the cool gloom of the console room. Warm and inviting all the way straight to the med bay, she reckoned sourly, which was bound to be behind every door she tried to open until she resigned herself to it.
“I was getting to it,” she muttered, dragging her feet on the way up the stairs. Rassilon’s pants, it was cold. “And you could turn the heating up, while you’re at it. Some of us have been out in the rain!”
Out in the rain, and the mud, and the glass. Had she done well, today? Truthfully, she still wasn’t sure. The thought hung in the air like the fog they’d left behind, as she meandered down the warmly-lit corridor, waiting for a door to appear. It hadn’t been her best work, admittedly. But for a moment, when the glass had shattered, when the kingdom had fallen, when the shards had been raining down on them all—that had felt right. That had felt like doing something, fixing something, changing something.
She was clinging to herself by a hair’s breadth, lately. Anything that felt like something was good enough, real enough, right enough. Outside the TARDIS doors there were a thousand things still gleaming in the dark of the universe, waiting. Inside, well—inside it was just her. Her and her fam and the space she’d built between. It was easier to pretend, out there. Easier to break something, save something, fix something. Easier to slip into the role she’d crafted for herself, when she’d first fallen through the ceiling of that train.
Her palm throbbed again, and with the reminder of that first night, she half-wished—but only half, because the whole affair was admittedly a bit of an ordeal—for a fraction of the energy regeneration brought with it. Never mind the med-bay, she could have grown a whole new hand, if she’d felt like it. Which would have been terribly convenient at the moment, she realized tiredly, as the corridor in front of her failed to become the one she was looking for.
Either that, or the med bay wasn’t where she’d left it.
The Doctor paused in the midst of what was admittedly becoming a fairly lopsided wander to glare at the ceiling.
“Are you having a go?” she demanded. “First the lights, and now this?” She kept her still seeping palm tight against her middle but placed her free hand on her hip. “Is this still about the mud? Because I’ve apologized for that. Profusely.”
The TARDIS hated being dripped on. Still. Her displeasure didn’t usually entail this much…dead silence. She wrinkled her nose at the emptiness at the back of her head. And at the lack of doors.
“Oh.” The answer was a bit obvious, but she’d forgive herself for being a bit slow. It had been a bit of a day, after all. A bit of a week. Month. Well, the semantics of it weren’t important. “Something’s wrong,” she proclaimed, into the empty. “Something’s wrong, and there’s no one even here for me to monologue to about it. Except me.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste, but set her shoulders straighter and carried on down the corridor. “So, Doctor. No doors, no stairs, and this corridor appears to be an essentially endless self-repeating loop, which means—the architectural reconfiguration circuits!”
Absolutely no one asked what exactly an architectural reconfiguration circuit was.
“The piece of the TARDIS,” she began to explain anyway, still reeling onwards into what was, mathematically speaking, essentially nothing, “that controls its internal dimensions, decides where everything is spatially located. And it’s decided,” she flicked a nervous glance up at the ceiling, out of habit, “to lead me away from the console, and close the door behind it.” She ground to a sudden halt. “Close all the doors,” she said. “And then get rid of all of the doors entirely.”
The chill at the back of her neck was starting to settle uneasily in the pit of her stomach. The TARDIS was still silent at the back of her head.
“Which means,” she whispered, swallowing, “that something’s disrupted the TARDIS’ psychic connection to its pilot. Which means…”
She glanced behind her, warily. She didn’t care for intruders at the best of times. This was hardly that.
“…something’s got into my ship,” she said. “Don’t like uninvited guests. Really don’t like uninvited guests that play around with essential components of the TARDIS mainframe. And I really,” she sagged against the wall, chilled, scowling, “could use the door to the med-bay.”
The door to the med-bay did not magically materialize. She clunked her forehead against the wall in protest.
“Could really use your help, if you’re listening,” she beseeched the ceiling, but the TARDIS didn’t answer. The back of her head was dead air, empty space. “Or maybe you could use mine?”
She mustered one foot in front of the other, using the wall for support. With her other hand, she gingerly reached for the sonic, not that it would do any good. There was nothing for it, she thought, but to keep moving forward.
Alone.
