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1
In his heart of hearts, Turlough always knew it was inevitable that he would one day have to explain it all to the Doctor. But foregone conclusion or not, he had sworn to himself that he would never offer up any personal information unless completely necessary. He dodged all questions about his planet, his parents, his past. Deflected them onto Tegan, and, later, Kamelion.
Then Frontios. Confronted with the race memory of the Tractators, his mind was thrown back to Trion. To dangers his ancestors faced that he never knew about. The Doctor understood that they weren’t Turlough’s own memories, so he didn’t press for information about the giant isopods. Still, the incident obviously piqued the Doctor’s interest. They talked about it afterwards, a little.
Talking was never their strong point. The Doctor had Tegan, who had been with him for much longer than Turlough had, to confide in. Turlough had heard their long conversation in between adventures. Especially early on, when he would wander the corridors instead of sleeping, unable to adjust to the lack of a daylight cycle on board the TARDIS. He didn’t mind. For the most part, he was just happy to be along for the ride.
But Tegan had begun to hate her life in the TARDIS. Oh, she never said so, at least not to Turlough, but he knew. Actually, he thought she hadn’t said so to the Doctor, either. He seemed more shocked than Turlough was when she left.
Afterwards, the Doctor needed someone to talk to, and had no one to talk to except Turlough. Kamelion was in the middle of his self-imposed exile, was God-knows-where in the middle of the labyrinthine TARDIS. For all intents and purposes, it was just the two of them.
So, when the door closed behind Tegan for the final time, Turlough positioned himself by the console and waited for the unavoidable therapy session.
And the Doctor walked right past him and into the corridor.
A little bewildered, Turlough followed him. He just about managed to keep track of the Doctor’s long coat swishing around corners. They went past Tegan’s room, past Turlough’s room, until finally Turlough rounded a corner and found the Doctor sitting in a garden.
It was a garden that Turlough could have sworn wasn’t there before, but he knew about the TARDIS’s habit of moving its rooms around like chess pieces. It was on the other side of a white stone archway. It was perhaps fifty square yards, and really nothing more than a patch of grass with a wooden bench sat right in the centre. And in the centre of the bench sat the Doctor. He was gazing forwards, oblivious to Turlough.
Turlough crept forwards, and finally saw what the Doctor was looking at. Beyond the low stone walls which bordered the garden was a paradise. Vibrant green countryside as far as the eye could see. The sun beat down upon them from a cornflower blue sky. Birds sang and butterflies and dragonflies danced to the tune, sunlight glinting from their wings.
Turlough, mesmerised, forgot about the Doctor until the latter spoke:
“It’s not real, you know.”
Turlough snapped out of it. “It’s not?”
“No. The garden is, but out there is just a projection.”
“Oh. Well. It’s still pretty.”
The Doctor didn’t answer.
Deciding that there was enough room on the bench for both of them, Turlough sat next to the Doctor, who still wasn’t looking at him.
They sat in silence for a while. Turlough watched the birds. The Doctor was as still as a statue.
Once, Turlough had been tortured. He didn’t remember much of it. His mind blocking it out as a trauma response, probably. He just remembered being very, very scared.
The Doctor didn’t rescue him. He rescued himself.
Afterwards, the Doctor tried to talk to him. He didn’t want to hear it. Actually, he hadn’t been travelling with the Doctor for long at that point, less than a year, and he didn’t want to break down in front of him. He was the youngest of the Doctor’s companions by several years and was very self-conscious about that fact. Better to put on a brave face for the Doctor. Better to not act like the nineteen-year-old he was.
He ended up crying on Tegan’s shoulder a few days later when she coaxed the whole story out of him. Embarrassing. But it taught him a lesson about bottling things up. Namely: don’t bottle things up. You couldn’t do that when you travelled in the TARDIS, saw as many crazy and terrifying things as you did. Gradually, she began to confide in him, too. The absence of Nyssa continued to affect her, and though he knew she sometimes thought of him as a petulant child, they were at least closer in age than she was to the Doctor.
Not to mention, it felt almost… inconsiderate to offload your problems onto the Doctor. He was hundreds of years old. More of his friends had come and gone than Turlough had ever had, would ever have in his whole life. He had probably seen more people die than Turlough had ever met. What right did Turlough have to complain to him?
