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Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter One

Start Off With A Bang

New York City

Her pale eyes glanced at the dark shop window as she walked by the glass, and the man that had been following her from across the street wasn’t in the reflection. Her relief faded when she turned her eyes ahead again: he was now standing down the block ahead of her, blocking the sidewalk with his wide frame. Trying to look nonchalant, Emmy paused to glance into the window of another store to examine the sequin skirt on a mannequin, fake checked her phone, frowned, and turned around to hurry back the way she came. Don’t make a scene. That would be a bad idea when you were trying to get away with maybe, possibly, breaking the law.

She couldn’t really be sure if she had broken the law. Was following someone around and taking secret pictures and searching their trash for evidence of organized crime breaking the law? Having worked as an investigative journalist for so long, she really should have known by then. Maybe the picture thing was illegal, or maybe the trash thing. Either way, she had to get away from this man she could only assume was a bodyguard sent to put a quiet stop to her stalking. Sending his bodyguard instead of the police told her one thing: the aspiring congressman was definitely up to something he didn’t want the public finding out.

But before she could find the secret and write the exposé and save her professional life, she first had to get away from the burly bodyguard while looking like she didn’t know she was being followed and save her actual life.

Seeing a green walk light up ahead, she half-jogged across the street, and then spotted a path leading into the park. Perfect. Fewer people meant fewer witnesses to his potentially murdering her, but more space to try to shrug him off was ideal, rather than following the sidewalk and being funneled in a straight line. And she lived almost straight across the park from there, in the one-bedroom apartment she shared with another failing journalist. All she had to do was get there without leading her new friend there.

Not a problem.

It was a problem. Not so much because of the big, burly bodyguard, but more because of the wedding reception taking place right in the way of her path. She could go around the long way, but she’d just managed to shake him, and the longer she was in the park, the more likely she was to run into him again. She’d have to cut through, but in case he was catching up, she had to do it without sticking out, so if he asked questions no one could mention which way she was headed, or if he ran by, he wouldn’t even see her.

Emmy watched people mill about the reception. Long dresses, neckties, big hats. She looked down at herself. Short shorts, exploding TARDIS tank top, trusty emerald green leather jacket. At least she had some good heels on, though walking across the grass in them seemed less than desirable. Still, she had to try.

So off the sidewalk she stepped, and she moved across the grass to where tables were set with pale pink tablecloths and blue Mason jars filled with peonies. A photographer wandered through them, snapping photos of women snacking on petit fours, teens trying to wrangle smaller children who ran around singing a nursery rhyme about rain and a man bumping his head, and groups of men standing around probably talking about boring stuff, like banks and elections. Seeing an abandoned big floral hat, Emmy grabbed it and set it on her head. A few feet away someone had left a long white trench coat tossed over a chair, and she grabbed that and slipped it on. If the owners didn’t spot her, maybe she could slip across unnoticed.

Unnoticed except by the photographer, apparently. “Hey,” he called out. “Smile.” 

“I hate my picture being taken,” she used the automatic reply she always had ready.

“Too bad,” replied the photographer, raising the camera.

There seemed to be no avoiding this one. Well, at least she’d be a mystery in the couple’s wedding album. She flashed a bright smile and a peace sign. “Great couple, huh?” she commented. That was something people said at weddings, right?

“Yeah. You a friend of the bride?”

“Sure.” She didn’t have time to chat, so Emmy kept walking, but her heels were sinking into the ground, and that was going to slow her down. “Can I borrow you for a sec?”

“What do you need?”

Emmy set a hand on his shoulder and reached down to take off one heel, then the other. “Thanks,” she commented, and ignored his confused look as she continued moving forward, quickly, but not so quickly she’d be obvious. She saw phones out everywhere, and assumed she’d be in the background of a lot of pictures. She usually avoided photos as often as possible – it was her safest option – but this couldn’t be helped. Hopefully no one followed any of these middle-aged, middle-class, middle-everything people on social media. Being discovered was the last thing she wanted.

“Hey!” she heard a woman shout, and inwardly groaned. She knew what was going to happen before it did. “That’s my hat!”

Emmy turned with a smile and a lie about mixing up their hats on the tip of her tongue she hoped would be believable, when she spotted something significantly worse than an angry old woman.

Mr. Burly was barreling through the crowd at her. Shit. Emmy turned to run, having to shove a server aside in order to move forward. “Sorry!” she cried, then danced around a chair a little too far from the table.

“Thief!” the woman cried. Of course, she thought Emmy was running to get away with her ugly hat. The thing flew off as she picked up speed, at least, so she hoped that would stop all the attention being drawn to her, but the woman kept screaming, “Catch that thief! Help that man catch that thief!”

“Awesome,” she muttered to herself, shrugging off the coat and darting to the left. Dodging between tables became easier, though, as apparently no one wanted to mess with a dangerous hat thief. Still, she needed a way to get the bodyguard off her back. He was taller than her, and quickly gaining. She saw out of the corner of her eye a table with a large, intricate cake on it, and groaned. She knew what had to be done.

Making a beeline for the cake and spotting the table of throwing rice packets behind it, Emmy’s mind skipped ahead a few steps. Cake, rice, gazebo, shoes. That would be the ticket. Cake, rice, gazebo, shoes.

She dashed around the table and spun around to see that the bodyguard had made it to the other side of it. He began to move one way, and she moved the opposite. He paused, and tried moving the other way. With each step, she shifted backwards a little. By the time he realized what she was about to do, it was too late. With a strong dancer’s leg, she kicked the table forward hard, causing the cake to fly forward and up, straight into his face. She turned, tucked her shoes under her arm, grabbed a handful of bags, tore them open, and ran back around the table. At that point, he’d wiped the buttercream and chunks of cake from his eyes, just in time for her to fling the rice into them. Then she ran back the way she’d come.

Everything was chaos. Ruining a wedding cake was a tragedy. People were screaming. Kids were crying. The groomsmen and bridesmaids ran to try to salvage it. Just enough people moving and screaming around her that she managed to dive under the gazebo without being seen. She crawled to the other side on her stomach, keeping her head low beneath the gazebo floor. She tossed both shoes out, then crawled back to the middle, and waited. While she watched for Mr. Burly’s shoes, she tried to catch her breath, and keep her heart from beating so painfully.

It was only now she noticed the fear. It was only now, in a moment of tense stillness, she let herself absorb what would likely happen if she was caught. If the aspiring congressman really had connections with organized crime, well – he would probably do anything to stop that from coming out, and his connections would make it easy for her to disappear.  She took in a slow, deep breath, and whispered to herself her mantra, her philosophy, her oath: “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” She risked closing her eyes for a moment in the hopes it would help slow her racing heart. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” She had to escape. For them.

When she heard heavy footfalls, Emmy opened her eyes. The bodyguard’s mud-caked boots were in front of her, but the heel was facing her, not the toes, thank the stars. She watched his hand go down to pick up a shoe, and then pick up the other one and take off in that direction. What he was going to do with the shoes she wasn’t sure. What a weird Cinderella situation that would be.

She turned her head to the other side. The wedding was still chaos. She thought she heard the bride crying. “So sorry,” she muttered, as she crawled forward and slid out from under the gazebo. She was caked in filth, but didn’t have time to worry about it. Emmy ran as fast as she could forward, straight for home.

With sticks in her hair, rice down her shirt, and filthy feet developing blisters, Emmy finally made it to the seventh floor, and slid her key into the door. She stepped inside, leaned against the door to close it, and repressed a laugh of relief. She tossed her keys at the hook on the wall, and when they missed and hit the floor, she shrugged, too exhausted to care.

“What the hell happened to you?”

Emmy finally noticed her roommate sitting on the couch across from her, laptop unsurprisingly on her lap, a pen holding her blonde hair in place, a bowl of green grapes beside her.

“Long story. Don’t ask.”

“But-”

“No, really. It’s safer if you don’t.” Emmy moved to sit in the beige chair she’d dragged up from the dumpster one day, but Isla threw a grape at her. “Hey! What?”

Isla glared. “Don’t sit. You’re filthy. You’ll get mud and – is that cake frosting?”

Emmy looked down at her TARDIS tank top, and frowned. Apparently at some point some of the – was that Italian or American buttercream? – frosting had managed to get on her, despite kicking the cake the other way. “Great. This is my favorite shirt.”

“Get in the shower.”

“You’re not my real mom.”

“Your real mom should’ve tau-” Isla froze, her mouth still hanging a little open. Emmy braced for the wave to hit. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

This time, the grief just barely got her feet wet. The images stayed where they belonged: locked in the back of her mind. “It’s fine. Is there any hot water left?”

“Might be.”

Emmy turned and walked down the hall, ignoring Isla’s shouted question about where the shoes Emmy had borrowed from her were. She leaned into the door to get into the bedroom, since the door got a bit stuck when shut. Inside were two twin beds, two dressers, and a shared bookcase. There wasn’t much room for anything else. She went to her dresser, set the half-stale bag of sour gummy worms on top of the dresser instead of still sitting in the already-open drawer, and then started tossing unfolded clothes on the floor, looking for something she liked. She tried to concentrate on not letting the clean clothes mix with the dirty, but that concentration was interrupted by her phone going off.

Emmy sighed, reached into her pocket, pulled out her phone, and looked at the number. She then very slowly stuck the phone into her underwear drawer and buried it, grabbed leggings, and a green tank crop top, and went to the bathroom. After twenty minutes of scrubbing and another twenty of fighting a comb through her long, thick hair, she went back to her bedroom. The phone was ringing again. She grabbed it and saw that she’d missed six calls. Well, there wasn’t really any other choice, was there?

“If it isn’t my least favorite cousin,” she greeted.

“I’m your only cousin,” Aiden reminded her.

“And still managed to be my least favorite.” Emmy threw her dirty clothes approximately where her basket was, which was dangerously close to the clean clothes she’d just pulled out and dropped on the floor. “What can I do for you? We’re not due our yearly phone chat for another two months.”

“Glad to know you count the hours until I call.”

“With an impending sense of doom.”

She didn’t have to see him to know that Aiden rolled his eyes. “What happened?”

Emmy turned and collapsed on her bed, then wriggled to get the scrunched up blanket a little flatter under her back. “Context might help.”

“Mom called me. She said she was at a wedding reception you destroyed.”

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” she groaned. “Aunt Loren was at that wedding?”

“Yeah. She’s pissed. Wants to uninvite you for Thanksgiving.” Tragedy, Emmy thought.

“Someone was following me,” she muttered into the phone as she pressed it tightly against her ear. “Again.”

“Did you deserve it?”

“I might’ve,” she admitted. “But you’re my cousin, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

As she waited for her cousin to finish laughing at the absurdity of taking her side no matter what, she glanced around the room. On her side, worn out posters of Doctor Who and Sherlock stapled to the wall. On Isla’s, a copy of Monet’s Water lilies in a golden frame. Isla was the niece Aunt Loren would have killed Emmy to have.

Aiden finally took a breath. “That’s very wholesome of you to think, but considering I know what you do for a living-”

“Journalism is totally legitimate.”

“If you call a weird mix of National Enquirer-level trash writing and vigilante justice to be journalism, I think I know why you couldn’t cut it.”

“Bite me,” she responded. “Aren’t you wondering who was following me? Aren’t you worried I’m about to be murdered?”

“If you were going to be murdered, you would have called the police. You just want to show off. Show off what, I don’t know.” The next slow, deep breath told her he was about to say something she didn’t want to hear. “Molly-”

“Emerald.”

“Emerald, don’t you think it’s time you gave up and came home? Your writing career went from bestseller to e-magazines no one has ever heard of. You’re being arrested every other month. Sooner or later, one of the people that starts following you is actually going to be dangerous.”

“Look, just because Isla put up a ‘Days Since Emmy Was Arrested’ sign…” Emmy chose not to tell Aiden that this time might be a bit more dangerous than the usual. Then she set aside the thought that being followed probably shouldn’t be considered ‘usual’. “Came home to where? To what? I lived with you and your mom for what, a year and a few months, about ten years ago? What’s there for me, besides a pet chicken?”

“…about Henrietta-”

“What’s there for me, besides a dead chicken?” She corrected. “I know I’ve hit a rough patch in my career, but I’ve been busy. I’m trying to save the world, you know.”

“One mildly environmentally harmful small company, homeless woman needing a tent, small time meth dealer, crying child lost in Central Park at a time? Please, Emerald. This one-woman crusade act was cute ten years ago, but you’re almost thirty now. Grow up.”

And convincing investors to open a free clinic by tricking them into a meeting, and pinpointing exactly who it was who’d been sending a local pop star threatening messages, and helping make a small non-profit popular with celebrities. “Remind me why I keep talking to you.”

She heard Aiden throw something on a counter, frustrated. “I just mean that, at your age, with a real job, making real money, you could put a lot more good into the world then digging through dumpsters and stealing tents from Walmart. I mean, you could have been a real ballerina instead of just teaching a ballet workout class along with whatever this mess is that you do, before you got distracted.”

Emmy leaned her head to hold the phone against her shoulder, so a hand could go to her wrist and trace the faint almost-white line across the top of it with her fingertips. ‘Distracted’ was one word for what had happened. “In my defense, I was broke, and Walmart fucks with their employees.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of pointing out that calling what had happened being ‘distracted’ was needlessly cruel.

“How did you get the tent out without getting caught, anyway?”

Emmy decided it was time for a change in subject. “Please tell me you didn’t eat Henrietta.”

Aiden drew in a slow, deep breath, and Emmy ended the call and tossed the phone aside. That was enough catching up until their next yearly chat, if she really was uninvited for Thanksgiving.

And yet, as much as she hated to admit it, she needed him. And Aunt Loren. Besides Isla, they were all she had left in the world. She rarely saw any of them, but humans needed other humans. Social contact was necessary to survive. Necessary to stay sane - as sane as she could be, anyway.

So now she had to update her To Do list: One, not get thrown into a river with concrete shoes. Two, write the exposé on the potential congressman and win back a decent career. Three, get her aunt to invite her back to Thanksgiving.

Well, she might manage one of those. She hoped it was the one where she didn’t get killed.

Two Months Later

So far, she hadn’t been killed. Of course, she hadn’t found solid evidence that would hold up in court, either, and she’d been followed a few more times, but still – not killed. That was a good start.

Less good, maybe, was the fight up the stairs with her arms full of something struggling. Opening the door was difficult, but she managed it, and shut it with her hip. “Hey! Isla! We have a duck now!” Slowly, she set the waterfowl down, where it promptly bit her ankle and ran off to hide under the couch. On the couch sat an unfamiliar young woman with dark hair and darker eyes.

“Oh. Hey. Sorry,” she apologized. “It’s got a broken wing. I’m just keeping it until I can find a vet.”

The woman stood slowly, pulling her large dark bag onto her shoulder. “I was waiting for you.”

Emmy’s stomach dropped. She looked a little official, in trousers and a sweater set. Was she someone there about a legal issue? But Isla hadn’t come out to the living room upon hearing the word ‘duck’ yet. Isla wasn’t here. How did she get inside? “Oh. Sorry, not sure who you are. Are you a friend of Isla’s?” she asked.

“Yes. But for you, not for her.” Her voice was ragged, almost desperate.

She’d befriended Isla to get a spare key, and came inside to wait for her. Someone sent by the future congressman? Or, given the desperation, someone he was threatening who needed her help, maybe? “What are you talking about? Where’s Isla?”

“At work, I expect,” said the woman. Her eyes grew angry. So. Didn’t need help. “It doesn’t matter. I’m here for you.”

Exits. One behind her, but the stairs were narrow and long and too easy to get trapped in. The fire escape was out the bedroom window, but that window got stuck a lot. Bathroom window, but she’d have to hang off the edge and try to drop onto one of the balconies on the fifth floor, two floors down. Her phone had been broken in pursuit of the duck; barricading herself in a room and calling for help wasn’t an option. The neighbors weren’t the kind of people who called the police, and she didn’t need to get them involved. Besides, the only lock in the apartment that worked was for the front door.

So, she was talking her way out of this. “What do you want from me?”

“I read your book, Emerald Grace. Except it’s actually Molly Phoenix, isn’t it? Or do you prefer Molly Quinn? You have so many names.”

Shit.

Emmy didn’t try to play it off. If this woman knew her name and knew about the book and had taken the time to find her, there was no pretending she had the wrong person. And if she took all that time to get a way in while Isla wasn’t home, there was only one thing she could want.

After a moment of trying to find a way to ignore the sharp pain in every quick beat of her heart, Emmy asked, “Which one was yours?” She hoped for a confused response.

“Ivy Noelle.” Fuck.

Emmy nodded at the confirmation of her worst fear. “How did you find me?”

“People posted photos of you at a wedding reception where you stood out quite a bit.” The woman’s anger was moving closer and closer to the surface of her voice. Her hand went into her bag.

Emmy’s heart begged her to say something; to give condolences, to plead for understanding, to explain that they were the same. But her mind knew better. There was no mercy to beg for. She turned for the door.

She never saw the barrel, but she would never forget the sound of the gun.

 One Year, Four Months Later

 London

A new country, a new home, and a new Molly Quinn. Or was it a new Emerald Grace? A new Alice Liddell? Whoever she was, she was brand new.

Well, that had been the plan, anyway. Now, she wasn’t so sure. She’d wanted to be someone with no past to speak of, but she didn’t feel like someone new. What she felt were the old scars that were carved deep into her body and soul.

She glanced around the hotel room. It had the average things, the bed, the TV, the minibar. Her empty carpet bag sat on top of the dresser, her clothes a mess in the drawers. Her dark wood cane leaned against the minibar. Two boxes of hair bleach and two boxes of blonde hair dye were waiting for her in the bathroom. Her hair – somewhere between carrot and fire engine red – was too recognizable, but after her flight, she was too jet-lagged to do anything with them.

Molly sat in near-splits on the bed, beige floral bedspread pushed aside, and all her new papers spread out before her. IDs and a birth certificate and even fake tax information, all with the name Alice Liddell matched with her face. This time, she’d done it right. Trash journalism had given her the right connections to pull off a fully new identity, along with papers to move to England. At first, she’d felt lucky. Now she longed to see her real name beside her face again. It had been so many years.

With a sigh, she collapsed backward, and reached behind her head for the TV remote. As much as she wanted to let the sound of her comfort show fill the room with calming vibrations, the neighbors likely didn’t appreciate the sound of a Fan Favorite Doctor Who Episodes marathon so early in the morning the sun was still down quite as much as she did. She put the TV on mute with captions, and glanced up now and then as she gathered the papers, organized them, and placed them back into the bedside drawer. The originals – both Molly’s and Emmy’s – were tucked under her mattress.

Molly reached for the phone, deciding that she’d rather eat the bill than sit in silence. She dialed, reached for a sour gummy worm from the bag on her nightstand, listened to two rings, and grinned for the first time in days when her old roomie answered.

“Hey, cutie,” she greeted Isla. “Having fun without me?”

“What the FUCK, Emmy?!”

Molly knew it was coming, but still she winced. “Yeah. I know. That wasn’t very nice of me.”

“Not nice? Where the hell did you go? You’ve been back from the physical rehab center for two weeks, and now you’re gone? You didn’t even leave a note, Emmy!”

Molly shifted her body to lie on her stomach and hang a long, thin arm over the edge and reach under the bed towards her real name. “Uh. London.”

“What the f-”

“Can we skip ahead to me explaining myself?”

“It better be good. I come home and all your furniture is here, but most of your clothes are gone, your suitcase, your secret money stash. You even left Fred.”

“Ah. Well, Fred’s dead anyway.” Molly gave a moment of silence for Fred the Fern.

“So are you, if you don’t have a good reason for this,” Isla said. Her voice had exchanged fire for ice. “Explain. Now.”

And so, she did. All the secrets Molly had never told Isla, no matter how much she begged while Molly lay in the hospital bed. It all spilled from her like tears, one story after another, until she could make Isla understand why she had to become a new person, for the second time in her life. And why she was never coming back.

“Now you know,” Molly sighed. “If you’re still mad, go ahead and scream. I deserve it.”

“Emmy…” Isla breathed. “I’m so sor-”

“Please don’t,” Molly cut her off quickly, her voice tight. “Don’t. I can’t hold your empathy and my trauma at the same time without breaking right now. I’m just barely keeping myself taped together.” She had lost everything, again.

A long silence followed. “Why London?”

“You saw my posters,” Molly reminded her. “That first set of foster parents should never have introduced me to Doctor Who.”

Isla laughed. “Well, at least I can stop going on your stupid adventures and finally get some real work done.”

“My adventures are not stupid,” Molly protested.

“Your ‘adventures’ are either aquariums, zoos, or museums. That’s not an adventure, that’s a field trip.”

“We went hiking that one time,” Molly reminded her, but even she knew the argument was weak.

“You didn’t even make it to the end of the trail. You were scared of the bugs.”

“You’re just being mean because you miss me.”

“Whatever,” said Isla, but she said it with a laugh. “I’ve gotta go to work. Try not to die without me. And call me sometimes.”

“Hey, you can call me, too.”

“No.” Isla ended the call. Molly put the receiver down, almost grateful she was alone. She didn’t want anyone to see the childish disappointment on her face, that the only person she had left had to stop talking to her and go to work. They’d had a hard enough time finding moments they could talk when they’d lived together. Now Molly lived on the other side of the world. Eventually, she knew, their connection – what little connection it was - would fade for Isla. And then Molly would be really, completely alone.

Trying to shake the melancholy, Molly turned the TV volume back on. She disappeared for a moment in the lights and the words and the music, but she turned it off before the end. The Eleventh Doctor was giving his farewell speech to Clara at the same time Matt Smith was saying his goodbye to the Doctor and to the show. Like the Doctor, Molly hated endings. She’d seen too many of them.

She finally got up and went into the bathroom, and peeled off the green tank dress she’d worn to heal her anxiety on the plane, since her mother had taught her that green was healing. She took a bath, sinking into the hot water and trying to keep her mind on how much she wished she had her honeysuckle bath oil, and not on how desperately alone she was again, in a country that was a stranger to her, filled with a sea of strangers. And then her mind would wander back to the face of the woman who’d tried to murder her standing trial despite Molly’s objections. Or the solid wall of reporters that had met her on the steps of the courthouse she’d never wanted to be in, so much so that she’d refused to name the woman that shot her. She cut her bath short, and then she tried to dry her hair the best she could, pulled on a red t-shirt with holes in the collar that just reached the tops of her thighs, and crawled under the blankets, cool against her water-warmed skin. It felt good, despite her traditional hesitance to sleep. The nightmares always waited.

On that thought, Molly turned the TV back on, and another Doctor Who rerun was on. It would ease her into sleep, like a lullaby. She stretched out across the bed.

“Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” Every morning, every night, like a prayer.

After a moment of thought, she decided to try a real prayer. She hadn’t said a prayer since that night when she was thirteen, but what harm could there be? She let her eyes rest on a crack in the ceiling that almost looked like the TARDIS, if she squinted and tilted her head and pretended there were enough lines.

“Hey, it’s me, Molly Quinn. Whatever kind of god or goddess or, like, pantheon you are, or the universe, magick, fate, even Santa Claus…” Like Amelia Pond. She smiled for a moment. “Whoever you are. You’ve kind of fucked me over a lot, and I feel like you owe me one. No offense.” She took a deep breath. “I can take being shot, the spinal damage, and being a twenty-nine-year-old who has to use a cane. I don’t care about that. I can even endure losing my ability to dance, though it’s been my only form of self-expression all my life. What I can’t endure for much longer is the grief, the anger, and the guilt. I really think it’s killing me. My heart races and aches all the time. I’ve been holding it all for too long, and picking up more and more pieces of pain along the way. Let me have some time in my life where I don’t have to be someone else or look over my shoulder or see faces every time I close my eyes, or hear names in my sleep. Just grant me that. That’s all I want.” She paused, and wiped a couple tears from her freckled cheeks. “Well. That and not being so alone anymore. But between the two, I’ll take the first one.”

She felt ridiculous. She felt adolescent. She felt exhausted, and so she set aside her dramatics and went to sleep.

???

???

Cold. Cold, cold, cold. Pain from the pinpricks the cold left in her skin. Something hard and cold, pressing all along against her side. Her neck bent oddly. The scar in her back throbbing with fury.

Molly gasped, and sat up from the floor quickly. The world blurred for her eyes for a moment, creating lines and swirls of pale blue and silver, but soon everything settled into a solid, impossible form.

She leapt to her feet, hissed in pain, and fell back onto her knees, creating a loud ‘thud’ noise she was sure would leave a bruise, if she were actually awake. Her knees ached as though she were awake, and it felt like her spine was vibrating, but being awake wasn’t a possibility. A dream, a breakdown, some hallucination she was having before dying like the nerdiest white light ever – all possible. Being awake and in reality, and staring at the inside of the TARDIS? Not a thing.

This was the most realistic dream she’d ever had, and usually they felt realistic enough that she never even realized she was dreaming. She stood, slowly and carefully this time, grunting at the sharp pains in her spine. She looked up at the blue lights swirling in the pillar of the circular center console, up to the spinning display of circular Gallifreyan. All around her were lights and hexagons and blue, blue, blue.

The reveal of this TARDIS interior in the Christmas special, the contrast to what it had been before, the lights, the Gallifreyan, and most of all the swell of music had always felt like one of the most beautiful and powerful moments of the show for her. And it was nothing – nothing – compared to this. Here, standing in the room surrounded by blinking lights and brightly colored buttons and switches, language like a work of art, gentle electrical humming, and the oddly sweet and metallic scent in the air, she felt almost lost in a paradise.

She probably shouldn’t have named herself after Alice if she wasn’t expecting to go to Wonderland.

Deciding that since it was all a dream it wouldn’t hurt to look around, she meandered around the console to take it all in, spinning to see each side. The more amazed she felt, the faster she spun, until she was practically twirling around the console like the ballet dancer she once was, and then she saw a blur of dark purple and gold she didn’t have time to process before she bumped into something soft and cold.

Molly looked up, and when she saw that familiar face she thought – of course. Why wouldn’t she dream him up, too? After all, Eleven had always been her Doctor. Her comfort character.

Except, why would she dream this expression? It was a familiar one – a dark, dangerous look; a response to a threat, meant to intimidate. The blood flowing through the back of her neck ran like ice water, making her shiver, both for the cold and for the sudden twinge of pity she felt for all the enemies he’d fixed with those eyes.

Why, in such a beautiful dream, would her mind give her this?

He leaned down, those green eyes that froze her meeting her blue. “Who are you? How did you get on the TARDIS?” His voice was low, and curious. She’d heard him speak to mysteries with this voice before. She opened her mouth to answer, but hesitated when his eyes widened a fraction of an inch, and he pulled back suddenly, looked her up and down, and frowned. Then, a second later, he gave her a light-hearted smirk that made her more on edge than his deliberate intimidation had.

His voice lightened considerably. “Oh. It’s you.” He raised his eyebrows and adjusted the dark purple and gold bowtie around his neck. “I love your show.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Two

What Dreams May Come

The ache in her heart returned as it beat wildly. What a strange detail to include in a dream.

“What?” Yes, there was the clever response she had wanted to give. ‘What’.

He ran his hands down his thick purple blazer, as though straightening his clothes to make a good impression. A cloud of warning around his seemingly casual attitude told her that the straightening of his clothes was a lie. “It’s my favorite television program. I watch it all the time.” He paused. “Well, not all the time. Some of the time. But for me, some of the time is really a lot of time.”

She knew she looked ridiculous wearing her deer-in-headlights look and a worn red T-shirt, but given this strange turn of events in her dream, it didn’t seem to matter. “What?”

The Doctor turned, pushing buttons and flipping switches on the console seemingly at random. “Yep. You know the one. You won an award for it.” He paused again to glance up at her through the strands of hair falling into his eyes. “Shame it got cancelled when it did.”

“What?”

The pleasant act dropped so suddenly it left her feeling even colder. He turned and stalked towards her with such sure steps, she found herself pressing herself back onto another console, careful not to hit any buttons. “Is ‘what’ the only word you know?” He stopped a foot in front of her, still towering over her. “If you wanted to trick me with the image of an actress, you really ought to have a little more in your vocabulary. What are you – a Dalek puppet? Zygon? Multiform?” He reached into his pocket, and pulled out the familiar sonic screwdriver. She froze as he scanned her, and looked at the results. “Human. How could you be human?”

Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Molly drew in a slow breath. “Okay. I would like to put in a formal request to wake up now. I don’t like this dream anymore.”

“You’re not dreaming,” responded the Doctor. Then he looked thoughtful, ran the screwdriver over himself, looked at the scan results, and frowned. “Neither am I.” He slipped the sonic back into its pocket, and turned back to the center console, moving a monitor around to look into it.

“Of course I’m dreaming,” she argued. “How could I be on the TARDIS if I wasn’t?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her, away from the image that looked like vital signs. “So you know what this is? You know where you are?”

Molly folded her arms over her chest. “Yeah. I mean, I’m actually in bed, but I know where this is, too.”

He shoved the display away in disgust when it didn’t give him the answers he wanted. He turned back to her. “Tell me how you got aboard the TARDIS.”

“I told you, I didn’t,” she said, now almost shouting. Wake up, wake up, she begged herself. “I’m asleep. I’m dreaming that I woke up on the floor of the TARDIS and I loved it for about two whole minutes before you showed up and ruined it.”

The Doctor rushed her suddenly, and as he reached out and gripped the skin of her arm and squeezed, she cried out.

“See? Not dreaming,” he insisted, letting her go.

She rubbed the spot on her arm. “I feel pain in my dreams, you jerk!”

His look of confusion almost had a tint of danger in it. “Who are you?” She’d almost never heard his voice raised like this on the show. “I know you’re not really Lydia Hart. Whatever sent you made a mistake if they thought I’d fall for this. It’s ridiculous! What was even the point? Why put someone who looks like an actress from a television program I watch on the TARDIS? What are you for?” His voice implied he was asking himself for an answer more than he was asking her.

Molly’s head was swimming. Nothing was making any sense in this dream. “Who is Lydia Hart?”

A bit of doubt crept into the Doctor’s eyes. “The actress you’re pretending to be.”

“I’m not pretending to be anyone.” For once. “And I’m definitely not an actress. I’m not even a good liar.”

“Yeah, the dreaming bit you won’t let go of is a dead giveaway of that,” he replied dryly. “If you’re not pretending to be Lydia Hart, then who are you supposed to be?”

One upside to this dream: being able to introduce herself as herself, at last. “I’m Molly Quinn.”

The Doctor’s gaze slowly shifted from confused to incredulous. He laughed and turned and stalked away, and then turned back to her. “You expect me to believe you’re a character from a television program?”

Molly blinked twice. “What?”

The Doctor waved a warning finger at her. “Now, don’t go starting that again.”

She took a couple steps towards him, but still felt the need to hold her hands up as though to show she was unarmed. He was, after all, a madman with a box. “You think I’m from a TV show?”

“The problem here is that you expect me to think you’re from a TV show.”

She stared for a moment, unable to process this strange new plot twist in her dreams. “I’m not from a TV show. You are.”

The Doctor looked offended. “I am not!”

“Yes, you are,” Molly insisted.

“No, you are!”

“No, you!”

“No, you!” The Doctor closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, we’re not doing that.” He looked at her intently, but she was relieved to see that his eyes were a little wider, a little softer. He pointed to her again. “So, you really believe you’re Molly Quinn, and that she’s a real person?”

“I’m Molly Quinn, so yeah, I’m going with real.”

He pointed to his chest. “And that I’m from a show?”

Molly shrugged. “Actually, I’m saying you’re a dream based on a show, but basically, yeah.”

“Well, I’m very real, I promise,” he responded seriously. But slowly a grin broke out across his face. “I’d make a great one, though. Brilliant, really. It would be the best show ever aired on television. It would be called ‘The Doctor Saves the Universe’ or ‘The Coolest Time Lord’, or something.”

“It’s called Doctor Who.”

The grin immediately disappeared. All levity he’d displayed leaked out of him, less like a leaking faucet than a leaking dam. She could swear the temperature dropped three degrees. This wasn’t the dark and dangerous expression. This was what she’d deemed the Ancient Doctor in her head while she watched the show. In that moment, there was no doubting that he was over a thousand years old.

“Say…that…again.” His voice was barely above a whisper but impossible to miss.

She didn’t want to. Afraid of what would happen next, her whole body tensed, Molly breathed out, “Doctor Who.”

The Doctor rushed forward at her again, but this time she managed not to lean away from him. He stared deep into her eyes, once again looking for something, some way she was a dangerous enemy, and she prayed for only the second time in over a decade that he didn’t find it. Then, slowly, he began to shake his head. “No.” He said solidly, and then spun away from her and repeated with more of a quake in his voice, “No, no, no, no, no, no, no…” Again, he pulled levers and pressed buttons, and words sped by on the monitor so quickly it took her a moment to realize it was in circular Gallifreyan. “I got away from it. I got away. It can’t be back now!”

“Wha-” She stopped herself and tried to think of a better word to express her confusion. “…whomst?” That word choice made her sound like an idiot, but it was too late to take it back now.

“The question. It’s like the crack in the wall,” the Doctor explained quickly, but once again she felt he was explaining it to himself. She may as well have been the rubber duck people used to explain a code to in order to find bugs in the program. “Exploding everywhere in space and time all at once. It must be leaking out to other dimensions, too, other universes.” He spun back around and approached her again, this time taking her shoulders in his hands. “Quickly…in the show, in my show, in Doctor Who - do they ever say my name? My real name?” His eyes held a sharp panic, and a longing for her to give him some relief from it.

She, of course, knew exactly why. “No,” she replied gently, hoping to reassure this strange dream Doctor. “No, they never say it. No one knows what it is. I’m not even sure if the writers do, really.”

His eyes closed and he hung his head with a sigh of relief. His body almost seemed to collapse in on itself as the tension was released. “Good. That’s good.” He let go of her and almost seemed to stagger as he moved back to the monitor. “Do you know what it means? The title?” It was almost too casual, his voice. He didn’t want her to know how important it was, if she didn’t already know.

But she did. “Yeah. It’s from when you went to Christmas, to Trenzalore. The Time Lords were looking for confirmation-”

He turned to her again. A shadow appeared across his face, and then just as suddenly disappeared. He looked tired. “How do you know about all this? Are you from Christmas? Did the church send you? Do you know Clara?”

Molly leaned her hip against the console. The stress was causing her muscles to tense, and the tightness made the scar in her back ache in a way that forced her to notice it again. “I already told you how I know.”

“Right, but how do I know you’re not a trick?” He looked thoughtful, his gaze rising to the top of the TARDIS. He was looking for every possibility, she figured. And as a Time Lord, he must have seen countless. Yet, he searched them all very quickly, and looked at her again two seconds later. “Tell me something they’ve shown on the show that only I would know. There must be something.”

Her eyes widened with surprise. This was the worst trivia night she’d ever been to. How was she supposed to come up with something out of the blue? “Um. Um. I don’t know! There’s been a lot of seasons, and its time travel, it’s hard to keep straight who knows what when,” she explained. She wasn’t surprised to see him nod knowingly, and cross his arms over his chest, waiting. He would know all about how hard it was for humans to keep track of time travel.

She straightened up and began pacing in small circles as her mind raced, her arms still clasped around herself to protect herself from the cold. “Uh. DoctorDonna?” She turned to look at his face, and though there was surprise, she could see it wasn’t enough. She continued pacing, watching her bare feet walk across the cold TARDIS floor. “No. No, Donna’s the only one who doesn’t remember that. I guess Wilf could’ve told me. Um. The crack eating Rory’s existence? Rose meeting you on Bad Wolf beach to say goodbye? The Statue of Liberty as a Weeping Angel? The Journey to the Center of the TARDIS? You and Clara go to the engine room to find out that the TARDIS engine exploded. Big friendly button? No, of course not, Clara remembered that. Maybe Waters of Mars? What’s her name…Adelaide Brook? She asked you to state your name, rank, and intensions. You said ‘Doctor; doctor; fun’. Would anyone have recorded that?”