The TARDIS hated being dripped on, Yaz knew. Maybe that was why she’d been stuck wandering in circles for the past half hour. Her mistake, she thought sourly, adjusting the towel turban wrapped around her hair, had been in leaving the spa in the first place, probably. Venturing out in a robe and bare, dripping feet. But she’d forgotten a change of clothes, and she wasn’t about to put her muddy, scraped up outfit back on just after a wash. Her shirt was so caked with mud that she still had half a mind to abandon it to the incinerator, when she got the chance.
If she ever found another room, ever again.
“Hello?” she wondered up at the ceiling, tentative. Sometimes, the TARDIS listened when you spoke. Sometimes being the operative word. “I’m sorry about the water,” she went on, still pressing forward. “But if you could just lead me back somewhere, even the console room, that would be great.”
Even the doors had disappeared. Where had everyone gone, anyway? The TARDIS, to hear the Doctor talk about it, could go on forever, but it tended to keep the things they used closer together. The kitchen was rarely a door or two down from the console, and the rooms they slept in seemed to stay in the same cluster for the most part as well. She’d never ventured down a corridor for this long without running into something or somebody, before. The TARDIS always knew what you needed, and the quickest way to get you there—at least, according to the Doctor.
Maybe the TARDIS had decided she needed to be left alone for a while. Or maybe, she thought, a bit traitorously, the TARDIS had decided the Doctor needed to be left alone for a while, and was leading Yaz in circles in the meantime. She wouldn’t have put it past the ship, necessarily. Only lately she’d been getting the impression that where the Doctor was concerned, the TARDIS wasn’t opposed to a bit of mutiny, if it involved taking care of her pilot. Sometimes, Yaz felt like the TARDIS was even leading her to the Doctor instead of away from her. Circling in on the console room, when she got too wrapped up in repairs. Leaving tea and biscuits for four in places you couldn’t help but notice. Making sure she wasn’t on her own, even if she didn’t want them close.
Maybe the Doctor had finally told the ship to stop. Maybe this was a punishment, somehow—but that was ridiculous, she told herself sharply, rounding another corner into more of the same. If the Doctor didn’t want them there, she would have said. And if she couldn’t be bothered to say it with words, well—
Unfortunately, the thought lingered as she wandered. She’d almost worked herself up into a proper fume by the time she rounded the next identical corner and nearly ran nose-first into Ryan, still caked in mud. The Doctor was just behind him, pristine.
“Where have you been?” she demanded.
“Why’ve you got a towel on your head?” the Doctor marvelled. “Also, great question, take ten points. The architectural reconfiguration circuits have overloaded.”
“What’s an architectural reconfiguration circuit?”
The Doctor beamed. “The piece of the TARDIS,” she began to explain,“that controls its internal dimensions, decides where everything is spatially located. Only it’s gone a bit funny. Rough take-off. We’d better find Graham, so I can fix it.”
There were unspoken consequences dangling at the end of that sentence. Yaz frowned. “Or?” she asked.
The Doctor wrinkled her nose. “Or we might be trapped wandering in circles for the rest of eternity. That’s assuming the TARDIS doesn’t go even funnier and start throwing in time loops for extra flavour.”
“You never mentioned time loops before,” Ryan cut in, frowning. “You said it was perfectly safe!”
“It is perfectly safe! And now I’ve got you both on the case with me, it’s even safer. Khan and Sinclair, on the job.” The Doctor smiled easily. Yaz wondered faintly, feeling mildly disgruntled about it, how she’d managed to clean herself up so much quicker than the rest of them. She really was squeaky clean, not so much as a smudge of engine grease or a biscuit crumb anywhere. The back of Yaz’s neck prickled. “And soon we’ll have Graham, too.”
“So we can all get trapped in a never-ending corridor together?” Yaz wondered. “You’re awfully cheerful, considering.”
The Doctor’s teeth glinted white in the warm corridor light.
“Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got my fam, haven’t I? And besides, this’ll be an easy fix.” She took Yaz by the hand. Her fingers were smooth and cool. Yaz’s stomach swooped, despite herself. It wasn’t that she was keeping track, she insisted furiously to herself, but she knew with a lonely kind of certainty that the Doctor hadn’t so much as grabbed her by the wrist in weeks.
“It’s just—“ The prickling at the back of her neck was playing a losing game with the Doctor’s smile. This was right, wasn’t it? Danger, but only just. Running down the corridor, hand in hand. And the Doctor—trusting her, liking her. Looking at her like she wanted her around, instead of like she’d do anything for her to leave. “Never mind.” She breathed out, relieved. “I trust you. Easy fix?”