But now the Doctor had a problem, and Turlough wanted to be his confidant. It was only fair. Turlough was the last man standing. Though it was a horrible thing to think, Tegan had been an obstacle, a barrier between him and the Doctor. She was his best friend; Turlough had to settle for second place. Now it was only him left. And the Doctor was ignoring him.
He wanted the Doctor to speak first, but eventually he couldn’t stand the silence anymore.
“What are you going to do with Tegan’s room?”
“Hmm?”
“Tegan’s room. Are you just going to leave it?”
The Doctor nodded. “The TARDIS will move it around, probably, but the inside will always be the same.”
“Oh. What about my room?”
“I’m not going to do anything with your room.”
“No, I mean—well, it’s miles away from the console room. Can’t I move it closer to yours?”
“My what?”
“Your room.”
“I don’t have a room.”
Turlough blinked. “You don’t? Where do you sleep, then?”
“I usually just wander around when I’m tired. I find a chair eventually.”
“I see.” Okay, plan A: casual conversation was a bust. Plan B: emotional vulnerability. “I’m going to miss her.”
“I know you are.”
“Kamelion didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.” A thought occurred to him. “Kamelion doesn’t even know she’s gone.”
“What a pity for Kamelion,” the Doctor said tightly. The first hint of emotion in his voice since Turlough had sat down.
“You’re going to miss her, too.”
“I don’t need you to tell me that.”
“I know, but I—”
The Doctor turned to face him. “Why are you here?”
“I thought you might want to talk.”
“Talk? Talk? All right, I’ll talk. About the fact that I’m alone, again.”
The words hit like a punch to the stomach. “Excuse me?”
“I don’t mean—oh, you wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” said Turlough, anger bubbling up inside him.
The Doctor looked back out into the ersatz countryside. “Tegan was—was—special to me, I suppose.”
“What, you were sleeping with her?”
The Doctor looked at him with an expression of such utter, naked shock that Turlough couldn’t help but laugh.
“Okay, fine, you weren’t.”
“Why would you have thought that?”
“Erm, ‘she was special to me’, maybe?”
“She was with me during my last regeneration,” said the Doctor. “Alongside Nyssa and Adric. Now they’re all gone, it’s like… there’s no one left who remembers who I was before. So who’s to say who I was before?”
“You were there. You know.”
The Doctor shook his head. “It’s not the same. When she left, I suddenly realised how long she was with me. Four years since I met her, for me at least. I’ve been me for four years. Now I’m here and she isn’t. You understand?”
“No,” said Turlough sullenly. “Is that all we’re here for? So you can keep track of time? What am I here for, then?”
“No, it’s not like that—”
“Maybe you’d prefer it if I wasn’t here at all!”
“When did I say—”
“You didn’t have to,” Turlough spat, and thundered out of the garden.
When he was around the corner, he stopped and listened.
The Doctor wasn’t following him.
He went to his room and tried not to cry.
2
He forgave the Doctor, of course. A few days later. Before the Doctor even apologised. But he did apologise eventually; when they were being held captive by a race of amber-skinned humanoids who never revealed what they were called.
They had been tied up and bundled into a musty stone room, where water leaked through cracks in the ceiling and mere slits of lights shone through the filthy windows. Their wrists and ankles were bound with coarse rope. Two rickety chains secured them to two opposite walls.
Turlough was in the process of scratching away at the piece of stone that his chain was bolted to. It was working—slowly. He was eroding away his fingernails more than the stone, but he could feel the chain getting looser and looser.
A trickle of blood ran down his wrist. He brought his hand away and sucked briefly on his injured finger. He looked over at the Doctor, who was sitting cross-legged against the wall, his eyes closed.
He turned away. Yes, he had forgiven the Doctor, but only in his head. They had not discussed the incident since Turlough had stormed out of the garden. The Doctor was up to his usual tricks in that he was pretending nothing had happened. Turlough was loathe to bring it up himself. So, he’d decided to wait for the Doctor to make the first move.
Turlough braced his feet against the wall and began to pull on the chain. A crumb of stone fell away. He grunted with exertion and repositioned himself. The chain was slick with the dripping water. On his second pull, his hands slipped down the chain and the metal burn on his fingers made him cry out.
“Damn it,” he muttered, wringing his hands. He had already tried to untie his hands and feet, but that had proven impossible. The chain was weaker. Though clearly not weak enough. “Aren’t you going to do anything bloody useful?” he snapped at the Doctor.