Molly turned to look at the Doctor’s reaction. He stood, shifting his weight from foot to foot, and she watched his face as he processed this information in record speed. He almost looked proud for a moment, and then confused, concerned, and even afraid, all in quick succession. And then he settled back on pride. He stood straight, ran a hand through his hair. “I’m a TV show,” he said with satisfaction. “I bet it’s a fantastic show. Is it your favorite?”

Molly rolled her eyes. “It was until right about five minutes ago. Don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again after this.”

“Well, yeah, that is a problem,” the Doctor replied, his self-satisfied grin fading a little. “We’ll need to find a way to break back into your universe and drop you off.”

“That’s not the problem!” Exasperated, Molly turned away from him. She tried to stalk off, but was met with a counter of switches a half step later, and growled in frustration. She turned left to move away from him. “I just need to wake up, that’s all I need. This is getting ridiculous. I want to wake up.” She paused, and then began slapping the top of her left hand with her right hard enough to make the sound echo, over and over again.

“Wait, no-” The Doctor dashed around the other side to grab her right hand, preventing another slap. “What are you doing?”

Molly yanked her hand away. “Trying to wake up! This is the worst dream I’ve ever had, and that’s really saying something!” Her words were coming out sharper than she’d intended, but her heart hurt physically and emotionally and it wasn’t as though it mattered if her disappointment showed. He wasn’t real. “I don’t want this stupid dream to taint the Doctor for me, and I’m not letting my dumbass brain ruin my comfort show!”

The Doctor frowned. “Well, one, you’re not asleep, stop saying that,” he said. “Second – why are you so mad about this dream? Why wouldn’t you want to be on the TARDIS? Isn’t meeting me cool?”

“No, meeting you isn’t cool,” she growled. “You’re a jerk who keeps invading my personal space and making threatening faces at me!”

“‘Jerk’?” he repeated, sounding as though his feelings were hurt, and then something seemed to connect. “Oh! Right – of course – I did the - ” His head tilted forward, and the blood-chilling dangerous madman appeared again. But it quickly melted away into a more apologetic expression as he wrung his hands together. “- thing. Sorry. To be fair, I was confused. Fictional characters don’t normally pop up on the TARDIS.”

“Donna did.”

“Well, Donna wasn’t fictional, was she?” The Doctor sighed, exasperated. “And that was supposed to be a once in a lifetime thing - even for my lifetime.”

“Besides that,” Molly continued, placing her hands on her hips, “You’d think that if this was some kind of trick, they’d have given me some actual clothes!”

The Doctor opened his mouth, hesitated, and looked her up and down again. “Oh. Right.” He seemed to be blushing a little as he turned around. “That…might’ve been the most obvious sign. For someone so clever, I can be a bit slow.” He slid his jacket off, pulled the sonic screwdriver out and stuck it in his pants pocket, and then held the jacket out behind him towards her. “Here.”

Without hesitation, she grabbed the jacket and slipped it on. It was one he’d worn around Clara, she remembered, and was made of warm, thick fabric, for which she was grateful. She was starting to see some of her pale skin turn pink with cold. She wrapped the front around her and buttoned it closed. It wasn’t much longer than her shirt, but it made her a bit more modest. “Thanks. It’s safe to turn around now.”

The Doctor turned, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand as though expressing embarrassment. “Sorry about that,” he commented softly. “Bit warmer?”

“Would be a lot warmer if you could wake me up.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes, turned to the TARDIS console, and swiped his finger up something that looked like a mother-of-pearl touchpad. He took a few steps to his right and typed on a square keyboard of pastel rainbow buttons, took another couple steps and wound a crank, and then walked all the way back around to stand behind Molly, and pulled a lever. The whole room shook, and Molly took a step back to keep her balance.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

“I’m tired of the dream thing,” the Doctor announced. “It’s boring.” Molly had just a moment to appreciate the beautiful sound of the TARDIS landing up close when the Doctor grabbed her by the shoulders and started leading her towards the door. She tried to plant her feet, but he was stronger than she was, and had better momentum. When they arrived at the doors, he reached around her and pulled them open. In front of them was a red desert, a white misty wind swirling about the surface. Despite the two suns, the world looked like it was in perpetual twilight, with both suns and stars burning in a red sky at the same time.

“Where are we?” she asked breathlessly.

“Criazaga S3-8. Uninhabited. Breathable atmosphere – just barely,” he added quietly. She stood and stared in wonder at the bright yellow suns, smaller than hers. She tried to absorb the idea that this was an alien planet, that she wasn’t on Earth, that this was a whole world in which no one lived, but the thought of it was too vast to take in all at once. She felt as though she didn’t have the tools to grasp the concept of it. At least it was a dream, and she wasn’t missing much if she didn’t memorize this feeling. Still, it was the closest she’d ever come to actually standing on an alien planet.

“Okay,” said the Doctor after a moment of silence. “Off you pop.” And he began shoving her forward.

Molly shrieked and grabbed each side of the door, digging her heels into the ground and leaning as far back against him as she could. “What are you doing?! Stop it!”

“I told you, I’m tired of the dream thing. I’m dropping you off.” He pushed a little harder.

Molly’s eyes were wide with panic, her heart pounding painfully. No, no, no! “You can’t do this! You can’t just leave me here!” The beautiful expanse of empty planet went very quickly from a wonder to a terror. “No! Stop! I’ll die!” She couldn’t die here, she couldn’t! She’d promised!

“What’s it matter, if you’re dreaming?”

Her body realized the truth before her mind did. She gasped hard, her arms dropped, her knees grew weak and failed, and she pitched forward from the pressure of the Doctor’s shoves. As she began falling into the red expanse, she felt his arms wrap quickly around her middle and pull her back into the TARDIS. She wanted to pull away immediately, but had to take a moment to get enough air in her lungs to make her body move.

Finally, she spun away from the alien planet to face the actual alien, and stare for a few seconds with wide eyes.

“Oh, my stars,” she breathed. “This is-”

“Yeah.” The Doctor was smiling.

“You’re-”

“Yeah.”

“Real!”

The Doctor’s smile widened and he spread his arms out and gestured towards her with excitement. “So are you!”

“No! I’m not!” When the Doctor tilted his head with confusion, Molly paused and rethought her words. “No, I mean, I am. But I’m not – I can’t be – I’m not a fictional character on a TV show!”

The Doctor dropped his arms, and it almost seemed as though he was pouting. “Okay, I might really leave you here.” But as he turned and walked away, he snapped and the TARDIS doors behind her closed.

Molly half-jogged to catch up with the Doctor despite the pain it caused her, who was already punching more buttons. He swung the monitor around to face her, and stepped out of the way.

And there – on screen – was her. Or, someone who looked exactly like her, saying some very familiar things.

The actress was lying on a bed – her bed from New York – wriggling to get comfortable on it as she groaned, holding a phone to her ear. “Aunt Loren was at that wedding?”

A man appeared on the screen, tall, with sharp features and pale blond hair, wearing the same boring suit any boring banker would wear, pouring a cup of coffee in his kitchen with a pile of mail beside him. He looked an awful lot like Aiden. “Yeah. She’s pissed. Wants to uninvite you for Thanksgiving.”

“Tragedy,” the actress muttered, the word muted over the phone.

The actor playing Aiden scoffed. “What happened?”

It cut back to her bedroom. “Someone was following me,” The other Molly muttered into the phone as she pressed it tightly against her ear. “Again.”

“Did you deserve it?”

“I might’ve,” she said casually. “But you’re my cousin, you’re supposed to be on my side.”

Molly was breathless as she watched her life play out before her. She remembered it all well, for it being such a long time ago. She even remembered the blanket scrunched up under her back.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I believe you.” She paused a moment, narrowing her eyes. “Wow. I really am, like, properly pretty.”

The Doctor took a breath, held still for a moment, and then sighed. “Oh,” he began with disgust, and switched the monitor off. “What’s with you lot and always flirting with yourselves?”

“Like you never did that.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

“Because – because it is!” The Doctor turned and leaned back against the console, and folded his arms. “Anyway, we’ve more important things to think about.”

“Like?”

“Like – like – like how you got here!” His voice suggested she was an idiot for not thinking of it. To be fair, she probably was. “And how we get you back.”

“And why I’m here,” Molly added. She turned to her side, leaning her hip against the TARDIS so she could face him, and relieve some of the pressure in her spine.

He glanced at her. “What do you mean, why? There isn’t always a why.”

“Yes, there is,” she said, her voice now implying his own idiocy. “Think about it. Whenever something this weird happens, has there ever not been a reason?”

The Doctor looked over the top of her head as he searched his memory. “Well…this one time…or when…” he frowned, and then smiled and looked back down at her. “Okay. Also why.”

Something in Molly’s brain clicked into place, and slowly, she started grinning. “Wait. Wait. The TARDIS is real.”

The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Yes, yes, we’ve already established that.”

“No, I mean…” but Molly couldn’t quite put it into words. Instead, she slowly began walking around the console, looking for blank space. She settled on a spot between sections of controls. She put both palms flat down on the surface, and looked back up at the swirling blue light.

“Hi there,” she greeted, aware her voice was friendlier than it had been since she’d woken up. “I’m Molly. Molly Quinn. You know that already, but it’s only polite to introduce myself properly.” She glanced at the Doctor, who was watching her with curiosity, and almost anticipation. She smirked, and lowered her voice, though not so much the Doctor wouldn’t be able to hear. “You’re actually everyone’s favorite character, you know. You have way more merch than everyone else combined.”

The Doctor looked offended. “Oi! I’m the one that does all the interesting stuff!”

Immediately, Molly heard a switch flip on the other side, and the floor began to rumble, and again Molly gripped the console tighter for balance. Evidently, that had been the wrong thing to say.

For a moment, Molly closed her eyes and relished that beloved sound of the TARDIS. Then, as she thought about spinning through time and/or space, she felt lightheaded and sick. Hurtling through some time vortex or Tipler cylinder was one of the scariest things she could think of. While physically fine, she still suddenly felt like she was in the front seat of a rollercoaster with a hundred loops and no seatbelt.

But the TARDIS came to a standstill soon enough. She tried to catch the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and took her hands off the console before the Doctor could notice her fingers had turned white with how hard she’d been trying to grip the flat surface.

“Well, let’s see where you took us, showoff,” the Doctor grumbled, and headed for the door. Molly moved after him, until he threw the doors open and all she could see was stars. She immediately stopped moving.

“Ah, yes, of course,” the Doctor said, looking out at something hidden below them. He turned to face Molly. “Come on, then. Let her show off for you.”

Molly tried to take a step forward, and found she felt she was as frozen as stone. “Uh, can’t.”

“What do you mean, ‘can’t’? Come take a look.”

Molly shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t move.”

A concerned expression on his face, the Doctor approached, pulling the sonic out of his pocket. “What do you mean, you can’t move? Are you hurt? Trapped somehow?”

“I guess the show never mentioned.”

“Never mentioned what?”

“I am fucking terrified of space,” Molly confessed.

Now the Doctor froze. “…of space?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re terrified of space?” he asked again, incredulously.

“Yep.”

The Doctor tucked the sonic screwdriver back into his pocket. “You realize the TARDIS is a spaceship?”

“Yes.”

“‘Time And Relative Dimension In Space’,” the Doctor said. “That includes the word ‘space’.”

“I am aware.”

“Well,” the Doctor began, sounding frustrated, and gesturing to her bare feet glued to the floor. “You can’t just stand there, you’ll insult her.”

Molly swallowed. “I am willing to risk that.”

“I’m not,” argued the Doctor. He glanced back at the pillar of light that essentially was the TARDIS. When he spoke next, his voice was softer than she’d heard it since she’d arrived, full of a kind of gentle encouragement. “Alright. We’ll do this together. One step at a time.” He reached out and offered her his hand.

There it was. The dream, the dream probably every fan had. The Doctor extending a hand out to them to show them something incredible. Her heart fluttered in her chest, this time without pain. She hated to admit it, but sitting in front of the TV in one foster home and then another and then another, she’d longed for it so much she’d almost prayed for it. The longing had followed her into adulthood for a while, and grew more painful in its intensity whenever she’d met a failure. The image of the Doctor reaching a hand out to her – first Eight, then Nine, then Ten, then Eleven - had been her safe place as much as the show itself had been. And here it was in front of her. How could she say no?

But the terror still won out, until she looked up into his eyes. The gentle encouragement in his voice was there tenfold, and he had a small smile on his lips. He seemed genuinely excited to show the stars to her.

She drew in a slow, deep breath, and closed her eyes. There had been tears building in her eyes that she hadn’t noticed, and at the closing of her lids one had escaped. She didn’t bother to wipe it away, and instead opened her eyes and took his hand with her left.

“Okay,” she breathed. “But very, very slowly. Please.”

As his hand closed around hers, she shivered, from the cold of his touch in combination with the cold in the room, yes, but most of all from the solidification of what she’d dreamed for since she was thirteen, and ready to start learning to be a person again.

“Of course, Molly,” he agreed. “At your pace.”

“My pace is not at all,” she reminded him. “So maybe at yours.”

He nodded, smiling. “Okay. Okay. One step at a time,” he repeated softly. He took a step back, but she found she wasn’t able to take one forward. He took another, and her arm was extended as far as it could go, but still, she couldn’t move. “You’re going to have to come with me, a bit,” he reminded her. She nodded, and managed to inch her foot forward. She took another deep breath, and forced her to lift her leg and take a proper step. “Good. Let’s do another one.”

Trembling, Molly took another step. He took another step back, and she took another forward. She found it was easier to keep walking when she looked in his eyes, not at the ground, or at the terrifying expanse of void behind him.

Oh. She shouldn’t have thought about the void. A little over halfway there, her legs went still again, her knees locked. Her eyes stared past his head at the black and stars ahead, so much more threatening now that they weren’t on a TV screen while her father watched his astronomy documentaries.

“Molly…Molly, look at me, not at the door,” the Doctor urged her.

Molly shook her head. “I can’t. I really can’t.”

“You can,” he insisted. She could see him bend over a little, trying to catch her gaze again, but when it failed, he stood straight. “Tell me what you find so terrifying about space.”

“Floating through the void,” she replied, her voice low. “If you’re buried alive, you can dig. If you’re drowning, you can kick. But once you’re free floating out in space, there is nothing you can do. No way you can fight. You just suffocate and freeze and float slowly away, forever. Helpless.”

“The TARDIS has shields that protect us,” he explained. “We’d have already been sucked out into the vacuum otherwise.” He seemed to realize what he’d said and winced. “Sorry. But it’s true. You are perfectly safe.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Even if it’s never once failed, that doesn’t mean it never will. You should know that better than anyone. And all my brain can think is - if it’s never happened yet, then it’s due.”

She could see the Doctor thinking out of the corner of her eye, but all she heard was the roaring of space. If it was really audible or not didn’t matter, it filled her ears and eyes and soul nonetheless.

“Hey. Look at me.” Looking away from the void to the Doctor as he’d asked was one of the most difficult things she’d ever accomplished. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you. I’ll walk behind you and hold on to your shoulders. Even if the shields fail – which they won’t – I’ll be holding on to you and I’ll pull us both back in time. I promise.” He searched her eyes, though what for she didn’t know. “The TARDIS wants you to see this. Believe me, it’s beautiful.”

Molly took a ragged breath and blinked away the tears blurring his face. “Alright. Let’s do it.”

He released her hand and moved around her, and gently placed a hand on each shoulder. Slowly, he moved her forward. She wanted to keep her eyes closed until they were there, but was scared of accidentally stepping over the edge. So she watched as her fear slowly approached.

At last, they reached the TARDIS doors. She kept her eyes locked on one star opposite them, not willing to look around, feeling as though she might slip and fall if she did.

“Okay. Look down.”

“Nope.”

“It’s okay,” said the Doctor, and he squeezed her shoulders reassuringly. “I’ve got you.”

She made a deep whining noise, but slowly forced her gaze downward. And then all the breath left her all at once, and the reason for her dizziness went from terror to the dancing of stars in her eyes.

Yes, there were thousands upon thousands of stars. There were so many of them she felt as though the space below her should be made of solid starlight, but still there managed to be a background of darkest black, making the stars seem even brighter. But it wasn’t the stars that made her feel as though she could never hope to see something so beautiful again. It was the swirl of shimmering colors before her that looked as though they were shining through a gap in the universe, shifting from a robin’s egg blue to a mix of pink and purple that put a million sunsets to shame. Lines of gold shifted through them, like little flowing streams, and in the center of it all was something that looked like a delicate, iridescent bubble. But most awe-inspiring of all was the layer of something glittering over the top, reminding her of a thin sheet of ice with fresh snow dusted over the top, sparkling underneath lamplight. Despite herself, part of her wanted to fall into it.

“The Polychrome nebula,” the Doctor whispered in her ear, a tone of reverence in his voice. “Humanity won’t discover it for another few thousand years, but it’s been here since before your planet was born. You see what looks like glitter spilled over the top of it?” She nodded, feeling his cheek against her hair. “Diamonds, millions and millions of diamonds from two meteorites that collided here. It’s a nebula covered in diamonds.” He wasn’t able to keep the excitement from his voice now. She probably wouldn’t have been able to, either, if she could speak.

It was overwhelming. Looking down on something human eyes had never seen, the most incredible thing she would ever see in all her life. She felt like she was floating. A laugh of delight started to build in her chest.

“What are you thinking?” asked the Doctor.

She didn’t even bother attempting to filter her thoughts, or to escape the embarrassment of them. She couldn’t while filled with so much awe. “I can’t believe that the TARDIS and the Doctor are showing me something amazing. The most amazing thing I’ll ever see.”

She heard the Doctor chuckle. “I can’t believe I’m showing Molly Quinn something amazing.” She laughed at the absurdity of the idea that the Doctor felt anything like she did at that moment, but rather than sad, the mirth was light.

He continued, “But who said we’re stopping here?”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Three

Extraordinary Ordinary

Molly felt the Doctor pull back, slowly letting go of her shoulders. For a moment she felt like she was freefalling, the colors whirling around beneath her. But her vision settled, and she felt more on solid ground. After a moment of trying to keep the image imprinted in her memory forever, she turned her head. The Doctor was already back at the controls, messing around with gears and buttons. She turned back, said a silent goodbye to the Polychrome nebula, and shut the door. She walked back towards him.

“So,” the Doctor began. “Where to next?”

“I thought we were trying to figure out how I got here and how to get me back,” Molly reminded him.

The Doctor glanced up. “Plenty of time for that. I’ve already got the TARDIS working on your scans and trying to track the path you took through universes. In the meantime – where to next?”

Molly shivered. “The wardrobe.”

He looked confused for a moment, and then his eyes went wide. “Ah. Right.”

She wrapped her arms around herself again. “It’s completely freezing in here. How can you stand it?”

The Doctor walked away from the controls and motioned for Molly to follow him up the stairs. “It’s comfortable. It’s you lot that like to keep the TARDIS sweltering.”

Molly followed, and hid the pain in her spine with each step upward with a smile. “Oh, right, Time Lord physiology,” she commented, more to herself. “I forgot you run so much colder than we do.”

“They discussed my physiology?” he asked as they began down a corridor. “Please tell me my show isn’t that boring.”

“It’s been on for about sixty years, they’ve talked about a lot of things.”

“Sixty years?” he asked incredulously. After a moment, he continued. “That makes sense, actually. I’ve been around a long time, and the number of adventures I’ve had could probably add another four or five hundred years to the series.”

She looked over at him. “How long was mine on, before it got cancelled?”

“It only made it to series three,” he explained, sounding disappointed. “The actress won an award for it, and she got offers to do some big films, so she quit.” He glanced over at her. “I’m still not over it.”

“So…” Molly started speaking before she even fully realized what she was going to say. It was starting to sink in that he’d watched her life, just like she’d watched his. “You must know almost as much about me and I know about you.”

“I wouldn’t say so,” said the Doctor. “I doubt either of our shows really portrayed us in our entirety.”

Molly stopped walking, cold filling her stomach that wasn’t from the low temperature. “But you know.”

“Know what?” The Doctor took a few more steps before he realized she wasn’t following, then paused and turned back halfway to look at her. “About the names?”

Her heart sank. She swallowed hard, fighting to keep herself from crying again. “Yeah,” she whispered, her throat tight. “About the names.” She had never imagined she would have to worry about the comfort character she idolized knowing the secret behind the names, that he would know what they meant to her, that he would know the awful, horrific truth about her. She didn’t want him to know. With all her soul, she didn’t want him to know that about her.

He took a few steps towards her. He seemed to realize that she desperately hoped he didn’t know. “I don’t,” he said.

“You’re lying,” she accused. “Rule number one, the Doctor lies. There is no way there could have been a whole show about me and they didn’t show it.”

“They didn’t,” he reassured her. “I’m not lying, I promise. It was one of the big mysteries of the show. It was cancelled before they ever revealed it. I hated not knowing – I always hate not knowing – so I tried bribing the writers. They refused to tell me. Said something about artistic integrity that honestly, I wasn’t paying attention to.” He paused. “If you like, you can watch the whole thing and see for yourself. But I swear, I don’t know what the names mean.”

She couldn’t be certain he was telling the truth, but the mild frustration in his voice helped her feel secure in the thought that he hadn’t been able to solve the mystery. The promise of being able to check for herself was further reassurance. Warm relief flooded her. “Okay. Okay. Good.” She continued onward, and the Doctor followed beside her.

After a moment, the Doctor cried out, “Oh!” and snapped his fingers as he jumped in front of her, facing her while walking backward. “Question, big question, big, important question!”

“What?”

“What do people think about the bowtie?” he asked, reaching up to straighten it again. “Do they think it’s cool?”

Molly remembered the intimidating faces he’d given her, the sharp way he’d spoken when she’d first arrived, his hands shoving her onto a deserted planet as he pretended to leave her for dead. “No.”

She felt a little vindicated as his face fell. “What? Really?”

“Really.” But a second later she realized she couldn’t take the sad, frustrated eyes. “I’m messing with you. Everyone loves the bowtie. Bowties are, indeed, cool.” She paused. “Actually, come to think of it, I’m pretty sure you’re the one that made them cool.”

“Of course I did,” he said with a grin, and turned through a door to her left. She followed him into what had to be a wardrobe the actual size of Narnia. Endless rows of clothes surrounded her, almost like a department store. In fact, like a department store, there were signs: Earth 1560’s Women’s, Galomora 5 Religious Robes, Universal 1980s Fancy Dress, a whole section for bowties. Upstairs there were rows of hats, bags, scarves, jewelry. She spotted a fez under glass.

“Huh. It wasn’t like this last time I was here,” the Doctor said, glancing around. “Guess she got bored and reorganized.”

Molly looked around, feeling both lost and excited. A stroll through would be fun, especially through the historical or alien sections, but mostly she just wanted some pants on. She spotted ‘Earth 2020s Women’s’ about twenty feet away and headed in that direction. The Doctor followed her.

“By the way, good thinking, flattering the TARDIS like that,” he said. “Flattery will get you everywhere with her.”

“Flattery?” she turned to look at him with a confused expression. “I was telling the truth. She’s got more fans than any single version of you.”

The Doctor looked a little hurt. “Well, you might’ve lied to spare my feelings,” he said. “Flattery will get you everywhere with me, too, you know.”

“Oh, don’t I,” she breathed. But as she arrived at the racks of clothes that felt like home, she began to feel a strange lightheadedness, attached to the idea of making a good impression on the Doctor. She began looking through racks for something that would fit both her body and her personality, and looked up to steal looks at the Doctor, who’d gone to the other side where a selection of astronaut clothing from different times and different planets hung, holding one up to himself to see how it looked.

Oh. The Doctor was right there. Not just any Doctor, her Doctor. She’d stared at his face on a screen for hours, almost obsessing over his gestures and speech patterns. She’d thought Matt Smith was a genius, so easily going from a childlike Doctor to a self-loathing Doctor to an ancient Doctor, that the writers who created his dialogue had been so brilliant with his cleverness and his speeches and the lessons they taught about coping with trauma and self-worth and love. But this wasn’t an actor, this wasn’t a writer – this was the character himself, a real, live person who had actually done and said all of those things. She had been so focused on processing that it was all real, that she had forgotten to process exactly who it was she was standing next to, talking to.

She had met Matt Smith once, at a convention. Took a picture with him and Karen Gillian. She’d promised herself she’d be cool, she wasn’t the type to get starry-eyed and ditzy just because someone was famous, that she knew they were just people. But the moment she’d stepped up to them, the air around her seemed to buzz with an electric energy – an electric, nervous energy. She’d felt lightheaded, like she did now. Everything had become one big blur, and she still couldn’t remember anything she’d said, but she did, sadly, remember accidentally waving hello three different times.

That was nothing compared to this. That was a pebble compared to a mountain. This wasn’t just a person, just an actor doing their job, this was the actual person she’d actually loved. The one she had adored watching every frame of.

“What? Is there something on my face?” the Doctor asked, wiping a hand over his cheek and looking to see if there was anything he’d swept away. Molly realized she’d stopped looking through clothes and had begun to just stand and stare with wide eyes. She realized they were dry from staring and blinked a few times, and forced herself to look down at the clothes.

“Oh. Nothing. Nothing. There’s nothing. It’s nothing. Absolutely nothing.” That was two or three too many ‘nothings’. It was the waves all over again.

“Oh, nothing, is it? Nothing at all?” She wasn’t looking at him, but could sense his sardonic expression. “Is that why you’ve said ‘nothing’ five times in a row?”

She sighed and looked back up at him. “I did say I was a bad liar, didn’t I?”

“You did mention it, yeah.”

Now she was looking at him again, she felt that star-struck idiocy sinking in again, and couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of him. Or blink, for that matter.

The Doctor started to look uncomfortable. “Okay, you can explain any time now.”

“Sorry,” she apologized, and looked back down at the rack. This was going to be easier without eye contact. “It’s just…now that I’ve started absorbing that this is actually, really happening, I’m starting to feel a little…” and she lowered her voice enough that she wasn’t even able to hear the word herself. 

“What was that last bit?”

“Star-struck,” she mumbled it again.

“Sorry, again?”

Molly rolled her eyes and looked back up at him. “Star-struck, okay? I’m feeling a bit star-struck. Leave me alone, I’m allowed.”

He seemed surprised. “Are you really?” Then he seemed to think better of the surprise. “Well, of course you are. I’m awesome. Very star-struck…able.” He frowned at the last bit ending not quite the way he’d expected.

She stared at him again for a moment. “…and now I’m over it,” she said. “Thanks for that.”

He pouted. “Well…I…” Then he sighed and turned around to look through the row of what seemed to be firefighter clothing. Molly turned back to her own search so he wouldn’t see the lie in her eyes. Finally, she spotted a pair of black leggings of thick material and an oversized dark green long-sleeved top that would work perfectly in the chill of the TARDIS. She’d need some shoes, but it was a good start. A heaviness about her lids, though, told her she might need to consider asking for a bed before changing out of her bed clothes.

But suddenly, the Doctor was at her side, looking frustrated with her.

“Oi,” he said, his voice holding a note of accusation. “Now you’ve got me all – all star-struck!”

Molly stared a moment. Somehow this was harder to process than almost anything else that had happened. “…over me?”

“Yes, yes, who else do you see here, Queen Victoria?” He paused. “Actually, met her already, never did get star-struck. Lovely woman, though. Hosts an excellent tea.”

She felt like a computer that needed rebooted. “…me?”

“Yes, you!”

“Why in the world would you be star-struck over me?”

“Well – well – why wouldn’t I?” He lifted an arm and tried to lean on the rack of clothing beside him, but the hangers shifted with his weight, causing him to slip and stumble little. He moved his arm higher, and it failed again, so he folded his arms across his chest as though he’d always meant to do that. “I told you, you’re my favorite show. I’ve watched the whole thing at least forty-six times. Probably more.”

She pulled the jeans and shirt off the hangers. “You can’t be serious. Why would anyone want to watch my life forty times? It can’t be that interesting.”

“Are you joking?” the Doctor asked, skeptically. “You’re clever and funny and daring, and determined to put good into the world, even if it gets you in trouble. Especially if it gets you in trouble. You enjoy trouble. Just what I like in a person.” He smiled. “I’m a fan. Big fan. Huge fan.”

She glanced over at him, raising her eyebrows. “Lots of compliments there. Did you ever say ‘yowza’ while watching my show?” she joked.

He almost looked offended. “No. Yes. I prefer not the answer that.”

She laughed at the absurdity of that ever happening, and turned to walk towards the stairs. “Well, those are all just compliments about me, and while I’m grateful, there’s got to be more to the show than just how awesome I am.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment as she started up the stairs. “Actually, thinking about it, we may be a bit alike, you and I.”

Molly wanted to object, and then realized that they’d both called themselves ‘awesome’ in the space of a few minutes. Okay, in that way, maybe he was right. “I mean, it makes sense why I’ve watched your show a hundred times,” she said. She paused, turning to look to him as she spoke, hoping he didn’t notice it was actually to take a break from the spinal pain. “It’s not just the running around and getting into trouble, and helping people, and getting out of trouble again, or even the saving the universe part. It’s just…feeling like we’re seeing new planets and the future and the past along with you. It’s a taste of freedom we’ll never experience. Most people will be trapped working for most of the day, most of the week, most of the year, most of their lives, and still never have the money or time to go and see new things and have new experiences and make memories. But watching the show, we get to experience it all second hand, the wonder of it all, everything that almost feels like magic.” She paused, trying to put it all into words rather than the rush of feelings she always experienced. “And it’s the…the…well, you know, you’ve given those speeches. The reminders that we’re each unique in the universe, that we have worth even when we don’t feel like it, that it’s more important to be kind than powerful or smart or brave. That you don’t have to have an amazing life to be someone amazing. It’s all so important.”  And then she realized exactly who she was saying this to, and turned to keep walking to hide her blush. For a moment she’d felt like she was just talking to another fan, not describing the Doctor’s life in passionate terms to the Doctor himself.

She continued up the stairs and felt herself leaving the Doctor behind. Maybe he needed a moment to process the emotions about his life she’d just gushed like a moron. But after a moment he called, “So, it is your favorite show.”

Molly turned, giving a playful, irritated look. “Shut up.” But she knew the Doctor well, and she knew that tone. He was overwhelmed with some emotion, and hiding it with humor. She thought about giving him another moment, and then decided changing the subject would probably make him more comfortable. It would make her more comfortable, anyway. “What’s my life compared to all that? No real family, no real friends. Everything I do is on such a small scale it’s barely noticeable. No adventures, no decent romances, and my mental health is shit so I doubt there’s been any big, inspiring speeches. Not that I recall giving any, anyway.” She started looking for a pair of shoes that would fit her small feet. “I might be funny, and clever, and pretty, and yes, I want to make the world a better place – but that’s all I am. Characteristics and wants, not anything real, solid. I’m all surface.” She said none of this with self-pity. It was all just fact. She was a surface person with nothing going on deep below but pain, and nothing sent out into the world but bits and pieces of dreams. “I’m surprised it even made it three seasons. What’s there to win an award for, anyway?”

When he didn’t answer, Molly stopped to look at him. He was still standing a couple of feet behind her. Even having studied each moment of him over and over again, she wasn’t sure she could read this expression. Surprise? Sadness? Concern? Suspicion? It was like there was a fog between them. She supposed to was true: the shows hadn’t portrayed them both in their entirety. Otherwise, she’d be able to read him like a book.

“Do you really feel that way, Molly? That you’re…superficial?”

She shrugged and turned back to the shoe rack. “That’s a good word for it. Superficial.”

“Molly.”

His tone shot a warning through her body, a sharpness. It was the sort of gentle kindness in his voice. And gentle empathy always made her cry, which made her feel that she would never stop crying.

“No, thank you,” she replied. She spotted a pair of black combat boots on the bottom shelf and picked them up. She’d been a heels girl before the spinal injury, but found that boots suited her better now.

“Molly.” His voice was insistent now. She still tried to ignore him, but he approached, took the clothes and shoes out of her hands, and put them on the top shelf of the rack. “Is that really all you see when you look at yourself, at your life?”

“I don’t know what other idea the show gave you, but that’s my life, Doctor. That’s what it is.”

He shook his head. “That’s not at all what was on the show,” he said, his voice soft. “Yes, your wit and your humor make it more fun. But it’s not the fun, not the mysteries you solve or the great big question mark of your past that made people watch. At its heart, it’s a story about a woman who took all her pain and turned it into something good. It’s a testament, that small acts of kindness and everyday heroism are what matter most. You may not be saving worlds, but you’re saving people. The regular, ordinary people who fill the Earth, and ordinary is important, ordinary is beautiful. You don’t have to blow up Cyberships or talk down parasite gods the size of a sun to be important, to be a hero. You can help a small charity raising money to pay hospital bills for children with a rare disorder become successful, decry the destruction of the planet by forcing a company to change its waste disposal habits, give the homeless a safe place to sleep, help a lost child find their mother. And that’s not touching on the bigger things you did – forcing a corrupt businessman to donate his profits back to the people he hurt, helping to create a free clinic by tricking investors into a meeting, trying to stop a politician from gaining power while connected to organized crime, volunteering for disaster relief efforts. Those seemingly little acts of compassion, the determination to make things better a little at a time, can mean so much more than you believe. It’s kindness and courage and being willing to sacrifice for what’s right that makes a person a hero. A thousand small acts that change the world…it’s the most human thing I can think of.”

There it was. One of his speeches that she so loved. And it was directed towards her. It was too much to take in. She wanted to, but she couldn’t. The idea of her Doctor comforting her, the meaningful speech, those were overwhelming, yes, but she also felt the wall go up that protected her from anyone trying to make her feel better about herself and her life. Letting those words pierce it felt like it would make her break. She couldn’t break here.

She gave a weak smile. “You don’t have to talk like that to comfort me.”

He frowned, and placed his arm on top of a shelf to lean against it. “And what would you say if your favorite character talked about themselves and their life like that?”

Molly opened her mouth to argue that she wasn’t his favorite character, she couldn’t be, so it wasn’t the same thing. But she didn’t want to invite more of this conversation, so instead she said, “Don’t be silly. The TARDIS doesn’t talk.” But all he did was stare at her with expectant eyes, still waiting for a real answer. She made another attempt to make things light again. “Okay, okay. You’re my favorite character. Of all time,” she said. She decided to leave out just how much he’d mattered to her. “Happy?”

“Are you?” The Doctor asked. “Happy? At all?” He leaned his torso towards her a little. “I don’t mean now, here, on the TARDIS. I mean in your life. You don’t seem to be.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not drowning in sorrow, if that’s what you mean. I enjoy myself. I have fun. I laugh.”

“But that’s not what I mean,” he said earnestly. “I mean…are you happy?”

Molly sighed, and wished for an ‘eject’ button for this conversation. These were the kinds of things she didn’t enjoy talking about. She liked being perceived as a happy person. And she wasn’t lying about enjoying her life, as small and empty as it was. But she also had scars on scars and secrets locked in boxes deep in the dark that she fought against every time they tried to seep out. How to explain that she was the happiest unhappy person she could think of…other than him?

“Honestly,” she said, finally, accepting that he wouldn’t let it go, “I don’t remember being happy in my life, ever. Not since I was twelve. I was too focused on surviving and being strong to worry about being happy. There were moments of happiness, of course, everyone has those. But just a generally happy life? Really, truly happy, as a baseline? I don’t know what that means. I don’t even know if it’s real.”

A gloom seemed to settle on him, along with a desire to investigate. The Doctor tried to search her eyes for answers about who she was again. “What happened to you to make you feel this sad?”

“I’m not sad,” she argued.

“You are,” he said. He hesitated a moment. “What do the names mean, Molly?”

She drew in a sharp breath, and then leaned in closer to him. “So, what about you, Doctor? Are you happy?” Her voice was harsher than she’d meant it to be, but she needed him to stop asking questions.

Molly didn’t need him to reply out loud. She saw in the wince around his eyes that his answer was the same as hers: no.

She seized the clothes and shoes from off the shelf. “Okay, so. Any chance you have any canes around here?” She asked, and began walking again.

“Canes?” he asked, sounding confused. She was grateful that the empathy was gone from his voice.