“Easy fix,” the Doctor reassured, taking Ryan with her other hand. Her reflection in the metal wall of the corridor glinted warmly.“Best we get a shift on, though.” She glanced up at the ceiling, expression unreadable.
The TARDIS didn’t react.
“The sooner we’re all together,” she said, “the better.”
Graham hated to admit it, but he was well and truly lost. The TARDIS corridors had a tendency to play tricks on his eyes on the best of days, and this clearly wasn’t. As it stood, he’d been thinking very loudly about taking a shower for a good fifteen minutes without so much as a door appearing, which usually was a surefire way of at least running into some form of what you thought you were looking for.
Instead, the walls remained smooth. Each corner he turned seemed identical to the last. He’d tried to retrace his steps back to the console room and only ended up exactly where he’d started.
“Now, it’s not that I’m complaining, mind,” he said tentatively, chancing a glance up at the ceiling. “Only I thought we’d sort of come to an arrangement, you and me.”
The arrangement, as Graham understood it, was that in exchange for making sure Ryan didn’t overload the circuits in the arcade, making sure the Doctor occasionally stopped what she was doing to have tea and a biscuit, and making sure Yaz didn’t get so curious that she wandered too far into the depths of the ship, the TARDIS allowed him free range in the kitchen and made sure there was always a crossword waiting for him, wherever he ended up. Not that it was a verbal arrangement in any sense of the word, mind. Only with the Doctor’s ship, it didn’t have to be. Meanings just settled into the back of your mind, sometimes. Images, feelings. Friendly understandings.
Graham’s skin prickled. This was certainly far from friendly. It wasn’t very convenient, either. His face hurt and his bones ached and the idea of a scalding hot shower was all-consuming. The mud between his toes was starting to harden.
Skin still prickling, he turned stubbornly down another identical corridor.
“If it’s something I’ve done,” he offered, trailing a hand across the smooth metal, “then I’m sorry.” The TARDIS was usually faintly warm to the touch, but the metal under his fingers was cool and silent. It had been, ever since he’d left the console room, left the Doctor to her gloom. Guilt blossomed in his stomach.“I know I should try harder, sometimes. I mean to, I really do. Only she don’t listen to me, and I—I don’t always know how to help.”
More silence.
“I could go back,” he tried, pausing, fingers splayed against the wall. “If you’d take me there, I could go back. Try again.”
No doors, no warmth, no comforting hum. Like the TARDIS had abandoned them all inside of her. He shuddered, despite himself, and let his hand fall from the wall. The truth was, his options were refreshingly limited. He could stay where he was and hope the Doctor sorted it all out, or he could press on.
What did it say about him now, after all this time, that he could choose the second option without a moment’s hesitation? But that was the Doc’s influence, he supposed, traipsing onward. He was a better man for it. They were all better for it, even on days like today, when it felt like nothing had gone quite right.
But you couldn’t win every day, he reassured himself, pressing on. The Doc, she couldn’t win every day, even though it sometimes seemed like she might. It didn’t do to get too wrapped up in false promises like that. No matter what she liked you to believe, she was only a person. Only—
“Doc,” he said, relieved at first, catching her shadow first, as it spread before her. Relief faltered into worry, at the unsteady ring of her boots across the grate, the rusty marmalade splotch darkening her sleeve as she rounded the corner.
Only human. Only that wasn’t quite true, was it.
“Graham,” she breathed, coming to an ungraceful halt, knuckles white around the sonic screwdriver. She held it in front of her like a shield, arm straight out. The other arm, orange-soaked, was clamped against her chest. “Hold on—what are you doin’ here?”
“If you ain’t a sight for sore eyes,” he said, resisting the urge to put his hands out, or, God help him, grab her by the elbow. “And I do mean a sight. Are you alright?” He frowned. “And what do you mean, what am I doing? I’ve been looking for you lot, haven’t I, your ship has had me wandering about like an idiot for ages.” He glanced nervously up at the ceiling. “Er, not that I’m complaining.”
She shook her head faintly, brow creasing.
“No, I—how are you here?”
The urge to reach out and steady her was all-consuming, but she wouldn’t care for it. “I thought you said you’d be alright,” he said instead, before he could stop himself. It was funny, sometimes. The way the Doctor could sometimes make betrayal and worry catch in your mouth at the same time. The way she could sometimes disappoint you by being—well. By being less than what she pretended to be. “Doc, I mean it, what’s going on?”