The Doctor opened his eyes. “Like what?”
“Like try to escape! You’ve just been sat there for the last hour.”
“I’m waiting,” said the Doctor mildly. “And it’s no use trying to break that chain. You’ll break your fingers first.”
“Don’t I know it. Why are you so calm?”
The Doctor closed his eyes again. “Because I’m tired. I don’t want to waste energy. Get yourself untied, fine. How are you going to open the door?”
Turlough’s gaze trailed to the door. It was really no more than a slab of rock, but it had taken four of their captors to push it across the entrance. He scowled at the Doctor.
“I don’t know. But we can’t do nothing.”
“Yes, we can. They’re a reasonable people. They just think that we’re in league with their enemies. At some point they’ll come to question us, and then we can explain to them that we’re not from this planet.”
“And you think they’ll listen?”
The Doctor shrugged. “I would.”
“Yes, well.” He gave up on the chain and sat with his back against the wall. His hands were stinging, his fingers were bleeding, the rope was scratching his wrists. He drew his legs up underneath him as best as he could.
“Are you okay?” the Doctor asked him.
“Not really. But if you think we should wait, then fine.”
“I think it best.” He paused. “Are you okay… generally?”
“Are we being philosophical now?”
“No, I—I wasn’t very nice to you the day that Tegan left.”
“I wouldn’t say ‘not very nice’. Try for ‘downright horrible’.”
The Doctor sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to talk about it at the time, but I should have considered that you might have wanted to.”
“Tegan was my friend,” Turlough said quietly. “I barely got to say goodbye. And then it was just you and me, and I feel…”
“Yes?”
“I feel like you don’t care,” Turlough finished. “I get that you and Tegan were friends ages before I came along, but I’m the one who’s still here.”
“I know you are.”
“And I’m not planning on going anywhere.”
“I know that, too,” said the Doctor.
They lapsed into silence once more.
The Doctor was right, as usual. Their captors let them go without too many questions, once it became obvious that the two of them were not from that planet. They were back in the TARDIS and off into the time vortex in no time.
Once they were in flight, Turlough limped to the sickbay. His wrists and ankles felt like they’d had the skin rubbed clean off them. He ignored the Doctor following behind him.
“They’re a lovely race, you know,” the Doctor was saying.
“Oh yeah, really hospitable.”
“Well, not their fault we landed in the middle of a war. We could try again for a few years later?”
“Maybe not right now,” said Turlough. He winced as he reached for a med-pack and his fingers brushed the wooden shelf.
“Let me do that,” said the Doctor, rushing forwards to take the med-pack off the shelf. “Sit yourself down. Take off your jacket and your shoes.”
Turlough perched himself on the treatment table. “That might be tricky.”
“What?” Turlough wiggled his fingers. “Oh, right, sorry.” The Doctor shrugged off his own coat and came forwards to help. Turlough curled up his fingers as the Doctor took his blazer off for him, trying and failing to protect his ruined fingernails. “Not to be insensitive, but you can’t really blame them for that.”
“If you know you’re going to be insensitive, do yourself a favour and keep quiet,” Turlough told him. He heeled off his shoes, cringing at the dampness of his socks. “I’m absolutely covered in grime.”
“Change into some proper clothes, you can get those washed. Or just throw them away.”
“I’m not throwing them away. I like wearing them.”
“For the life of me I’ll never know why,” said the Doctor. He opened the med-pack and selected a clear glass bottle. “Antiseptic first, then I’ll find something for the rope burns.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me yet. This is going to hurt.” The Doctor poured a little of the antiseptic onto a cloth and started dabbing it onto the fingertips of Turlough’s right hand. It was all Turlough could do to not swear and yank his hand away. Still, the Doctor obviously noticed his grimace. “You don’t need to put on a brave face.”
“I’m not, I—”
“I meant about Tegan,” said the Doctor gently.
“Oh. Well.” Turlough shrugged. “Public school. You learn to keep your emotions to yourself. Besides, you do the same thing.”
“I’m over six hundred years old. I really can’t afford to wear my hearts on my sleeves. I’d need bigger sleeves, for one thing.”
Turlough snorted. “Well, if I’m going to share my issues with you, I’ll want something in return.”
“I expected nothing less, Turlough.”
“I just mean—it’s a two-way street, right? You need to tell me things, too. Otherwise you’d just be my therapist.”
