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Bill turned on her heel one more time, pacing a few steps away from the Doctor’s office door, back down the corridor, another turn, another few hesitant steps. She knew what needed to be done. It was just stepping up and doing it that felt way too hard at the moment. You just saved the world, she reminded herself. After dooming it in the first place, that traitorous, doubting voice chimed in.
Yes, but it worked, in the end. That’s what matters, right? The Doctor would probably agree, given his recent behavior. She sighed, leaned a hand against his office door. Confrontations like this were never her strong suit. But courage, courage was something you could learn, and after everything that had happened…
She turned the doorknob without knocking, opening the door almost soundlessly before shutting it behind her. She stood paused on the threshold for the moment, looking at the familiar office where she’d spent months and months of her life now. Talking, learning, writing, revising. Growing.
The Doctor was seated at his desk, head tilted towards the door, hands placed flat against the desk. Waiting. Even blind as he was again, she sensed his focus on her as precise and intense as a laser. The Monks in their defeat, with their deal broken to pieces, had seen fit to revoke his gift of restored sight, another decision that had come down to her in the end. She stood facing him now, uncertain whether to feel guilty or righteously pissed off or maybe all of the above. He sat calmly, waiting, as if he knew what she was about to say. Hell, maybe he did. Maybe those sonic, psychic glasses could see through walls and minds alike.
She shuffled her feet forward, reluctant. “It’s me. Though I suppose you know that already.” He’d never seemed to have a problem identifying her before. Even when she hadn’t spoken he’d known it was her. If she thought about that too hard she got ever so slightly creeped out. But maybe it was sweet, that he knew her so well.
“Bill,” he said, and that was it. No help from that corner, apparently. He’d always been inclined to throw her in the deep end when it came to lessons, although usually with a helping hand outstretched and a few life preservers, to give him his due.
Right, guess it’s up to me, she mentally fortified herself, stamping down on the irritation she felt building. How someone so brave could be so cowardly was beyond her. Then again, his intelligence was equally balanced by blatant stupidity, so. She shut down her mental procrastination, drawing herself up physically as well as psychologically.
“I don’t think we should travel anymore,” she blurted, like a kid coming out to their parents. Not that she’d ever experienced that. “I mean. I- It’s been amazing. Brilliant. I, I never thought I’d get to travel outside of Britain let alone see alien planets and space and the Thames all frozen and the past and it’s been amazing, brilliant.” She stopped her babbling, since he didn’t seem inclined to. He sat, straight backed, frowning, eyebrows drawn down. She couldn’t tell whether he was actually irritated with her or if this was another instance of what she had dubbed his “angry resting face”.
“Anyway,” she continued, psyching herself up again. “Anyway, it seems pretty obvious from, from recent events that perhaps the two of us should not in future, that is to say, that we -” Good god but this was hard. Please, just say something, Doctor, she begged, and as if he had heard her (maybe he had… another creepy thought), he leaned forward across the desk, stopping her diatribe with an outstretched hand.
“Bill. I understand.”
“You do?” she asked, startled. She reassessed that whole mind reading thing. Sonic, psychic glasses after all. “Wait, what exactly do you understand? Recent events have also informed me that you are a categorical idiot, so just to be sure…” She trailed off, embarrassed to have spoken about her undeniably a genius tutor like that, but he honestly really, really deserved it.
“You’ve been through an ordeal. You’ve made choices you perhaps are not entirely comfortable with. And you made those choices because of the fact that I lied to you.”
Bill stopped, momentarily stunned. The Doctor could ramble and deflect with the best of them, but when he hit the nail, he hit it hard. “Yeah, that’s, that’s about it. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me!” she burst out, pent up frustration finally releasing itself. “Why didn’t you tell me? I don’t get it! Did you honestly think I’d think less of you? You had to be the big strong hero for little old me, is that it?”
“I-” the Doctor started, but suddenly Bill wasn’t interested in what he had to say.
“No, you, you just didn’t trust me. That’s it. You didn’t - you didn’t think I could handle it.” She was mortified to find tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, felt a guilty sort of relief that he couldn’t see them. “I’m good for a lark now and then, but actually trusting me to help you-” The lump in her throat cut her off and she looked down at her clenched fists, feeling as rejected and forgotten as she had that first night in his office, when he’d almost taken it all away. A small part of her now wished that he had.
But then she’d never have had Heather, and the stars, and little murderous emoji bots and elephants walking on the river Thames and - it just didn’t bear thinking about.
“No, Bill, no.” Bill looked up, noticing the Doctor had removed his shades and was looking vaguely in her direction, and how had she not seen before? Stupid, stupid - “No,” he interrupted her thoughts, clenching his own fists against the desk.
“You must believe, this had nothing to do with you, Bill. This was me. This was my fear, my weakness, my - my error. I should pay for that, not you. I lied to you because I thought I was protecting you from-” He sighed, sightless eyes turning down to a few papers strewn across his desk. She’d noticed in the past week he’d taken to grading papers on his laptop instead, and really, it could not have been more obvious. Perhaps she hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it as true, in the end. That the Doctor was truly blind, blind because of her. She felt the tears prick again at her eyes and scrubbed them angrily away.
“I thought I was protecting you from this,” he waved a hand in her general direction. Bill was confused.
“From what? From finding out you lied? From? I don’t-”
“From guilt, Bill.” The Doctor turned his face towards hers again, and she shuddered at the remembrance of the moment when he turned around to face her on Chasm Forge, sightless, milky eyes gazing through her. Some horrible part of her had deemed it appropriate, that someone like the Doctor should have the shrouded gaze of an ancient, mythic soothsayer.