Her nose wrinkled. “I’m fine,” she said. “And as for you—“ The ship shuddered, no warning, no sound. Metal wrenched, the TARDIS groaned, and the two of them went careening into the wall. His aching bones didn’t care for it in the slightest, but he locked his knees and did his best to absorb the impact with his forearm, to marginal success. The Doctor hit the wall with a sound that made his stomach drop and slid to the floor.
Well, to hell with it, he thought, and reached for her gently. When she didn’t shake him off immediately, his stomach dropped even further. His fingers caught in the silky fabric of her coat, one side damp and half-dried, soaked through with that strange, rusty blood.
The TARDIS moaned again. The sound rippled, vibrating through the wall. It made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. The Doctor’s face creased.
“We were in a self-repeating spatial loop,” she said, gritting her teeth as he hoisted her to unsteady feet. Finally, she shook him off, but her sonic hand clutched reluctantly at the fabric of his sleeve. “Security measures. She was keeping us separate, the architectural reconfiguration circuits—“
She swallowed thickly, as the TARDIS shuddered again.
“But the spatial loop has been broken,” she whispered. Her eyes were nearly black in the warm light, pupils wide. It was a shocky sort of look that he didn’t like at all, but he knew her hand spasmed into his jacket was as much compromise as he was likely to get.
“Doc,” he said gently, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
The fingers ground into his sleeve tightened. Her breath hissed. “It means—“
“—that the TARDIS’ psychic connection to its pilot has resumed,” the Doctor said, stepping around the corner. Her reflection gleamed warmly, but her expression was cool. Smooth, like glass. “Graham,” she said, voice ringing. The Doc didn’t sound like that, Graham thought, alarmed. All clear and pitch perfect. Nothing ragged at the edges, nothing catching in her teeth. “I don’t want you to worry, but I need you to step away.”
But the thought caught, before he could do anything about it. Doubt crept in, through the cracks. Hadn’t the Doctor sounded like that, once? Didn’t she sound like that, after all? Wasn’t she meant to?
Yaz and Ryan joined her, grinding to a confused halt as they caught sight of Graham and the other Doctor. Well, his Doctor. Well, no—well, the whole affair, he had to admit, was starting to become a bit complicated.
The Doctor beside him physically recoiled.
“What?” she demanded, nose wrinkling.
“Graham,” the Doctor across from him said firmly, nose wrinkling in turn. “Step away, now.”
“Well, uh,” he stammered. If he stepped away, he didn’t say, he wasn’t entirely sure the Doctor beside him would stay standing. “Now, see here—“
He looked to the Doctor across from him, barely a hair out of place, clean and dry and bloodless. Back to the Doctor beside him, stained and dirt-streaked, hair curling damply at her temple.
“Woah,” Ryan said, face creasing into a frown. “Uh…what’s going on?”
“I have a few questions myself,” the Doctor beside him said, breathless. “First of all, Yaz, how’d you get that towel to wrap around your head like that? Second of all, how did you get past the spatial loop? Third of all,” and she narrowed her eyes at the other Doctor, “what are you, and why do you look like me?”
“No,” the other Doctor protested, shaking her head. “It’s you that looks like me. And that was four questions, not three.”
“Let’s make it five: how did you get on my ship? The TARDIS,” the Doctor beside Graham breathed, “is excellent at keeping things out. Which means you must have come in with one of us.”
Interest gleamed in those black eyes, at odds with the worried turn of her mouth. You could always depend on the Doctor to be curious, even when she was scared out of her wits.
The problem, Graham thought, stomach sinking, was he could see the same glint in the eyes of the Doctor across from him.
“Yeah,” the other Doctor said, stalking forward a step. “You must have done. Planet full of naturally reflective surfaces,” she said, head tilting to one side. Her hair gleamed with the movement. “Makes sense, that life would evolve to suit it. That’s what you are, isn’t it? A reflection.” She stilled. “A parasite.”
But Graham’s Doctor had only gone very still in turn. “A psychic parasite,” she said hoarsely. “Such a perfect copy that even the TARDIS couldn’t figure out who was who, that’s why she gave us both the boot, that’s—“ She swallowed abruptly, face twisting. “That’s why she disengaged the security measures,” she said hollowly. “She connected to you. She decided you were—”
She swallowed, looking faintly ill.