The Doctor considered. “Yes, I see your point. I’d be a terrible therapist.”
He’d moved onto Turlough’s other hand by now. Turlough’s fingers felt like they were on fire, but the Doctor’s hands were cool on his own. He was holding Turlough’s hand steady with one, being careful not to touch the marks on his wrist, while applying the antiseptic with the other. Turlough’s eyes were drawn to the identical injuries on the Doctor’s wrists.
“I’ll do your wrists after you’ve done mine.”
“No, that’s all right. You shouldn’t get ointment in these cuts. I can manage.”
The wounds cleaned, the Doctor reached for a roll of bandages and started unwinding it. He winced.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, fine. Just knocked my wrist.” He began to weave the bandages between Turlough’s fingers, hiding the sliced-up red skin. “Does it still hurt?”
“Less so. Thank you.”
“No problem.” Finished, the Doctor grasped Turlough’s hands in his own. “Nothing a Doctor can’t fix, eh?” He looked into Turlough’s eyes and beamed.
That was the moment Turlough discovered he was in love with the Doctor.
Well. He’d kind of known it for a while.
But when you travel with the Doctor, is it really possible to not be in love with him?
That was what he told himself at first. Someone drops out of the sky and shows you all the unfathomable wonders of the universe? Any feelings you have for them aren’t love, more… worship. How else can you feel towards a man who changed your life so much?
In his case, of course, the Doctor had rescued him from his abysmal life, and Turlough had repaid him by trying to destroy the TARDIS with him inside. And after the Doctor found out the truth about him, he didn’t send him back to Earth. Or toss him out of the TARDIS door when it was in flight. He was forgiven. Which was more than he could ever imagined.
So how could he not be in love with him?
3
There was nothing to be done about it, of course. What was he going to do, tell the Doctor about his feelings? As if. Even when it was just a childish crush he knew to keep it to himself, because what would be the point? It would only make things awkward for a couple of days. Besides, the feeling would probably go away after a while.
It didn’t. And the day the Doctor tended to his wounds in the sickbay was the day he realised that he had to do something about it. He wouldn’t be able to stay on the TARDIS much longer, just the two of them, with these thoughts swirling around his head, eating away at him. It was going to make him go insane.
Outwardly, nothing changed. Things were quiet in the days following their escape. They spent some time in the TARDIS, the Doctor doing who knows what while Turlough did anything and everything to try and distract his mind. He’d started making his way through the vast rabbit-burrow of a library, picking a section at random each day. This time his wanderings took him to History of Architecture, Andromeda Galaxy, sections XVII-IX. Not because he was interested in Andromedan architecture, but because it was something else to do. He liked books and he liked that they were from another planet. He liked the collection, the smorgasbord of different cultures all under one roof. A bit like the Doctor and his companions, really.
He was going back to his room after putting the books back when the Doctor came and told him where they were going next: Mn-Kzp (he’d had to ask the Doctor to write it down for him), a dwarf planet in the vague vicinity of Alpha Centauri. Inhabited? he asked. We’ll find out, the Doctor replied.
It didn’t really deserve the classification ‘dwarf planet’. More like fire-torn asteroid that had managed to fall into a sun’s orbit. Also, it was definitely inhabited. By a population of convicted murderers, arms dealers, people traffickers, and war criminals. In short, it was an Alpha Centaurian prison planet.
They found this out when they exited the TARDIS and were immediately arrested for no good reason at all as far as Turlough could see. They were separated; Turlough was hauled off by a huge green blob with one eye before the Doctor could say a word. It was constantly gibbering at him in an unexpectedly squeaky voice about decontamination and judicial processes and the rest. He was whisked away into a tiny space shuttle and zoomed to the other side of the planet.
Obviously, he wasn’t worried. Well, maybe he was a bit. But only because he was alone on a planet with aliens who wanted to at best slap him on the wrist and ship him off for someone else to deal with, at medium imprison him on Mn-Kzp, and at worst execute him. And the Doctor would come to help him way before the Alpha Centaurians could decide which of those options they would prefer. So, yes, no need to worry at all.
He was put into a square holding cell with a bed, no windows, and a ceiling so low he had to duck his head when he stood up. The flight there had taken three hours, and he’d given up asking where they’d taken the Doctor by the end of the first hour. He reasoned that the Doctor would be able to sort things out, and then come to collect him. That probably wouldn’t take much more than a couple of hours.