The rest of her had clenched in horror, in guilt, that he had done this for her.
“You didn’t need to,” she said, after a long pause. “I can take care of my own guilt, thanks. Actually, I can take care my own everything, so.”
“I know you can, Bill. I just didn’t want you to have to.”
“That-” she stopped herself, unsure what she’d been about to say. That’s sweet, but incredibly misguided? I don’t want to have to either? Can’t we just go back and do things differently? “That’s stupid,” is what she actually said. It seemed the most appropriate.
“Never claimed I was anything else,” said the Doctor with a roguish grin lighting up his dour features.
“What? You are literally always going on about what a genius you are.” She pointed an accusing finger. “Scary handsome genius from space?”
“Who me? Thank you.” He made an exaggerated show at gratitude and mock humility, the usual hand waving, eyebrow raising thing she’d only really seen on actors in old movies. Or really cheesy comedies. “And the operative word in that statement,” he continued, “is ‘handsome’.”
“Not my department,” she reminded, almost absently. Now she was distracted, what had she been doing? Oh yes, grounding herself. “But I really mean it, we shouldn’t do that anymore. Go traveling, I mean. I hope, I mean, I want to continue the lessons but -” I need you to trust me, I need to trust me, and I can’t after this.
“Nardole would be very happy to hear you say that,” the Doctor hedged, slipping his glasses back on.
“And we know how much you like making Nardole happy,” she needled, somehow finding her own smile despite the deep pit of despair that was welling up inside her. No more adventures, no more strange, alien worlds, no more saving people, no more mattering. It wasn’t like she wasn’t used to that by now, most of her life she’d spent in the wings, watching, imagining, serving chips and sneaking into lectures to try and grab some fragment of the life she wanted. It was just, imaginary mothers and impossibly beautiful not-girlfriends hadn’t seemed quite so out of reach for a while there.
She really needed to send some sort of apology text to Penny. Or maybe an apology card. One of those ones that lit up and sang.
“I do trust you, Bill,” said the Doctor. “If it makes any difference in your decision.”
“I don’t know, maybe.” She shrugged, realized he couldn’t see it, tried to figure out how to communicate blasé-but-really-actually-not in sounds, gave up, finally sat down in the chair facing his desk. “I guess I understand why you wouldn’t want me to know. But you must’ve realized you had to tell me eventually? I mean, even I’m not that thick.” She huffed in feigned indignation.
“Bill, I don’t think you’re thick at all. Nardole would tell you that by keeping this,” he waved an elegant hand around and then away from his face - sign language for beautiful, a small part of her noted - “a secret from you it made it not real for me. As long as you didn’t know, I didn’t have to deal with the consequences of… everything.”
“And would he be right?” she asked, his deliberate phrasing piquing her interest. She could probably honestly understand an explanation like that. Avoiding problems until they (hopefully) went away was just about the most human thing there was. But the Doctor wasn’t human.
“In a way, I suppose.” The Doctor fidgeted with his hands on the desk, smoothing over the stray papers, shifting a few around. The silence grew.
“Er, in what way?” she asked, figuring he might need the prompting and willing to play along, for now.
“I didn’t want it to be true for you.”
“So you were protecting me, again, some more.”
“I wanted you to have the adventure you deserve, this -“ he waved a hand again at his face, not beautiful this time, ugly she noted, and yeah, she was kind of regretting that one summer she’d spent learning sign just to talk to a girl she had a crush on if it was just going to continue breaking her heart like this “-this was not supposed to be part of it.”
“Doctor…” She trailed off, not an ounce of her knowing what to say.
“You’re brilliant, Bill. You deserve to see the universe. No, the universe deserves to be seen by you. Please don’t throw that away because a crotchety old man decided to make a mistake. Please.”
“You have to promise, swear on whatever it is Time Lord’s swear on, that you won’t lie to me again. Not like that. Not to protect me. It doesn’t work like that.”
“I know. I am actually fairly good at learning some lessons, once they’ve been beaten into my skull a bit.” He knock knocked at the top of his head, then sobered. “I promise. I swear on the insufferable shade of Rassilon and my word as a failed Prydonian that I will not lie to you again. At least, not about stuff like this.”
“That was possibly the worst promising I’ve ever heard,” she scowled, hoping he could sense her disapprobation the same way he had on the plane.
“It’s the most honest one I could make,” he protested, and somehow she believed him.
“Alright,” she stuck out a hand before pulling it back abruptly, “no spitting!”
“Spitting?” he frowned in confusion, mild disgust crossing his features. “Why would there be spitting? I’m against spitting,” he added, as if it was vitally necessary she know.
“Er, just some bad memories of annoying foster brothers.”
The Doctor looked horrified, “Your foster brothers spat on you?”
“No! They spat on themselves - look, just shake my hand already, alright?” The Doctor’s expression briefly spiraled from shock, revulsion, and into pure “does not compute” territory before finally returning to his usual glower. “Ah, this is about handshakes. Why didn’t you say so?
“Uh, I forgot you couldn’t see,” she said, sheepish. This would probably take some adjusting on both their parts. “Here, I guess I’ll take your hand, if that’s alright?” She reached out carefully, and the Doctor met her halfway, hand fumbling through the air until it made contact with her own.
He gripped her hand in his own cool, dry one and gave it one good, well-rehearsed shake before withdrawing again. There were times she forgot he was an alien; this was not one of them. She grinned, mind already spinning away into the dark of the universe. “So what’s next? Past, present, future? Alien world? Parallel Earth?”
“That’s up to you, Boss,” he said, returning her grin.