“Yeah,” Molly said. She supposed it was time to admit her weakness. “The gunshot caused some spinal damage. Sometimes I need a little help walking.” She looked beside her at him as he caught up. “Or did they show that in the series?”

“It was the last thing that happened. The screen went dark and the gun went off,” he explained. “It’s one of the things I tried to talk to the writers about, whether or not you survived. They told me that since the show was from your perspective, and the show was cancelled after you were shot, it meant that you’d died, so there was no story to continue. Very glad that wasn’t accurate.”

She held fingers to her neck to feel for her pulse. “Nope. Not dead. Not that I’ve noticed, anyway,” she said. “So? Canes?”

The Doctor pointed to a sign to her right, and she began off in that direction, grabbing a pair of socks at the end of the shelving. “I suppose we ought to find out where we are in each other’s timelines,” he said.

“Right,” she agreed. She reached a rack and glanced through them. Nothing too flashy. “Well, mine is pretty straightforward. I survived the attempted murder, went through multiple surgeries the following three or so months, and then went to a sort of hospital/physical therapy rehab for about seven months. Two weeks after I was released, I packed a bag, changed my identity again to Alice Liddell, and ran for London. I went to bed my first night, and woke up here.” She turned to him. “That’s about it. That’s where I am.”

“Alice Liddell? Alice in Wonderland?” he asked. “You did read that in an episode once.”

“Alice in Wonderland was always one of my favorite books.” She smiled. “I guess I’ve always had a thing for stories about running off to strange new worlds.” 

“Me, too.”

“‘Course you would.” Molly pulled out a cherrywood cane with a pretty grain pattern. “Anyway, where are you? I’m really confused by it. You seemed to know about Christmas, but you can’t have passed that point and still be…well, you. Unless you were just going along with it, which does sound like you.”

“No, I wasn’t just going along with i – wait, what do you mean I can’t be me?” He stood beside her now. “What’s wrong with being me?

She turned to look at him, her blue eyes showing her confusion. “I mean…you regenerated.”

“Yeah. Whole new regeneration cycle. I recall.”

“So…” She waited for him to grasp the obvious. “So, where’s the new face?”

The Doctor seemed even more confused. “No new face. Did they not show me after the regeneration?”

“No, they did,” she said. “There was the reset, and then the full regeneration.”

“Full regeneration? What do you mean?” Lines appeared between his brows as he tried to understand. “I fully regenerated. I even took out a Dalek fleet with the energy. It was so awesome – did they really not show it?” He sounded disappointed.

Molly shifted her new clothes to her other arm. “They showed that. It was amazing. But then you regenerated.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “I regenerated twice?”

“No, a reset and then a regeneration.” She paused. “…did you not?”

The Doctor gestured to himself. “Obviously.”

“Huh. I guess the shows sometimes deviate from what really happened. I wonder what changed in mine,” she said, as she hiked the clothes further up her hip. “What really happened?”

He rubbed his hands together. “Well. I regenerated into myself, again, it’s happened before, don’t know if they showed that. Christmas was saved, then Clara’s Christmas dinner. I left Clara there, went off and had some adventures of my own. Last one was saving the Ood from some nasty Sontarans. Did they show that?”

Molly shook her head. “No. After you was the twelfth Doctor, and he had one season filmed before it was put on hiatus a couple years back, and it never aired. It’s not fully cancelled, they’re still planning on coming back, but there was a huge strike by the writers and actors and editors that went on for a year, and it’s taken another to finish up new contracts and write up new scripts and figure out new budgets and prepare for another season. So anything after Christmas probably never actually happened in the show.”

“Who played the next Doctor?”

“Peter Capaldi.”

“Don’t know him.”

She searched her memory. “Um, you met someone who looked like him once, in Pompeii. Lobus Caecilius, I think? They reused the actor.”

The Doctor’s face dropped. “I got old?”

Molly tried not to laugh. “Yeah.”

“Hope that doesn’t really happen,” he scoffed, but then gently took the clothes from her arms. “Come on, I’ll take you somewhere you can change.”

“Thanks,” she said. “But is there any chance you can take me to a bed?”

The Doctor froze, and turned toward her with an embarrassed, weirded-out expression. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but-”

She cut him off. “Doctor. It’s the middle of the night.”

“No, it’s not, there’s no day and night cycle here.”

Molly shook her head. “No, I mean for me. It’s the middle of the night for me. I feel like I must have only slept two or three hours, it’s got to be like, three am for me – I mean, sleep-wise. And that’s on top of the jet lag, and I didn’t sleep much the night before I left because of the anxiety.” Of knowing she was going to leave Isla behind without a word.

“Oh,” he said, finally understanding. “Oh, yes, of course. You woke up here. You’ll need more sleep.” He motioned for her to follow. “Yeah, I’ll get you a room.”

“Thanks,” she said. She followed him back down the stairs, grateful for the cane though it slowed them both down. As they made their way down the corridor, the Doctor made a ‘hmm’ sound.

She turned her head towards him. “Sorry I’m a little slow moving.”

He waved a dismissive hand. “No, it’s not that, that’s fine,” he said, his voice sounding distracted.

“What is it, then?”

He was silent for a moment, and she watched as the gears turned in his head. “There’s something about my show being called ‘Doctor Who’ that’s bothering me. I’m not sure quite what it is.” He was silent for a moment longer, but couldn’t seem to reach the information he wanted. He looked over at her with a confident smile. “It’ll come to me.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Four

Pain and Healing

They stopped inside the control room again. Molly looked around, confused. “I thought there was a bed somewhere on the TARDIS? I’m not sleeping on the floor again.”

“No, no,” the Doctor shook his head. He punched a few buttons. “New room, coming right up.”

Molly frowned, taking a few steps closer. “New room?” She paused. “I thought only frequent flyers got rooms?”

“Well…you’re about to be one, aren’t you?” the Doctor asked. She thought she heard a touch of hope in his voice.

“I mean…we never discussed it.” Molly walked up to the main console to stand next to him, and leaned against it again. “If finding my way home took a long time. Whether I was going to stay here, or you’d drop me off on Earth somewhere.”

The Doctor frowned. “Why would I do that? Where would you go? You don’t technically exist,” he reminded her. “Besides, people would mistake you for Lydia Hart. Can’t have two Lydia Harts running around, can we?”

Molly smiled a little. “I guess.” She hadn’t really thought about it – there hadn’t really been time - but now she realized she’d been afraid he wouldn’t want her on the TARDIS for long, that either he’d set her up on Earth or some kind of interplanetary hotel. He hadn’t chosen her, after all. He’d gotten stuck with her. But now, thinking about getting to stay and travel with the Doctor…it made her dizzy thinking about the absolutely incredible things that might happen. She might get to be a real, actual, capital-C Companion.

“‘I guess’,” his voice had a hint of childish mockery in it as he sarcastically rolled his eyes. “I ask you to travel with me, and I get an ‘I guess’?”

She shrugged. “Technically, you haven’t asked me.”

He turned to her with a small smile. “You’re right. I haven’t, have I?” He set her clothes aside, straightened up, and held both hands behind his back. He moved his weight forward to stand on the balls of his feet. “So, Molly Quinn? What do you say? Want to see all of space and time with me?”

For a moment, all she could do was stare. This was an official invitation. She’d memorized so many of them: Grace’s, Rose’s, Martha’s, Donna’s, Amy’s, Clara’s. This one was hers. It was really happening.

Molly slowly started to smile, and then couldn’t help but laugh from the pure joy of it all, of going on real adventures through time and – gulp – space, with probably the most fun person to travel with she could imagine. The Doctor’s smile matched hers.

“Okay. Yeah.”

“Yeah?” The excited note in his voice just made her all the more excited.

“Yeah.”

He rubbed his hands together. “Brilliant! Who knows, maybe in another dimension we have our own show together. The Adventures of the Doctor and Molly Quinn.”

She tilted her head. “Or Molly Quinn and the Doctor.”

“Why do you go first? I’m the one with the TARDIS.”

“Okay,” she said, slowly. “The Adventures of the TARDIS, it’s pilot, and Molly Quinn.”

He ignored her jab. “The TARDIS, The Doctor, and Molly Quinn. I love it.”

“One problem, though,” she said.

“What’s the problem?” His voice was still excited, as though he relished the thought of a problem.

“The problem with going places with you is that it usually involves almost getting killed.”

“Aha,” he said, and pointed at her. “Keyword. ‘Almost’.”

“I disagree; I think the keyword is ‘killed’.”

He lowered his hand. “Eh, semantics.”

“More than semantics,” Molly said. “I have a spinal injury, Doctor. You do a lot of running. I can’t run. Not for long.”

“Oh, that’s not a problem, I thought you had a real problem,” he responded, sounding almost disappointed. “Easy enough to fix.”

Molly stared. “What do you mean, ‘easy enough to fix’? There’s permanent damage.”

The Doctor turned to pick her clothes up again, “For you lot, maybe. You think the rest of space and time might have a hospital or two?”

Of course. She’d seen them. In the episode New Earth, the Sisters of Plentitude. There must be a place somewhere out there where they could repair the damage. She could walk without pain again. She could dance again. She could run with the Doctor.

And here came the tears again, and this time she wasn’t sure if she could keep them back. They had gone well past ‘overwhelming’. Could there be a word that expressed the dense pile of emotions she’d been feeling the past…how long had it even been? Not nearly long enough for the low lows and the repeated high highs, the thousand different kinds of happiness she’d felt in a flash of a moment, when she’d felt nothing but misery since she’d woken in the hospital all those months ago. 

“Okay,” the Doctor said. “Tears. Uh…” His discomfort was obvious.

Molly wiped the tears off her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Right. Too much to process at once. I really need to crawl into bed and cry by myself for a little while.”

The Doctor seemed almost relieved. “Right. Let’s be off, then.”

He led the way down a few corridors, until they reached a door. It slid open for them, and in they stepped. It was a plain, but nice little room. Oak floor, dark green walls, a dark wood wardrobe and matching dresser, bed with a comforter that matched the walls. What was unusual were the number of hampers and small trash cans that lined the walls everywhere there was space.

“Hey!” Molly objected. “Is she calling me a slob? I thought we were friends!”

“She takes a little while to warm up to new people,” the Doctor explained. “She’ll adjust soon enough. Won’t you, dear?” He raised his voice for the last bit, as though the TARDIS couldn’t hear him speaking at normal volume.

Molly couldn’t help pouting, but said, “Fine. At least there’s a bed. That’s all I really need right now.”

“Remember how to get back to the console room?”

Molly thought back on the path they’d taken. “I think so. I’ll figure it out.”

The Doctor seemed apprehensive as he handed her the clothes. “Try very hard not to get lost. It could be hours or even days before I find you.”

“Comforting,” Molly quipped.

“Well then, goodnight,” he replied brightly, and went out the door.

Molly sighed, and set her clothes on top of the dresser. She headed to the bed and collapsed on top of it, almost too tired to bother to slip under the covers. She closed her eyes, and felt sleep begin to overtake her. She opened her eyes again and sat up in bed, her legs folded. There were a few things she needed to do before she slept.

First, she needed to do some processing. There were too many things to process at once, so she needed to do it by category. Still feeling a bit of the dizziness from being in the Doctor’s presence, she decided to start there.

Okay. So. The Doctor. She had just had multiple conversations with the real, actual Doctor. The character she’d obsessed over, when she needed something for her mind to do rather than think about reality. The number of times she’d rewound little moments repeatedly, she couldn’t count. A gesture, a wink, a threatening point, all the moments his eyes leaked both power and excitement, when they expressed his ancient life or his childlike perspective, or the way he said something ordinary so very gently, and of course, the straightening of the bowtie. She had been very close to being actually in love with a fictional character. It was embarrassing to think about, now he was real. Obsessing over a fictional character was strange but fine. Obsessing over a real person was creepy.

The obsession and love faded the last couple of years, but he’d still been who she turned to when she really needed comfort. She’d been unable to fully absorb who it was she’d been talking to this whole time, which really had made it easier. But still, the star-struckness had started to set in, and she was worried it would be here to stay. She hid her nerves, the fluttering heart, and twist of her stomach, the knot in her throat under smart comments. Maybe if she kept pretending, the star-struckness would fade.

Molly couldn’t believe all the little suggestions he’d made that he also thought of her as a favorite character, that her life was his favorite show. That couldn’t be possible; it was kindness that made him say those things. Still, looking back to when he’d given the official offer of traveling with him, she thought she could now see a bit of loneliness in his eyes, a bit of pleading in his voice. He was lonely. He was traveling without Clara – why? If he was so lonely, he could skip to their day together. Something there was wrong.

Okay, now, travelling the world, the universe, and all of time. She could go anywhere, see anything. Run around with the Doctor just like she’d always dreamed. Watch him show her things, show off his cleverness, and – oh, she was back to the Doctor again. Still – here she was, aboard the TARDIS, about to see…anything. That thought alone made her briefly feel like she wouldn’t be able to sleep with excitement. Time to think about something else.

Healed. She was going to be healed. No more cane. She’d be able to keep up with the Doctor. And she could dance again. She’d let go of any hope of dancing again, of expressing herself that way, of enjoying the only real talent she had. And now it was going to be back. It was as great a gift as any of the rest of it.

On a more somber note – she was far away from home, with no idea how she’d gotten there, no idea how to get back, and why it had happened at all. Cut off from everyone she knew, the few she did know. From everything. It was sad, but she wasn’t sure she was as sad as she should be.

Well, now, she needed to have a little chat with someone. She scooted up to the head of the bed, and placed a hand on the wall.

“Hi. Me again.” She took a slow breath. She wasn’t entirely certain where she was going with this. “I get it. I’m an invader. It’s just been you and the Doctor, and sometimes Clara, and you’re already not overly fond of her. I’m not trying to get in anyone’s way. You heard, I’m sure, that we’re just going to try to get me home.” She paused. Saying this next part out loud wasn’t what she wanted to do, but it needed to be said. She lowered her voice to a whisper, just in case. “I know the girls who fawn over him are your least favorite. At least, it seems that way. I promise, that’s not me. You can probably tell I have…some feelings. But they’re not real. They’ll fade. He’s real now, and the feelings are for someone who isn’t. That changes things.” Okay. At least that was done. “I get it, if you want to mess with me still. But I want to be friends. And I’m stubborn. Eventually, you’ll like me.”

That was enough. Her whole body felt weighted, though her mind felt a little lighter. All that was left was a good crying session. Molly stretched out under the blanket, pulled it over her head, and started to release everything that had built in her chest.

Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Was it minutes later? A few hours? A whole night and a day? Impossible to tell. But when Molly woke, she expected everything to come rushing at her as though it were new and shocking. But it didn’t. She remembered what had happened, and had accepted it as reality. It was time to go and start this adventure properly.

She rolled out of bed, and started her day with her usual stretches. Then she was happy to discover a door that led to a little bathroom, and longed for her makeup bag as she splashed water on her face. She didn’t look the same without her signature red lipstick. She ran her fingers through her hair a few times – better for her wavy texture than combing it out every day, anyway – and changed into the clothes she’d picked out.

Okay. Time to find the Doctor. She grabbed his jacket and her cane, quickly wished for luck, mumbled a request to the TARDIS to not get her lost, and headed out the door. A few turns later, she was relieved to come across the console room. The first thing she noticed was that it was noticeably warmer, and she felt a swell of gratitude. Probably, he kept it warmer when he had human guests.

“Good morning!” the Doctor greeted, and at first it took her a moment to realize he was half hidden under the center console, messing around with bits of wire. 

“Morning,” she said. She set the jacket aside along the railing. “Not sure how long I slept.”

“It’s always like that,” the Doctor said, rather than giving her a number of hours she’d slept like she’d hoped. He slid out from under the TARDIS, and took off the familiar round glasses that had once been Amy’s. That’s right. Amy had been real, too. All of them were. Donna was somewhere out there, and Martha and Mickey, too. Captain Jack Harkness would be out there for a very long while.

“I’m guessing you didn’t sleep,” she commented, leaning back against the railing.

“I don’t, usually,” the Doctor replied. He began to rub his hands together excitedly. “Now! Ready for our first trip?”

Molly stared a moment, then raised one arched eyebrow. “First?”

The Doctor thought for a second. “…okay, second,” he said, and then noticed her continued stare. “Third. Whatever, it’s the first real one. First time off the TARDIS. What do you say?”

She swallowed. The thought of ricocheting through space and time made her squirm almost more than the excited look the Doctor was giving her. But this was what she’d signed up for, sort of.

Molly forced a smile. “Let’s do it.” 

The Doctor clapped, and spun around to the console. “Excellent!” His movements were too fast for her to follow, but soon enough he said, “Better grab on to something!” And then they were off.

She turned and gripped the railing as tight as possible, tossing her cane aside. The whole of the TARDIS rumbled and shook and she could picture the opening of the show with the TARDIS careening through a tunnel of swirling light. She managed not to give another fearful whine, but only just. They didn’t land quite soon enough for her.

“Alright, ready to set foot on a whole new planet?” She could hear the Doctor’s voice, but her head was still swimming with the thought of careening through space, and she found she couldn’t respond or even let go of the railing. She felt the Doctor approach, and then let him peel her hands off the railing. “It’s okay. We’ve landed. Come and see.”

With a sigh, Molly grabbed her cane and turned and followed him to the TARDIS doors. He hopped out, but Molly hesitated. She looked down at the grass, green, like home. She looked up, and the sky was the same, too, but cars darted through the clouds. She took a deep breath, and stepped out of the TARDIS, onto an alien world.

She stared down at her feet as she took her first few steps. “Oh, my stars,” she muttered. “I’m actually walking on a different planet.” It felt as though the ground beneath her was buzzing, though she knew that was from her, and not the ground itself.

“Yeah,” said the Doctor excitedly, and he hopped up and down a couple times to emphasize it. She looked up as he gestured around them. “Not that different, really. New Earth. New New York. Lots of humans around. A good starter planet, if you’re nervous.” He turned and pointed to a familiar building that stood over them, white with a green moon on the side. “Hospitals right there. You always know one from the green moon,” he explained, and she decided not to point out that he didn’t have to. “Run by the Sisters of Plentitude, a bunch of nuns who are also doctors who are also cats. Try not to stare, they don’t like it.” He turned towards her. “Oh, and you won’t need that,” he said, gesturing to the cane. She looked down at the stick of wood in her hand. He was right. Soon, she wouldn’t need it.

Molly grinned and set the cane back inside, then found herself feeling dizzy. What was wrong? She stood up again, and the dizziness began to spin the other way. She leaned in again, knocked on the wood on the outside, then took a few steps back and stared.

“What is it?” the Doctor asked, confused.

Molly shrugged. “I knew it already, but…it is so much weirder to experience the…bigger on the inside personally.”

The Doctor grinned. “Yeah. It’s always amazing,” he said, and then he closed the door and grabbed her hand and hooked her arm in his to help support her, and led her into the hospital. It wasn’t very busy, just a couple people sitting and reading what seemed to be newspapers off a tablet that projected the image around them. Some of the nuns milled about, and though at first she’d been confident in her ability to be cool about it, she found it very hard not to stare. It was so different from seeing them on a screen. Actual cat people, walking around.

“I said ‘don’t stare’,” the Doctor reminded her quietly.

She tried not to blush. “Sorry.”

“Oh!” he exclaimed suddenly, dropping her arm and taking off. “They added a little shop! I love a little shop!”

Molly picked up her pace to try to catch up with him, but though her legs were long, he was quite a bit faster, and she couldn’t run well. By the time she got there, he was already at the hat rack.

“What do you think?” he asked, turning to face her. On his head he had a boater hat, complete with the red-and-blue ribbon. “Should I buy it?”

Molly scrunched up her face and shook her head. “Definitely not. You look much better with the fez.”

A look of validation came over his face. “Yes! Thank you. Fezzes are cool. Finally, someone else can see that.”

Molly smiled and turned to look through a jewelry spinner, sometimes admiring, sometimes questioning the taste of the people of New Earth. When she turned back, the Doctor was purchasing something, and she walked up, hoping it wasn’t anything embarrassing.

He put the black bowler hat on, and turned to Molly, turning his head to the left and right to show it off. She sighed.

“Yeah, okay, I guess,” she responded.

“I think it looks sharp.”

“If we were in the past, probably, yeah.”

“Well, what do you know?” He objected. “You’ve been here five minutes. Maybe it’s the height of fashion.”

“Then these people have a very, very old-fashioned sense of taste.”

The Doctor scoffed. “Alright, that’s enough out of you. Let’s go get your spine fixed.” He walked around her and headed towards the front desk, this time, thankfully, a little slower.

They stepped up to the front desk. “Hi,” the Doctor greeted. “Doctor here, the Doctor, not an actual doctor, well actually an actual doctor as well, sometimes, occasionally, but not here to work.” The nun behind the desk stared, waiting for him to get to the point. He cleared his throat. “Right. We have an appointment for a spine procedure. Patient’s name is Molly Quinn.” He turned to Molly. “Wait, your name is actually Molly Phoenix, isn’t it? Would you prefer th-”

“No.” She was aware her voice was overly firm, but just the mention of her old name made her whole body tense as though preparing for an attack.

“O-kay,” the Doctor responded, and turned back to the cat nun. “Molly Quinn.”

The nun nodded, and typed a few things into a computer. “Floor 38.”

Molly took a moment to remember that this cat-woman-nun wasn’t actually speaking English. The TARDIS had transformed her mind, or was sort of a part of her mind, translating for her. It was a little creepy to think about, so she set the thought aside.

“Right,” the Doctor said, and led Molly to the elevator. The doors closed, and Molly remembered a detail of the episode.

“Uh, isn’t there a…disinfecting…shower…thing?”

“Yep! Wait, how’d you know?”

“There was an episode.” Molly managed to say before the automated voice came on to warn them. She winced.

“Of course,” the Doctor sighed. “I’m just not going to be able to take you to anywhere I’ve ever already taken someone. It’s no fun if you already know everything.”

And then the spray began. Molly shrieked, and instantly regretted it. She spat the bitter chemical out of her mouth, and turned to look at the Doctor. He, of course, had his face turned up with a smile. He extended his arms and slowly turned. He seemed to be enjoying himself, until the force of the spray blew his hat off. He tried to pick it up, but kept getting the spray in his face. This made Molly feel a little bit better, but she knew better than to laugh now. No opening her mouth.

As the dryers came on, she leaned against them as much as possible. Being completely soaked was miserable. Finally, the process was finished, and the elevator doors opened. The Doctor spat the water out of his mouth, picked up his hat, and turned it over. A rush of water came out of it. He frowned, and on the way into the room he tossed the hat in a nearby bin.

A nun approached them. “The Doctor and Molly Quinn?”

“That’s us,” the Doctor said brightly.

“Right this way,” the nun responded, and gestured to a bed surrounded by pale white and green curtains. Molly followed them, and realized that every step she took was difficult, almost mechanical. Leave it to her not to notice a feeling until much later. She was nervous, of course. She didn’t know what was going to happen. A whole surgery? Would she be awake? Would something go wrong; would they botch it somehow? What if by the end of this she couldn’t walk at all?

Still, she sat on the bed when gestured to. The nurse arranged some instruments on a tray, and Molly couldn’t help but glance at the Doctor nervously.

He noticed. “Don’t worry about it,” he reassured her. “It’s real quick. In and out, as they say. Do they say that?”

Molly found she couldn’t speak, and nodded in response. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the nun pick up a long silver instrument that looked like a cross between the sonic and a spinal tap needle. She immediately grabbed the Doctor’s hand.

“Hey.” The Doctor’s voice was soft as he placed another hand of hers. “It’s not going to hurt at all. I promise.”

“Ready now?” the nun asked. Molly took in a slow, deep breath, and nodded. The nurse lifted the back of her shirt, and then suddenly Molly felt like she’d been stabbed in the back, both literally and figuratively.

She glared at the Doctor. “You lied!”

“You know the rules,” he replied calmly.

She felt something like a buzzing scrape against the weakest point of her spine, and cried out. The Doctor squeezed her hand as she felt a heat rush up and down her spine, that felt a lot like the contrast dye she’d had used for tests more times than she could count. The needle retreated from her back, and she felt some sort of salve rubbed across her spine. And then the pain faded, including the small ache that had been her constant companion since she’d been shot.

“There we are,” said the nurse. “All better.” And that was it. She turned and left, and the Doctor helped her off the bed.

“We’re done?” Molly asked, dazed.

“We’re done!” the Doctor exclaimed. “All good to go, good as new. Told you it was quick, didn’t I?” He turned and headed back for the elevators.

“That was a lot quicker than I thought.” The elevator door opened. “Oh, no. We’re going to have to do that shower again, aren’t we?”

“Yep!”

Molly was still trying to process the fact that her spine was healed now as they walked back through the lobby.

“So, it’s really done? I can run and dance and do…” and then she stopped dead as a man stepped into the building. “…Captain Jack Harkness?”

“Do – sorry, do what?”

Captain Jack Harkness – the actual, real, stunningly gorgeous Captain Jack Harkness – turned towards her with a knee-weakening smile. “Hi there,” he said, approaching them. “Have we met before? I think I’d remember a face this gorgeous.”

She heard the Doctor groan as she said, “Oh. Uh, no. Yes. I mean…” she nudged the Doctor with an elbow, hoping he’d get her out of the mess she’d made without having to explain the TV show thing to Captain Jack.

Jack turned to the Doctor, and smiled even wider. “I’d recognize that distrustful, disgusted glare anywhere. How’ve you been, Doc? Love the new face,” he added, and winked. Obviously despite himself, the Doctor smiled.

 “Thanks, I quite like it myself,” he said, and spun in place to show off his ‘new’ body. “Funny running into you here, though. Small universe. Teeny, tiny all of time. What are you doing here?”

“I came to visit somebody, saw the TARDIS parked outside on my way out, and thought I’d come in and try to find my old friend.” He turned back to Molly. “Your companions just keep getting prettier and prettier.”

Molly raised her eyebrows a little. “Guess that means you must be next.”

The Doctor made a disgusted sound and headed for the doors. Molly and Jack followed as the Doctor took the key to the TARDIS out of his pocket. As he began to unlock the door, Jack turned to Molly.

“So, how’d you meet the Doctor? He doesn’t usually travel with many Americans.”

“Bit of a long story,” she said, hoping that would be the end of it.

Jack leaned against the TARDIS with one arm over his head. “I’d love to hear it sometime.”

The Doctor pointed a finger at Jack. “Stop. Don’t.”

“Why, are you the only one allowed to flirt around here?”

Molly knew what her line was. “I don’t mind.”

The Doctor opened the doors to the TARDIS. “No flirting in the TARDIS. I will not have flirting in the TARDIS.” He said, and then stepped inside. He then took a step backwards, back outside. “Wait, why am I letting you into the TARDIS?”

Jack’s demeanor became more serious. “Actually, Doctor, I was hoping you could help me with something.”

“Absolutely not, much too busy,” the Doctor responded, and he walked back onto the TARDIS. Jack followed him, and Molly followed behind and closed the door.

“Come on, Doc. It’s important.”

“So is what we’re doing.”

Molly frowned. “What are we doing?”

The Doctor looked up from the console he was standing at. “You know. Important things. Very, very important things. Things we can’t possibly put off.” His face told her to play along.

“You have a time machine,” Jack pointed out. “You can get to them without missing a second.”

“No, we really can’t,” the Doctor insisted.

Jack held his hands out in surrender. “Fine. Have it your way. I just thought you might want to see some merpeople from space.”

The Doctor paused, and Molly really hoped that Jack’s mention of alien merpeople had done the trick. She knew she definitely wanted to see them.

After a moment, the Doctor cleared his throat. “Well. I guess a short detour wouldn’t hurt.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Five

Space Merpeople

The three of them walked down a sidewalk, one that was much more enjoyable than the crowded sidewalks had been in the real New York. Significantly so. Molly assumed most people just used their flying cars to go from place to place. Better yet, they’d been walking for fifteen minutes or so now, and there was zero pain in her back. She could move without wincing and choking back a cry of pain. It was surprising. It was incredible.

The scenery became more and more beautiful, with less city and more greenery, grass and trees and flowers she didn’t recognize in brilliant shades of blue and green, even a few that started white and ended in a rainbow. Up ahead was large, beautifully blue lake. ‘Large’ really wasn’t the right word. Huge, gigantic, colossal, maybe, but ‘large’ wasn’t a strong enough word. It looked as though they were approaching the edge of an ocean. But the blue was deep and dark, surrounded by wild greenery.

As she enjoyed the scenery, the conversation started up again, after fading when it became clear that neither the Doctor nor Molly really wanted to discuss how it was they’d met, and that Jack didn’t want to admit who he’d come to see.

“So, what is going on with the merpeople that you need my help for?” the Doctor asked.

Jack rubbed his fingers over the hair on the back of his head. “People go swimming here a lot, or they used to. They stopped after multiple people disappeared. They searched the surrounding area, but when they sent people to search the lake, they never resurfaced, and neither did the people they sent in after them. My scans show what appears to be a large, dome-like ship, and hundred-something lifeforms. They look an awful lot like mermaids.”

“So, big fish bowl ship and space mermaids stealing away people,” the Doctor recapped.

“That does sound like a you thing, Doctor,” Molly commented.

Jack nodded. “That’s exactly what I was thinking. Glad you turned up.”

The Doctor was silent a moment. “Awfully convenient that I did, isn’t it?” He seemed deep in thought for a second, and then shrugged. “Well, one thing at a time.”

They were just reaching the edge of the lake, which had a long pier going out so far, she couldn’t see the end of it. She assumed it ended somewhere in the middle, or maybe went all the way across. It was pretty thin for a pier, and there were very few handrails. It looked like it had been made hastily – ah. It had probably been built to help rescue efforts. This wasn’t reassuring for her fear of natural bodies of water. Or bodies of water in general.

The Doctor began scanning the area before taking a step onto the pier. Jack followed after. As much as she wanted to be a part of it, and witness the Doctor investigating something in person, she also wanted to take everything in slowly, to memorize every moment of it. This wasn’t her home, this life – she would only be here for a little while. She didn’t know how many chances she would get to savor it.

So, she closed her eyes and listened to the song of alien birds and of the sonic screwdriver, the small, lapping waves of the lake coming in from ripples formed by the wind, the sound of a city both behind and miles above her. She felt the cool, foreign breeze on her skin and through her hair, sending strands of it dancing across her freckled face. She breathed in the smell, so familiar to standing in the middle of Central Park, faint greenery inside a heavy, sour smoky smell.  The Doctor and Jack’s voices faded in and out, and by that she counted the seconds before opening her eyes and moving again, not wanting to get caught meditating on the moment.

The words became more distinct as she caught up with Jack and the Doctor, who were taking a few steps down the pier. It took a little effort for her to force her brain to overcome the fear that the pier would collapse and follow.

“Show me those scans, again?” the Doctor was asking as Jack flipped through the screen of some kind of tablet. When Jack held it up, she could see the image, too: a deep, blue, blurry background and foreground with shadows in a distinct shape, top human, bottom fish, with long hair flowing in the current. They swarmed together like a school of fish, following each other’s lead. Nearby there were a few large circular shapes connected by other oval ones. The ship?

“I can’t make anything out with that,” the Doctor grumbled. “There are too many options for potential species. I need to narrow it down. Any eyewitnesses?”

“A few,” Jack replied. A few swipes later there were videos of people explaining what they’d seen, but Jack talked over them. “The best we’ve got is that someone spotted a hand half-covered in golden scales, and another swore they saw gills on the wrists.”

“Narrows it down a bit,” the Doctor said, and he began down the pier in earnest. “Has anything else gone missing?”

“Around the lake?” Jack asked.

The Doctor stopped and turned to him. “No, no, just in general, has anyone lost anything? Keys, a pen, a left sock?” The Doctor’s voice sounded in earnest, but his face showed that he was thinking about how slow everyone else was. “Yes, Captain. Around the lake.”

“A couple of rowboats, I think.”

“Anything else?”

“Not that I know of, just regular things, like kid’s water toys,” replied Jack. “Why?”

“Do you have any paper?” Molly interjected. She tried not to squirm when they both looked at her incredulously. “Just go with it, please.”

Jack reached into his pocket and pulled out a brochure. “I grabbed this at the hospital. Will it work?”

Molly nodded and took the offered paper. She knelt down on the wood of the pier, and, ignoring their stares, quickly folded the paper in half and back a few times.

“A paper airplane?” the Doctor asked as she stood. She nodded, and pulled her arm back. The wind got her hair caught in the paper, but she pulled it clear, aimed for as far into the lake as she could, and let the paper plane loose. The wind caught it and blew it further to the right than she’d intended, but that was further into the lake, so it helped. Ripples exploded outward as it touched the surface, and floated a moment. Then a flash of gold exploded out of the surface, seized the plane, and dragged it down.

“Oh!” the Doctor exclaimed. “Good thinking! Very good!”

“Thanks,” Molly breathed, glad she didn’t just make herself look like an idiot.

“So, not just the people, it’s anything that touches the water.” The Doctor grabbed the tablet from Jack, and pulled up the scans again. “They’re Vannique! They’ve claimed that water as theirs, anything that touches it belongs to them. See what looks like hair? They’re actually feelers, thousands of little feelers that look like hair.”

“That’s great,” said Jack, “But what do we do about them?”

“Which way was their ship? Just this way?” The Doctor pointed down the pier.

“Yeah, about a hundred feet that way, fifty feet down.”

The Doctor took off in that direction, and Jack followed after him. Molly sighed and ran after them, almost keeping up, but keeping her eyes on the thin wood of the pier. She’d had to run a lot in her line of work, but it had been a while, and she preferred not to slip and fall into the lake. She still half-expected a muscle spasm in her back to send her crashing into the water.

As she ran, she saw a flash of gold out of the corner of her eye. She stopped and turned back to look. A bit of scaly flesh stuck out between the flooring of the pier and a support that disappeared into the water. She went back and knelt down. No, not a hand, just a bit of shed skin, like a snake’s. She looked up. “Doctor!” she called. But he kept running. “Doctor! There’s something here!”

The Doctor turned, and a brief flash of panic came over his face. “Don’t go near the water!”

“I’m not touching it!” she insisted. She pointed down at the flesh. “There’s some skin here. Do they shed?”

“Not usually,” said the Doctor, coming back. “Sometimes under extreme stress-”

A cold, wet, scaled thing wrapped around her wrist. She looked down and saw the patches of iridescent, golden fish scales scattered around more human-looking, though blue-tinted flesh. It yanked at her, and she screamed. She grabbed hold of a gap between the planks.

“No! No!” she heard the Doctor screaming as footsteps raced towards her. “She didn’t touch it! She didn’t touch the water, let her go!”

Jack and the Doctor both reached her at the same time and grabbed hold of her free arm and her shoulders, and began pulling her back. The Vannique released her wrist, but grabbed onto both her legs. She kicked as hard as she could. She didn’t have her full dancer’s strength anymore, but she’d done physical therapy three times a day at the rehab, and tried to practice daily, so she still had decent strength in them. Between her kicks and Jack and the Doctor pulling, she was regaining the pier – until she felt more hands, hands and hands and hands reach up and take hold of her hips and waist, and more hands taking her torso and shoulders as they dragged her down. She gasped as she felt the cold water begin to creep up her body. Jack braced his legs against the floor of the pier, but she was slipping, and slipping fast, and they were slipping after her.

Realization, fear, and then acceptance washed through her all at once. “Don’t touch the water!” Molly insisted. “They’ve got me, we can’t get me up, it’s done, don’t let them come for you, too!”

The Doctor gave a frustrated shout as he tugged on her harder. Jack’s grip grew tighter. “No! We’re not giving up! Come on!” Jack shouted.

The Doctor and Jack now only had hold of her arms, and they were partially hanging off the edge of the wood. She was shoulder-deep in the water. “Let go! Don’t touch the water! You have to let go!”

“No! Hold on tight!” the Doctor screamed, but she felt his grip slip, and then Jack’s, and they were pulled further over the edge. She took a deep breath, and the Doctor noticed. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you dare!” She yanked her arms back, and got loose from their grip. Then she was surrounded by cold.