“Of course she did,” the other Doctor said. Just on the edge of gloating, Graham thought nervously. But then, he couldn’t say that wasn’t like the Doc, either. “I’m me.”
The Doctor beside him shook her head, swallowing gingerly again. “No,” she protested. “I am. And I can prove it.” She let go of his sleeve and brandished the sonic screwdriver, eyebrows raising in challenge. “Only one of these.”
The other Doctor looked back at her blandly and fished around in her coat pocket. “You sure about that?” she wondered, tossing her own sonic into the air and catching it. It glinted in the warm light of the corridor. “But that’s the problem with mirrors, isn’t it?” She smiled, brief, bland. Was it like her, to smile like that? He couldn’t say. He didn’t know. “They reflect everything.”
The Doctor’s fingers found the fabric of his sleeve again. Her face was nearly bloodless. When she moved, he caught the faint scent of rust under his tongue, at the back of his throat, strange enough to turn his stomach.
“Impossible,” she breathed unsteadily, brows knitting together. “Fam—“
“They’re not your fam. Step away, Graham,” the other Doctor said, again. “Please.”
“Right,” Graham ventured. He didn’t move. How did he know? “Only—only I’ve gotta admit, I’m not sure which one of you is which, Doc.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re with the real one,” Ryan said, voice wavering. “Pretty sure. Mostly sure?”He shot another glance in their direction, frowning. “She found us. Saved us from getting lost, I thought—but—“
“Maybe neither of them is the real one,” Graham suggested. “What if she got split in two? Maybe one of them’s good, and one of them’s evil.”
“Graham,” the Doctor beside him said, offended.
“This isn’t Jekyll and Hyde,” the other Doctor said, sounding equally insulted.
“Right, nobody move,” Yaz said, sounding surprisingly authoritative for someone barefoot, bathrobed, and wearing a towel hat. “There must be a better way of sorting this. There must be some way to know for sure. Doctor—“
But her gaze caught between them, conflicted. She was just as unsure as they all were.
“That’s not me,” both Doctors protested at the same time. Then: “Oi!”, in tandem. The Doctor beside him shuddered, and he watched her lip curl back from her teeth in irritation. The Doctor across from them wrinkled her nose.
“Yaz, Ryan,” she said, glancing at them beseechingly. There was a touch of exasperation in her voice. “Come on. You know who I am. Doctor, Time Lord, Gallifrey? I fell through the ceiling of a train when we first met?”
Ryan swallowed.
“Er,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah, ‘course we do.” He looked uneasily across.
“Graham,” his Doctor said, lowly. At the mention of her home planet, she’d turned a terrible gray. “Tell them. You saw me last, you left the console room after everyone else.”
“That’s true,” he said. “You—you look the same.”
“Exactly,” the other Doctor said, exasperated. “Because it copied me at that exact moment. After Graham left, I went and cleaned myself up, just like the rest of you. It must have manifested in the meantime.”
“How did it get on the TARDIS in the first place?” Yaz said. Her gaze was still shifting uneasily between the two Doctors, but she’d shuffled closer to the cleaner one. “Is it like the Kasaavin?”
“Brilliant question,” the Doctor closest to her said, glancing at her, approval glistening in her eyes. Yaz swallowed. “I don’t know. One of us must have brought it in. It probably only registered as a life form once it manifested itself. Clever. And annoying. Annoyingly clever.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Graham’s Doctor protested. He could see her thinking, mouth tight, that cavernous crease between her eyebrows that only ever meant trouble. “It couldn’t have come in with any of us, it would have had to have been—“
She glanced down at the hand she was still holding to her chest, rust-stained sleeve and all. He caught a glimpse the glass, a fault line through her palm.
“It would have had to have been me,” she whispered, almost to herself. “Oh, of course, stupid—“ But she bit the rest of the thought off with a cry, hunching forwards, nearly dragging him with her.
“Doc,” he said, alarmed, but she straightened immediately, breaths ragged, thinking furiously.
“It’s fine,” she breathed.
The other Doctor’s face remained impassive. Did he know, yet? Was he sure?
“It’s just a reflection,” she said, stepping in front of Yaz snd Ryan, who had shifted uneasily at the other Doctor’s cry. “It was linked to me. Now I’ve wrested the psychic connection to the TARDIS back and shut it out of my head, it’s got nothing to feed on.”