And in the meantime, it wouldn’t kill him to try and find his own way out of there.
After half an hour he’d come to the conclusion that there was absolutely no way out that didn’t involve someone opening the door from the other side. It looked like solid iron, and unlike the Doctor he didn’t have anything in his pockets he could use as a blowtorch or lockpick. The bed was nothing more than a wooden pallet. Even if it was strong enough to be used as a battering ram, there wasn’t enough room in the cell to manoeuvre with it.
So, with nothing else to do, he just waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And the Doctor didn’t come. For hours.
It must have been the next day. Not a soul had come into the room, or spoken to him from behind the door, or given him anything to eat or drink. He was getting extremely hungry, but the more pressing concern was water. At some point he started to bang on the door, asking for and then shouting for something to drink. No one answered. After a while he stopped because his throat was getting scratchy.
At some point he slept.
He woke up to a sound, and before he had time to remember the predicament he was in, he saw the Doctor peering anxiously at him.
“Thank goodness for that,” the Doctor was saying. With him was one of the amorphous aliens, blinking placidly at him.
“Doctor,” Turlough rasped.
“Don’t worry, Turlough, it was all a big misunderstanding. I’ve cleared it up with the Alpha Centaurians, we go way back.”
Turlough uncurled himself and winced at the various aches and pains that blossomed throughout his body. He coughed. “What… what…?”
“See, the thing is,” the Doctor said, bouncing on his toes, “that we actually have to get out of here quite quickly. Since the Alpha Centaurians know me they’ve agreed to give us a bit of leeway, but we only have about ten minutes”—he paused to look at his watch—“eight minutes forty seconds before the head governor gets here, and he’s not going to be as lenient. So come on, quickly!”
Turlough got to his feet, rather unsteadily. He felt exhausted and dizzy with dehydration, the hungry ache in his stomach notwithstanding. After one shaky step forwards the Doctor took his hand and started dragging him along.
The TARDIS wasn’t far away, but it was far enough. It was tucked away in one of the many corridors that made up the convoluted cell system. The Doctor unlocked it and all but shoved Turlough inside.
Turlough stumbled through the entrance corridor and just about saved himself from tripping headfirst into the console. He clung onto it and lowered himself onto the floor. The Doctor came striding in behind him, immediately readying the TARDIS for take-off. The floor shuddered. Turlough closed his eyes as the normally-mild vertigo of take-off swept over him.
When he opened his eyes, the Doctor was sitting next to him, crouched below the console, waiting.
“Are you all right?” he asked softly.
Turlough shook his head. They were shoulder to shoulder. He swallowed a couple of times, trying to get his voice to work. His throat felt like sandpaper.
“What do you need? Are you—”
“You left me. Again.”
“I’m sorry, I—wait, what do you mean ‘again’?”
“You keep on leaving me alone.”
“What? When?”
“Tayborough. The Crystal Bucephalus. Testament.”
“Okay, the first one I didn’t really leave you, I came straight back for you. The second one I thought you were dead. The third one I thought you were dead!”
“And today?” Turlough said with as much venom as he could muster. “Oh, wait, sorry, yesterday? You knew exactly where I was, you were just slow.”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Things came up.”
Turlough wrapped his arms around himself. The adrenaline of his escape was wearing off and his hunger was coming back in full force. He barely had the energy to be angry at the Doctor, but he was going to try his best. “Things always come up. How long has it been? Twenty-four hours?”
“Probably more like twenty-six.”
“Right. These lovely Alpha Centaurian friends of yours—are they aware that humanoids generally need water at least once a day? Or something to eat?”
The Doctor winced.
“What if more ‘things’ had come up? What if you’d left me for two days, or three? Then I’d be dead. And it would be your fault.”
He wasn’t sure what he was trying to make happen. Make the Doctor feel bad, he supposed. Make him as angry as Turlough felt. Make him hurt like Turlough hurt.
The Doctor was silent, looking down at his hands.
“Things are always your fault. What if I was never able to walk again after Testament? What if the Daleks had killed me? I was only in those situations because of you. You say you want to show us the best parts of the universe. How does that work out for you? Tegan left you. Nyssa left you twice. How many before them have got sick and tired of nearly dying for you? How many never got the chance because they did die for you? How—” He broke off when the words caught in his dry throat and he started coughing instead.