She was sinking, down and down, faster than she thought possible. She wanted to open her eyes and see what was happening, but the lake water was murky and stung her eyes. She felt herself pulled along by the Vannique, one on each arm. They were going down and over. Her mind flooded with possibilities: were they going to drown her? Surely drowned bodies would have come back up by now. Eat her? She felt sickened by the thought, but given what she knew of mermaid mythology, it seemed a strong possibility. She wished the Doctor had said more about them. And then, she hoped with all her being he wouldn’t blame himself for whatever was about to happen to her. He didn’t need more made-up reasons to hate himself.

A pressure in Molly’s head began to build, and her lungs were burning. How long could the average person hold their breath? Was it two minutes? How long had it been? How much time did she have left to live? Was she supposed to be thinking meaningful thoughts? Was her life going to flash before her eyes? She hoped not. The only good thing about drowning was that she was never going to have to see any of it ever again.

Her brain felt like it was going to implode. The lack of oxygen was excruciating. He lungs begged her to take a breath, and the temptation was growing every nanosecond. Fill her lungs with lake water and stop the pain. She just wanted to scream.

Behind her lids, she started to see a white light. Was this the white light people saw before they died? It was spreading across her eyes, spreading and spreading and spreading and -

Molly woke, and choked, and coughed. Water came out of her lungs, but not as much as she’d expected. She spat out a mouthful, and gasped for air for a few minutes. She enjoyed the feeling of the cool air filling her throat and lungs for a few breaths before she was able to begin taking in her surroundings.

The floor was sort of a mix of pale blue and white, glowing faintly. Around her was the clearest glass she’d ever seen. She could only tell it was glass from the faint reflection of the glowing floor. She followed the pale white reflection up to the top. A glass dome. There were a few concerning cracks at the top. Very concerning, since everything else surrounding the dome seemed to be filled with water, with the Vannique swimming around, some pausing to look in at them, some not.

Their appearance was unnerving. The feelers had dots that glowed all along them, the eyes were too big and round and glowed gold. Their tails looked like most depictions of mermaids, but with what seemed to be thin tentacles growing out the sides, one on each. They had gills at their throats and wrists and bare chests, slits for a nose, and no mouths.

Around her were tables with random objects – she spotted her paper airplane – and rowboats, and people. Scared people. Most were wearing swimsuits or wetsuits of some kind. They must have been the people the Vannique had snatched. All adults. That stuck with her, and she wasn’t sure why yet.

A man, dressed in black swim trunks, approached her slowly. “Hey,” he began, his voice low and non-threatening. “You okay?”

She took in another breath, and felt droplets in her chest rattle. But otherwise, she seemed to be fine. There wasn’t even an ache in her spine. “I think so.”

“You know what happened to you?”

She nodded, and tried to get to her feet. She was a bit unstable, and was grateful when the man offered an arm to help her regain her balance. “Yeah. It’s weird, though. I didn’t touch the water.”

He seemed confused. “What?”

She opened her mouth to explain, but decided it might be best not to begin until she got her bearings. She wasn’t sure how much the Doctor wanted her telling people about him. If she remembered right, he was trying to draw less attention to himself now. “Are you all okay?” she asked instead.

“Mostly. They throw in these weird, squishy containers of water from the hatch now and then,” he said, and pointed in the direction of a mother-of-pearl trapdoor on the floor a few feet away. “And raw fish. It’s not exactly appetizing, but at least we don’t starve.” He helped her over to the edge of the dome, where most people sat leaning against the wall. There were a little under a dozen of them. “We seem to be inside some kind of giant, mazelike fish bowl. We try to ask what they’re going to do with us, but they just say we belong to them now. Things just appear around us, like they’re teleported in.”

Molly tried not to giggle and failed. “A collection. Like the Little Mermaid.” She paused. “What do you mean, they say? They don’t have mouths.”

A woman with blonde hair gone wild with the humidity replied, “They speak telepathically, in our heads.” 

“Got it,” she replied. So, she could talk to them. Maybe she could reason with them. She wasn’t quite as good with words as the Doctor, but she’d spent most of her work life writing, and in her off time convincing people to do good things they didn’t want to do.

Molly turned and walked a few feet away, where a couple of the Vannique looked in at them. They were smaller, with darker blue faces. Maybe they were children. She knocked on the glass, and they swam away, startled.

“What are you doing?” the man asked, alarmed. “It’s best we just leave them alone.”

“Why?”

Another woman in the group replied, “Are you kidding? They’re evil aliens who kidnapped us!”

Molly shrugged. “Maybe they’re not evil. Maybe it’s a culture clash.” She walked around the dome, looking for another one that had drifted close enough to get their attention.

“You crazy? Is that it?” the woman replied.

“Probably,” Molly replied.  “That doesn’t mean I’m wrong.” There – another one, glancing over. She knocked again, and tried to wave him down, but was ignored.

She tried again. “Hey! You! Don’t I get a phone call?” Maybe not the right time for a joke. “Or do the Vannique not do that?”

The Vannique seemed surprised, and finally approached the glass.

<You know our name?> He asked, and Molly felt his voice like an itch in her brain.

“Yeah.”

<None of the others do.>

“The others don’t have the same tour guide I do,” she replied. “So, what are we doing here? What’s your plan with us?”

<You touched our territory. You belong to the Vannique.>

“Cool, cool. By the way, I’m Molly,” she introduced herself. “Molly Quinn. You have a name?”

Forget the other humans, she seemed to be weirding out the Vannique even more. <…Pereus.>

“Nice to meet you, Pereus. How’s your day going? Mine could be going a bit better. I’m missing my friends.” Humanize herself. Make them see her as a person, not an object.

Pereus seemed taken aback. <I…have my duties to perform.> But the tone was apologetic. Aha.

“Hold on, hold on!” She tapped the glass to keep him from turning away. “I think you’re in trouble. My friends can help.”

<What do you know of our troubles?>

“You’re under stress. You’re not from this planet. There are cracks in your ship. Also, your ship is in a lake. There are a lot of you. Surely you need more space than a lake, even one this size.” Molly decided to take a moment to pause for dramatic effect. “You crashed here, didn’t you?”

<Yes,> he replied. <What do you think your…friends…can do? Our technology is far superior to yours.>

“Mine, yeah, even more superior than you think,” she agreed. “But my friends aren’t from around here. Is there someone I can talk to, some kind of leader? I promise, my friends can help you.”

Molly tried not to look desperate, but it was difficult. Now that she knew she would live, she hoped the Doctor would find her eventually. But he’d said short trips in the TARDIS was dangerous – if he tried, it might be years, lifetimes. If he didn’t make it, or if things got violent…she wanted to find another way out. And she had to admit, she wanted to impress the Doctor. This was a strategy she was sure he would approve of. She hoped she wasn’t making empty promises.

Pereus looked hesitant, then swam closer, almost right against the glass. She took a step forward and pressed a hand against the glass. “Please,” she begged, quietly. So much for not seeming desperate. “You’re clearly an advanced race of people. You’re trapped and desperate. We understand that feeling. Let me try to help you. What’s the harm?”

Pereus looked from her face to her hand pressed against the glass. He held his hand up to hers. Something in him, she knew, was seeing their similarities. She could see it in his eyes. He looked back to hers.

<I’ll take this to the Grand Emperor,> he said at last.

A smile of relief came across her face. “Thank you.”

Pereus turned and swam away. She sighed and pressed her forehead against the glass.

“What are you doing?” asked the first man she’d spoken to as he approached. “Why are you promising to help them? They kidnapped us. If they find out you’re lying, they might kill us.”

Molly turned her head towards him. “What’s your name?”

“John.”

“Okay, John,” she stood up straight, turned fully towards him, folded her arms and leaned against the glass. “First of all, don’t call me a liar. I never lie. Actually, that itself is a lie. But I almost never lie. I’m really, really bad at it. As you just experienced. Secondly, my friends really can, probably, help. Third, what’s your brilliant idea to get us out of here?”

John scowled, but eventually nodded. “Okay. Yeah. If it gets us out, I guess it’s worth a shot.”

It was some time later when an entourage of Vannique arrived. Molly stood from where she’d been sitting on the floor, half meditating on what she’d say, half panicking all the things she planned would go straight out of her head when it mattered. Of course, that was exactly what happened.

Still, she stepped up to the glass. She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to bow or curtsey, or even who to since they all looked the same, but she bowed her head a bit anyway. “Hi,” she greeted. “How are you today?”

They weren’t into small talk. <Tell me how your friends can help us.> Somehow, she could feel it came from the man in the center. The only thing that made him remarkable were a few extra tentacles on the sides.

“My friends are experienced with…um, helping people.” Where were the mind and heart-changing words she’d just planned? “One of them in particular. He has access to advanced technology, and he probably knows the name of every planet in the universe. He’s how I knew who you are, and-”

<Faster.> The Emperor demanded.

She resisted rolling her eyes. “I’m sure he can help fix your ship, and help you get home.”

<Our home is dead.>

Okay. New goal. “Well, maybe he can help you find another safe planet to live on. Or maybe relocate you somewhere on this planet, where you have more space, and you’re less of a threat to the people.”

One of the other captured humans took offense to this. “Don’t invite them to stay here! We don’t want those monsters here.”

“Shut up,” she said, not moving her eyes from the Emperor. She took a deep breath. Where was the Molly the Doctor claimed she was? “My friend is going to find his way here. I don’t know how, but he is. When he does, he’ll offer you a chance at help. He always does. But he’ll want you to return the people you stole.”

<Anything that touches our water belongs to us.>

“Except it’s not your water,” she argued. “You crashed here. This water already belongs to the people on this planet. I know you have a concept of property. If this was going to be your permanent home, there would need to be a discussion of the transfer of the ownership. And if it was the people of this planet stealing away your people, you’d object. You didn’t land here on purpose; it wasn’t your fault. No one here knew you’d claimed the water. It’s not their fault.” She paused, hoping that the point would sink in. “That’ll be the ultimatum. He helps you, and you let these people go.”

His expression looked something akin to offended. And now she wondered if the Doctor would want her negotiating on his behalf. So, things were looking pretty bad. Mistake after mistake. But one good thing about making mistakes: it always made her angry, to cover the fear and embarrassment. And when she was angry, she got shit done.

Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.

Well, screw it. New tactic. Making the Doctor happy wasn’t her priority. Making friends with the Vannique wasn’t her priority. Her priority was getting these people out alive. And she wasn’t going to fail. “Maybe I’m not making myself clear,” she said with authority. “You are on a planet that isn’t your own, and trying to enforce laws that aren’t part of this planet. Further, you’ve stolen away their people, which is basically a declaration of war. Your ship is damaged, and you’re trapped in a lake, so you’re not exactly in fighting shape. I’ve told you the deal. You let us go, and you let my friends and I help you. Otherwise, the leaders of this planet will eventually come down here and destroy you. They know you’re here. You’re surrounded by them, and they won’t let you just steal away their people without consequences, just as you wouldn’t let anyone hurt your citizens without punishment. So basically, you accept this deal, or your people suffer those consequences. Neither of us want your people getting hurt. What’s it going to be?”

The moment between her finishing speaking and him beginning felt so very long, though her mind told her it was only a few seconds. <…‘Neither’, you said. Neither I…nor you. Why would you care if my people suffer?>

She found herself smiling a little. “You didn’t take the kids. There are always more kids than adults playing in the water, no matter where or when you are. But you didn’t take them.” Molly paused for a moment. “Your children are here, I mean, Vannique children. I’ve seen them. It’s not just you and I that don’t want to see children hurt. It’s both our societies.”

The Emperor stared at her for another long moment, and then turned to the people around him. She felt that tickling in her mind stronger, but couldn’t hear any words. It must have been some form of whispering. She held her breath and hoped the whispering meant something good. That she had, at least, almost convinced him.

Finally, he turned back to her. She thought she saw a small smile on his face. <We accept your proposal. We will speak to this friend when he arrives. How will he do that?>

Molly shrugged. “No idea. But he’ll get here. Eventually.” Hopefully he wouldn’t miss by a few years.

But just like he’d heard his cue, that familiar sound began echoing off the glass, and flashes of the TARDIS appeared before she appeared herself. Molly turned with a smile as the door opened, partially out of relief, partially because it was still so wonderful that she got to see things like the TARDIS appearing.

“Molly,” the Doctor began, almost half-falling out of the TARDIS. Jack followed after him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” she replied. “Everyone seems to be.”

The Doctor turned around and seemed to take count of everything and all the people staring in shock at the TARDIS, while Jack walked up and half-hugged her.

“Glad to see you didn’t drown,” he said.

“Me too,” she breathed.

The Doctor noticed the group of Vannique, and seemed to know which was the Emperor. He immediately approached. “I need to speak with you,” he said, and approached the glass. “We need to negotiate. I can help you, but you need to release these people. They’re innocent, they didn’t know any better.”

<Your companion has already this negotiated this with us,> the Emperor replied. <We will release our property, and you will help us find a safe place to exist.>

The Doctor turned to Molly, an incredulous look on his face. Here it was. He was going to be angry that she’d made promises on his behalf.

“You already negotiated all this?”

Molly braced herself for her favorite character to be angry with her again, this time for good reason. Still, she’d done what she had to, and she wasn’t ashamed. If only her heart would stop racing so painfully. “Yeah.”

His face fell. “You took my job. I was going to be extremely clever.”

Relief. She folded her arms over her chest. Now everything was settled, and the adrenalin had faded, the heaviness and chill of her wet clothes was getting to her. “To be fair, I left the hard part for you. That’s the best way for you to show off your brilliance.”

The Doctor smiled. “Good point.” He turned back to the Emperor. “I know just the planet for you. Drothvoda – a water planet – lots of different species of aquatic animals, no humans. You could claim the whole planet, if you wanted.”

<We have heard of this planet, but not where to find it,> the Emperor replied.

“I’ll get you a map,” the Doctor said. “And I’ll get the people of New Earth to help you repair your ship. They’ll want some discussions, things in writing, guarantees from you…but they’ll help you, if only to get you to leave.”

While the Doctor and the Emperor continued to discuss the issue, Molly turned and headed over to lean against the TARDIS, and closed her eyes. Her day had only just begun, and she was already exhausted. A couple hours into her time with the Doctor, and she’d already almost died. But it didn’t seem as awful as she’d thought. After all, she’d almost been killed multiple times in her quest for (admittedly mild) vigilante justice. What was the difference between a human trying to kill her and an alien trying to kill her?

“Hey,” Jack said, and she opened her eyes to see him beside her. She gave him a tired smile. “First time kidnapped by aliens?”

“Yep,” she admitted, laughing weakly. “I guess it’s a sort of initiation for travelling with the Doctor.”

Jack looked thoughtful. “May as well be,” he said. “So, where are you from? You might not want to tell me how you met the Doctor, but what’s the harm in telling me where you’re from?”

Molly considered this, and decided he was right. “Texas originally, then New York. Well, technically I’d just moved to England, but I was there less than a day when…when I met the Doctor,” she dodged the technical details. “It was 2025 when I left.”

“Really? I haven’t been there yet.”

She looked at him in surprise, and then decided she shouldn’t be. Jack and the Doctor were both time travelers. “Well, I kind of missed…a lot, so it still feels like 2023 to me.”

“How did you miss a year?”

She supposed it was safe enough to talk about that here, where it never actually happened and she never really existed, and therefore he couldn’t figure out her past. “I was shot. Long story, and one I don’t like to talk about. It took multiple surgeries, and months of physical rehab, but eventually I could walk again, mostly fine, but still in pain. Couldn’t dance anymore – I’m sort of a part-time dancer – and couldn’t run for more than a couple minutes. That’s why we’re here. He was getting my spine fixed.”

“Ah,” replied Jack. “You can’t exactly run with the Doctor without running.”

“Yeah.”

“So…what kind of dance?”

The Doctor walked up to them then, already talking. “Alright, it’s all set. We’ll just give these people a lift back to the surface, swing by the Senate, and we can get going.”

“One thing I’m confused about,” Molly started. “Why did they grab me? I didn’t touch the water.”

The Doctor turned and approached one of the tables, and picked up the paper airplane. He walked back to her, held it up to her eyeline, and slowly pulled a strand of hair from the folds of the plane. “Your hair got caught in it in the wind,” he reminded her. “Your DNA touched the surface. It counts.”

“Ohhh. Right.” She shrugged. “Well, if we’re ready to go, I’m going to head back to the wardrobe. These clothes have gotten soaked three times, and are really uncomfortable now.”

“You don’t want to see everyone getting to go home?”

“…three times.”

“Right.”

Hurtling through space while in the bath was a new experience, and Molly didn’t really want to repeat it. But she’d desperately needed warming up, and to clean off the lake water, so she had taken the risk. Maybe someone less afraid of space would have found it fun. People loved water slides. This was kind of like one, right?

As soon as she felt clean and warm, she got out, dried herself off, and changed into the skinny jeans and black tank top she’d found, and threw her boots back on. She headed back to the control room, where she found the Doctor and Jack chatting.

“Oh, are we done?” she asked.

“Yes! Everything’s all fixed,” said the Doctor. “Humans helping space mermaids find a new home planet. Not a bad first trip, huh?”

She laughed. “Yeah, not bad. Thought we’d start out a little slower than me being almost drowned, but I guess that means I’m here for real now.”

“Really real,” said the Doctor, sounding like he was reassuring her again that it wasn’t a dream. He approached her. “By the way…”

She stared back at him. “Yeah?”

“Thanks for saving us so much time. Negotiating that yourself was very impressive, for a first time around.”

She grinned. “Yeah, I was pretty great, wasn’t I?” Then she shrugged. “Nothing anyone else couldn’t have done, but-”

“Much, much better than most could have done,” he said, his voice lower now. He was giving her that look. That look that said he wanted to fix her doubt in herself, the look she’d seen before, in the wardrobe. She was already starting to hate it. Subject change.

“And thanks for getting my spine fixed,” Molly said, deciding on something sincere. “I can’t tell you what a miracle it is to not always, always be in pain.” She gave a thankful squeeze of his arm as he smiled.

“You’re very welcome,” he said softly.

She released the Doctor’s arm and walked around him to Jack. “So, are you sticking around?”

“He is absolutely not,” replied the Doctor sharply, turning around to follow behind her. “We’re giving him a lift home, that’s all.”

“Have you eaten?” she asked, pointedly facing Jack.

“Not since last night,” he responded, smiling a little. He knew where this was going.

“Yeah, I had some peanuts on the plane to England, and about three bites of the meal was all I could stand.” She turned to the Doctor. “I don’t think any of us have had breakfast yet. Or lunch. Whatever meal it is we’re supposed to be on.”

“We can be on any meal,” said the Doctor. “It’s a time machine.”

Molly smiled. “So…should we all stop for brunch when we drop Jack off? Seems the most efficient to me.”

The Doctor was scowling, but Jack added, “Come on, Doc. I know you miss me. You must have talked about me; how else would she know who I am?”

The Doctor and Molly shared a quick glance. She was not doing well at keeping who she really was a secret.

“Fine, fine,” the Doctor groaned, and approached the console. “Just because I love brunch.” But Molly saw the quick flash, just a split second of nostalgic happiness in his eyes. He really had missed Jack. In a way, Jack was a representative of all his old friends, Rose and Martha and Donna, everyone he hadn’t seen since he had last seen Jack, since his last regeneration. All those important people he hadn’t seen in over a thousand years.

Molly wondered just how long it had been.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Six

Ghosts

Molly stepped out of the TARDIS and took a look around. It was strange, being the past, but not the distant past.  If this was her universe, she would be out there in New York, still with a part-time, entry-level job at the New York Times. She’d have just moved in with Isla. She’d be deleting every photo anyone tagged her in.

Jack and the Doctor followed her out. “Oh, good,” said Jack as he looked up and down the street, a few shoppers milling about, none seeming to notice the blue box that had suddenly appeared. “There’s a nice café just down the street from here. It’s my favorite.”

“Mine, too,” the Doctor replied. He led the way, and Jack and Molly followed, discussing their time differences, with Molly hesitating to give anything away other than the fate of cancelled TV shows.

Once they arrived, Molly recognized it instantly. The Bells of Saint John. This was where the Doctor had taken Clara when they first met, in this version of her. Thinking of Clara, she wondered for a moment if they’d meet. Probably not. The Doctor would probably go back to Clara once Molly was gone. He had a time machine, after all. The thought made her a little sad. Clara had been her favorite Companion.

She ordered a black coffee, a croissant and some fruit, and Jack paid for everyone. They went outside and sat on the balcony, and Molly thought it might have even been the same table. She took a sip of the coffee, and though she knew it must be her imagination, she instantly felt herself coming to life.

They ate together quietly for a moment, before Jack spoke. “So, Molly.”

“So, Jack.”

“How did you manage to escape a TV show?”

She almost dropped the coffee, but managed to set it down carefully. She looked at the Doctor. At some point, she’d decided it was up to him whether or not they told people who she really was. It was probably a wise decision. This was his universe, she was on his TARDIS, and he had a pretty good record for making solid decisions. Mostly. Better than her record, anyway.

The Doctor leaned back in his seat, folding his arms. A little too casual, but his eyes were calculating. “What makes you say that?” It wasn’t a real question. It was a test.

“You don’t want to talk about how you met,” Jack said, folding his hands in front of him. “But Molly already knows me.”

“Could mean she’s met you in the future.”

“It could,” Jack admitted. “But it doesn’t. She’s a negotiator, born in Texas, from New York, a dancer – ballet, I expect, though she didn’t tell me - and she was shot not too long ago. Plus, her name is Molly Quinn and she looks exactly like herself.”

“You saw the show,” the Doctor replied, slowly.

“I caught a few episodes of it, yeah. Always liked Molly,” Jack replied, and took a moment to wink at Molly. She wasn’t sure whether to smile or roll her eyes.

“But,” the Doctor began, “What does that have to do with how she knows you?”

“Well, it goes without saying.”

The Doctor spread his hands out. “Say it anyway.”

Jack picked up his coffee and took a sip. “Her life is a TV show. She must be from another universe, or a parallel dimension.”

“And?”

“And, that means that in her universe, we’re the TV show.”

The Doctor was silent, a collection of almosts: Almost smirking, almost looking with approval, almost excited. Whatever the test was for, Jack had passed it.

Molly, on the other hand, was less reserved. “Ding ding ding, we have a winner,” she announced, and offered to clink her coffee cup with his. Afterwards she took a sip. “That was really clever.”

“I know,” Jack said, smiling. “So, tell me, Molly. Who is everyone’s favorite character, and why is it me?”

The Doctor’s almosts faded into objection. “What makes you think it’s going to be you?”

Before Jack could reply, Molly interjected, “It’s the TARDIS, actually. Everyone’s favorite character is the TARDIS.” It was the safest answer.

Jack looked confused. “The box?”

“Bit more than just a box,” the Doctor argued bitterly.

Molly finished her coffee, and already wanted another one. “It’s the only real constant on the show. The Doctor regenerates every couple seasons or so, the companions come and go, and classic antagonists appear and disappear at random. The only thing in nearly every episode from the very start of the show – about sixty years ago, by the way, off and on – is the TARDIS.”

“Sixty years?”

The Doctor picked up his cup. “We’ve been over this.”

“I haven’t.”

Molly explained, “Well, when all the actors can be replaced, and it’s a show where literally anything could happen, it’s easy to keep it fresh and interesting. One episode is a mystery, another completely scifi, another a horror story. It can be whatever it needs to be to keep going.”

Jack seemed surprised. “You only lasted three seasons.”

“I know,” Molly said, picking at her fruit. “What was my show called, anyway?”

She noticed the Doctor’s warning look to Jack, but Jack didn’t and said, “The Phoenix.”

Molly involuntarily gasped, and immediately choked on the piece of strawberry. Jack pat her on the back a few times, and eventually she managed to get the fruit down. She grabbed the Doctor’s offered coffee, too sweet for her taste, and took a few sips. When she felt she could breathe easily again, she handed the cup back.

“Are you okay?” asked Jack.

But all Molly could think was also all she could say. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? This has to be a joke.”

“What is?” Jack asked, concerned. “The name of the show? What’s wrong with it? Isn’t it just your original last name?”

Molly was shaking her head before he’d finished speaking. “No. I’m not talking about it.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jack look to the Doctor, who also shook his head.

“I don’t know. And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Fair enough,” replied Jack. He turned back to his breakfast.

“Subject change, please,” Molly announced. She was tired of doing it herself.

The Doctor set aside his empty coffee cup and looked to Molly. “Where do you want to go next, for your first real trip?”

Molly raised her eyebrows. “I thought the last trip was the first real trip.”

The Doctor spread out his hands. “That was an errand trip. We just got a bit sidetracked,” he said. “Now we get to go on the real first trip.”

“Unlike that planet with the two suns.”

“Yeah.”

“And the nebula.”

“…yeah,” the Doctor replied again, though this time a little more uncertainly. “Well, forget about the number. Where do you want to go? Or when? Or…both?”

Molly’s eyes widened as she realized, fully realized, that she could choose to go anywhere or anywhen in the universe. There were so many options, they were very nearly literally limitless, and how many people were lucky enough to get to choose one? How could she process all the possibilities? How could she narrow all of space and time to one, specific place, one, specific time? How many chances was she going to get to travel like this? No wonder Clara had been overwhelmed.

“Well?” The Doctor prompted her.

She held a finger up. “Give me a second, I don’t process information as fast as you do, and I…can’t even comprehend how many options there are.”

“There must have been somewhere you thought of wanting to go, when you watched the show.”

Molly thought back to sitting in the little basement room, staring up at the television with the grainy screen that sometimes glitched into a single line that was fixed by smacking it with a shoe. Sitting there, completely alone, in the dark, all the things she’d seen and done that no one should ever see or do being left behind as she almost melted into the movie, and then later, the show. Doctor Who had been her escape from it all, and she understood the Doctor, watching him run away from it all himself. So where had she dreamed of running to first?

Oh. Of course. It had more to do with what she’d missed in her own life then something incredible she’d wanted to see on the show. The Doctor might be disappointed, but this was another good choice to ease in before all the running and attempts to avoid death. And she’d wanted to see it with all her heart.

“Paris, June 28^th 1841.”

She watched as the Doctor’s mind raced to try to find the reason why that specific place and that specific time. In a few seconds, his eyes lit up. “Ah! The first performance of the ballet Giselle, with Carlotta Grisi in the title role. That’s it, isn’t it?”

Jack looked curious. “You could go anywhere, do anything – why a ballet?”

“It was her dream role,” the Doctor replied, straightening his jacket and leaning back. “She mentioned on the show once.”

It was a little unnerving, having the Doctor know that without her telling him. He probably knew things about her she hadn’t told anyone. She started to realize what the Doctor must have felt as she named off all those people and events she shouldn’t have known about while trying to prove he was a TV show in her world.

“You’re not disappointed?” she asked the Doctor. “It’s not exactly the most thrilling request.”

“Not at all. I saw Giselle once. Most of it. Part of it, probably,” he replied. “I don’t remember when. I was a bit…distracted. But it was Grisi, definitely Grisi. Amazing dancer. I would like to give it another go. I hear there’s ghosts at the end. Are they real ghosts? Didn’t see that part, again, distracted.”

“Distracted?” Molly asked cautiously. “There weren’t aliens running around backstage or anything, were there?”

“Nope! Only alien there was me.” He frowned. “As far as I know.” 

“So, three for the ballet?”

“Yep, three for the – oh, wait a minute.” His voice became accusing. “I said we were just dropping him off!”

Molly stood and put her napkin on the table. “Too late. You already said yes.”

“But, I-”

She patted Jack’s shoulder as she moved around behind him. “Come on, Jack, we don’t want to be late.”

As she walked away, she heard the Doctor making objection noises, but Jack said, “Sorry, Doctor. You heard her. We don’t want to be late.”

She heard Jack begin to follow her and the Doctor’s chair move away from the table. “It’s a time machine, we can’t be late!”

So they were, of course, late. Molly had struggled putting on the clothing that would fit in with the time, though it felt to her like a costume. They snuck in as the opera they performed before the ballet was fading, and only seemed to irritate a few people as they snuck into the box.

They settled in their seats as the ballet itself began, the curtain opening on a pretty painted backdrop of a small woodland village, the façade of a house on either side. It only took a few breaths of time before Molly felt lost in the beauty of it all. Of the set, the costumes, the dances that were so similar to what she’d seen but was also so different, the choreography having changed since this first night. And Carlotta Grisi…Molly could see why everyone had sung her praises, and why the show had so quickly spread across the continent. It was almost ethereal in its loveliness.

But that’s not where the beauty ended. Under her feet was 1841, all around her were people living their regular lives in 1841. It may as well have been a whole alien world, still somehow full of humans. Their lives were so different, and yet so the same. In pictures you never thought of those people as being real; of their clothes being as regular to them as jeans or a little black dress, or women using their gloves as hand fans, people whispering about the other people around them, men starting to doze off, kids pointing at the dancers. She even saw people below her who had snuck in some snacks of some kind, eating and quietly laughing. It was all so real – and it had all already happened. It had already happened, and it was happening now. Her mind was swimming. It wasn’t a surprise that Time Lords could process information so quickly; time travel was such a wonderful tangle, her human mind could barely keep up with it all. 

“So, what’s happening?” she heard Jack whisper from her right. She waited to feel some anger at him interrupting this experience, but it felt as much a part of it as the dancers on the stage were.

“Essentially, Giselle is about a girl, named Giselle, who lives in a little village that is having a festival. She loves dancing more than anything,” she whispered back. “But she has a heart condition, and if she gets too worked up, she’ll die. She meets a man and falls in love with him, and later some nobles come to see the festival. In gratitude for a necklace a noblewoman gave her, Giselle dances – just…the best variation in all of ballet.”

Molly’s mind began to drift back, years and years. “I’d been dancing since I was three when I saw it, dancing for five years already, but that was the moment I decided I wanted to dedicate my whole life to ballet…just so I could perform that.” She noticed that her voice had been growing quieter with each word, and a wistful tone had somehow snuck in. But with every pleasant memory of her mother, something awful was attached, and she could feel it pulling her down. She wasn’t allowed to just enjoy the memory of her mother. She couldn’t even remember the words of a single conversation they’d had anymore.

She fought to set the thoughts aside. “Anyway, Giselle finds out that the man she’s in love with is secretly a nobleman and engaged to the woman who gave her the necklace, and she goes mad and dies, sometimes by suicide, sometimes from her heart condition, depends on the production. In the next act, the Wilis appear, women who died scorned by a man they loved, and now they find men and force them to dance to death. They summon Giselle’s ghost to join them, and try to kill the nobleman that tricked her, but she begs them to stop and helps him, and eventually they defeat the Wilis and Giselle’s soul is set free, and the nobleman walks off alone.”

“So…the ghosts aren’t real,” came the Doctor’s voice from the other side of her, sounding a little disappointed. She tried to glare at him but couldn’t help but smile at the ridiculousness of him.

She turned back to the stage and continued to be swept away in it, watching the pantomime of Grisi looking for whoever it was who had knocked on her door and hidden. But her mind wandered back years and years again. “All our money went to my ballet career,” she started, speaking mostly to herself. “But my mom sold her pearls so she could take me to Giselle. She drove three hours to San Antonio so I could see…oh,” she paused, and glanced at the Doctor. “Sorry. You probably already know all this.”

She saw the Doctor smile and shrug. “Tell me anyway.”

Molly looked back to the stage as the nobleman approached Giselle. “She drove all that way so I could see it. I wore my only nice dress. We had dinner on the Riverwalk. On the way home, I talked about the show for so long, I fell asleep midsentence. It was everything to me, everything my future was going to be…” She should have known better. She again had to dodge the knives of darker memories. “Anyway. It’s a great ballet.”

Jack whispered, “Did you ever get to dance in it?”

The Doctor’s voice interrupted again, an urgent note piercing through. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. We have to go.” He took Molly’s arm and pulled her up. “We have to go. We’ll see her on another night. Maybe her last?” He led her out behind him, rushing around the other people and out the door. She stumbled a little as he rushed to the stairs, and she pulled herself loose so she could lift her skirt as they made their way down.

“What’s going on?” she asked, hoping there wasn’t a note of panic in her voice. Had he seen something dangerous? But he just kept rushing down the stairs with no answer. “Doctor, what’s wrong? What did you see?”

He stopped at the bottom of the steps so suddenly she bumped into him. She felt an unusually strong apprehension as she peeked around the Doctor to see why he had stopped.

And there she stood. Tall, lean, strong. One of the few people who could say that the grey of their dress made their skin glow. The intense eyes, the almost-smirking mouth, and of course…the space hair.

The Doctor inhaled sharply. “River.” Molly could barely even hear him.

“What’s wrong with you? You look like you’ve seen a ghost. I told you I’d be right back, I just forgot my gloves,” River responded. Even with such a casual, innocent sentence, her voice always seemed to hold a tone of teasing, flirtation, or both. Molly saw the Doctor’s eyes close in a moment of remembering and regret, just as River’s eyes drifted to her, then Jack behind her, and narrowed with suspicion. “Really? I’m gone two minutes, and you’ve already got some strays following you?”

Molly opened her mouth to violently object, but held back. This moment felt oddly sacred.

“Wrong Doctor, I’m afraid,” the Doctor explained. His demeanor had changed, returning to what it had been before he’d stood and bolted so suddenly.

Of course. The Doctor said he’d seen Giselle before. He must have taken River and forgotten which day.  What he’d seen that made him run was himself beside an empty seat.

River frowned. “What do you mean?”

“Look at my tie.” The Doctor reached up to straighten it. “I’m wearing white. He’s wearing black.”

River paused, looking the Doctor up and down. “Well, what are you doing here? You know you shouldn’t run into yourself.”

“It was an accident,” the Doctor explained. “I got my days confused. You know me.”

“I do know you.” River looked at Molly again. As amazing as it was to see River in person, having her look at you with both curiosity and suspicion was even less comfortable than it looked on the screen. Another thing she and the Doctor had in common. “And is this your date? You always had a thing for gingers.”

Molly decided it was time to speak up. “No, no, not his date,” she said quickly. “He’s, um, just my ride. Uh…” She looked behind her, hooked her arm in Jack’s and pulled him forward. “This is my date.”

River and Jack eyed each other, and suddenly Molly wished she was at home with a bag of popcorn. Jack and River. This was going to be interesting.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jack smile. “But I do have a whole other arm if you want to join us,” he offered. “I’d never say no to a date with two gorgeous ladies.”

River looked him up and down with approval. “You never introduced me to this one,” River said to the Doctor, sounding amused and a little admiring.

“And I never will,” replied the Doctor.

“Captain Jack Harkness.” Jack took on the duty of introducing himself. “At your service. Anytime, anywhere.”

“You’re the worst date,” Molly sighed.

River, however, was giving a flirtatious look to Jack. “Oh, this one might get me into trouble.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Molly saw Jack wink. “And what’s wrong with a little trouble?”

“Nothing at all. Except for my old fella standing right there,” River said, pointing to the Doctor with a gloved hand.

Jack leaned around Molly to look at the Doctor in surprise. “You’re a married man now, Doc?”

“Uh. A bit.”

“What’s ‘a bit’ mean?” Jack wondered. He looked back to River. “Does that mean the marriage is ‘a bit’ open?”

River smiled. “Oh, I might be able to open it just a crack.”

Molly removed her arm from Jack’s. “I am uncomfy.”

“Me, too,” muttered the Doctor. He waved his hands to get River’s attention. “River. You need to go back to your Doctor now. Don’t mention you saw me, that’s a good girl.”

“Now, Doctor, you know there’s only one place you can call me that, and it’s certainly not in public,” River flirted, walking up to him and giving him a wink. As she headed up the stairs around him, she gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “Behave yourself.”

“Never.” The Doctor turned and watched as she headed up the stairs, then hastily turned and headed the other direction. Molly followed hurriedly, with Jack coming after her. They got into the TARDIS as the Doctor was firing her up.

“Sorry about that,” he apologized quickly, not looking up from his task. “We’ll do her last performance, hey? Finale is just as good as a premiere, right?”