“But I don’t—“ Graham tried. “I don’t think that’s what’s—“
Yaz nodded. The crease in her forehead was ironing out before his eyes. “Yeah,” she said, the line of her shoulders relaxing. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
Her Doctor smiled reassuringly. “Of course it does. If we can get to the console, I can run a scan, and we’ll know more.”
“No,” the Doctor beside Graham strangled out, fingers twisting in his sleeve. She was listing, he realized uneasily. Barely upright. And her hand was a block of ice, even through the fabric of his coat. “Whatever happens, we cannot let that thing near the controls. Graham—”
The other Doctor turned her attention.
“Oh,” she said. “Are we still pretending like there’s even a remote chance that you’re me? I thought by now it was obvious. Honestly,” she said, nose wrinkling, “I’m actually a little insulted.”
“But it’s—she’s hurt,” Ryan pointed out, held back by the other Doctor’s arm. He frowned. “When did that happen?”
“On the planet,” Graham said. “I only noticed when we got back. You two had already left.”
Ryan’s frown deepened. He shook his head, like he was trying to clear it. “So…wait,” he said, glancing at the Doctor nearest him. Shiny, clean, unblemished. “But…you were fine. You are fine.”
She waggled the hand in question. “Yeah,” she said, incredulous. “Because I went off and fixed it. The TARDIS has one of the most technologically advanced med-bays in the universe, she heals scrapes in seconds.” She waggled her fingers again. “Besides,” she said, deliberately. Her gaze slid to Graham’s Doctor, hunched over, fingers still wound in his sleeve. Her nose wrinkled. “Looks like it hurts. What sort of person,” she said scornfully, “would just leave something like that?”
“You—you can’t talk to her like that,” Graham protested. The back of his head throbbed. The Doctor beside him was real. She was right, down to the soot on her cheek and the blood on her sleeve, the scowl on her face, the fear in her eyes. Right and real and good. It was obvious. It was easy. But he could see it, in their eyes—doubt, creeping in and settling.
“She’s right, though,” Ryan said, taking a step towards the other Doctor. He took a deep breath, convinced. “Yeah, that don’t make any sense, does it? Who would do that?”
The other Doctor extended her unblemished hand, and he took it. Graham’s Doctor sank against the wall, dismayed. Her fingers in his sleeve were weakening.
“I trust you,” the other Doctor told them all, eyes shining. “Don’t you trust me? Help me,” she promised, “and I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go, show you anything you wanna see. Home, if you like.” Her teeth glinted. “Yours or mine.”
The Doctor flinched into him, recoiling.
“D’you mean it?” Yaz asked, breathless. Eyes glazed. Wrong, all of it, his skin was prickling with it, the Doctor was silent with it.
Dying with it, he thought then, ice in his heart. Ice, where her fingers met his arm. And the other Doctor, growing brighter, warmer, stronger.
It was so hard to think. And it should have been obvious, which one of them was real—it was obvious, he knew it like a simple fact, an absolute truth. But it was being swallowed, he realized absently. What he knew to be true was being swallowed by what he wanted to believe. The lights of the corridor were warm, the Doctor across from him was spotless and guileless, the TARDIS had been set to rights—and it was all a lie. A reflection.
“Guys,” he said, around the fog in his head. He clutched at the Doctor beside him, as she sagged bonelessly against the wall. “I really think—“
“Of course I mean it,” the other Doctor said, warmly. She clasped Yaz’s hand in her other, drew her and Ryan in closer. “No time to lose, though. I need the console. We’d best get a shift on.”
The Doctor’s words, robbed from her mouth. He opened his to protest, but before he could, the right Doctor, the real one, tugged at his sleeve. Her mouth moved soundlessly. Fear darted behind her eyes, a fish between reeds.
“It’s all right,” he said quietly, as he began to shuffle behind the others. The corridors of the TARDIS began to shift and churn, wheezing gently with the movement, the entrance to the console unfurling slowly like a flower. “I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen, Doc, I promise. I know who you are.”
“Don’t let it touch you,” she rasped, barely words. Her boots caught in the floor grate. “Cold,” she whispered. “Graham, I can’t—I can’t move.”
“Graham,” the other Doctor said, tossing a glance over her shoulder. Sharp. No, kind. She was worried about him—she liked him. She didn’t want him lost, she didn’t want him too far behind—
Now, come on, son, he thought, gritting his teeth, shaking off the strange, psychic grip. You can do better than that.
“I, uh,” he said. “Well, we can’t just leave her in the corridor, can we?”