The Doctor moved his arm as if to put a hand on Turlough’s shoulder, then thought better of it. Instead he murmured, “I’ll go and get you something to drink.”
Turlough shook his head, struggling to stop coughing. “I—I can do that myself.” He reached behind him and pulled himself up using the console. The Doctor got up too, but sensibly did not try to help Turlough up.
“I’ll just… sort out our flight path, then,” the Doctor said. Turlough didn’t reply, concentrating on making his way out of the console room without falling over.
He managed to close the door behind him before doubling over. He felt dreadful. All he wanted to do was crawl to his room and go to sleep, but he was genuinely worried that he would die of dehydration while asleep. Instead, he made for the kitchen. Or, more accurately, the ‘room where the food machine and water dispenser were’.
There were certainly times when he despised the food machine. When he would prefer to eat something that looked and felt the way it tasted. It was indescribably disconcerting to bite into a substance with the consistency of nougat and the taste of tomato soup.
But right now he welcomed it. He felt so hungry he was nauseated. The thought of actually eating anything was making him feel worse.
Water came first; he poured himself a glass of lukewarm water and made a tremendous effort to not drink so quickly he would choke on it. There was some limit on the amount of water you could drink at once, right? Well, it couldn’t be fewer than three glasses. He poured himself another and sipped at it more slowly, grimacing as it hit his stomach. With any luck he would get sufficiently hydrated before he had to throw up.
The food machine spat out a bar of whatever it was he’d asked it for. Refilling his water glass, he retreated to the small seating area adjacent to the kitchen. His usual seat was next to the one that the Doctor used and opposite the one that Nyssa used to use. It was also next to the one that Adric had apparently used. Tegan had… requested that he move when he tried to sit there the first evening he was there.
He tried to concentrate on eating and not letting his eyelids droop. Wasn’t there something called refeeding syndrome? No, that only applied if you’d gone without food for several days. He was as hungry as he’d ever been in his life, but he wasn’t literally starving. Though, he still felt sick, and while the water had definitely helped his throat it was making his nausea worse. He nibbled at the food bar.
Sooner or later he thought the Doctor would have come in. To apologise, or see how he was doing at least. But no. Turlough was still alone long after he’d finished eating. And as the minutes droned on, and as he realised he was soon going to need to get up to find something to be sick into, the Doctor still did not appear.
His natural instinct was to go back to his room and feel miserable in private. But the horrible part of him wanted the Doctor to see what he’d done to him. He drank more water and stayed where he was.
A few minutes passed. The Doctor did not come. Turlough folded his arms on the table and rested his head on them, taking deep breaths to try his absolute best to keep his stomach contents where they were.
He must have drifted off after all, because the next thing he knew he was blinking awake and feeling more sick than ever. He stifled a groan and put a hand on his stomach.
As he sat up he saw that he wasn’t alone.
The Doctor was next to him. When he noticed Turlough had woken up, he pushed a cup of tea over to him.
Turlough responded to him by dragging himself to the sink against the wall and vomiting into it.
He returned to his seat, feeling too rotten to care that the Doctor was watching him. The tea was nudged forwards. Turlough shook his head.
“Do you want me to help you back to your room?” the Doctor said softly.
“I’m not an invalid,” muttered Turlough.
“I’ll just leave you to it, then. Try not to get sick everywhere.”
Turlough sighed. “Sorry. I did eat something, but it made me feel worse.”
The Doctor lifted his hand and placed the back of it against Turlough’s forehead. Turlough frowned.
“What are you doing?”
“Wondering if you picked up something on Mn-Kzp. You don’t feel hot. Maybe the atmosphere didn’t agree with you.”
“Maybe having an empty stomach and then not having an empty stomach didn’t agree with me.”
“Could be that,” the Doctor conceded. “Did you have some water?”
“Yes.”
“You should have some more.”
“Wow, I never would have thought of… sorry.”
“Can I get you some?”
“Yes. Please.”
The Doctor obliged. Turlough drank deeply, and when he’d finished the Doctor made to get up, but Turlough motioned for him to stay where he was.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Turlough—”
“No, I am. I shouldn’t have said all of that about people leaving you. It was unfair.”
“But not untrue.”
“Well.” For probably the first time in his life, Turlough didn’t want to lie. “Untrue or not, I shouldn’t have said it. I was being petty. I wanted to make you feel bad.”