“When did you marry a woman like that?” Jack asked, starting to approach the Doctor. “And…how?”

Molly tugged on Jack’s coat, and gave him a stern look she hoped communicated ‘shut up and stay here’. As she walked up to the Doctor, he replied to Jack. “Long story. We met a long time ago. A very long time ago.”

Molly slid up beside the Doctor and watched his face. He was focused on what he was doing – too focused. And it shouldn’t have taken this much time to get the TARDIS going again. Just behind his eyes, there was pain. This was the first time he’d seen River since his tomb, she was sure of it.

The Doctor glanced at her. “Stop staring.”

“Are you okay?” she whispered. She glanced over her shoulder, and was glad to see that Jack had busied himself texting someone on his phone.

“Fine, fine,” the Doctor replied distractedly. “I’m always fine.”

But if Molly’s chest ached at the thought of the Doctor seeing River again despite their many, painful goodbyes, she couldn’t imagine what he was feeling. “I’m not one of the people you can lie to about that, you know.”

The Doctor closed his eyes for a moment, stopping what he was doing. He then turned to her. “I know,” he said lowly. “But do me a favor. Pretend you are.”

She wanted to say something more, to say something comforting, to convince him to admit how he was feeling, but she knew better. Instead, she nodded. “Okay,” she said, speaking up a bit more. “Let’s try that again.”

The ballet had been even better than she’d imagined. But even with how pleased she was by it, Molly had spent a lot of that time worrying about the Doctor. She really, truly hadn’t known him all that long. Despite watching the show for so much of her life, this was the real Doctor, a real person, and someone she had only known for about a day and a half. She really had no place worrying about him. But if she broke it down, even if he was a stranger, she would worry about someone who had just had a run-in with their dead wife.

Changed back into her normal clothes, she leaned against the railing of the TARDIS and watched as the Doctor began to set the TARDIS’s destination, wondering what he was thinking. Jack leaned against the railing beside her.

“So,” Jack said, “Did you ever get to play Giselle?”

Replace worrying about the Doctor’s sadness with her own. “I lost my parents in one way or another when I was thirteen. There was a little while there that I bounced around foster homes. It was all very…White Oleander, for a while.”

“White Oleander?” the Doctor asked.

“It’s a book. A very sad book,” explained Molly. “About a girl who goes from one bad foster situation to another. Not that mine were all bad, they just…didn’t last. Anyway, it was a few years before I landed in a family that could afford for me to continue my lessons. They were very kind, very supportive. Never missed a practice. I was seventeen when we were going to do my last show before I aged out of the system and would have to start paying for myself.” She paused. “I’m not being overconfident when I say that I was good. I was very, very good. There wasn’t a single person who doubted that I would go on to be principal at a great company someday. I placed first in more than one worldwide competition. So, when they announced Giselle, I knew it was my chance at my dream role.”

She paused, the memories flooded her head, the elation, the longing, the hope. Life was finally beginning to feel worth living again. “I got the role, and it was a not-so-secret secret that there would be scouts in the audience, just when I needed them to be there. It was the start of…oh, everything. My dream, my life. Ballet was my escape, and the only way I knew how to express vulnerability anymore. Ballet was…who I was.” It occurred to Molly that she was here, showing that vulnerability now, despite her years of carefully constructing a persona that didn’t care too much about anything.

She was getting overemotional with what were essentially two strangers. Reel it in. “Two weeks before the performance, my foster parents were arrested for dealing meth. Apparently, that was how they could afford my lessons. I ran out of foster homes I was allowed in. I moved in with my aunt and cousin, in the middle of nowhere. When I moved to New York I wanted to…but it was better if no one had a chance to recognize me. So…that was that. I fell back on teaching a ballet workout class instead, along with attempting to be a journalist. I still practiced on my own, but…it wasn’t the same.”

She hadn’t meant to give her whole life story, but once she’d started, it had been difficult to stop. Molly sighed, hoping to sigh out all that old disappointment and sorrow. “Anyway,” she started, forcing a brighter note to her voice. “Thanks for taking me to see Grisi.”

“Not a problem, happy to do it,” replied the Doctor. And suddenly they were off. Molly grabbed the bar behind her to keep herself still. She took a few deep breaths and tried to force the concept of space from her mind.

They landed and stepped out, back to Earth, 2019, where Jack belonged. Jack turned to the Doctor, and offered a hand.

“Well, Doc, it’s been great seeing you again,” he said.

The Doctor grinned and shook Jack’s hand. “You, too, Captain. Don’t be a stranger.”

“You’re welcome to come around to visit anytime.”

“Really,” the Doctor said softly. “Really. It’s been good…very good…to see you again. I’m glad I did.”

“Me, too,” said Jack, his voice uncharacteristically soft. After a moment, he pulled the Doctor into a hug. “You take care of yourself, you hear?”

“You know, you could…come along, if you wanted.”

Molly was surprised by the invitation. The Doctor seemed just as surprised he’d said it.

Jack grinned, and stepped back. “I’d love to, but I’ve got some of my own stuff going on. Maybe next time.”

“Well, don’t get into any trouble,” replied the Doctor.

“Wouldn’t that be boring?” Jack turned to Molly, and offered a hand. “Miss Molly Quinn,” he grinned. “It’s been a pleasure. You keep safe, alright?”

She opted for a short hug instead. “You, too, Jack,” she replied. She stepped away, and looked from Jack to the Doctor. “I’m going to head in. Take your time.”

The Doctor looked over at her with gratitude as she stepped back inside the TARDIS. Their goodbye deserved a little more privacy than she’d been letting it have.

She took a quick walk around the console, admiring all the little, strange bits and pieces, then headed up the stairs to examine the books. Mostly science and mathematics books that she couldn’t hope to understand, and a couple thick history tomes, too, but she was happy to see a copy of Alice in Wonderland. She flipped through it until the TARDIS door opened again, and the Doctor stepped through.

Molly put the book back and headed back down the stairs. She didn’t say anything as he set new coordinates, but waited until he was ready to speak.

“The Face of Boe,” the Doctor finally said. “That’s who he was there to see, though he just told me it was someone with a big head. The Face of Boe told him when to deliver a message to me. I don’t know how much of this you know.”

Molly folded her arms and approached him, standing next to him at the console. “The Face of Boe is Jack, way in the future. Just before the Face of Boe dies, he tells you you’re not alone.”

The Doctor nodded. “The Face of Boe told Jack to tell me about the Master just before he…they…die. Jack wasn’t sure if I was ever supposed to know who the Face of Boe was. I decided not to mention that he’d already told me, unintentionally.”

“So, he told himself to tell you about the Master?”

“Seems so. Jack is full of paradoxes.” He seemed to repress a sigh. “I also think we both knew it would be a long time before we saw each other again. If I do see him again. I think I might – we’re both everywhere – but it’s been a long time, and probably will be, again.”

“That’s why you let him tag along,” replied Molly. It hadn’t been all that difficult to convince him to have brunch with Jack, to bring him along to the ballet. “You knew it would be a while.”

The Doctor nodded, and was silent a moment before he took a slow breath. “Anyway,” he began, but he didn’t seem to know where he was headed with that sentence.

Molly decided to step in for him. “Anywhere we should go next? I think we can fit in one more trip today. Or…in the number of hours that take up a day.”

“Any specific sort of place you have in mind?” She was relieved to hear a note of excitement in his voice again. “Past, future, another planet? Past or future on another planet? Spaceship, space station, star base? I know about a structure so resistant to heat it can orbit its sun closer than any planet can. Or we could have tea with Lord Byron, he’s always a laugh. Or we could visit ancient Egypt. Must avoid Ramses the First, though, I owe him money. Maybe a planet that’s one great big dog park? Space dogs? Do you want to see space dogs?”

Molly felt a dizziness that was very familiar now. There were just too many infinite options. “Yeah,” she laughed. “Space dogs. And ancient Egypt and Greece, and modern Japan and Italy. Another planet, star bases. All of it. That’s the problem, I want to see everything, and there’s no way to do that.”

The Doctor leaned around the console to look at her with a slow smile. “Everything it is, then!” He ran around flipping switches and spinning knobs and once she thought she saw him play a touchpad like a xylophone. “Or Everywhere, to be precise!”

They were off again before she could ask where. She held on tight and closed her eyes and counted to ten, and sighed with relief when they landed. “What do you mean, everywhere? We can’t possibly see everywhere. Where are we?”

“Everywhere!” The Doctor repeated, as though that answered her question. He approached her, his hands gesturing excitedly. “In the future, as humanity spreads out, they get homesick. They go back to Earth and bring bits of the home planet with them, bring all their cultures and history and lives and make a city with them, and they call it Everywhere. It’s like Epcot, except it’s all real. Little pockets of each country and culture spread throughout, some with historical sites complete with restorations – and, keep in mind, that includes your time, too – and some of their own time, 58-Apple-B3, all mixed up with things they’ve picked up as they travelled across the stars, influences from alien cultures. So, actually, not like Epcot at all, forget I said Epcot.”

Molly stared. Everywhere. A city called Everywhere. She could experience so much of Earth all at once, and some of other planets. It was almost too perfect. “Wow. Okay. Let’s do it.”

“Earth 2.0, right outside,” The Doctor announced. “…there were a lot of Earth 2.0s when humanity moved out. They all wanted the rights to that name and never managed to settle on a compromise.” The Doctor pointed through one of the doors to the rest of the TARDIS. “Might want to change first. It’s summer, best time to go, but the jumper might get a bit warm.”

“Finally,” she breathed. “Somewhere I’m not going to freeze.” Between her arrival on the TARDIS and the water and the cold ship and even Paris in May, she was really looking forward to some real warmth. “Which way was the wardrobe?”

“Just a straight right, about eight doors, then to the left.”

“Got it.”

She half-ran to the wardrobe, grabbed the first pair of denim shorts she saw and a white lacy tank, and headed back to her room to change. But when the door opened, she was faced with something completely different.

“Um, Doctor?!” she called, though she knew she was probably a little too far away for him to hear her. She stepped into the room, a long room with a nostalgic wood floor, walls of mirrors, and a barre set along one side, along with something that looked like a futuristic stereo system. On the other were rows of very familiar items hanging or sitting on a shelf: tights and leg warmers and skirts and leotards and tutus and a shelf full of pointe shoes. She dropped the clothes she was holding on the floor and ran to look at them. They were even created by her preferred maker, who had retired years ago. The shoes would fit her perfectly.

She heard footsteps behind her. “What is i – oh.” She turned and saw the Doctor looking around with surprise. “Well, then. I’d say the TARDIS is warming up to you.”

Molly found that she couldn’t respond. All she could do was stare, and try to ignore the tears gathering in her eyes that she saw reflected in the mirror. A warmth filled her chest that almost made her gasp. “She made me a ballet studio?” she whispered, uncertain if the Doctor could even hear her.

“She heard you. She hears everything,” the Doctor explained, his voice holding that certain tone of warm admiration he always had when speaking about the TARDIS. “She heard you talk about how important ballet was to you. So, she gave you a gift.”

“Thank you,” she whispered to the TARDIS. Molly wiped tears off her face with the back of her hand. “I can dance again. I really can.” The Doctor had given her body back to her, and the TARDIS had given her everything else she needed. “Oh, sometimes I can’t help but wonder if it really is all a dream.” She turned to look at the Doctor with a smile. “Not really. Please don’t try to shove me onto any desolate planets.”

The Doctor gave a small smile. “Cross my hearts,” he said, using both hands to cross both sides of his chest.

She looked back at the row of clothing. “Can the TARDIS create clothing?”

The Doctor stepped up and began looking through them. “No. Well, sometimes. I’m actually not certain,” he admitted. “I stole this TARDIS, and whoever had it before me seemed to collect all kinds of clothing. It may be that the TARDIS made them, or that she just relocated them.”

Molly walked across the floor as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It smelled just like the studio she’d used back in New York, where she had paid the owner to let her dance at night when all the classes were over.

She heard the Doctor take a few steps closer. “Do you want a moment? Or a few hours? We can do Everywhere tomorrow.”

Opening her eyes, she set her hand on the barre, smiling down at it. Somehow, the alien but human world outside seemed a little less enticing. “Yes, please. If you don’t mind.”

The Doctor clapped his hands together, and the sound echoed off the mirrors. “Not a problem. It’ll still be outside in the morning.” He started for the door. “I’ll pop out and bring something back for tea.”

“Thanks,” she said. Then she turned back to him. “But, um. One question.”

“Yes?”

“Where did my room go?”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Seven

Shopping, Interrupted

Molly’s room, it turned out, had shifted next door. After an evening of stretches, sewing and breaking in shoes, learning to use the stereo, and a light warm up followed by an easy dance she’d learned when she was six or seven, she found her room again. A dinner of some alien kind of noodles, a quick bath – noticing, now, the lack of soap – and a deep sleep later, she woke in the morning, repeated the names, changed, and was ready to go to Everywhere.

“Hey,” she said as she entered the main control room, looking down below the console where the Doctor was messing with bits of wire again.

“Good morning!” the Doctor greeted. “How did you sleep?”

She took a few steps down the stairs and then sat on them, watching him connect wires seemingly at random, Amy’s glasses balanced on his nose. “Really well, actually. I think between the hospital visit, getting kidnapped by aliens, two stops in Paris, and a good workout, my body was ready for some deep sleep.”

“I bet,” he replied, now placing the wires back where they seemed to belong. “You ready to head out, then? We could get some breakfast in the India district. Or ancient China. Or there’s a little restaurant outside a replica of 1940s Las Vegas with cuisine from the local galaxy. What do you think?”

“I’m game for anything,” she replied. “But is there anywhere we can do some shopping? I need some basics. You know, like soap, and makeup, and my own clothes, preferably. Wait – do you even have money?”

“Do I have money?” the Doctor repeated, incredulous. “Do I have money? Of course I have money. Why wouldn’t I have money?”

Molly used the railing to pull herself back to her feet. “I don’t know. In the show you mention that you never really carry it.”

The Doctor pulled Amy’s glasses off and stared at her a moment. “Well, that’s ridiculous. I don’t use it that often, but how else am I supposed to get food and supplies?”

“…psychic paper?”

“That would just be unfair,” the Doctor replied, headed up the stairs with her. “People work hard to create things; I wouldn’t want to just take it from them because I’m pretending to be the Prince of Denmark or from the Halian Embassy or something.”

“That does seem more fair,” Molly admitted. “Another way the show is different from the reality, I guess.”

“Yes,” agreed the Doctor. He turned to her with curious eyes. “I wonder where yours varies.”

Molly shrugged. “There were only three seasons, I don’t imagine is varies very much.”

“Do you want to watch it and find out?”

Molly thought about it for a moment. “Not really. Watching my own life through a dramatized lens doesn’t seem…comfortable.”

The Doctor nodded. “Well, alright, then. Shall we head out? We’ll make a shopping list over breakfast.” He almost laughed. “Shopping list.  Haven’t used one of those for ages.”

“Sounds good to me,” Molly replied. “Shopping list, on an alien planet.”

“Well,” said the Doctor, pointing to the doors. “Go on, take a look.”

Molly smiled and headed for the door of the TARDIS. She paused with her hand on the door for a moment, and took a deep breath. Here we go. Another alien planet. A human planet, yes, but not Earth. She’d already done New New Earth, but this time she was actually going to look around, experience it.

Before it could get too overwhelming, she swung the door open.

It did look like her memories of Earth, specifically New York – partially because of the thin layer of smog clinging to the tops of the buildings. There were crowds of people rushing by, a street lamp flickering despite it being daytime, and advertisements of scrolling words across the walls of buildings. A completely normal city, if she ignored the patchwork-like pattern of architectural styles and colors and materials, the clearly alien people dotted amongst the humans, and the green tint to a sky with a red-tinted sun.

She stepped outside onto what looked like concrete but felt under her feet more like soft earth after rain. She didn’t stick to it, but it gave a little under her weight. When she adjusted, it would probably be more comfortable to walk on. Or it would kill her shins. One or the other.

They were parked in a small alley off a side street, but it seemed to be a main street for shopping. She had stepped right out into the crowd, who largely ignored her and quickly moved by her with their bags and briefcases and strollers.

The door closed behind her and the Doctor stepped up beside her. “Right! So. Breakfast.”

They wound up at what looked like a 50s diner, but served food from nearly every country Molly could imagine. The menu had been twenty-three pages long, and also included food from other nearby planets, that sounded less appetizing as the Doctor explained them. She settled on croissants and a jam made of some neon purple fruit the Doctor recommended, which was sweet and tart like a raspberry, with a hint of melon. The Doctor ordered something from another planet that looked like a dessert bread with fruit cooked in, and of course a good cup of tea. As they ate, they wrote out a shopping list of what Molly considered essentials: A good bar of soap, red lipstick, and a leather jacket like the one she had at home, if they could find one, among a few other things. She liked the boots the TARDIS provided, but figured she may need other footwear, too. The first stop was back to the TARDIS, to grab a couple bags that were bigger on the inside, just like the TARDIS and the Doctor’s pockets.

As they walked along a large outdoor market, the Doctor stopped to pick up a few things for himself, too, though they didn’t seem quite as essential.

“What do you need a gavel for?” she asked him, as he handed her the metal gavel to put into one of her bags.

The Doctor turned to her with an expression as though she’d said something ridiculous. “I don’t know, one never knows when they might need a gavel. But now, I’m prepared.”

“Okay,” she laughed. They continued their stroll, and she looked up at the green-tinted sky, enjoying the warmth on her arms and legs, the alien sun on her face. “I think we’re almost done for me, anyway.”

The Doctor pulled the list out of his pocket. “Clothes, shoes, soaps etcetera, most of the makeup – yep. Just the red lipstick and jacket left.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” she remarked, looking around. They’d been shopping for a little while now, but it was all still fascinating. A stall had oddly-shaped bells all hanging around the front, and another bore alien vegetables and pink honey with bumblebees crowded around the jars, and another had a man shouting offers of free sample of something called ‘joy curls’. There were bright patterned fabrics, patterns that were common in India or China, or that looked like they may have been made into a dress for Marie Antoinette. In fact, there were clothes from all sorts of cultures and time periods. Someone was selling what looked like vases and statues from ancient Egypt. And all around her, people dressed in what she would consider cliché futuristic clothing, others with bright colors streaked across their face. She noticed a Hath, a little cluster of Ood, and a couple of Adipose bouncing on the roof of a stall. Everything about it was incredible, and so very real and alive. And almost steaming warm.

She looked back over to the Doctor, in his long sleeves and waistcoat. “Aren’t you hot?”

The Doctor gave a little laugh. “Yeah…yeah, I am, thanks for noticing.” He smirked back over at her.

Molly rolled her eyes. “Oh, you are just so very, very funny. But seriously – temperature-wise…aren’t you hot in that cashmere?”

The Doctor shrugged. “Bit warm, yeah. But I’m alright.” 

Down the way and to the left she noticed jars of pigmented powder, bright creams, and very recognizable metal tubes. Lipstick. “Over there,” she pointed. “That’ll probably be lipstick handled.”

“Excellent,” replied the Doctor. They began to head that way, when an odd, almost metallic screeching sound echoed from the sky, a distance away. Shortly after, a strong sound wave passed over them, a sound she could more feel than hear.

“Doctor, what was that?” She turned towards him, and then continued to turn as she realized he wasn’t beside her anymore. “Aaaand he’s gone.”  She looked across the market where he’d been standing, and spotted a rush of purple quickly moving away from her. She pulled the bags further onto her shoulder and took off after what she hoped was him.

She watched as he dodged his way through the crowd, a little more deftly than she did with her bags. But running through a crowd was practically second nature to her at that point. He dashed down an alley decorated with paper lanterns, and she followed through a minute later. “Doctor!” she called out. He continued forward. “Doctor!”

Finally, he paused and turned back to look at her, but all he did was gesture for her to continue following. With a frustrated growl, she did so, tempted to drop the bags but not wanting anyone to just pick them up and walk off with them. She may have expected the Doctor to buy her the essentials as they were stuck together, but she didn’t want to waste his money.

He slowed a little so she could catch up to him, and together they made their way out of the marketplace, towards the outskirts of the city. She saw smoke rising up in a distant field, a strange, white and red smoke, swirling together in the breeze. “What is that?”

“I don’t know,” the Doctor responded, his voice somehow both apprehensive and excited. “Almost there, now.”

It didn’t feel like they were nearly there, but they rushed up a hill and were able to get a good look at the wide and nearly empty field, save for in the center of it. There were great black burn marks, the dead yellow grass in a massive circle turned to charcoal. An inner part of the circle went deep, deep into the ground, the edges of it surrounded by some yellow and orange flames - but inside the hole there was nothing. She looked in the sky, and saw nothing, not even a cloud or a bird.

“Strange,” the Doctor muttered. “A crash of some sort. An invisible ship?” His face was serious for a moment, and then excitement began to flood his expression. He turned to Molly and put the serious frown back on. “Of course, very serious, a crash.”

“Oh, stop pretending to not be excited by a mystery,” Molly demanded. “I know you better than that.”

The Doctor’s grin returned. “I know you, too,” the Doctor pointed out. “You’re excited.”

Molly examined the scene in front of them. Great big, brand-new crater, surrounded by fire…and empty. “Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

“Marvelous. Let’s go, then.” He looked at the bags. “Go ahead and drop those there. Bring the gavel, though.”

Frowning with confusion, Molly dropped the bags, reached into one as deep as her shoulder, and retrieved the gavel. When she looked up, he was already gone. She stood and turned and saw him running for the crater. “I guess the running part of our adventures has begun,” she mumbled, took a deep breath, and took off after him.

Her body was unused to running again, so she was a bit out of breath when she arrived at the crater, just outside the fire, and the Doctor was already scanning the area with the sonic screwdriver. A few bits of metal were scattered around the hole, in shapes of things Molly could never guess the purpose of.

The Doctor looked at the results of his scan, and his brow furrowed. He turned to Molly and held the screwdriver out. “Trade me,” he said.

Molly’s brows raised. “What?”

“Trade me,” the Doctor repeated.

She held the gavel out. “Why do you want me to hold on to the sonic?”

The Doctor took the gavel and pressed the screwdriver into her hand, and turned back to the burning crater. The flames were at her knees, and she could feel the heat of them on her face like a bad sunburn. The sound of the flames almost drowned out the sound of the birds. She looked down past them and saw that hot embers filled the bottom.

“Because,” the Doctor said, “If I catch fire, I don’t want it to be damaged.”

Molly turned back to the Doctor with surprise. “Sorry, what? You’re not going in there, are you?”

“‘Course I am,” the Doctor replied, his voice with a tone as though she’d missed the obvious. “How else am I going to check it with the gavel?”

There were too many questions she had following that. “There’s a ring of fire around it.”

“Yeah, I noticed that, thank you.”

“And the ground is ten or eleven feet down and made of red-hot embers.”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t that suicide?”

“For my shoes, yeah,” replied the Doctor, lifting a foot to look at the bottom of his shoe. “For me…hopefully not.” He passed the gavel from one hand to the other as he looked all around the crater, and through the flames into it. “Well. Geronimo!”

With that he leapt forward, swinging the gavel wildly ahead of him. Molly held her breath until he saw him land on the other side with no sign of fire spreading over his clothes or hair. He continued to walk forward, swinging the gavel all around him.

“Agh!” he shouted after a minute. “Hot! Hot, hot, hot!” He began hopping from one foot to the other, but continued moving around the crater, leaving no part of the hole unchecked.

“Doctor!” Molly shouted.

“I’m busy!”

“But Doctor-”

“No, shut up, I need to focus!”

“Don’t tell me to shut up!” she snapped. “How are you getting back out of there?”

The Doctor looked up at her with irritation, and then a look of realization crossed his face. “Oh.” She could barely hear him say over the sound of the flames. He continued moving and swinging the gavel, but now he was looking up at how deep in he was. “I’ll figure that out as I go.”

Molly had doubts. He always came up with something, but sometimes he needed a little help. She looked down at the sonic in her hand and felt a brief moment of amazement at actually holding the sonic screwdriver. She was tempted to press the button, but what would that do? She didn’t know how to use it. She slid it into her back pocket and started to look around. There were things that looked like sharp-edged screws, what might be computer chips, long rods, gears with a thousand little teeth and – hold on.

She ran over a few feet, picking up one of the rods among an oblong-shaped depression of grass. It was long, maybe twenty feet, solid, but surprisingly light, almost feeling like nothing. She picked it up and paused, waiting for the scream of pain through her spine that she’d never actually feel again. Relieved all over again that she was free from its debilitating grasp, she dragged the pole back to the crater, the dragging more due to the length than the weight. “Doctor, throw your jacket up here!”

“Why?!” He was facing the other way now, swinging the mallet.

“So I can put out the flames and get you out!”

He turned back to her, and she waved the rod at him. He held up a finger for her to wait, and quickly finished his last lap of the crater, then turned back to her. Wincing with every step, the Doctor shrugged off his waistcoat. “Ready?!”

She set the rod aside. “Yeah!”

He tossed it up at her, and when she caught it, she felt relief flood her. Wishing for a bucket of water, she began beating at the flames.

“Hurry!” the Doctor shouted, and out of her peripheral vision she saw him hopping, his face red from the heat. She spread the coat out and hit with more force, finally deciding to throw the coat down and risk jumping up and down on it a few times. The edges of her calves and thighs burned, but she gritted her teeth and endured it. Finally, there seemed to be a gap wide enough for the Doctor, and she grabbed the rod and lowered an end to him. He stuck the gavel handle in his mouth, and immediately grasped the rod, and as she dug her feet into the earth and pulled, he used his feet against the wall of the crater to help her lift him up. When he landed at the top with a gasp for the clearer air, she never felt more grateful for physical therapy. Even as fit as she’d been before the gunshot, she never would have had the upper body strength to pull that off.

The Doctor spat out the gavel and reached down and began pulling a shoe off, and she knelt beside him and yanked off the other one. Both of the soles of the shoes had almost completely melted away. The Doctor removed his socks, bits of orange-red gleaming in them, and slowly got to his feet.

“Barefoot. Brilliant. I’ll solve the mystery barefoot, then,” he scowled, throwing the socks aside as though it was their fault.

“What was that all about?” Molly asked. “What was the point of that?”

“Some shields make a ship invisible,” he explained. “If they’re strong enough, even the sonic can’t detect them.”

Molly looked back at the crater. “But you didn’t find anything.”

“No,” the Doctor frowned, looking at the area around them. “I didn’t.”

“But it just crashed. The ship just crashed here. We felt it.”

“I know.” The Doctor began to make his way around the crater. “A ship crashed here, it definitely crashed here, look at all these bits of metal, the burned grass, the fire. And then…” He turned to her, his expression perplexed. “And then it grew legs and walked away.”

She looked at the crater. It wasn’t as massive as she imagined a crater caused by a ship falling from space would be, but it was still big. Too big to be moved that quickly. “How could it have disappeared?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, literally, it grew legs and walked away,” he said, pointing out among the dead grass. “Look, the grass is crushed, and there are little oblong impressions in the ground, slightly to the left, slightly to the right, spaced out evenly.”

Molly’s eyes widened as she looked at the grass. “Just like footsteps.”

“Exactly.” The Doctor turned towards her, his hand out expectantly. She reached into her pocket and handed him the sonic. “Grab the gavel, we might need it.” And off he went, following the footsteps.

Molly wrinkled her nose, and used the bottom of her tank top to pick up the gavel. She wiped the handle down, then held onto it. A quick glance at her legs showed heat blisters, but other than that, she seemed okay. Once she was away from the heat of the fire it would hurt less.

Molly stood and jogged to catch up with the Doctor, who was moving pretty quickly despite the lack of shoes. “What do you think it is?”

“Not sure yet, working on it,” he replied. “It couldn’t have gotten far.”

“Then why can’t we see it?”

“The shielding, I imagine.”

Molly lifted the gavel. “Why we have this.”

“Precisely.”

“Okay, another question, then,” she said. “Why can’t we hear it?”

The Doctor glanced at her. “What?”

“We heard it crash. It caused a soundwave. If the ship is walking, even if it’s invisible, shouldn’t we be able to hear it?”

The Doctor glanced over at her with a half-smile. “Why can’t we hear it?”

It didn’t sound as though he was wondering that himself. He was asking her, because he already knew the answer. She knew the Doctor tested people sometimes, but she really wasn’t prepared for it. Her mind raced through any possible ideas, but nothing seemed right. “Does the shielding also include sound?”

“No, but a good guess.” He paused and turned to her, and hopped in place. “You can’t feel it, because you have shoes on and, well, you’re human, but there’s a slight rumbling in the ground. And in the distance – do you hear?”

Molly listened for a moment, only hearing the distant market behind them, and the squeaking of birds ahead of them. “I don’t…” and it occurred to her. “We’re in a field. There aren’t any trees ahead of us, or birds above us.”

“So where are the birds?”

She listened closely again. The squeaking of the birds. There was something metallic in it. “There aren’t any birds. It’s the ship moving.”

“And the reason we can only just hear it is…?”

Molly turned back to the crater. The bits of metal that had fallen off. The rod – the rod that was too long and too solid for her to have been able to lift or maneuver it so easily. “The metal. It’s lightweight. The rod felt like nothing.” She turned back to the Doctor. “We can barely hear it because it weighs almost nothing, for its size. That’s why the indents in the ground are mostly just the crushed grass.”

The Doctor gave her a smile that was mostly in his eyes. “Exactly.” He turned back, hurrying after the ship. “Come on! It’s headed for the city.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Eight

Mistake

Molly and the Doctor were approaching the city, too far behind the ship. There was already the sound of screaming ahead of them, and people running towards them, away from the streets.

The Doctor reached out and grabbed one of the retreating people. “What is it? Can you see it?”

The man shook his head. “No. No, but whatever it is it’s ripping out parts of the street, and streetlamps, and knocking off parts of buildings. Some people tried shooting at it when it got there, but no one can see it.”

“Do you know if-”

“Is anyone hurt?” Molly asked, ignoring the Doctor’s irritated look at her interruption.

The man nodded. “Must be. There were people in the buildings.”

The Doctor let go of the man’s arm. “Where is it? What section of the city?”

“It was headed for Germany. You should run,” the man suggested. “It’s big. Whatever it is, it’s huge.”

“No,” the Doctor replied. “But thank you. You should head toward the World Market, on the opposite side. It’s been headed this direction; I don’t think it’ll go back.”

The man nodded, and took off running.

Molly listened to the screams, the sounds of crushing concrete, the unmistakable sound of the collapse of walls. Suddenly everything was very real. People might be dying just ahead of them. And they were the city’s best hope at stopping it. The world on their shoulders. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” replied the Doctor, his eyes scanning the top of the city ahead of them. “I usually just start talking and figure it out somewhere along the way. For now, follow the smoke.”

She looked back at the city, and noticed the trail of red smoke the Doctor had been tracing. He took off again, and Molly followed after him. They entered the city again through a gap between buildings. Molly looked around and shuddered. Chunks of buildings were ripped out, almost like something had taken a bite out of them. She could see into people’s apartments, see people trapped by rubble and trying to climb out. Others were reaching out of pits caused by the collapsed sidewalk, and a few people had stopped to try to unbury them. People rushed by, some holding bleeding head wounds (which made her feel woozy), others carrying children. Almost everyone was screaming, in fear, in anger, in sheer terror. This up-close-and-personal panic was not something they’d shown on the show. But it was something she’d seen before.

Molly made a split-second decision. “Doctor!”

He turned back to her. “What? Do you see something?”

She saw a lot of things. “The damage. It doesn’t have to cause the damage; it’s doing it on purpose.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. In his eyes she saw focus, but also sadness, and some anger. “It’s attacking the city.”

“Did it land here on purpose?”

“I don’t know.” He turned back when another crashing sound echoed down the street. “Molly, we have to catch up with it. We have to try to stop it.”

Molly looked around herself again. “No. You need to try to stop it.” She held the gavel out to him. “You need to prevent it from causing more harm. You need to find out what it wants. I’m not going to be much use in that. But I can help here. I’ll do the most good here.”

The Doctor took a few steps towards her. “I know you want to help people, but think of the bigger picture. That thing, whatever it is, has to be stopped before it destroys everything.”

“I know that. But you know what you’re doing there. I know what I’m doing here.” She held the gavel closer to him. “I’m going to organize these people as quickly as I can, so they can have a workable system of evacuation and rescue efforts until medical, fire, police, whoever arrive. This way, you can work on prevention, and I can work on recovery. I’ll catch up, I promise.”

He looked torn. She could see him wondering how long it would take to convince her to follow him. Too long, he seemed to decide. He made a growling sound of frustration. “Why are you like this?! And why did I say this was my favorite part of you?!” His hands and voice said he hated it, but his eyes reflected some admiration. “Taking care of the ordinary people. Alright, fine. Fine! Keep the gavel, in case you suspect something has come back here. Don’t risk yourself, and catch up to me as soon as you can.”

Molly nodded. “Just follow the smoke, right?”

“Right.” The Doctor looked around for a moment, and clapped his hands together. “Okay. You get this done, I’ll get that done. Somehow. I’ll see you in a bit.”

“See you in a bit,” she promised. After a moment of hesitation, he turned to run after the ship. Molly glanced around, and looked for a place to get everyone’s attention, and hoped she hadn’t gotten in over her head. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. There – some sort of truck with a tall cab. She stuck the gavel in her boot, ran over to the bed of the truck, which was also unusually high, and used the slight spring in the ground to lift herself up. She waited a moment for the pain, and when she remembered again that it was gone, she ran across the truck bed, and pulled herself up on top of the cab. She got to her feet, took another quick look around, and whistled while waving her arms over her head. She’d learned the high-pitched, echoing whistle during her time volunteering for relief efforts.

“Okay! Okay! Everyone who can hear me! We need to get organized if we want everyone to survive!” She was shouting at the top of her lungs. She was grateful when she saw most people near her look at her, even the people behind her. They seemed confused, maybe a little suspicious, but she had to get them to listen to her. “This isn’t my first rodeo – uh, disaster. So please listen!” Her mind raced ahead to the most important tasks: Evacuation. Medical. Rescue. They needed supplies. “Take a look around! If your car still works, please come line it up. We’ll use them to evacuate people to the World Market on the fastest possible route. You’ll drop people off, come back, and pick up more, okay? You’re the evacuation team. We’re getting out anyone who can’t help. Anyone who can, stays. Got it?” She looked around, and no one moved. She clapped her hands over her head repeatedly. “Come on, get your asses in gear! You want to save your city or live with the fact you ran away when someone needed you? Because, trust me, it’s not as easy to live with as you think. Let’s move, people!” Well, she’d assisted with disaster relief. That didn’t mean she was good with people.

Two or three people moved down the street, finding their cars and preparing to line them up. Molly smiled. “Okay, that’s better! Anyone medical?” She saw a few people acknowledge her. “Get a marker, lipstick, anything you can use on skin. Decide on symbols, and then one of you use them to start triaging. The others set up a clear space away from fire to take people too injured to evacuate until stabilized, then come back and start patching people up. I need another couple volunteers to work with the medical team to find the supplies they need!” People still seemed hesitant, but a few impatient glares from her earned her two volunteers. “Great. Next, we need people to grab any digging implements you can find, and rope or cord, and anything to use as counterweights. You’re the rescue team. Dig people out, but be careful! If someone has a crush injury, don’t remove it until the medical team has seen them! The same goes for anyone with a foreign object sticking out of them. Let’s also get people out of these buildings, so grab ladders. Get some scarves and handkerchiefs and cover your mouths if you’re anywhere near fire, and get some fire extinguishers or buckets of water ready. If you’re going to get close to fire, drench yourself first. Are we clear?!” At that moment, there was nothing as beautiful as the sound of assent. “Okay, then! Let’s get moving!”

The area around her was mobilized, and she saw others spreading the plan in the distance. She climbed down and joined a group nearby that was finishing digging a woman out. She pulled the woman back onto the surface, and immediately had to look away as the red soaking the woman’s clothing made her dizzy and her vision was obscured with flashes of red. She looked up. The path of red smoke had gotten longer, and more twisted around the city. But she could see the source of the smoke.