The other Doctor considered this. “True. Take ten points. Bring it with you,” she conceded. “Best we get rid of it, anyway.”
“I,” the real Doctor wheezed, indignant, “do the points.”
He nodded jerkily, hauling the Doctor down the hall, wincing at the clang of her feet, the chill of her fingers. She kept her wounded palm clutched to her chest. The console room beckoned warmly, apparently set to rights. Tricked, he thought uneasily, as he stumbled them down the steps. Like the rest of them.
The wrong Doctor spun on her heels and ground to a halt by the console, hair gleaming.
“Here we are,” she said triumphantly. There really was no trace of the day on her, he marvelled sickly. No hint of dirt, no biscuit crumbs. No strange, flimsy smile. She was perfect. “Go on, then,” she said, like she couldn’t imagine asking anyone else. “Take it round to the door. I’ll sort it, and then we can be off. The whole universe,” she said, fingers dancing lightly over the tops of the controls. “The past and the future. Your home and mine. We could pop in on your gran, Yaz.” Her gaze trailed to Ryan. “Save the world from climate change, before it’s too late.” Finally, she landed on Graham. Eyes wide and guileless. “Find a way to rescue Grace.”
His stomach dropped.
“Oh,” he said, softly. “Well, now, Doc, you know I’d—you know I’d do anything, but you always told me we couldn’t interfere.”
She smiled at him. “My rules change all the time,” she said. “I could change them, for you. I could change the rules, I could tell you everything. Just take care of the impostor, Graham. Take it to the door.”
“Oh, right, yeah,” Ryan said agreeably. “Here, I’ll help you, Grandad.”
“Er,” Graham said. “No, it’s all right, I’ve got her.” He stumbled closer to the door, the Doctor still boneless in his grasp, stomach twisting. “But, er—well, I mean, what exactly—“
“Only one thing for it,” the wrong Doctor said casually. She flipped a switch and the TARDIS doors swung open with a familiar creak. The cold vacuum of space didn’t chill the back of him, but that was only because the TARDIS was usually pretty good at keeping things like breathable air in, and the cold vacuum of space out.
With a few notable exceptions. He thought of the Dalek from New Years, sucked out into a broiling sun, and shuddered.
Even Ryan faltered.
“That’s not usually—“ he started, brow knitting together. “I mean, we don’t usually—“
“She’s done it before,” Yaz pointed out, ever the pragmatist. She crossed her arms, still incongruously bathrobed. “Come on, Ryan. It’s not really her. Right?”
“It’s a parasite,” the wrong Doctor said, intense. “A reflection gone wrong. The sooner we’re rid of it, the better. Graham, get out of the way, so there’s no chance of you being sucked out, too. We couldn’t have that.”
The Doctor shuddered in his arms. “No,” he thought she was saying, hands scrabbling weakly at his sleeve. “No—“
He didn’t want to look her in the eye.
“Yeah, of course,” he said, “just give me a second. My back’s not what it used to be.”
Miserably, he turned and met her gaze anyway. He’d thought she might be angry with them, but she only looked afraid. Chalk white and terrified.
“I know who you are,” he said again, quietly. “Don’t worry, Doc,” he said, and worked the sonic gently out from her death grip. She let him do it without complaint, and he couldn’t tell if it was because she’d given up, or if she simply didn’t have the strength to protest. He wasn’t a fan of either option.
The sonic was cool in his grasp.
Point and think, he thought, still crouched away from their view. There were opera singers, he’d heard once, that could sing at such a high frequency, they could shatter glass. It wasn’t about the volume. It was about the resonance.
And it was the principle of the thing, hopefully. He straightened, letting the Doctor slide to his feet, guiltily. He pointed. He thought.
“Mind your ears,” he said, and then the rest was drowned out by a noise so hideous and strange he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to accurately describe it. A warbling, shrieking thing, precise and deadly. Yaz and Ryan cried out and slammed their palms over their ears—
—and the other Doctor opened her mouth, as if in protest, and shattered like a dodgy window, wailing the whole way.
“Now!” Graham shouted—or at least, he thought he did—and Ryan dived clumsily for the console. The TARDIS shuddered and groaned. Graham crouched and grabbed the Doctor by the arm to pull her out of range with him, as the shattered remains of the imposter were sucked out into space.
For a moment, he only waited for his ears to stop ringing. He could hear the Doctor’s ragged breaths behind him, barely. Yaz and Ryan stayed where they were, frozen in horror.