“Congratulations,” said the Doctor wryly.
Turlough couldn’t quite bring himself to smile. He was waiting for the Doctor to forgive him.
Instead, the Doctor went on, “I can get you something to help with the nausea, if you want?”
“No, I think I just need to go to sleep. You… could help me to my room?”
Turlough got some more food out of the dispenser before they left, and ate it slowly as the Doctor’s footsteps receded down the corridor. Off to his non-existent room, Turlough thought humourlessly. They hadn’t said a further word to each other except for ‘goodnight’.
It didn’t occur to him until the next morning that the Doctor had probably been waiting for Turlough to forgive him.
4
He got the opportunity the next day. He arrived in the console room to find the Doctor already at the console.
“I thought somewhere familiar might be the ticket.” Turlough waited for him to name a place on Earth, and was pleasantly surprised to hear him say, “like the Eye of Orion?”
“We didn’t get much time there last time,” Turlough agreed. For some reason, it had never occurred to them to return after the adventure on Gallifrey. Things had gotten in the way.
“Good,” said the Doctor, seeming slightly surprised that Turlough had gone along with his first suggestion. “How are you feeling this morning?”
Turlough shrugged. “Better.” It wasn’t really a lie—he did feel better, marginally. He had been feeling queasy since he woke up, but he’d managed to keep his breakfast down, which was something. “How long till we arrive?”
“Just a few minutes. I took the liberty of setting the coordinates.”
Of course you did, thought Turlough. He didn’t have it in him to be annoyed, though. “Same spot as last time?”
“Erm, near enough.”
“I’ll get the deckchairs, then.”
“No, no, stay there, I’ll get them. I’ll find the umbrella that Tegan left around here somewhere.”
“I last saw it in her room,” said Turlough as the Doctor twisted a final dial and bounded out of the room.
Turlough paced around the console. With one hand on it, he could feel the vibrations of the TARDIS in flight. He’d never bothered to ask how it worked, just wanted to know which buttons to press to make it go. To make himself look cool and like he knew what he was doing. He had no idea about where the power came from (he thought he’d once heard the Doctor mention a black hole, but that was ridiculous, you couldn’t get power from a black hole, could you?), or where a TARDIS went when it was in flight (he knew about the time vortex, but that wasn’t an actual place, was it?), or even how the dimensional transcendentalism worked.
Maybe he would ask the Doctor about it soon. If he could spend an afternoon teaching Turlough about the rules of cricket, he could find the time to show off his flashy vehicle. And he knew Turlough had always liked cars.
But not today. Today was their holiday, away from Daleks and Sea Devils and definitely-very-nice-really Alpha Centaurians and, hopefully, trouble.
Touch wood, he thought wryly, then realised there was no wood in the console room.
“This is nice,” said the Doctor.
Turlough started. He’d thought the Doctor was asleep. It was the first time he’d spoken for at least an hour, probably the longest time the Doctor had gone without talking. He’d been taking the opportunity to look at him.
They weren’t were they had been last time, he knew that much. It was similar, very British countryside, but the landscape and the ruins were different. They had parked the deckchairs underneath an ancient-looking weeping willow. The Doctor had insisted on putting the umbrella up anyway. At one point he’d gone back into the TARDIS and re-emerged with a jug of what was definitely the best lemonade Turlough had ever drank. That had been a while ago.
He was curled up on his side on the deckchair. His body was still bruised from the Alpha Centaurians’ sorry excuse for a bed. At first he’d wanted to go to sleep, but soon found that he didn’t actually need sleep, just rest. As in, he needed to lie down for a while in the knowledge that he was safe and the Doctor was there. So, instead of sleeping, he was watching the Doctor.
The Doctor had an open book lying on his chest. His golden hair was hanging in his closed eyes, his hat sitting on the grass between the deckchairs. His expression was one of peace, one that Turlough had rarely seen before.
It was getting harder to not say anything.
When he’d woken up, safe in bed, the trauma of Mn-Kzp just a memory, he’d realised what was behind his outburst. Anger, sure. Fear, certainly. But really he’d just wanted the Doctor to know he wasn’t indestructible. That yes, travelling in the TARDIS was his own decision, and no, he wasn’t going to give up that privilege anytime soon, but the law of averages said that the more places they went to, the higher the chance that something really bad was going to happen to him one of these days. And that he may be able to hold his own in some regards, but he couldn’t get himself out of a prison cell, he couldn’t stand up to the Tractators or the Daleks, and he definitely couldn’t save his own skin one hundred percent of the time. In short, he’d realised that he needed the Doctor.