Molly ran to a set of stairs that looked like a fire escape and climbed up to the roof of a nearby building. She could see from there the pathways and streets that wound through the city, and see exactly where the ‘ship’ was. She quickly calculated a shortcut through and climbed back down, and took off running full-sprint.

Please let him be safe. The Doctor was almost always safe, of course, no matter the danger of the situation. But this was real life, not TV, and she had made him face the ‘ship’ alone. Had that been the wrong decision? She couldn’t help but feel she’d abandoned him. But she also couldn’t help but feel that her efforts to help the injured and trapped were just as important as the Doctor’s task.

She was reaching the source of the smoke now, watching it flow a few streets over in what was clearly a poorer part of the city, filled with worn buildings and tight alleys, and a downed power line. Before long, she heard the Doctor’s voice with relief. He was shouting at something – the ship, probably – but it took her a little while longer to make out his words.   “Listen to me! Listen to me. You don’t have to do this. I can help you! Please, just listen!” he begged. He wasn’t far away – maybe a street over?

A sharp right turn down an alley, out onto the next street, and a few feet down, she could see him. He was down another alley, trapped against the brick wall of a dead end. Between him and her, she saw the air move like a ripple. She crouched down and started approaching it from behind, hoping it wouldn’t hear her sneaking in on her toes.

There was a loud, grinding sound, and she heard the Doctor continue, “I know you’re scared. I know you’re angry. But you don’t have to do this! You can go in peace!” There was another grinding sound. The Doctor hadn’t even seen her yet; he was so focused on the ripple. And now Molly could see it was getting closer and closer to him. “No – please – let me help you.” He said something else, so soft she couldn’t hear it. Still, it continued to corner him.

Her heart beat painfully fast. It, whatever it was, was coming for him, and nothing he said was making it stop. If it could tear buildings apart, it could definitely tear the Doctor apart. If it was him or her that died, she chose her. But what could she do? How was she going to stop this thing she couldn’t even see? How could she buy the Doctor more time? What did she even have?

The gavel. That was it. She pulled it from her boot, and stood. She pulled her arm back. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. She let the gavel fly before she registered the Doctor’s cry of ‘no’.

It was too late. The mallet hit whatever it was with a loud th-wack against the hard metal. She saw some part of it fall off, a round, bronze keyboard thing of some sort. There was a clanking and hissing sound that almost sounded like a roar, and sparks against the sidewalk as whatever it was turned. “Come on!” she screamed, then took a deep breath, turned, and ran.

The sound of its footsteps – if it had feet – were nearly silent, but the metal still made the odd squeaking sound. It was following after her. A flood of relief quickly gave way to a flood of terror. She hadn’t thought of the Part Two of this plan. Hopefully, like the Doctor, she’d think of something on her feet.

What stops a giant mechanical ship? She wasn’t technical, not like the Doctor, not even like the average person. She couldn’t even figure out Snapchat. So how was she going to stop this thing? She racked her brain for anything she knew about robots, which was essentially what she’d seen in movies. A giant magnet? An electrical surge?

That was it. The downed power line. She just had to loop around and somehow trick it into walking into the electricity. Which probably wasn’t possible, and she wasn’t sure if it would even work, but it was the best option she could think of.

She took a sharp right down a narrow street, leaping over discarded items people had abandoned in order to run. Molly was even more grateful to the TARDIS as she realized how much easier it was to move after the stretches, but still her legs screamed in agony. Too much running, too fast, too soon, and with burns up and down her legs. She glanced back to see if she still had a lead on it, but could just barely make out the air moving behind her, not enough time to register how far ahead she was. The squeaking was just a blur in her ears, barely audible over the wind blowing past her as she ran as fast as she could. Another right.

Molly spotted the Doctor up ahead. “Molly! This way! Now!” he shouted, then turned back down the alleyway he’d come from, leading back to the street she’d started the chase on. Another sharp turn, but too sharp. She slipped and hit the concrete, the road ripping up the burns in her legs. She screamed, and thought for a moment that she wouldn’t be able to stand again. I will not be that girl in a horror movie, she thought, and pressed her palms into the ground in order to get back on her feet. As soon as she could, she darted down the alley – just in time, it seemed, as the concrete where she’d been lying imploded in on itself.

She made it to the other side of the alley, where the Doctor waved her out of the way. She dodged to the left, hitting the hood of a car, just in time for the sparks that marked the creature walking through the narrow alley stopped. As she turned to lean back on the hood of the car, she saw the ripple emerge. The Doctor aimed the sonic screwdriver at it, taking slow steps backward, his face determined. It didn’t take long for there to be a slight rumble to the ground, and then the ripple turned into a shimmer, which revealed a tall, large creature made up of metal and screens and wires, almost in the shape of a wolf, with a large hump on its back like a bear. It was sprawled across the street, unmoving.

Her breath was so ragged it took some time to put words together. “Is it…dead?”

“Turned off,” replied the Doctor, as he slid the sonic back into his pocket. “The others should be turned off, now, too. They’re connected by a network, sort of like Wifi, but not really at all like Wifi.”

“Others?”

“A group of them. They all must have crashed and emerged from the hole, going different directions. I didn’t see any of the footsteps headed for the World Market, did you?”

“No, but I…” Breath in. Breath out. “I didn’t see any others.”

“There were a few. They weren’t a real ship, they were robots created to serve as whatever their creators needed – in this case, an escape pod.”

“Where did they come from?”

“Better question!” he announced, and turned towards her, his eyes narrowing as he approached. “What the hell do you think you were doing?” The anger in his voice was so thick it seemed a question he would have bellowed, but instead his voice was quiet, almost cold.

Confusion filled her head and made her dizzy. “What are you talking about?”

“You don’t do that. You don’t put yourself in danger on my behalf, ever. You don’t attack anything unless it’s in self-defense, ever. You’re not smarter than me, you’re not as experienced as me, and you never will be.” Don’t try to play games with me, don’t ever think you’re capable of that. The Impossible Astronaut. That’s what he was reminding her of in that moment. “You don’t make those decisions. I do.”

Exhausted and confused wasn’t enough – now she was hurt, and with the hurt always came the anger. “What are you talking about?” she repeated. “It had you cornered! It was going to kill you!”

“No, it wasn’t.” The louder her voice became, the quieter his. “It was speaking to me; we were making progress.”

“But it was just making noise-”

The Doctor sighed, exasperated. “Code, it was speaking in code, Molly. Computer code, using the squeaking sounds to speak to me. It was afraid, they’re all afraid, and the fear made them angry, and being attacked made them rage against their attackers, but I was getting through to it before you attacked it. Which left me no choice but to attack it back. I promised it no human was going to hurt it again, but you did, and now it will never trust me. Now I’ll have to leave them all shut down. I’ve essentially killed them all, a whole new, intelligent, robotic species.” He paused clenching his jaw, pressing his lips together. “And it’s because you decided to try to save me by putting yourself in danger. Because you attacked it.” The disappointment in his eyes felt like needles in her heart. “I thought you’d know better.”

As he stared at her accusingly, she stared back at him, knowing her eyes and expression were blank. She hadn’t found an emotion to portray yet. She was devastated by their deaths – but wasn’t it necessary to save others? She was relieved – but wasn’t it tragic to destroy these new beings? She was angry – but wasn’t he right? He was angry – but wasn’t she right? “I’m sorry,” she said in a breath, finally. “I am. But I’m also not. And I want to talk about that, but later. More important right now is trying to figure out how to save them.”

The Doctor frowned. “Didn’t you hear me? I can’t turn them back on. The people that built them enslaved them, made them to be used for whatever they needed, whatever they liked, and when they gained sentience, their creators didn’t care. When their creators used them as an escape pod, the robots ejected them into space, and crashed here. They think humans are a threat to them, that they’ll be enslaved again. And now that you’ve attacked them, they have no reason to believe otherwise.”

“Okay. Can you just…wake this one up, but keep it from moving? So we can explain?”

“No,” replied the Doctor. “No, I can’t turn it on partially. It’s on or it’s not.”

Molly ran her hands down her face. “Okay. Could you program some kind of message using the code, and then turn it on, so it’ll know the moment it wakes up?”

“Not now you’ve knocked off the control panel,” said the Doctor. Molly remembered the bronze thing that had fallen off when the gavel hit the robot.

She turned and headed back to the alley to find it. “There’s got to be some way to reattach it, then.”

“Molly,” came the Doctor’s irritated voice as he followed behind her. “Do you think I haven’t already thought of all of this?”

The anger exploded in her mind like a field of red. She spun around. “I don’t know, okay?! I don’t know what I’m doing! I know that. I am aware. But there has to be something, there always is, so please, if you could, kindly explain to me like I’m four years old why it can’t be repaired, why there is nothing we can do. I know you’re good at talking to people like they’re stupid, you do it to people all the time, and you clearly think that’s what I am, so go for it. Tell me why I can’t fix this.”

They’d switched places. Now she was angry, and his expression was nearly blank. She thought she saw a trace of hurt around his eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. If it was there, well, then good. He’d hurt her, and in her anger, hurting him back felt justified.

The Doctor shifted his weight a few times before clearing his throat. “They’re all connected, it’s part of their system. If I do anything to it, if I touch it, and something goes wrong, it will just make everything worse.”

“If it’s dead either way, what does that matter?”

“I’m not familiar with this technology. I don’t know if something I do might turn it into a bomb,” the Doctor explained. “They were built to be used as everything, it’s possible that includes as missiles. And if I accidentally turn this one into a bomb, and they’re all connected, then the others may go off, too, creating explosions all over the city.”

Okay. Another strategy. “If you turned it back on, do you think it could tell you how to repair it?”

“Molly, I can’t risk turning it back on.”

“But if you could,” she insisted, turning again to find the part she’d torn off. “Say I can buy us a couple of minutes. If it can understand your words, it can understand mine. Maybe if I’m holding the part out to it, if I’m apologizing, if I’m on my knees showing submission, it will pause long enough for you to convince it to let you help repair it, to cease hostilities and save them.”

The Doctor grabbed her arm to stop her just as she reached the alley the Doctor had been cornered in. “And risk your life again? Give it the perfect opportunity to kill you before I have to kill them again?”

She tore her arm out of his grasp and took a few steps back. “Look. I did this, but I can’t fix it on my own. My life isn’t more important than theirs, even if they’re technically machines. So, let’s just try this, and if I get through to it, everything is fine, and if I die – I die.” She did her best to stare him down despite his height advantage, his age and experience and intellectual advantage. “We’re going to do this. If there’s any chance it’ll work, we have to. And yeah…I’m making that decision on my own. Because risking my life should be my decision. Not yours.”

Two feelings seemed to be at war inside him, and she couldn’t identify either of them. He soon turned and stalked away, and pulled out the sonic screwdriver. He passed it from hand to hand again, pacing. She was about to speak when he spun back towards her. “You are infuriating!” he shouted. She took a breath to shout something back, but he continued, pointing the sonic at her to emphasize his words. “And if you survive this, we’re going to have a chat on the TARDIS.”

Molly couldn’t help but smile. She didn’t want to risk her life, but she’d rather die than live with the consequences of her actions weighing her down.  “Good. I want that chat, too.”

The Doctor frowned, but she spotted some pride in his eyes. “Well, good, then,” he said, a little ornery. “You’ll save them, and we’ll head back.” You’ll save them. He specifically said that she would.

Which was a comforting thought. If it worked.

Molly knelt, nearly completely across the street from the creature, the control panel in her hand, breath hitching in her chest, as she waited for the Doctor. He stood to one side, near the hood of the car, and aimed the sonic at the robot.

“Ready?” he asked.

She took a deep breath. “No. But let’s do it.”

“If it lurches at you, dive under, then roll out,” the Doctor reminded her of the plan they had made. She nodded. “Three…two…one.” The unmistakable sound of the sonic echoed in the breeze, and slowly, the creature in front of her began making a grinding sound, gears inside beginning to turn. She watched, uncertain of when it was fully awake. The Doctor helped with that. “Now, Molly.”

She was surprised to hear herself clear her throat like she was about to give a presentation in school. “Um. Hi.” Strong start. “My name is Molly Quinn.” Introduce yourself. Make them see her as an individual, and one that was willing to take the time to give them information about herself. “There’s been a misunderstanding.” Was this how one spoke to a robotic creature that may, potentially, kill her? “I thought you were going to hurt my friend. I didn’t mean to really hurt you.” She held the part in her hands out towards it. Them. “I found the bit I broke off. We wanted to know if you could tell us how to fix it for you.” This didn’t feel like enough, and now they were getting to their feet, or paws, or whatever they were. She took a breath and tried again. “I’m genuinely very sorry. I let my fear dictate my actions, and I should have done better. I will do better. You deserve better. You and your…friends.” Something. Something, something more powerful than this. “All you’ve known is cruelty. You were born of cruelty, and lived in cruelty. You deserve more than that, and we want to help you find it.”

They stood, but didn’t move closer to her. There was no sign they fully understood her, or understood her at all. But they must have – the Doctor had spoken to them.

Molly heard creaking noises as it stood to full height, and then a few clicks and beeps and squeaks. She turned to the Doctor, waiting for a translation, but his eyes were on the creature. “Right. I’m lowering the sonic,” he said calmly. He did so, even sliding it into his pocket. “See? Completely unarmed. She’s telling you the truth. We just want to help.” He paused, and the sounds returned. She wished the TARDIS would translate the code. For now, she had to try to infer what it was saying from what the Doctor’s replies were. “Yes, I can reattach it, if you tell me how.” He paused, and realization lit up his face as the creature ‘spoke’ again. “Oh. Yes. Yes, of course.” The Doctor turned to Molly. “Toss me the panel.”

Molly slowly got to her feet, hoping the creature didn’t view that as a threat. But then, it was easily three times her size and made of metal. She was hardly a real threat to begin with.

She turned and threw the Doctor the panel. “Can you fix it?”

“Better,” replied the Doctor. He pulled the sonic screwdriver back out of his pocket and aimed it at the panel. A moment later, sparks flew from the panel, and the Doctor tossed it aside into some rubble. He turned back to the creature. “There. Now no one can control you. You’re free. We’ll remove them from the others, as well.”

A long moment of silence. Molly held her breath and looked from the creature to the Doctor, watching every bit of his face for any emotion that would tell her what was going to happen next. Just as the moment was stretching on so long she felt she would scream, a sound came from the creature. The Doctor’s eyes closed, and he released the breath he’d been holding, too.

A sigh of relief or failure? “What? What is it?”

The Doctor turned to her, and she caught a smile in his eyes. “Time for peace talks.” And just as suddenly as he’d smiled, he frowned. “And then it’s time for that chat.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Nine

First Fight

Molly leaned against the railing of the TARDIS, watching as the Doctor tied new shoes onto his feet, her arms crossed against her chest. She was ready to be on both the defensive and the aggressive, but was trying to be better than that. Fighting against that instinct was difficult, especially as she waited for the Doctor to be the one to start speaking.

When the Doctor stood, he moved to the console, doing something on the other side she couldn’t see. The silence stretched on and on, until she couldn’t take it anymore.

She leaned over to look at the Doctor, but could only catch sight of an arm and a shoulder. “If you’re trying to make me feel like a kid that’s about to be grounded, it’s not going to work.” He leaned around to look at her. His gaze, while not cold, was certainly chilled. “Don’t look at me like that. You don’t intimidate me.” A lie. And he probably knew it, too, given how well he’d intimidated her when she’d first arrived.

“You don’t do that,” he said, walking around the console to approach her.

“Do what?”

“Attack, unless you have no choice.”

“They had you cornered.”

“See, that’s the other thing you don’t do: put yourself at risk for me.”

“No.”

He sighed in frustration. “You don’t get to just say no, you-”

Molly unfolded her arms and stood straight. She couldn’t match his height, but at least she could match his stance. “No.” She took two steps closer. Maybe looking confident would make her feel less sick over arguing with him. “You don’t get to dictate to me what I can and cannot do with my own life. I’m not a child, Doctor. And I won’t let you forbid me from doing anything you wouldn’t do for me.”

He took a step closer to her. “You have made it very clear that you can’t be trusted to make those kinds of decisions on your own. You risked yourself, and you made things worse. It may have been that that whole race had to be killed before it even started.”

She sighed and ran her fingers through her hair. “I get it, okay? I made a bad call. I’m new to this, it’s going to happen sometimes. I make mistakes, I make a lot of mistakes. But I don’t make the same one twice.” Unless it was fun, but she decided now wasn’t the time for that comment.

“That was quite the mistake.”

 “It won’t happen again.”

“You’re right, it won’t,” he said. His anger was no longer hidden beneath a cool expression. “Because you’re not going to try to save me again, not without us formulating a plan first.”

“Like there’s ever time for that when your life is at risk!” Her voice was drier than she’d meant. “Look. Don’t attack things unless my life is in danger, got it. But you can’t just force me to be okay with you saving my life, but me having to sit around and twiddle my thumbs if you’re in danger!”

“Molly-”

“I understand that no one has said this to you for a while, but Doctor, I mean it when I say no.” The voice in the back of her mind told her that was definitely over some line or other, but that voice was probably her conscience or her common sense, and she tended to ignore those, anyway.

“I know what I’m doing, Molly. I’m not new to any of this. You are. You need to do as you’re told.”

Molly tried to fight back a laugh, and failed. “You know me. In which of our universes do you think that is ever gonna happen?” She paused. “We’ve known each other for about ten seconds, and we’ve known each other all our lives. We know each other better than most people know us. I’m willing to die for you, the same as I would happily die for any other friend.” If she’d ever had one. “And I’m okay with that. You have to be, too.”

There was a long pause, as she watched him bite the inside of his lip. “And if I’m not?”

Molly shrugged. “Then go drop me off on Earth somewhere. It’s not like you chose me; it’s not like you wanted me here anyway. Drop me off on Earth, and I’ll figure it out until you can send me home. Because that’s the only other option here. Accept that I’m going to risk my life for you if I need to, or get rid of me.”

Her heart was pounding. This wasn’t something she’d thought about saying, but really, what other option was there? She could stay, or go, but she wasn’t going to compromise what few moral rules she had either way. The issue was, of course, that she had no connections in this universe. She didn’t exist in this universe. So where was she going to live? How was she going to eat? What kind of job could she get without any record of her existence?

And, of course, there was another issue: she didn’t want to leave him. Or the TARDIS.

She watched as the Doctor turned and walked away from her. He didn’t seem to be going anywhere in particular, just trying to get some space from her while he thought through things. She wanted to push him to answer, to not leave her in this horrible space where she might be homeless and cut off from the only person she knew in the universe, torn away from their adventures so soon. But it wouldn’t be fair for her to interrupt him now, and it might push him to make the decision she was dreading. She tried to calm herself instead. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.

Finally, he turned towards her. “I never said I didn’t want you here,” he said slowly. “Do you really think I’d just abandon you on Earth, when you have nowhere to go?” He paused. “Do you want to leave?”

Molly didn’t bother to resist the urge to roll her eyes. “No, of course not.”

“Then how is it one moment you’ve decided we’re friends, and the next you’ve decided that I don’t want you here?”

An ache in her chest and a woosh of emotions hit her hard, unexpectedly. She had implied they were friends, she realized, and she also realized she very much wanted them to be. It had only been a couple days, but they had done so much together already, and as she’d said, they also knew so much about each other’s lives. But did he? He’d just called her out on assuming it, so probably not. And it hurt. But it could also be that he just didn’t want her making assumptions about him. That was fair.

There was only one way to find out. And when she wanted to know something, she didn’t shy from whatever she had to do to get the information, no matter how humiliating it was to ask. “Well, are we friends?” Clearly, he hadn’t been expecting that question. He frowned, and she saw the lines deepen across his forehead and around his eyes. As he stared, clearly surprised, maybe confused, she continued, “I know, I know, we haven’t actually known each other that long. You can be honest about whether or not you think we are. You’re not going to hurt my feelings.” A lie. “I’m not going to cry or anything.” Another lie.

Molly watched as he wrung his hands together. Was it a good sign, or a bad one? This felt worse than facing the space merpeople and the living robots. Her loneliness had broken from the box she kept it locked in and clung to her skin, exposing her nerves to the world. The breeze turning the wrong way would cause enormous pain. She needed a friend. A real friend. She’d never really had one before. And for most of her life, watching his faces move across a screen, she had wanted her real friend to be him.

He finally opened his mouth to speak. “Of course we are,” he said, and Molly felt a rush of warmth. “I didn’t know that was a question.” The fight wasn’t over yet, she knew, but she felt the moment they both set aside their defenses as he took a few steps forward and wrapped his arms around her. The warmth increased, maybe tenfold. A feeling of safety washed over her, something she wasn’t overly familiar with. She wrapped her arms around him, holding tightly to the only real friend she’d ever had. She probably held on longer than she should have, but she wanted to memorize the experience of this platonic affection.

“Even though it’s only been a couple days?” She could have slapped herself. Did she always have to try to find holes in every good thing that happened?

“Like you said,” began the Doctor, pulling away now. “Our shows may not be entirely accurate, but they’ve still probably shown more about us than we’ve ever shown one person before. There are things we don’t know about each other, but from what I’ve seen between the real you and the show you, most things are accurate. If my show goes back to when I knew Donna, then you’ve seen more of me than anyone else has.” For a moment, he didn’t seem comfortable with that. It was understandable; she wasn’t very comfortable with someone knowing more about her then she maybe would have told them herself, either.

“And I don’t really get to show most of myself to anyone, but I can, now,” she said, turning to lean against the railing again. The realization dawned on her. “It’s weird. Before I came here, I basically sent out a prayer to the universe that I could finally be completely myself. And here I am. You’re the first person I can be my actual, fully true self since-”

“Since you changed your identity and moved to New York?” he asked, now coming to join her against the railing.

“Yeah.” Molly pressed her lips together for a moment as she debated how much she was willing to say. “I couldn’t talk about…anything to do with my past with anyone. I never got to hear anyone call me by my real name. I had to avoid people looking at me too long, in case somehow, they recognized me. Now I don’t have to think so much before I do or say anything, I don’t have to worry about people looking at me, or that someone will connect me to…” She let the sentence drift. She may be relieved to be herself, but there were still things she wasn’t willing to let come to light. Not even for him. Especially not for him.

The Doctor looked thoughtful for a moment. “You asked the universe to give you the opportunity to be yourself, without fear of anyone knowing who you really were, about your past?”

“Essentially. Yeah.”

“Anything else you asked it for?”

She hesitated. Some aspect of his voice told her this wasn’t a casual inquiry. “Does it matter? It’s not like the universe was listening.”

“Who said it wasn’t?”

Molly turned her head away from him, looking at the orange light moving up and down the console of the TARDIS. “Maybe in your universe that happens. Not in mine.”

“And yet…here you are,” he said softly, gesturing to her. “Exactly where you needed to be to in order to be yourself. So, what else did you ask for?”

She hated that he had a point. It hurt her head to think that maybe that little prayer had done this, somehow, that something in the universe could hear her and grant her that wish. “Just…” her mind reached back to that night. What else had she said? “I think just not to be alone. Some relief from the grief and the anger from the grief. But mostly it was just…being able to be myself finally, without fear.”

He was quiet for a moment. She looked to him, and saw that look again, the one that told her his mind was racing so fast and far ahead of hers that she likely wouldn’t fully understand his thoughts, even if he’d said them aloud. “And here you landed. On the TARDIS. With me. Someone you had watched on television for years. That you were familiar with. That was familiar with you.”

Molly stared a moment longer. “What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know yet,” he said, his voice distant. But a moment later, he cleared his throat, and turned back to her. “But you were right. You were sent here for a reason. Whatever reason that is, it’s clearly important. Which is why you can’t risk yourself anymore.”

She rolled her eyes again. “Have we been here before? I think I recognize that tree.”

“We do seem to be going in circles, yes.”

 “So we’re at an impasse.”

“It would appear so.”

Molly said, “Look. It is etched into my mind, into my heart, into my soul. I can help others. They can’t help me. I cannot accept anyone’s help.” She turned her body towards him a little. “But I have to accept your help. I don’t have a choice. So as long as you’re going to help me, you have to understand that I will stop at nothing to help you. No matter the cost. I have to.”

There was no response for a time, just his body position changing to mirror hers: Leaned back against the railing, body turned a little toward her, arms folded, one leg slightly out, and looking into her eyes. As she was learning, reading his gaze was nearly impossible most of the time, at least, if he didn’t want to be read. So instead, for once, she opened up herself to being read: she didn’t hide how earnestly she meant it. That accepting help was one of the most difficult things in the world for her, that having to accept his was painful, that no matter what she was going to do whatever it took to keep him safe in return.

The tenseness of his shoulders slacked, and for a moment, he looked defeated. “I know something happened to make you feel this way,” he said, finally. He paused, and when he spoke again his voice was near a whisper. “Something happened to you when you were thirteen. What was it?”

Now it was her shoulders that tensed, her whole body that tensed, in a way that made her feel she was collapsing in on herself. “It’s a long story. I don’t want to get into it.”

“Something,” the Doctor argued gently, “Just give me something. Some context to help me understand.”

Molly pursed her lips together. What could she possibly give him to explain this that wasn’t incriminating? Finally, she settled on the surrounding cause, rather than the root of it. “I loved my parents,” she began. “And they took good care of me. But they also never shielded me from anything. Their marriage issues were front and center with all out screaming fights, our financial problems discussed with me sitting at the dinner table with them, including their fears of losing the house. If I struggled in my schoolwork, I had to figure it out on my own. If I was bullied at school, well, it’d make me stronger, so I could protect myself and be more self-sufficient. I was told not to whine. I was trained to not ask for help. Instead, I took on the role of helping others. If I couldn’t ask for help, then I would do my best to give it.” She swallowed. She didn’t want to say these next words, but they were what he was looking for. But she couldn’t look in his eyes as she said them, so she stared down at his new shoes. “Then, one day, at thirteen, when someone needed my help, I turned away. I ran. All they could do was watch me run. When it counted, when it mattered the most, I abandoned them.” She closed her eyes and felt the tears fall down her cheeks, and sighed. She needed to keep talking, to avoid falling into that red hot pit of memory, but she knew she needed to make eye contact with him in order to say what she needed to say next. Getting the nerve to look him in the eye again was difficult, to say the least. Every part of her soul begged her not to. She didn’t want to see his disappointment in her, not again, not like this.

But Molly took a deep breath, tilted her head up, and forced her eyes to look into his. Instead of judgement, she found understanding. She should have known better. He thought she wasn’t that person anymore, the one who ran from someone who needed her help so desperately, and that was what counted to him. She wished it counted to her. She wished she believed she wasn’t that person. He was less harsh a judge than she was. “Anyway,” she started, using the filler word to borrow time as she tried to organize her mess of a head. “Since then, if someone needs my help, I help them. No questions asked. It doesn’t matter what it might cost me. I don’t have that much left to lose, anyway. I’ll spend all my life making up for that time I ran away, and I’m happy to do it. And I won’t stop doing it. Because if I refuse, I fail them all over again.”

The Doctor turned from her some, looking down as he seemed to process what she’d told him, what little she had actually told him. While her instinct told her to watch his expression, she instead turned to watch the lights of the TARDIS again. For once, she didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

It wasn’t long before, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn back to her. “You took on the responsibility of saving the world before you were even an adult.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Including saving yourself.”

She shrugged, her hands bracing herself on the railing behind her. “I had to. No one else was going to.” Molly paused, uncertain if she should continue speaking her train of thought, but decided against caution, as she usually did. He was her friend – she was going to talk to him like he was. “I guess that’s partially why I liked the show so much. Nearly everyone on the show fought so hard to protect each other. Especially you. You would move heaven and Earth to protect the people you cared about. Watching that was as close as I could get to experiencing that. I never had anyone to protect me.”

A moment passed, and then she felt the cool sensation of his hand moving to cover hers. “Now you do.”

It was almost like being hit with a wall of hurricane-level winds, but also like a pot of water bubbling over, but also like a part of her soul being fused back together. Protected. The one thing she had never believed she would be. And protected by her friend, the Doctor. It was overwhelming, to say the very least. And while part of her fought to say that she didn’t need it, didn’t want it, couldn’t accept his help any further – she was relieved to find she was strong enough to hold that back. The Doctor – her Doctor – was going to protect her.

Less than a conscious decision, and more like a string attached to her heart pulling her over to him, she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. For a moment, she could have sworn he blushed, but that second disappeared when he looked over at her with a small smile. He reached out with his hand and mussed her hair a little. “So,” he said, “Our first fight.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Me, neither.”

“Are we done with it now?”

“Yes, please.”

“Excellent,” replied the Doctor, moving away from the railing now. “Because I’d really like some lunch. I’m thinking ancient Egyptian, what do you say?”

She watched as he headed towards the console. “Doctor,” she said, stopping him.

He seemed to know what she was going to say, in the way his body paused and tensed. He turned back to her. “Molly.”

“Are we actually done with the fight, or just hitting pause? I’m still not going to stop doing what I can to save you if I have to, and you’re still not okay with it.”

“No, I’m not,” he replied. “But I guess I don’t have a choice.”

Molly managed to convince her body to shrug as though she didn’t care. “I mean, you still do. You can still drop me off on Earth.”

“No,” he said gently, shaking his head. “I can’t.” The slight squinting of his eyes and upturn of a corner of his mouth told her it was because he wouldn’t abandon his friend.

Molly smiled. “Okay. So. Ancient Egyptian lunch it is.”

The Doctor decided they should jump ahead a couple decades. He usually didn’t stick around to see the aftermath of what he’d done, but they hadn’t really had a chance to explore. They walked through another, smaller outdoor market, a few short buildings, and various statues that were replicas of ones found in Egypt. They stopped to look at a few stalls as they navigated their way down the street, with the Doctor narrating about the history of the planet.

“And then about five hundred years after that, they started going to Earth and transporting various landmarks, dismantling quite a few and rebuilding them here, which was actually protested, as it undid the integrity of-” He paused, and suddenly span in a circle a couple of times. He spotted her, and frowned. “Hey! Don’t wander off! That’s rule number one.”

“You don’t wander off,” replied Molly. “You’re the one that took off running without a word earlier.”

“Yeah, well, I’m allowed.”

Molly frowned. “I thought rule one was that the Doctor lies?”

“Rule one is that the rules go in whatever order I say they go in.”

They made their way out of the market, and then the Doctor spotted the place he’d wanted to take her. Down the street from the restaurant the Doctor had chosen, she could see a pyramid.

They sat and ordered lunch (a sort of stir-fry with beans, leeks, peas, garlic, and radishes, with a side of duck and some kind of flat bread, and watermelon for dessert. She’d traded her duck for the Doctor’s vegetables when he made a face at them), and talked about how things had changed in twenty years. Not much, really, except in the distance were sounds of machinery; the robots they had saved, now called Mechanas, were practicing in an arena. They loved to play soccer, and the people of Earth 2.0 loved to watch. The Doctor talked about catching the game later that night.

“Football, played by giant robots,” he said excitedly. “I haven’t seen that in a few regenerations.”

“Does that happen a lot?” Molly asked, taking a sip of her beer, and immediately setting it as far from her as possible. She’d always been a liquor kind of woman.

“Well, everything happens at least once. Actually, the average is sixteen and a half times,” he replied. “Don’t ask about the half. It’s usually not very pretty.”

She couldn’t help but giggle at that. “I’ll take your word for it.” As rude as it was generally seen, she couldn’t help but fold her legs under her in the chair. Sitting normally was always a bit uncomfortable. “So, are we planning on sightseeing after this?”

“Yes! Sightseeing. Just plain, regular, touristy sightseeing.”

“No invasion of the giant robots?”

“Hopefully not,” he replied, though his tone implied a lack of actual hope on his part. “We’ll just wander about. Don’t get to do that very often, wandering about.”

She stared at him a moment. “…You’re going to be really bored in about twenty minutes, aren’t you?”

“No, no!” He objected, but then, “Well, yes, probably. But this trip isn’t about me. You wanted to see everywhere, so here we are. Don’t worry about me. It’ll be fun showing you around, anyway.”

Molly tilted her head as she considered him. “Okay. Let’s at least make it interesting.”

The Doctor seemed intrigued. “How so?”

“Got any paper and pen in your pocket?”

He reached in and retrieved a notepad and pen, similar to one she thought she’d seen him use when pretending to be a detective. She flipped to a page, and began drawing a few smaller squares inside a larger one. “We’ll make a couple Bingo boards, filled with places, objects, situations, whatever, that we might encounter while we’re here. When we’re done, whoever has the most bingos wins.”

He looked even more interested, leaning forward to watch her finish making the board. “And the prize?”

“Other than bragging rights?” She thought for a moment. “The other has to buy them a gift they’ll like. I mean, it’ll have to be your money, but it’s the thought that counts.”

The Doctor smiled. “You’re on.” He pulled out another pen, reached across to her and grabbed a piece of paper, and began making his own grid. “We’ll make sure to mix ours up a bit, but what goes on it?”

“I don’t know. You’re the one who has been here before. What do you think?” She paused. “Although there are some things you can find anywhere. One of them should be a tourist in a Hawaiian shirt. There has to be. I don’t care where in time and space, there always is.”

“Right you are!” said the Doctor, and he jotted it down. “Hawaiian shirt. Or socks with sandals.”

“Deal,” she agreed. “What’s square two?”

The Doctor looked thoughtful. “An Adipose. They seem to be everywhere now.”

Molly wrote it in the next square over. “Ood, too. But we should add something more specific.”

“Ood buying shoes,” the Doctor supplied. That was the next square.

“What next?”

“Kissing,” said the Doctor, with almost a note of distaste. “Someone’s always kissing.”

She wrote ‘kissing’ in. “There are a bunch of little sections for various countries, right? I know it’s mostly mixed up here, but…”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. How about a country, then? India?”

“First to spot India,” said the Doctor, writing it in. “Fair enough. I don’t remember where India is.”

They spent the rest of their lunch filling in the little boxes with landmarks, people, situations. It didn’t take long to finish the Bingo card, and after finishing off his grape juice, they were off.

He first led her down the street, headed for the pyramid. It was about three minutes before Molly pulled her Bingo card out of her pocket and marked it.

“What?” the Doctor wondered, turning around. “What did you see?”

“If I tell you, you’ll get it, too,” replied Molly.

“That’s not very nice of you.”

Molly shrugged. “I’m not a nice person.” But after a moment, she couldn’t resist. “Two o clock, couple arguing over a map.”

The Doctor smiled and checked it off his card. “Ah, see? You are nice.”

“Don’t accuse me of that. It’s not very nice of you.”

The rest of the day sped by. They did tours of the pyramid, and an art gallery, and a palace Molly couldn’t remember the name of but she was pretty sure was from Iraq. The Bingo cards got fuller and fuller as they spotted things – an “antique” vase with a crack that was clearly made recently, someone shouting ‘I’m walking here!’, an Asian bakery beside an African gift shop – and sometimes shared with each other, sometimes not. By the time the sun had set, Molly had seen more places and things of the past and future, and more of Earth, than she could count, and her Bingo card had four bingos on it. The Doctor’s, however, was completely full. She tried to drown out his declaration of ‘Hah, I win!’ with the sounds of the massive city, but couldn’t ignore the laugh that accompanied it.

He handed her some of the currency and explained what they were, then went to wait for her at a café for a light dinner before the soccer match. Molly explored the World Market alone, feeling a little overwhelmed, but less fearful than she would have been trying to navigate it that morning. There were piles and piles of options, and looking through them, Molly really felt the test of how well she knew the Doctor. But when her eyes landed on a particular stall, she smiled. She knew exactly what to get him.

She arrived at the café with a tall gift box wrapped in a sparkling golden paper, and found him seated outside, the table set with what seemed to be various types of tea from different cultures. She sat down across from him, and set the box on the table.

“Ah, my victory prize,” The Doctor said, reaching for it. She poured herself a cup of jasmine tea as she watched him tear the paper like a seven-year-old boy on his birthday, and take the lid off the box. His face lit up as he looked at her with a smile, and as he reached into the box, her smile was probably wider than his.