“Oh, god,” Ryan said, breaking the strange, sudden silence.
Yaz whipped the towel off her head, knuckles white. Eyes wet. He thought she might say something, but instead she turned on her heel, face bloodless, and all but ran out of the console room, bare feet slapping on the grate.
Graham took a step towards, but Ryan held up a reassuring hand. “It’s all right,” he said quietly. Mournful eyes tracking his. “I’ve got her.”
He followed.
Graham sighed, a great, gusty thing.
“Well, er,” he said, turning back around. The sonic was still clenched in his right hand, but his other one was starting to shake. His face was throbbing, the mud between his toes hopelessly solidified, a reminder of the strange, shifting city they’d had to abandon. Living glass. Another one for the books, he supposed. “Doc, I—“
Of course, she was already gone.
It was funny, the lengths a hot shower and a clean shirt could go. Even without a good ten hour rest, by the time he worked up the courage to venture out into the depths of the TARDIS again, he was well on his way to feeling half-way human.
His slippers always caught in the floor grate. The mugs of tea in his hand clinked together irritably, liquid sloshing up over the sides. The sonic was cool in his grasp.
Luckily, the TARDIS always knew where you needed to go.
He let himself be nudged in the direction of the console room, soaked again in gentle gloom, the way it always was, lately. More familiar. She cut a lonely silhouette at the open door, shoulder pressed into the frame. For a moment, he thought she might have been asleep, and paused his approach.
“It’s all right,” she said softly. Her silhouette shifted. “I’m awake.”
He shuffled forward slowly, eyes catching on the peaceful starscape just beyond. Pinpoints of light, glinting invitingly into the slow blue of the interior. With a muffled groan, he lowered himself to sit beside her.
“Nice view,” he said, passing her a mug, and then the sonic. When she took it, he took a careful look at her hands—grease-stained, but unblemished. Her palm glistened with some of the same salve he’d smeared on his cheek earlier. She caught him looking and quirked an eyebrow.
“Tannins,” she said, without elaborating. No colour in her cheeks, in the gloomy dark, but he couldn’t say there ever was, lately. “Just the thing. Thanks, Graham.”
“Ta,” he said quietly. “Doc, I—“
“Is everyone okay?” she asked him, gaze slipping back to the expanse in front of them.
He could barely read her face when he was looking at it straight on, most times. In profile, in shadow, he didn’t have a hope.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Yeah, they’re okay. A bit torn up. Doc, you should know, they didn’t mean it.”
“It wasn’t their fault,” she said firmly. “That thing was a powerful psychic entity. It even fooled the TARDIS.”
And her breath did hitch, just for a moment, just for a second. The TARDIS moaned quietly. Her thumb found the edge of the door. She rubbed soothing circles until it stopped.
“I don’t understand,” Graham said. “It was just a piece of glass.”
“A parasite. A living reflection,” she corrected. “Not of me,” she went on, when he stared back at her, blank-faced. “Of them. Of—you.” She still wouldn’t look at him. “Only not quite you. Thanks for that, by the way.” She swallowed. “Couldn’t quite—couldn’t quite think my way out of that one.”
There was one star that was a little bit brighter than all the others. He squinted at it, as he thought. They all blurred together a bit, was the only thing, stars. When you looked at them too long. You had to focus in on one bit at a time.
Grace would have loved it. The view. The adventures. All of it.
“It almost got me, too,” he admitted eventually. “For a minute there, I wanted it to be you.”
She ducked her head, lips flattening into that thin, familiar line. He didn’t reach for her. She wouldn’t care for it.
“But it was a poor copy, Doc,” he said firmly. “Family, friends, they don’t always give you exactly what you think you want, or take you exactly where you think you want to go. And they’re not always right, and they’re not always happy, and that’s just fine. ‘Cos we’re here for each other, good times and bad, right?” He was never quite sure how to say it. He was never quite sure how much of it she heard. “We don’t need you to be anyone other than who you are, cockle. We don’t need more than you can give.”
She swallowed again, throat bobbing. Blue with gloom, and he couldn’t read her face.
“Thanks, Graham,” she said quietly, and took a careful sip of the tea he’d made.
Small victories. He’d keep trying.
The universe twinkled kindly. The TARDIS hummed. Strange and blue and set to rights.
“Yeah,” he said. “All right.”