Like, really needed.
He didn’t even know what he wanted. He was already the Doctor’s companion, he couldn’t ask for much more than that. Sex? He didn’t look at the Doctor with attraction—well, all right, he did, so shoot him, the Doctor was handsome as hell, as if the boys at Brendon hadn’t already had enough ammunition to throw at him—but with… reverence, he supposed. A sort of knowledge that they could never be equals, not in any regard. He couldn’t even be the Doctor’s best friend, not really. Current best friend, maybe, but best friend ever? Not a chance. And he had no idea if any of the companions before him had ascended to ‘lover’ status. Or what the Doctor’s inclinations were. Or if Time Lords and Trions were even biologically compatible—
Then there was the age thing. What was the Doctor, six hundred and something? And Turlough was only—well, it was hard to keep track in the TARDIS, but he reckoned he was twenty-one. He was probably the equivalent of an infant to the Doctor. That was only weird when he thought about it, so he tried not to think about it. They were all adults, anyway.
But no, it wasn’t anything physical, not really. It was just the desire to be with him forever. To have all those little moments happen for the rest of his life. The Doctor holding his hand after bandaging his fingers. The look on the Doctor’s face when he saw him alive after Testament. His childlike fascination with Kamelion. Just watching him, just being around him. It was ridiculous and it was soppy but it was true.
But the Doctor was awake. He cracked open an eye, saw Turlough looking at him, and said, “Penny for your thoughts?”
Turlough shook his head. “These ones are worth more than a penny.”
“Ooh, secrets,” said the Doctor, sitting up and putting his book on the ground.
“Not secrets,” said Turlough hastily. “Just… ah, nothing. Just enjoying a day without being shot at.”
“The day’s not over yet,” the Doctor told him. “Come on, I thought you wanted to be able to talk to me about things. I’ll go first if you want. Quid pro quo, a thought for a thought.”
“Oh, all right then,” said Turlough. He turned onto his back and tried to come up with some innocent thoughts.
“I was thinking about what you said yesterday, about people leaving me. I don’t like it, you know, I hated Tegan and Nyssa for leaving.” He paused, and Turlough looked at him. “But at the same time, at least I know they’re still alive. Having to say goodbye is terrible, but not getting the chance to is worse.”
“That’s life, though, isn’t it? Knowing that people are going to die sooner or later.”
“The difference for me, Turlough, is that you and Tegan and everyone else are going to die before me. It’s like… you have a choice, yes? You can choose to leave. But for me it’s a certainty that you will leave, one way or another. And that’s hard. It doesn’t get any easier the more times I have to do it, it gets harder, much harder.” He stopped, lowered his eyes, then looked back up at Turlough expectantly.
Oh, it was his turn. He gave up trying to think of fake thoughts. “I was thinking that I want to be with you forever,” he said quietly, looking at the sky.
“You can be with me for as long as you want,” replied the Doctor, equally quietly. The Eye of Orion was completely silent, not so much as a whisper of wind breezing through the trees. “I’m sorry that you were hurt on Mn-Kzp. I should have been more careful.”
“No, you shouldn’t have,” said Turlough with a smile. “If you were more careful, you wouldn’t be the Doctor.”
He felt something touch his arm. The Doctor was reaching out his hand, bridging the gap between them. He took the hand and squeezed it.
It was kind of now or never, wasn’t it?
“Have you ever been in love?” he said before he could change his mind.
“Erm. Yes, I suppose so. Have, erm, have you?”
Turlough let the silence answer for him. He held the Doctor’s hand a little tighter.
“I see,” said the Doctor, in a tone that Turlough couldn’t quite identify.
“It doesn’t change anything. I like what we have now. I just… didn’t want it to be a secret.”
He waited for what felt like forever for the Doctor to say something else.
“You can be with me for as long as you want,” said the Doctor again, “but it can’t be forever. It doesn’t work like that.”
Turlough turned back to look at him. “I know. I know it can’t last forever. I just need it to last.”
The Doctor smiled at him. “Now that, I can manage.”
Nothing changed, really. Nothing was different, and that was good because neither of them wanted it to be different. Things were just… more. More talking. More holding. More moments would, in some way, really last forever.