He turned it around in his hands with an excited look. “A fez,” he said happily. “A TARDIS blue fez. How did you find it?”

“Tap the top,” she suggested.

He looked at her confused for a moment, and then tapped the top of the fez. It changed to a bright amethyst purple. The Doctor laughed with delight, and touched it again. It became a dark emerald green. He quickly set it on his head. “The fez of many colors,” he laughed.

“I was thinking it’s like the horse of a different color from Wizard of Oz.”

“It’s perfect!” He reached up and adjusted the fez so it sat more firmly on his head. “Thank you.”

Molly sipped her tea. “I saw you had a fez under glass in the wardrobe, but I figured you don’t wear it that often.”

“Yeah, River kept shooting my hats. I didn’t want it to become a habit for anyone else.” He took it off and tapped the top again, an amused smile on his face as it turned canary yellow. “I might need to get a glass case to keep this one safe, too. Except it’s going to be so much fun to wear. It’ll match anything.”

“I’m really glad you like it,” she said. She touched the clear screen set on the side of the table like a paper containing drink specials would be back home, and a menu appeared. “Wow, you really did order every tea option.”

“I wasn’t sure what you were in the mood for,” said the Doctor. “I did stop and get you a consolation prize, though. Couldn’t help myself.”

The Doctor leaned over and reached under the table, and then set a large, flat white box between them. She accepted it with a smile.

“Thanks, that was sweet of you,” she said as she started taking the lid off. “What is it?”

“Open it,” the Doctor encouraged, knocking on the table. “And you’ll see. That’s the point of the box.”

She took the lid off and set it beside her chair, on the ground. There was faintly opalescent tissue paper covering whatever it was he’d gotten her. She carefully shifted it aside, and revealed something white and blue and pink and sparkling.

Molly looked up at the Doctor, as he sat there with a self-satisfied smile, certain he’d gotten her something she would love. And as she pulled the costume from the box, she knew he was right to be confident.

A pretty, long and layered white skirt of some soft, flowing tulle, or at least something like it, with two lines of blue ribbon wrapping around near the bottom. A tiny, lacy apron at the top of the skirt. A white bodice, with a false blue Medieval stay, embroidered pink flowers decorating the edges. The whole thing sparkled in a way that reminded her of the diamonds across the Polychrome nebula, but subtler.

In her hands she was holding the costume for Giselle in Act One, she was sure of it. She looked at the Doctor again, this time in wonder.

“It’s from the revival,” the Doctor explained. “Actually, the forty-eighth revival. The first ever performance of Giselle on Earth 2.0.”

She looked over to him in shock. “Giselle survives this long?”

“And much longer.” His words made her feel elated, as though she found out a beloved pet had lived this long, though the closest she’d ever had to a beloved pet had been Henrietta (may she rest in peace).

She stared at the costume a moment longer, turning it and watching it sparkle in the lamplight, before carefully, gently setting it back inside it’s box, wrapping it in paper, and putting the lid back on before setting it beside her.

Molly looked back up at him with another smile, and stood and leaned over the table, careful to avoid knocking over any of the numerous tea pots, and kissed him on the cheek again. She ignored the wipe of his hand over the cheek, and the pressing of his lips together. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said warmly.

As she listened to the sound of the Mechanas warming up in the stadium a few blocks away, she felt another kind of elation. She may have screwed up, but they were out there now, decades later, happy and free and playing.

“What are you thinking about?” the Doctor asked, and Molly realized she’d had a sort of dreamy smile on her mouth.

“They’re alive. The Mechanas, I mean. They’re still out there, and they’re free.”

“Yeah.”

She closed her eyes and listened again. She could almost hear a clicking sound echoing by that sounded like laughter. Laughing in response, she looked at the Doctor again. “Does it always feel like this?”

The Doctor grinned. “Always.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Ten

...---...

A few days on the TARDIS passed after Everywhere. The adventures had been incredible, but a bit much for her body that was still building up the kind of stamina needed for all the running. Her emotions had gone from high highs to low lows and back again, so she needed some time to regulate that, as well. The Doctor seemed happy to do it; the break gave him more time to do some ‘adjustments’ to the TARDIS, as well as catch up on some reading he wanted to do. He showed her a library, smaller than the one Clara had found, this one specifically for fiction. They visited together sometimes, as she reread Through the Looking Glass, and she caught him reading a Melody Malone novel.

She spent a lot of her time in the ballet studio the TARDIS had gifted her, warming up her body up again, practicing, even attempting a few parts of the Giselle variation, though she didn’t dare wear the costume he’d given her. That remained safe on a hanger, in front of the row of the other costumes, on display.

The fact that they were floating through space was…still concerning for her, though not as much as it had been. Now and then she felt sick and dizzy, but she’d reach out and touch the TARDIS and feel it solid underneath her hands and feet, and she’d feel better. She attempted a few more chats with the TARDIS, and though obviously she couldn’t answer, Molly felt as though she at least heard her. Molly talked about little things, the continued fear of space, but also thanks for the studio, for taking them places safely, discussing how impressed she was the TARDIS had managed to keep the Doctor safe so many times while still delivering him to dangerous situations that needed him.

She was starting to feel comfortable enough with the TARDIS and its layout that on the morning of the third day, after her morning names, stretches, and dressing, she decided to do a little exploring. She started at the main console room to see if she could find the Doctor and ask if he was alright with it, but he wasn’t there, though he’d left the fez she’d given him on the console. Well, that was fine. She was sure he wouldn’t mind.

Tempted to bring her red lipstick to mark her way like Sarah in Labyrinth, Molly instead tried to keep a count of turns in her head. One left, two rights, straight on. She let her feet choose the way, walking by some closed doors, opening others. She found the swimming pool in a conservatory, fake sunlight streaming in through fake glass windows, with nothing on the other side of them but light. It felt almost like the pool had wandered off and gotten lost. In another room, she found a collection of paintings, none of which she recognized but all of which had a matching umbrella hanging beside it. Another room seemed to just be a green hill on a warm sunny day, with thousands of butterflies and moths flying around. Another room was completely blank; white walls, floor, and ceiling, giving off their own light, but nothing else at all. Stepping inside the room, the light turned canary yellow. When she stepped out again, the light was white. Some sort of mood ring room?

Walking through the TARDIS felt a little, she thought, like walking through the ancient pyramid in Everywhere. Sure, there were funhouse elements, but the reality was that the TARDIS was ancient. Molly didn’t even know how ancient the TARDIS was. She’d been outdated before the Doctor had stolen her, and that was, what? 1,800 years ago? How old did she have to be to be considered ‘outdated’? She redesigned herself, but this was still the same ship people had been walking through all that time. As fun as the TARDIS was to explore, Molly still felt a sort of reverence as she wandered.

Eventually, she came across a familiar room. Large, with vaulted, cathedral-like ceilings, and endless bookshelves, with multiple levels, and black railing for balconies, swirling gold on the walls. It was different here and there, though, seeming maybe ten times as large with rows and rows of lofty shelves on the first floor, and more spaces for sitting. Straight ahead, a golden sort of music stand-thing, with a book lying atop it. Holding her breath, Molly approached it slowly, almost in reverence. The History of the Time War. Contained somewhere within this book…was the Doctor’s name. The Doctor’s real name.

Her fingers slowly brushed their way across the cover, drifting to the side to touch the papers. Of course there was temptation. Who wouldn’t be tempted? But whether or not she was going to open that book and read his name was never a question in her mind. There were so many reasons to keep it safe, to keep it hidden from herself, and chief among them was that he’d respected her privacy. He burned with similar questions about her, though she was certain it couldn’t be nearly as much as she burned to know his name. But still, though he’d asked, he’d never pressured her into answering, not really, not about the names.

“You really should keep this somewhere a little more hidden,” she whispered an admonition to the Doctor, though where he was, she wasn’t sure. “There’s literally a giant spotlight on this thing.”

Molly tore herself away, and glanced around the library. A place to explore, for sure, to take and carry piles of books in her arms back to her own room to read, as much as she could before the TARDIS found her way home, but not now. She still wanted to find more rooms. And though she felt her body was as strong, if not stronger, than it had been before being shot, she felt her limbs shaking a little, and considered sitting down after a few more rooms.

But as she walked out of the library, she stepped back into the control room, rather than the corridor. A wave of disorientation crashed over her, made worse when she turned to see the corridor behind her, rather than the library.

“What are you doing?” she asked the TARDIS as she headed down the stairs back to the console. “Why did you bring me back here?” If the TARDIS had an issue with her exploring, it hadn’t shown it before.

Her answer came quickly. A red line of light began rotating around the center console, below and above the blue light, while a high-pitched beeping sound began to echo. Molly rushed up and looked at the screens, and then questioned herself. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” she muttered, running her hands over her face, glad her embarrassment was between her and the unspeaking TARDIS.

“Okay. TARDIS, if you could direct me to the Doctor so he can actually do something about this, I would appreciate it very much.”

White lights lit up on the wall beside her, leading out to the corridor. “Thanks.” Molly took off running, following the row of lights leading through the TARDIS corridors. It didn’t take long for her to reach the end of the line, and she opened the door with a press of the button. What greeted her seemed like the sort of small movie theater you’d find in a rich person’s house.

“You’ve been keeping a cinema room hidden from me?” Maybe not the first priority, but it seemed important to mention.

She watched as the Doctor scrambled for a remote, like someone caught watching something adult. She looked at the screen, and caught a brief glimpse at her face before the screen went dark. “Not hidden. I just haven’t mentioned it yet!” He stood and turned towards her. “Did you need something?”

A quick glance around the room, and Molly spotted something else to distract her. “…is that my jacket? And a poster of me?”

The Doctor glanced to the display beside the screen of various props and posters of different films and shows he must like. On a mannequin was her emerald green leather jacket, and on the wall, a poster with her face and the words ‘The Phoenix’ in swirling writing, a background of New York City. “Uh, well. Technically, it’s a poster of Lydia Hart.” He turned back to her and quickly changed the subject. “Were you looking for something in particular?”

Right, she was here for a reason. “There’s a swirly red light and beeping coming from the control room. The TARDIS led me here to tell you, so I guess it’s something important.”

The Doctor frowned and hopped over the back of his chair, strolling out the door beside her. “Why didn’t you say so?!”

“I did say so,” she pointed out. She hesitated, and then ran over to his collection of things, reminiscent of her own Doctor Who collection she had left in storage when she’d moved to London, to be sent to her when she had her own place. She grabbed the jacket off the mannequin – it was practically hers, she figured, and they hadn’t found one at the World Market - and slipped it on, then jogged to catch up with him. “Why don’t you have some kind of messaging system set up where the TARDIS can tell you if there’s an emergency alert?”

“What do you think you’re here for?”

Molly slowed her pace as they reached the control room. “Oh, so I was just used as a messaging system.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor responded casually, as he moved the monitor back around and flipped a few switches. He snatched the TARDIS blue fez back up and when he didn’t see a good place to set it out of the way, he set it on his head. “Definitely a distress call. Having trouble making out what it says or who it’s from.”

“Any particular reason why?” Molly asked, walking up behind him and peeking over his shoulder as though she could understand the words on the screen.

“It’s as though both the message and the location are in a language the TARDIS doesn’t want to translate,” he mumbled, seemingly mostly to himself. But then he glanced over his shoulder. He seemed a bit dazed by her theft of the jacket for a moment, but shook it off quickly. “I mean, it’s not like that at all, but if it helps.”

“Can you translate it?”

The Doctor looked offended as he turned back. “Of course I can. It’ll just take a mo.”

Molly watched quietly for a moment. “So, you’re still watching my show? Because I’m literally right here.”

The Doctor shot her a dirty look. “Oh, don’t pretend you wouldn’t watch my show if you could.”

Molly thought about it for a moment. “Fair point.” She paused a moment. “I just can’t get used to the idea of me being on TV, though. But I do look good on a screen.”

The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. “Yes, yes, stunning, but can we get back to the untraceable distress call? I feel like that should be the priority here.”

A wicked smile slowly pulled on the corners of Molly’s mouth. “You think I’m stunning?”

“What?” the Doctor turned to look at her in confusion, and then realization dawned on his face. “No, I – just – I didn’t mean…shut up!”

Molly decided to show some mercy in light of his fair skin turning pink, as well as in light of the weird fluttering feeling in her stomach. She hoped it was because she’d forgotten breakfast. “Could it be River sending a message in some kind of code?” She gestured to the screen with a jut of her chin.

The Doctor shook his head, turning back to the buttons and switches he was working on, occasionally reaching around to the mother-of-pearl touchpad. “No, no. Definitely not.”

“Why no-”

“Aha!” the Doctor exclaimed suddenly. He suddenly circled around the console, twisting a few knobs and tapping on a brilliantly white typewriter he’d recently added. “I got it! The location, anyway. It’s a ship nearby, though I don’t have a clear read on what kind yet.”

Molly grabbed onto the console as the TARDIS shook as it ricocheted through space. This wasn’t something she’d get used to. After a moment they settled, and the Doctor went back to the console. “Now that we’re on the ship,” he said, “I might be able to get a better read on what kind of ship it is.”

“By looking outside?”

“Yeah, but I was hoping you’d think it was something more clever than that.”

Molly walked around to look into the monitor with him. After few more button presses, an image appeared on the screen. Inside the ship was silver, but that was all she could make out. It was almost entirely dark, with just the TARDIS for light. The walls couldn’t be made out, just a bit of the floor and ceiling.

“Do you recognize it?” she asked.

He shook his head. His brow was furrowed, his eyes narrowed, a small frown on his face as he tried to identify the ship. “It’s too dark. I can’t make out any identifying features. I’ll have to just walk right into whatever this situation is blindly.”

Molly simultaneously didn’t love that plan, and was looking forward to it. Jumping right into the unknown was exciting, and she could see the same feelings on the Doctor’s face. Still, she really would have liked some more information. “Any idea who sent the distress signal?”

“None,” replied the Doctor, as he began to head for the door.

“And it couldn’t be River?” She didn’t want to bring his dead wife up, but on the show, at least during his seasons, a mysterious message was usually River.

“No,” replied the Doctor. “My time with her is…” He couldn’t finish the sentence as his voice drifted off. He continued towards the door without looking back at her. ‘Over’, he couldn’t say. Molly felt guilt swell in her chest for bringing her up. “I think our diaries match up exactly now. I wasn’t supposed to see her at the ballet. No, I don’t think I’ll ever see River Song again.” He swung the doors open, but paused before stepping out. “Oh.”

Molly heard a voice coming from outside. “Hello, sweetie. Thought you might turn up.”

Molly’s pace sped up until she could look around the Doctor, at River Song. This time in tight black jeans, a zipped up brown leather jacket, and similar boots to Molly’s, she was also holding out some kind of scanner. She looked, as ever, ready for an adventure.

Molly looked back to the Doctor, who swallowed hard. “Hi, dear. Coincidence, meeting you here. Or is it?”

River shook her head. “I didn’t send that distress signal. I’m here investigating, just like you are.” She turned her head over to Molly. “I remember you. From the ballet, yes? Is that handsome date of yours around, too?” River peeked into the TARDIS behind Molly.

“Nope,” Molly replied. “Between Captain Jack and the Doctor, the TARDIS was having trouble containing their egos.” If she were being fair, her ego was probably difficult to contain, too. But that ego wouldn’t allow her to admit to it out loud.

“Shame,” replied River with a smirk, hooking her scanner to her belt. “But unsurprising.”

“I disagree,” said the Doctor, sounding offended as he stepped out of the TARDIS. Molly followed, and immediately wished she was wearing more than short denim shorts and a floral silk tank top she’d gotten at the World Market. At least the stolen jacket protected her from the cold some.

“And what, exactly, is this?” River asked as the Doctor locked up the TARDIS. He glanced back, confused, and then managed to dodge when River moved to swipe the blue fez off his head.

“The Fez of a Different Color, and I’ll thank you not to ruin another hat of mine,” he said. “It was a gift.”

River turned to Molly. “Please tell me you have better sense then to give him that monstrosity.”

Molly shrugged. “I lost at bingo and owed him a prize. Besides, I think it looks good on him.”

The Doctor gave River a victorious look and point as River rolled her eyes. “Oh, goodness. I’ll never hear the end of it now. Molly Quinn likes him in a fez.”

The Doctor frowned as Molly stared. “Jack gave you his name. I don’t think I gave you mine.”

“Please,” said River dryly, taking the scanner back in her hands. “Anyone who knows the Doctor knows his favorite show is the Phoenix. And I know the Doctor better than anyone.”

Molly fought back a gag reflex, and felt her stomach drop. She leaned against the TARDIS in an attempt to look casual, and not that a wave of shock hit her whenever she heard the word ‘phoenix’. “But how did you know it was me?”

“I can’t tell you how many times he made me watch that show,” River explained. “And you’re not Lydia Hart.”

“How do you know that?” the Doctor asked.

River began using the scanner again, walking around in the bit of light the TARDIS provided. “You convinced me to go to that convention, remember? She was signing autographs for that fantasy film series she did. She refused to sign your poster, made it clear she had a distaste for fans of the show, and just generally was a snob.”

“Ew,” Molly muttered. She wasn’t Lydia, and Lydia wasn’t her, but the idea of someone who had played her on TV being a brat was gross.

“So how did you manage to get Molly Quinn on the TARDIS?” River asked.

“We’re still figuring that out,” replied the Doctor, pulling the sonic out of his pocket. “She just sort of appeared.” He began to scan the area himself, starting in the opposite direction of River. “I’m not seeing anything, are you?”

“Just glimpses of metal from the light,” said River.

Molly watched as they walked around and scanned the ship, wishing she had something she could use to scan with too, not that she’d understand what any of it said. What skills did she have to help here?

Well, common sense, for one. “Doctor, unlock the TARDIS.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m getting a flashlight.”

There was a moment of silence. “Oh. Right.” She heard his footsteps walk back around to the door, and he pulled out a key and unlocked it. “They’re underneath the-”

“I remember from the show,” Molly said as she stepped inside.

“The show?” she heard River ask in confusion.

Molly stuck her head out again. “Oh, yeah. The Doctor is a show in my world, too. You’re on it, actually.” She pointed to River, then to the Doctor and back. “Discuss.”

As she heard River asking the Doctor about the show, Molly ran into the TARDIS, rushed down the stairs, and opened the containers below the control room. There were some of the Doctor’s clothes in the first, so she tried another, and inside she found a few small flashlights, and the large one the Doctor had used in Vampires of Venice. She grabbed two small ones and the larger one and went back out.

“River,” she said, getting the woman’s attention before tossing her a smaller one. “Doctor.” And she tossed him the other small one.

“Why do you get the big one?” the Doctor complained.

“I don’t get a scanner,” Molly replied. She flipped on the light and held it out and above her head. And once she looked ahead at the ship, she dropped it, and the light shattered at her feet.

“Oh, dear G-d,” she heard River mumble, as the Doctor shouted, “Get back, get back!” Molly pressed her back against the wood of the TARDIS, but even that couldn’t reassure her and slow her painfully thundering heart. She fought back the urge to vomit.

Daleks. They were surrounded by Daleks.

“Get inside the TARDIS,” the Doctor ordered, and Molly turned to wrench the door open.

“Wait,” said River, holding the scanner up to show the screen to the Doctor. “There’s no life inside. We’re the only lifeforms in the room.”

The Doctor took the scanner from River, punching a few buttons and swinging it around them. “How is it possible?” he mumbled to himself. “Dalek shells with no Daleks. What are they doing?”

River took her scanner back. “If there are no Daleks, we should be safe enough in here.”

“Still…” the Doctor said. “We should get inside. Just to be safe. And I want to do a few more scans.”

“Right,” River agreed, and Molly stepped inside the TARDIS, the Doctor and River Song following behind her.

As she watched the Doctor and River immediately begin working together at the console, Molly closed the door and leaned against it to catch her breath. “You know,” she said, “As much as I love the show and wanted to see everything, the Daleks were the very last thing on the list. Well, second to last.” Very last would be the Weeping Angels. They’d given her nightmares.

“Daleks are usually the last thing I want to see, too,” the Doctor commented, as he looked up into the screen. He pointed something on it out to River. “Look. The ship is empty. It’s an empty Dalek ship.”

“Or very nearly,” replied River. She touched a few controls, and then tapped the screen. “See? There are a handful of life forms in a room on the eighth deck.”

The Doctor looked annoyed for a brief moment that River had gotten a better scan from the TARDIS than he had, but seemed to remember he had bigger things to think about. Molly headed over to the console, peeking between their shoulders at the monitor. A collection of red dots along the edges of an oblong room was displayed, with one small green line marking a door, alongside a few words of text that declared the number of living creatures – a couple dozen – and location of the room.

“That’s nowhere near enough to pilot a ship this size,” remarked the Doctor. His voice held that familiar note of fascination as he took off the fez and set it aside. Another mystery to solve.

“So, the Dalek shells used to have Daleks inside?” Molly asked.

“I think so.”

“Must have,” replied River. “Question is – what can kill a Dalek in its shell? It’s a perfect defense mechanism.”

The Doctor shook his head in confusion. “Unless something took its shielding down and shot it down the eye stalk, but there were no burn marks, no evidence of attack.”

“Maybe it wasn’t an attack,” River theorized. “Some sort of issue with the ship, something wrong with the life support systems?”

“But we could breathe. Some sort of disease?”

“But how did it transmit? They’re locked in their shells.”

“I know I’m laughably inexperienced here, but…” Molly pushed the Doctor a little out of the way and pointed at the screen. “I think it was an attack. They’re in an easily defensible room, with one entrance. They’re all up against the walls, to avoid any surprise coming straight in through the door taking them all out at once, but they can easily react and shoot at something coming in through the door and avoid friendly fire.”

The Doctor and River studied the screen together for a moment, and Molly stepped back out of the way. After a moment, River said, “I think you’re right. Every Dalek on the ship gathered into one room for a reason. Something attacked the ship.”

“And whatever it was, it’s still here,” the Doctor said darkly.

Molly’s stomach dropped. Somehow, she had missed that conclusion. Maybe she was too focused on the fact of the Daleks being so nearby her. “So…” her voice was too weak, betraying her fear. She hated that. She cleared her throat and tried again. “So the Daleks sent out a distress signal?”

The Doctor frowned. “That’s unusual, the Daleks crying for help like this.”

“But it had to have been,” said River. “There’s no one else here.”

Molly shuddered. “That we know of.”

The Doctor turned away for the console and began pacing. “Okay. Okay. A distress signal was sent out from a nearly empty Dalek ship, oh, probably ten or fifteen minutes ago.”

“Two hours,” River corrected, as she turned back to the console and continued working, connecting her scanner to the TARDIS.

“Two hours?” Molly repeated. “We just got the signal.”

“Sometimes there are time discrepancies on the TARDIS,” the Doctor explained, pausing in his pacing for a moment to glance at her, and then continuing. “Alright, two hours. A distress call went out two hours ago, so that must be when the attack began. Whatever it was, it only took two hours to nearly wipe out the whole ship.”

“Could they be on our side?” Molly asked. “The enemy of my enemy, and all that.”

River looked over to her. “Unfortunately, that’s very rarely true.”

“It could be,” said the Doctor, “But something powerful enough to kill every Dalek on a ship in two hours should be approached with caution. We don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Another thing,” started River, staring again at the monitor. “The Daleks…they’re not just dead.”

The Doctor paused in his pacing again. “What do you mean, they’re not just dead? What other kind of dead is there?”

“They’re gone,” said River, showing him the monitor. It showed something like an x-ray of one of the Dalek shells. Molly could see where the Dalek sat, the metal and the wires and the bulbs for various tiny lights. But no Dalek. “They aren’t even in the shells anymore. Their bodies are gone.”

Molly turned, and saw the Doctor looking at the screen with a look of vague horror. “Disintegrated?” He asked.

“Or stolen,” River suggested. “Or maybe rescued, I don’t know. Something could have transported them.”

“Without the shell?”

“Maybe something that wanted to leave them vulnerable.”

The Doctor sighed, and then let out a growl of frustration while he rubbed his face. “Okay. Dead, or missing Daleks. Other Daleks in a defensible room, waiting for an attack. Empty Dalek shells. A dark ship. A distress call. How does it all add up?” 

“I don’t know, Doctor,” replied River. “But I think at this point our only option is to go out there and find out.”

“At least we know where all the Daleks are,” Molly pointed out.

Even the Doctor looked a bit sick at the idea of wandering around a dark Dalek ship, with a powerful, unknown threat lurking in the shadows. He glanced from River to Molly, and back again, then sighed. He straightened his bowtie. “Okay. No avoiding it, I guess. We’ll go and have a look, shall we?” He turned back to Molly. “You stay here.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s too dangerous out there for someone who hasn’t experienced anything similar to this before. Daleks, and an unknown threat that can wipe out tens of thousands of Daleks in two hours. You’re staying here.”

“Right,” Molly said dryly, folding her arms. “I guess I’ll just watch you go into danger and chill here with the TARDIS, maybe read a book.”

“Good,” replied the Doctor, and he turned and headed for the door. River paused and gave her a confused look, but went to follow him.

Molly cleared her throat. “I’ll see you in two minutes after I sneak out?”

“I expect so,” sighed the Doctor as he stepped out. She heard River make a half-laughter sound.

The door closed, and Molly headed back down the stairs, searching for another flashlight. She found one buried beneath a winter coat. The last step was to run back to her room and pull her hair up, and then take a moment to splash cold water on her face. She generally thought of fear as making you cold, but she felt herself burning. Daleks, and something that could kill Daleks en masse. By far, this was the most dangerous thing she’d ever faced. Even more than a potential congressman in the mob.

Molly headed back to the control room, and stepped out of the TARDIS. She saw the flashlights off a bit to her right, flipped hers on, and followed. The room was quite a bit larger than she’d thought at first, going on and on, and filled with Daleks that weren’t Daleks anymore. Still, looking at them made her feel sick.

She caught River and the Doctor mid-conversation.

“- probably took out the lighting system,” River was saying.

“Yes, but why?” He turned back and nodded to Molly as she caught up before turning back to River. “What’s the point of that? It’s not like Daleks can’t see in the dark.”

“Maybe whatever it is sees better in the dark?” Molly suggested.

“Could be,” River agreed as she stepped around of the Dalek shells. She paused to run her flashlight up and down it, but evidently found nothing unusual and continued on her way. “It might have been strategic.”

The Doctor thought about it for a moment, as they reached a large silver wall, the bronze doors similar to the ones on the TARDIS. “I don’t like this.”

“Well, I’m not exactly jumping for joy, either,” River replied. “But if there’s something this dangerous on a Dalek ship, we need to know what it is.”

“I know,” the Doctor said. He turned to the door, pulling out the screwdriver. “Let’s hope the systems to open the doors are still working.”

Molly watched as the green light filled that space of the room, and the sound echoed off the metal of the walls and the Daleks. A hissing sound came from the door for a moment as it slid open. The Doctor slipped the sonic back into his pocket. “Let’s take it slowly. I’ll go first and make sure it’s clear.” River was already sticking her head through the door by the time he finished his sentence. “River!” the Doctor objected in a whisper.

“All clear,” announced River, stepping into the hallway. “I don’t even see any Dalek shells out here.”

The Doctor scowled as he followed her into the hall. “You don’t know what’s out here, you could have-”

“The alternative was you. Not much better,” replied River, who was aiming her scanner one way and then the other, trying to choose a direction. “The left may lead to a control room of some kind.”

“To the left, then,” agreed the Doctor. Molly aimed her flashlight ahead of her, and followed after the two more seasoned adventurers.

The corridors seemed vacant. They passed by one stray Dalek shell, but otherwise it was one long passageway of emptiness and metal. They continued on their way, and though she couldn’t see their faces, Molly could see by the way their muscles slowly tensed that the Doctor and River were both frustrated by the lack of clues as to what was happening. And that was beyond the level of tense they all were, slowly creeping down the long emptiness.

Darkness and silver flashes and footsteps on metal, echoing up and down the vast corridor, and somewhere in the ship was hatred in the form of death, and something that could consume all that hatred and death in a terrifyingly short amount of time. At any second, they could come across a turn, and beyond the corner it might be waiting for them.

Molly held her breath as sharply as she held her flashlight. It was the only weapon she had. River, she saw, had a gun on each hip, but she knew the Doctor didn’t. At the moment, she wished the Doctor believed in carrying weapons a little more.

Still, his mind was his true weapon, and as he held his flashlight in one hand and the sonic screwdriver in the other, she could watch as his weapon raced and tried to put the odd pieces together to form a whole.

“Up ahead,” River said softly, and Molly stopped dead. Between River and the Doctor, she could see that quite a way further down, the corridor forked. One side was a cavern of darkness. The other was lit.

“There are still lights on the ship?” Molly wondered. “Was turning out the lights everywhere else on purpose, or some kind of wiring flaw?”

“I don’t know,” said the Doctor. He sped off down towards the split, and River and Molly followed. By the time they caught up, the Doctor was already scanning both ways down. “Which way to the control room, River?”

“The left,” said River, pointing to the darkness.

“And the right?”

“I’m not sure,” said River, stepping up and scanning. “I don’t have a map of the whole place.”

Molly remembered the lit path the TARDIS had used to bring her to the Doctor. “Could whatever attacked the Daleks know we’re here, and be trying to direct us to them?”

The Doctor turned to look at Molly thoughtfully. “Could be.”

“The attacker sent the distress call?” River wondered. “Something powerful enough to destroy the Daleks, but unable to escape?”

“Or taken hostage while it was…I don’t know, asleep or something,” suggested Molly.

Molly and River watched as the Doctor looked down one corridor, and then the next. He pointed the screwdriver at each, back and forth while he thought through the possibilities.

Finally, he said, “I want a look at the bigger picture first. We need to get to the control room and see if we can find what we’re up against. Or what we’ve been invited by.”

River and Molly both nodded in agreement, and they all started down the dark corridor. Their footsteps echoed down it, and a loud metallic crushing sound echoed back to meet them.

The Doctor stopped. “On the other hand…” The sound echoed again, sounding closer now. “Run!”

They all turned back, and headed for the other corridor. She felt the Doctor grab her hand as they ran, and she was grateful as her pace sped up to match his. If only she had a spare thought to dwell on the image, that this was so like a moment on the show. Instead, she gasped for air and wished she’d given her body that rest rather than wandering the TARDIS. It already ached.

They raced down the lit corridor, and Molly was glad. She was the only one that still held onto the flashlight; the Doctor had dropped his to grab Molly’s hand, and River, it seemed, hand her spare hand ready to grab her gun, and kept glancing down at her scanner. A few glances back revealed nothing, but Molly swore at one point she saw the metal bend as the sound continued after them. She also thought she heard an odd buzzing. She began to sink, but kept herself afloat with a Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.

They reached another option of two turns, and the Doctor headed left again with Molly behind him, but River took a few steps right.

“What are you doing?!” the Doctor demanded, dropping Molly’s hand to go after River.

“This way!” River gestured for them to follow her. “There’s a room, with a door in and a door out. We can slip in, and if the door keeps whatever it is out, we have a moment. If not, we can run out the back.”

“Fine!” the Doctor shouted as he led the way, looking back to be sure Molly was following. She took a deep gulp of the air, and headed after the two. They ran down the corridor, the metal sound like flattening a giant can following behind them still. The Doctor stopped at what Molly soon saw was a door, and used the sonic to open it. The Doctor and River ran in, and Molly followed. The door closed, and they all backed away from it, further into the dark room. Molly bumped into something tall and hard, and turned to see a Dalek. She covered her mouth to choke back a scream, and reminded herself that the Dalek shell was empty. It was just metal and wire. She looked ahead again as she heard the mettalic sound drawing closer and closer. The whole room felt frozen in time. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.

The sound passed them, and they collectively breathed a sigh of relief.

“What the hell was that?” River wanted to know.

The Doctor slowly made his way to the door, and pressed his ear to it. “Is there another way to the control room?”

River started to work on her scanner, and Molly felt her way around the Dalek to start making her way to the other side of the room, looking for the door. Though the threat had clearly passed them, she didn’t relish the thought of walking back the way they’d come, just in case. And her flashlight was dimming – she wanted to find the door before it went out. She walked for a little while, and bumped into another Dalek.

“Do we think we can get some lights somehow?” Molly wondered. “Is there something like a light switch?”

She heard the Doctor move around behind her, and then heard, “Aha!”. The green light of the sonic lit up, and she could make out some kind of electrical panel against the wall beside the Doctor. Lights came on above them revealing a room of various bits of what Molly thought of as giant computer equipment, and a few empty Daleks. She saw River smile with relief at being able to see her surroundings, and the Doctor turning to look around the room – but only for a moment before a wall came down between them.

“Um!” She shouted, and then knocked on the wall. “What happened?”

She heard the Doctor make a frustrated sound. “I must have tripped something else in the control panel. Hold on!”

Molly felt a chill at the back of her neck, and a drop in her stomach. Oh, no. Not only was she trapped here, alone…but deep in her bones, she knew something was coming. “Hurry!”

“I’m working on it!”

And then the sound of tiny needles tapping against metal reached her ears, growing in sound until it was as though there were millions of them. Dreading what she might see, Molly took a breath and turned her head towards the sound.

It was coming from the Dalek shell beside her. She turned and banged on the wall. “No, really, hurry! There’s a Dalek shell here making a weird sound!”

Molly heard River’s voice on the other side of the wall. “What’s it doing?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t want to find out!”

She couldn’t quite hear the Doctor, but could make out something about not being able to find ‘it’, something blocking him. Molly looked back to the Dalek. A light in its eyestalk was flickering.

A screeching sound escaped her throat as she dove to her right, away from the Dalek, so fast her feet got tangled and she hit the ground.

“Molly!” she heard River shout. “Are you alright? Tell us what’s happening!”

Molly pulled her feet back under her, watching the blue light turning on and off and on, as the sound of the needles grew louder and transformed into something more like aluminum being crinkled. “The Dalek shell’s eyestalk light is turning on!”

“It can’t be, it’s empty!”

“Tell that to the Dalek shell!”

She heard River turn and shout something at the Doctor. She heard his response clearly, and it chilled her: “I can’t get it open!”

The Dalek’s plunger arm shifted an inch, and then the whisk. Molly made a mental note to find scarier words for them, if she survived. Molly pushed up with her feet and used the wall to brace her as she stood up again. “It’s moving.” She wasn’t able to get enough force behind the words, so she wasn’t even sure if River hear her.

But River must have heard what came next.

“EX…TER…” and the voice shut down like a record needle shifting. The eyestalk light flickered and Molly felt a brief flash of hope that it wouldn’t come back. But then it tried again. “EX…TER…MIN…”

“Doctor!” she heard River scream.

Open the door, open the door, open the door, Molly begged, but she couldn’t do it aloud. If this was it, if she was going to die right here, right now, she didn’t want him to hear her begging for his help, couldn’t let him hear that. She couldn’t make her voice work, besides.

The Dalek moved forward towards her, and she stumbled back. The whisk shifted to aim towards her chest.

“EXTERMINATE.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Eleven

The Worst Episode

“EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE.”

Molly felt like her head was collapsing in on itself. The word had been frightening to hear on television. There were no words to describe how horrific and petrifying it was to hear it in reality. The Dalek was looking right at her, aiming right at her. Worse – it wasn’t even a Dalek. It was an empty, metal shell.

“I-it’s like it’s been possessed by a Dalek,” she shouted back at River, who she just realized was screaming her name repeatedly.

“Molly!” she heard the Doctor shout her name as he ran up to the wall. “I can’t get this wall open, but I can get the door behind you open! Are you ready to run?”

Molly glanced over at the door, a couple dozen feet away. “Am I ever!” Whether or not she could make it to the door was another question.

“When it’s open, run! Just run! I’ll find you!”

She tried to answer but choked on her fear as the Dalek moved closer, and she began taking slow steps towards the door. Why it hadn’t shot her yet she didn’t know, but she was grateful to whatever power in the universe it was that had sent her here in the first place.

“EXTERMINATE.”

She heard the tell-tale sliding sound, and without even looking at it, she ran for the door. She managed to tear her eyes off the Dalek as she sped out of the room, just in time to hear it take a shot. Hopefully, River could see on the scanner that Molly was still alive. And where she was, as she ran down corridors with turn after turn, some lit and some dark. Running through the dark, realized she’d dropped the flashlight at some point.

After running for so long her lungs felt like they would collapse and she couldn’t run any further, she stopped and looked behind her. There was no sign of the Dalek, even if she closed her eyes to listen. No EXTERMINATE, no metallic sound, nothing. She turned and continued down the corridor, hoping to find some space where she could stand with her back to the corner, but also have a quick exit.

It was difficult, though, navigating her way down tunnels of darkness. More than once she bumped into a wall. When she bumped into what she knew had to be a Dalek, her heart stopped. She waited for a moment to see if she would die, but the Dalek didn’t light up. She felt around it, and gripped the eyestalk. Well. At least it was something.

Molly pulled on the eyestalk as hard as she could, but could only get it to shift ever so slightly to the side. She knelt on the floor and tried yanking it down with her strength and her weight, and though it bent some, it remained in place. She got back on her feet and braced a boot against the body of the Dalek shell, and pushed herself up with her foot just as she pushed down with her arms. She bounced up and down a few times, and then shoved herself up in the air, threw her feet straight out, and landed hard on her back. But the crack! sound told her that the bumped head was worth it. She had a Dalek eyestalk as a weapon now.

What good an eyestalk would do against a possessed Dalek shell or the metal thing that had chased them or whatever it was that had killed the Daleks, she didn’t know. But she felt better having something. Something. Even if the last time she’d used a weapon had gone wrong, surely, on a Dalek ship, the Doctor couldn’t judge her for having something to defend herself with. Maybe she would get the chance to go Ace on a Dalek, if she were brave enough.

After taking a moment to catch her breath and wait for the throbbing to fade, Molly got back to her feet. She didn’t know where she was going, and now she wasn’t even sure which way she’d come from. She started walking in whatever direction it was she was facing. Forward was as good as back.

Molly wandered in the darkness for a few more minutes, brushing against corners and feeling grateful that it was highly unlikely a Dalek ship would have steps, when she heard a mechanical whirring sound that made her stop dead. It was coming from her left.

With her heart in her throat, she took a deep breath and turned her head. A blue light was approaching slowly from down the corridor. Her mind tried to find any excuse for something else it could be, but there was no denying when the dreaded word echoed against the walls.

“EXTERMINATE.”

She shrieked, and ran forward, hoping turning the corner would buy her a little more time. With that in mind, she held a hand against the wall, feeling for another turn. A glance back made her head spin; the possessed Dalek shell was already behind her. Even worse was when she heard the unmistakable sound of a shot landing just behind her, even as the heat of it surprised her. She found a corner just in time and spun around it. After a moment of deliberation, she held the eyestalk out the other side of her. She was certain she looked ridiculous, running with both arms outstretched, but she needed, desperately, to serpentine, and it was the only way she could think of doing so without missing another turn.

“EXTERMINATE.”

She dodged another shot just in time, though she felt a few strands of her hair burn away with it so close. There was no time to dwell on how close to death she was, no time to even recite the names in her head. Molly spun around another corner.

She only registered that something terrible happened and not what it was. Suddenly she hadn’t been able to move anymore, and was pulled sideways. Eventually her mind recognized hands at her arms, but still her body was flooded with panic and adrenalin. She pulled away and took a swing with the eyestalk at whatever it was that had grabbed her while giving a battle cry, but the person-like thing dodged her.

For a moment, she thought it was the Doctor.

It most definitely wasn’t.

Molly wanted to scream again, but it felt like her chest had been torn to shreds and she couldn’t get enough air in her lungs. She took a gulp of air, and then, staring wide-eyed at the thing that had grabbed her and pulled her into another room, swallowed back vomit.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” it – he, she corrected – assured her.

Finally able to make sound, she couldn’t resist making a sound to indicate disgust. But then she managed a smile. “Hi.”

“Hello,” Dalek Sec said in return. “You came here with the Doctor.”

“Yeah,” she confirmed eloquently. “I’m not sure where he is.” Face to face with the human-Dalek hybrid. And the Sass Queen of the Daleks, to boot; she recalled the exchange between him and the Cybermen.

“You were separated, I saw,” he replied, and turned back towards one of the large computers Molly thought reminded her of something on Star Trek. Molly assumed there must be some sort of security camera display that let him watch the Doctor, River, and her navigating the ship. “I’ll try to lead him here with the lights. It’s difficult to force them to be bright enough, but I have to make the attempt.”

“Right,” Molly breathed, as she rested the Dalek eye stalk on her shoulder. Her head was swimming. “You sent the distress signal.”

“Yes,” replied Dalek Sec. “Once I realized what was happening, I knew I had to escape, for the sake of the universe. I had hoped the Doctor would find it somehow.”

There were too many things that didn’t make sense, and Molly felt confused and dizzy, and her stomach twisted, and she felt she was burning up from the inside, so it was time to sit down. Her legs got the message before her brain did, and she found herself collapsing to the floor.  “Ow.”

Dalek Sec spared her a glance. “You’re one of the Doctor’s associates?”

Molly thought about it a moment. “I guess.” She still wasn’t sure she could really call herself a Companion with a capital C, but she did travel with him. And – she thought with a warmth in her chest that made her smile – they were friends.

“You don’t seem as alarmed to see me as I thought you would be.”

“Oh.” Of course. She wasn’t supposed to know about the human-Dalek hybrid. She needed to play along. She rearranged her face in a frown. “I’m definitely alarmed. Super alarmed. Like an alarm clock.” She hadn’t been lying when she’d said she was bad at lying. If she’d attempted that particular lie, it still would’ve been obvious. “I’m too tired to display how very, very alarmed I am.” 

Dalek Sec only nodded his head. Molly decided it would be best for her stomach to stop looking at him until she got better control of her body. She felt a bit guilty, as it wasn’t his fault he had slimy tentacles on his face, or an exposed brain, or one eye, but seeing these things on a screen was infinitely different than seeing them in reality, and it gave her the heebie-jeebies. She’d just take a moment to close her eyes and get over it.

A banging at the door made her give up on the break and leap to her feet, eyestalk in swinging position.

“EXTERMINATE.” Came the sound of the possessed shell on the other side of the door. “EXTERMINATE.”

“Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla,” she muttered.

“It can’t get in. It’s not clever enough to hack into the controls,” she heard Dalek Sec assure her. “…What were those names?”

Molly still couldn’t tear her eyes from the door as the banging continued, the shell ramming against it repeatedly. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” She held her breath until she heard the Dalek shell retreat. She lowered the eyestalk and turned to face Dalek Sec. “How is it moving on its own? We know it’s empty.”

“I think it would be best if I waited until the Doctor arrived to explain.”

Molly tried not to be offended by that seeming insult to her intelligence. Despite the fact that he was probably right in thinking she wouldn’t understand as well as the Doctor, she failed. “What’s your name?” she asked, setting the eyestalk down and approaching. Then she remembered that she should also be confused about his existence in general. “Also, and I mean very little offense – what are you?” She wasn’t able to ask the questions she really wanted an answer to: Why wasn’t he dead, how was he here, was he still trying to make more hybrids?

“I am Dalek Sec,” he said, as he continued working. “I am a Dalek-human hybrid. I can explain more when the Doctor and his other companion arrive.”

“Right,” Molly said, trying and failing to keep the irritation out of her voice. She understood: he was focused on a task, and it was better to explain something once rather than multiple times. That didn’t make it feel any better to keep hitting a brick wall with him.

Uncertain what else to do, Molly began walking around the room, looking around, but unable to really understand everything. Mostly it was computers and other sorts of equipment she’d seen on TV but had never been explained. The room was fairly large, rectangular, with a lot of lights and ramps to various levels.

“This is the main control room?” she asked, just as that possibility clicked in her mind.

“Yes,” replied Dalek Sec. “I barricaded myself in here when the Daleks realized I was here.”

She thought about asking about that, but knew the answer she would get. Instead, she walked up to stand beside him and watch him work, though she didn’t quite understand what it was he was doing. On the screen, she saw the Doctor and River following lights that flickered on and off, with the scanner and screwdriver extended. They seemed tense, but not so panicked that she was afraid whatever the metallic sound was was chasing them.

“So, you do know what’s happening.” She didn’t bother to make it a question.

“Yes,” replied Dalek Sec. He turned his head slightly towards her. “What was your name?”

Molly felt elated for a moment, but couldn’t understand why. And then she realized: of course, Dalek Sec would never have seen the show. Since she’d arrived in this universe, she’d finally had the opportunity to introduce herself by her real name a handful of times. And this time, he was sure to not already know who she was. He would never think of her as Molly Phoenix.

“Molly Quinn,” she said with what she hoped was a winning smile. “Nice to meet you, Dalek Sec.”

“And you, Molly Quinn,” he replied, which made her smile more. The human side of him was definitely winning out over the Dalek side. She’d been sad to see him die. Which made the fact that he was standing beside her all the more confusing.

“Oh, and thanks for saving my life, and all that,” she added, realizing how rude it had been for her not to mention it before.

Dalek Sec glanced at her, with almost a look of surprise in his one eye. “You’re welcome.” He turned back to the screen, and then pressed a button. The door slid open. Molly looked at it in genuine alarm, but Dalek Sec said, “The Doctor and his other companion are about to arrive.”

Molly ran towards the door and stuck her head in the dark corridor. She watched the Doctor hesitate between going straight and turning. “Doctor! River! Over here!” She waved, and hoped he saw her in the darkness. Thankfully, the light from River’s scanner was bright enough to light the corridor to a deep grey instead of black, and Molly blinked when it shone in her eyes and blinded her. The scanner lowered, and Molly saw the Doctor hurrying towards her. He seized her in a quick hug, which made Molly flush with warmth, and then pulled back and held her by the shoulders.

“Are you alright?” He looked her up and down, seeking any injury.

Molly nodded. “A few singed hairs from another shell that found me, but otherwise, I’m okay.”

“You really need to stop running off,” he said, a note of humor in his voice. “This is the second time.”

“Uh, first time, the other time you’re the one who took off, and I didn’t really have a choice here.” She paused. “The person who saved me and sent the distress signal is in here.”

“Makes sense, it’s the main control room,” said the Doctor, and he tried to step inside. Molly stepped in the way.

“Uh. Maybe prepare yourself.”

The Doctor looked confused, but this time Molly stepped out of the way as he entered the room, River right behind him.

Molly heard the Doctor made a sound of disgust she’d heard him make on the show before, one very similar to the one she’d made when coming face-to-face with Dalek Sec. Exact, really. Then, as she walked around him to see his expression, he smiled. “Oh. Hi.”

The door behind them closed, and Dalek Sec approached them. “Hello again, Doctor. You have regenerated?”

“No, I just went out and bought a new face,” replied the Doctor, but the sarcasm was light in his voice. He slapped each side of his face lightly. “Like it?”

“To be honest, I preferred the other, but that is not relevant.”

The Doctor scowled. “Well, no offense, Dalek Sec, but I’m fairly certain you’re meant to be dead. In fact, I saw you die, so I suppose I’m a bit more than ‘fairly’ certain.” But there was some excitement in his voice. Molly realized he was seeing another chance to do what he’d failed to do before: work with him to end the Dalek race in the most peaceful way possible.

Dalek Sec turned back and walked back to the controls. “I am from another universe,” he explained. The Doctor and Molly exchanged a look. They’d managed to run into another person who had crossed universes? “In mine, the Doctor, his companions and I were forced to destroy all the others of my kind. It was decided it would be best if I remained the last. He took me to another planet to live out my life on, but the longer I stayed there, the more I thought about the fate of the Daleks. I became obsessed with finding a way to save them, to change them, and I knew the only option was to save the Daleks in another universe. I built a machine to bring me here, with the help of others on that planet, with the intention to find my old lab on Skaro, and begin the process of creating human-Dalek hybrids there, and hope it would save my people, along with all the others of this universe in danger from them. I needed a connection between myself and where I landed here, and so ended up on this ship. I hid away, and used my connection to the pathweb to keep them from remembering whenever they saw me.”

The Doctor stood, processing Dalek Sec’s story. River took a step forward.

“So, you’re a Dalek-human hybrid? How did that happen?”

Molly watched the Doctor’s face as Dalek Sec told River the story. Even from another universe, it was the same, save the ending. The Doctor’s expression was more interesting. He was surprised, clearly, and impressed with Dalek Sec’s ability to cross universes, and his determination to come here to do good. It was his short, occasional, unreadable glances towards her that confused Molly. They’d both crossed universes, her and Dalek Sec. Maybe the Doctor was thinking that Dalek Sec’s technology could send her home. Her heart sank at the idea that this was all coming to an end so soon, even as she realized it was odd it was taking the TARDIS this long to track her path through the universes to begin with. But, setting that aside, she was most frustrated that she couldn’t tell how the Doctor felt about it. Was he disappointed too? Or glad she would get to go home? She dismissed the thought that he’d be relieved to have his time to himself again. She finally believed he didn’t view her as an inconvenience.

But by the time Dalek Sec was done telling his story, she still didn’t know what the familiar adjustments of the Doctor’s mouth and quick, almost dark glances towards her meant. And she hated it.

“Alright, then,” the Doctor said when Dalek Sec was done speaking, before River had a real chance to respond. He clapped his hands together. “You must know what it is that’s been happening here. Why is the ship almost entirely dead? Why do the Dalek shells move on their own? Where are the Dalek’s bodies? What is it that is hiding in the walls, turning out the ligh-” He stopped. His face went pale, his eyes wide. He held a hand out as if telling Dalek Sec to stop could prevent whatever conclusion it was he had come to. “No. No, wait. That’s impossible. It’s really impossible.”

“What is?” River asked.

The Doctor’s look towards her, for a moment, made Molly think he felt as sick as she did. He turned back to Dalek Sec. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

Dalek Sec shook his head. “I don’t believe you are.”

The Doctor walked over to where Dalek Sec stood, half-tripping for a moment over the eyestalk Molly had dropped, and then did something with the sonic to the computer. Molly thought about peeking to see what he was doing, but she wouldn’t know what to look for, and with River coming to stand beside them, there wasn’t much room.

River’s eyes widened, and she leaned in.  A light flashed in her eyes as she came to whatever conclusion the Doctor had. “But that’s impossible.”

“What’s impossible?” Molly asked. Knowing she was the least intelligent person in the room wasn’t sitting well with her.

River looked up to her, and the expression on her face told Molly that somehow, the danger they were in had just increased. “There are billions of lifeforms on this vessel.”

Now Molly felt cold. “I thought there were just a couple dozen Daleks?”

Dalek Sec shook his head. “The parameters for your scans were not widened far enough.”

Molly’s mind raced. Billions of lifeforms. Billions of lifeforms that must somehow be invisible and silent, save for maybe the sound of metal. Empty Dalek shells, and those shells moving and speaking and attacking on their own. The lights going out. The Doctor’s look at River when he realized what the threat was.

The impossible connection clicked, and she felt the air leave her lungs. It really was impossible.

“It’s my fault,” Dalek Sec explained. “Somehow, I brought them with me. I’ve hidden here for months, and in that time, they multiplied. They’ve finally grown large enough to destroy the ship.”

The Doctor’s expression was becoming more and more frustrated. “What? What?” he sighed. “It doesn’t make any sense. There are no trees in here, no paper even. It’s not like the Daleks keep libraries!”

“In my universe, their forests were destroyed long ago. They adapted to live in metal. They can feed, not only on meat, but on bone.”

“Vashta Nerada on a Dalek ship. This is the worst episode.” Molly ran her fingers through her hair. “So, essentially, we could be completely surrounded by them right now?”

“Yes,” replied Dalek Sec, as the Doctor did something on the computer.

“Oh, I love that for us.”

“…was that sarcasm?”

“Nooo, I totally meant it, everything about this is a dream.”

“Sarcasm.”

“Yeah.” Perhaps sarcasm wasn’t what they needed right now, but feeling helpless was one of Molly’s most hated feelings, and that’s what she was. The Doctor, River, and Dalek Sec knew, more or less, what they were doing. They had experience, they were smart, they were even familiar with how a Dalek ship worked, or at least the Doctor and, obviously, Dalek Sec did. And she couldn’t do anything.

She moved to another computer console to lean against it, while the Doctor and Dalek Sec spoke in quiet tones.

“We have to find a way to eliminate the Daleks, and contain the Vashta Nerada. They can’t be allowed to spread in this universe,” said the Doctor.

“The Daleks have all barricaded themselves in a safe room,” Dalek Sec pointed out. “They should be simple enough to eliminate. The Vashta Nerada will be more difficult.”

“I would really prefer to avoid…”

The conversation continued as River slipped away to stand near Molly. “So,” she began, “How long do you think until the men figure out what we already know?”

Molly looked at River in confusion, and then back at the Doctor and Dalek Sec. She wanted to tell River that she thought the Doctor had already thought of it, but she would then have to explain why the Doctor didn’t want to do it. It was too close to what had happened when he first met River. What would happen. “I give it two minutes,” she said instead.

“Are you before, during, or after Amy and Rory?” River asked.

Molly considered a way to answer that question that wouldn’t be too spoilery. She looked older than the Byzantium, older than the Impossible Astronaut, a little younger than the Library. But then, she had said she was going to take the age down. Maybe that was just on the show, and not in this universe. “Are you still in prison?”

“No,” responded River. “I’m thinking about moonlighting as a tour guide. I made professor ages ago.”

“Congratulations,” Molly forced out. She felt sick again as she glanced at River’s face. So. It was close. Very close. “After,” she replied. “A while after.”

She thought that maybe even her face was a bad liar as River examined her for a moment. But she turned to look back at the Doctor and Dalek Sec. “Must be overwhelming for you. I imagine you don’t get many Daleks in your universe.”

“Or aliens in general,” Molly answered, then frowned. “At least to my knowledge…” Maybe Area 51 really was hiding something. Aliens, bits of spaceship. Of course, knowing the luck of her planet, it’d probably be an alien toilet or something.

River looked around at every shadow in the room. “Right now, no aliens sounds refreshing.”

“No kidding.”

Molly overheard a bit of the men’s conversation. “…self-destruct may be the best option,” Dalek Sec was saying.

River looked at her watch. “Two minutes. Right on time.”

“As I said, I would really rather avoid…” the Doctor ran his hands over his face. “Yeah. Okay. Self-destruct it is.”

“It will have to be initiated from here, and then confirmed in the secondary command center,” Dalek Sec explained.

“So we’ll have another little romp around the ship,” said River as she walked back to the men.

“No. Well, yes, but no,” said the Doctor. “We’ll initiate here. Dalek Sec and I will go to the command center to confirm. You and Molly go to the TARDIS, and bring it there, so we can get off the ship before it, you know…blows up.”

“Sounds like a plan,” sighed Molly. At least she had something to do. Not that she could fly the TARDIS, or fight any Dalek shells off, but at she could watch River’s back. “Should we get-”

The door to the room slid open, and Molly could see a crowd of Daleks beyond it. She screamed and ducked behind the computer console with River, who took out her gun. “I thought you said they couldn’t get in!” Molly shouted.

“The shells can’t,” said Dalek Sec, from somewhere behind the computer. “These are the real Daleks.”

“They must have scanned for lifeforms,” the Doctor said quickly. She peeked around her computer and saw him on his knees in front of the console, peeking up just enough to sonic it.

“WE SAW THE TARDIS IN OUR SCANS. NOW WE HAVE FOUND THE DOCTOR,” the Dalek ahead screamed. “WE MUST DESTROY THE DOCTOR. WE MUST DESTROY THE ABOMINATION!”

“I can help you!” shouted the Doctor.

“OUR ORDERS ARE TO DESTROY THE DOCTOR!”

The Doctor sighed. “Yeah, that never works.”

“What are you doing, sweetie?” River shouted over the sound of a Dalek firing. Molly swallowed another scream when sparks flew from the console above her.

“Dalek Sec,” the Doctor said, in lieu of responding to River. “You’re connected to the pathweb. Do you think you can take down their shielding?”

“Not all at once,” Dale Sec replied. “I could possibly do it one at a time.”

“You lower their shields, and I’ll shoot them,” offered River.

Molly looked and saw Dalek Sec at the controls. He hesitated a moment, and then seemed to decide that these Daleks had to die so that he could live to save others. The Doctor watched Dalek Sec’s movements, and then shouted. “Far left!”

River hopped up, fired a shot, and ducked down again. “Next!” she shouted.

Once she cleared her head of the sound of a different gunshot echoing from years ago, a problem occurred to Molly. “Do you have a second gun?”

River glanced over at Molly before taking the next shot at the Dalek the Doctor directed her to. “Can you use it?”

“I’m from Texas.” Granted, she hadn’t held one since she’d been in Texas, but hopefully it was second-nature, and she could keep her mind clear of any more echoes of the past.

River paused to pulled her second gun and hand it over to Molly. It was laser, like hers, but seemed to fire the same way the guns Molly was used to would fire. “I’m going to move around the room, or the Daleks are just going to come to us. Hopefully they won’t know which of us to go after first.”

River nodded, then shouted to the Doctor, “I’m coming to you!” It was the Doctor and Dalek Sec the Daleks were after, after all.

As River took a quick look to be sure she could go one way, Molly dashed the other way, taking cover behind another console. When she heard the Doctor shout another direction, Molly aimed her gun at it, hitting it. Of course, her shot didn’t kill it – she couldn’t aim straight down the eyestalk – but it did manage to distract another Dalek. As that one headed towards her, the Doctor shouted, “The one in front of you, Molly!”

Molly’s aim had never been perfect, and she wasn’t sure if the nerves would help. But as she hopped up to take aim, she realized that the adrenalin had improved her focus. She managed to fire a shot before throwing her weight backwards to fall in order to avoid another Dalek’s attack. She got to her feet, crouching, and then dove back to the other console.

“Three o’clock!” the Doctor shouted.

“Whose three?!” She heard River shout back.

“Yours!”

Molly hopped up and fired at the same time River did, hoping to draw the Daleks away from River, the Doctor, and Dalek Sec. She was the more vulnerable target, and for once, she wanted it that way. She took another shot and gasped when a Dalek’s returning attack missed her by an inch, and felt a burn form on her arm – but she was still alive. She leapt to the other console.

“Eight o’clock!”

Molly tried desperately to picture a clock in her head, and tilt it on its side. She only just understood which Dalek was vulnerable when River’s shot missed it. It was getting dangerously close to them, but Molly would have to fully stand to hit it. She took a breath, stood, and fired. It swung its eyestalk towards her, but another Dalek took a shot at her. More of her hair burned away, and the smell was nauseating, but she fired a shot down the eyestalk of her target and dropped back to the ground.

“There’s only three more here,” Dalek Sec informed them.

“Left!” to Doctor shouted, and Molly heard River fire. Then, “Molly, one is coming up to you!”

Molly didn’t even think before getting to her feet and dashing for the other console. Once the Doctor announced that was the next target, she aimed, and hit it square in the eyestalk again. River finished off the last one moments later.

Molly breathed a sigh of relief, even as her arm throbbed. The door closed again.

“That was only a few of them,” said the Doctor. “Where are the rest?”

Dalek Sec replied, “They’re headed for storage room B.”

“I’m going to venture a guess that that’s where we left the TARDIS.”

“That is correct.”

As her adrenalin levels began to drop, Molly felt as though her stomach folded in half and began to squeeze itself flat. She dropped the gun on the console, and ran for the furthest corner of the room. There was little to cough up but yellow, bitter stomach acid, and it burned her throat.

Once her stomach had emptied, Molly turned back to the others, who were staring at her. She cleared her throat and ignored the ache it caused. “You know what? I think there’s a possibility I might actually be sick,” she said. “…Anyone happen to have a mint?”

“First fight?” River asked.

“Kind of, but I think I am genuinely sick,” Molly said, walking back. “That’s not the first time my body has tried to vomit today. I’ve felt really hot this whole time, too.”

The Doctor met her halfway with a peppermint. She smiled gratefully and popped it in her mouth while the Doctor scanned her with the sonic. After looking at the results, he scowled at her. “101.5 Fahrenheit.”

“Stop looking at me like it’s my fault,” she said.

“You should have told me.”

Molly shrugged. “We got a distress signal and ended up on a Dalek ship, I thought it was panic.”

“That’s a reasonable reaction,” River chimed in.

The Doctor was still frowning. “...reasonable, I guess.” He turned to head back towards the others. “So. We’ll set the ship to self-destruct, escape on the TARDIS, and then you’re going to bed.”

“Yes, sir,” Molly replied, rolling her eyes. She stopped to pick the gun up again. “I’ll get a bowl of chicken noodle soup right after we, you know, fight against two of the most dangerous creatures in the universe in order to blow up a ship and narrowly escape with our lives.”

“Marvelous.”

“Let’s head out, then,” said River. “No time like the present.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twelve

Shadows

Molly ran, gun in one hand at her side, the other ahead of her to avoid hitting a wall. Behind her, River ran backwards, firing off shots at one of the Dalek shells that followed them down the hall. After separating from the Doctor and Dalek Sec, they hadn’t made it very far before being found. She hoped the Doctor and Dalek Sec were having better luck than she and River was, just as she hoped their luck would improve.

“Go left – no, right!” Molly shouted, as she went to her left. Dalek Sec lit as many corridors as he could before they left, and this one had a faint, flickering light. She glanced back and made sure River was behind her.

“We’re getting further away from the TARDIS!” River shouted in frustration. “Do you see any kind of panel that might lead us into a room?”

“Can you get one open?” Molly spotted one ahead. “Can you get it locked?”

“I don’t know, but we may as well find out!”

“Up ahead to your right, I’ll tell you when to turn!”

They raced towards it, and when Molly announced they arrived, River and Molly span around each other, and Molly took a step forward, and fired at the Dalek shell. She was relieved to hear the door slide open quickly, and felt River drag her inside. The door closed behind them, and Molly held her breath. She wasn’t quite sure what River did, but when she heard River breathe a sigh of relief, she released her breath, too.

Molly turned and crept through the room, which seemed to only hold various cables along the walls, and a few large computer-y things that seemed more like half-walls to Molly. The room was eerily quiet, save for the distant hum of engines. This was, of course, preferable to the sound of the Vashta Nerada approaching through the walls or in a Dalek shell, but it still made Molly feel tense. She glanced back at River, who was using her scanner as a light to make the walls more visible than the dim light in the room.

River pointed the light in her direction. “We’ll wait a bit for the shell to give up and move on.”

Molly nodded, and decided to take a seat on the floor, legs stretched out ahead of her. “I am so ready for this to be over.”

“What, you’re not having fun?” River sounded amused.

Molly smiled weakly up at River. “I think I’ve reached my capacity for fun today.”

River took a seat across from her. “Seems to me you like getting in a bit of trouble. Or was the show wrong?”

“‘Bit of’, sure. Vashta Nerada on a Dalek ship isn’t exactly ‘a bit’.”

River handed Molly her scanner and gestured to her to hold the light towards her, and started making some adjustments to her gun. “You sound like you’re familiar with the Vashta Nerada. Was that on an episode?”

Molly thought she ought to warn of spoilers, but saying that seemed more of a spoiler in and of itself. River would know the Vashta Nerada were in her future. “Yeah. They were a bit different, obviously, but…” She looked around suddenly. The dimness in the room made her nervous. The shells were one thing, but the rest of the swarm was still out there. She needed to think about something other than their possibly impending deaths. “Dalek Sec was on an episode, too.”

River nodded as she continued to fiddle with her gun. “He’s going to fall in love with you, you know,” she said casually.

Molly stared. “Uh, I think love at first sight might be a little too on the human side for anything with Dalek in it.”

“Not Sec,” replied River, and she glanced up at Molly. “The Doctor.”

Molly stared for another moment, then felt a laugh escape her chest. “This is a weird joke for you to make.”

“I’m not joking.”

Molly tried to read River’s expression. She couldn’t quite pinpoint an emotion – River was an expert at hiding her emotions, she had to be – but she did appear to be serious. “What? Of course he’s not. Why would he?”

“Because you’re Molly Quinn,” River replied, now lowering the gun to watch her. “And he’s the Doctor. Why wouldn’t he?”

“Well, for one, I’m not sure if you realize this – he’s married.”

River chuckled. “I know. But that doesn’t matter, not really.” She looked back at her gun. Ah. It was easier for River to have this conversation without looking at her. The gun was probably perfectly fine.  “The Doctor travels through time. Theoretically, he exists across time and space all at once, with any version of him at every point in time.”

“Yeah, I know that. But what does-”

“That means that no matter where he is, he is always married to me, and not married to me at the same time. I’ve met versions of him before we were married but in the time after we were, and I’ve met versions of him well after we were married, before the time we got married. He’s also simultaneously married to his wife on Gallifrey, and Marilyn Monroe, and Queen Elizabeth the First. There may even be others, I’m not sure,” River explained. “This necessitates a polyamorous relationship. I can’t begrudge him the marriages that came before me, or even ones after me – though I will absolutely tell him that I do.” She glanced up at Molly with a small smirk at that. “Beyond that, he’s very nearly immortal. One day, I’ll die. One day – perhaps a different day – will be the last day he ever sees me again. How can I expect him to mourn me forever, to never be in love again, to always be alone? Sure, as I said, he may see me again, after I’ve died for him. But we’re not a constant in each other’s lives.” Again, River looked at her, but this time she held her gaze. “I’ll always love him. More than the sun and stars, more than the universe itself. I may take advantage of the open relationship now and then myself – if he can, I should be able to, too - but he will always be the only man I really love. I just can’t be that for him.”

Molly tried not to stare at the pain in River’s eyes. Some of those thoughts had occurred to her, while watching the show, but she never thought to hear them confirmed. She never thought she would have to sit here, across from River Song, and hear how much she loved the Doctor, and how she couldn’t be what she wanted to be for him. To hear how she had to share him, the one person she truly adored, regardless of if she wanted to or not. And Molly couldn’t tell her what she knew already: that the Doctor would always love her. That he was so afraid of saying goodbye to her, of the pain it would cause, that even when he could see her after she’d died, he couldn’t even acknowledge her.

‘After I died for him’. She meant after the point in the Doctor’s life where she’d died. She couldn’t know that it also meant that she would give her life for the Doctor. That she wouldn’t allow him to rewrite their story together, no matter the cost.

The Tale of River Song and the Doctor was maybe the most heartbreaking story Molly had ever heard. And she couldn’t show it. Not now.

Still. “I’m sorry,” she whispered back, afraid to put any volume in her voice, lest she put too much emotion in it. River shouldn’t have to hear her – who got to travel with the Doctor the way River couldn’t now – feeling pity for her. “That’s awful.”

“It’s just the way it is,” said River, looking away again. But Molly caught the tears shining in her eyes in the light anyway, tears River was too proud to shed.

It was time to try to move River away from that pain. “I understand that he must be married and not married at once. When you’re a time traveler, it seems inevitable,” she said. “But I don’t understand why you think he’d fall in love with me. It’s ridiculous. And what does my being Molly Quinn have to do with anything?”

A small, side smile took the place of the hint of grief on River’s face. “I told you, I can’t count the times he made me watch that show. Really, he mentioned it to anyone who stood still long enough. He didn’t exactly keep his admiration of you a secret.”

Molly shrugged. “Okay.” It was still difficult for her to grasp that the Doctor had admired her in any way like she’d admired him, but now wasn’t the time to get into it. “But that doesn’t mean anything. I mean, firstly, that doesn’t imply any kind of romantic inclination. He can like me and not ever develop any kind of feelings for me.”

River’s smirk reappeared. “Oh, I watched him watch you on the screen. It certainly does.”

“Secondly,” Molly continued as though she hadn’t heard River, “The person he admired was a fictional character. He’s smart enough to know that. That I am a real person, with more flaws and issues than a character on TV, that I have aspects of me that couldn’t be shown on a television show, that I can’t possibly be exactly like a fictional character, that he doesn’t really know me as me. He’s not going to feel for me what he may have felt for a fictionalized version of me. He’s going to realize, if he hasn’t already, and I’m sure he has, that I’m not her. That I’m a real person. That I’m a different person.”

“Like you did with him?”

Molly stared, but somehow found herself unable to speak. Of course she had. She’d even discussed it with the TARDIS. He was real, and whole, and she didn’t know him as a person. She knew he didn’t know her, and she knew she didn’t know him. Of course she had.  And she was going to say so.

But the door on the other side of the room slid open. River jumped to her feet, and aimed the gun, and fired before Molly could even get to her knees to aim the light.

“Its shield is still up,” said River. “We need to get out.”

Molly nodded and turned the light to the door, and they both stayed low as they ran for it. The Dalek – the real Dalek – fired at them, but missed. Molly was grateful that they had as good of aim as Stormtroopers did in Star Wars.

River opened the door as quickly as she could, and they both peeked out the doors. “Nothing this way,” she said, looking left.

“Nothing this way, either,” said Molly.

“Let’s get back to the direct path to the TARDIS, then,” said River, and darted back the way they’d come. Molly followed after, glancing back to be sure the Dalek hadn’t made it through the door fast enough to start shooting again.

She raced behind River, and felt a wave of relief hit her like a tidal wave when they made it through the door that led to the TARDIS. Back where they began, River and Molly rushed forward. River used her key to open the TARDIS, and they stepped inside and closed the door.

While Molly took a moment to catch her breath and finally feel safe, River didn’t waste time getting to the controls. She looked into the monitor and flipped a few switches. Molly assumed she was looking for the secondary control room.

Molly approached hesitantly. She couldn’t be of use in moving the TARDIS, and River didn’t need help, anyway. But she still felt that their earlier conversation needed a proper conclusion before the Doctor was back with them.

“He’s a real person, River,” she said softly. “I know that. We already know there are things that are different between our shows and our real lives. I can’t say that I really know him. And I can’t have feelings for someone that I don’t know.”

River didn’t look at her, but continued searching the monitor for the secondary control room. “But you did, when he was a fictional character.” It wasn’t a question.

Molly felt her heart flutter. This wasn’t something she’d ever admitted to anyone, hardly even to herself, and River had seen it right away. No matter how she wanted to, she couldn’t deny it. River deserved more than that. “Yes, okay,” she forced herself to say. It was time to confess the secret she was embarrassed to even have. “I had…romantic feelings for a fictional character. It happens sometimes. But I knew the fictional version of him. And I don’t know the real him. And he doesn’t know the real me. Even if he’d had some sort of crush on a fictional version of me, it isn’t the same.”

River glanced at her, and then began moving around the console to start transporting the TARDIS. Their time to discuss this was running low, and Molly desperately wanted to reassure River that her fears were unfounded. But River continued, “I’m not saying that he’s in love with you now. I’m saying, he will be. He fancied you as a fictional character, and it isn’t outside the realm of possibility that it transferred to you, now that you’re real in this universe. Just like your crush transferred to him.”

Molly half-scoffed, half-laughed. “Neither of those things are even a little bit true.”

“No?” River asked, but her voice suggested she had the answer already.

“No,” replied Molly confidently, one of her few successful lies. Because perhaps those feelings had transferred at first, she could admit that to herself, but never would she admit it aloud. But over the last few days it had faded, and fast. Better to not even mention any transference of crushes at all.  “I know you know the Doctor better than I do, but I really think you’re wrong about him, and I know you’re wrong about me.” She’d promised herself, the TARDIS, and even silently the Doctor that she wouldn’t develop any real feelings for him. Having feelings for him would just hurt them both. She’d seen it with Martha. “Even if that were true, which it’s not, I’ll be back in my own universe long before it can actually happen.”

Their conversation was interrupted a moment as the TARDIS began to shake. After a few seconds, while they were still traveling, River said, “It’s interesting. You seem to get along well. How long have you been here?”

Molly felt like she’d already lost track of the days. “I think it’s been about five days now.” All those adventures in less than a week. No wonder she’d gotten sick.

“Five days,” repeated River, and the TARDIS stopped shaking as they landed. “That seems to me a good long time to spend tracking down how you got into this universe. The Doctor has been to other universes before.”

Molly frowned. “Yeah, but that doesn’t mean he can easily find a specific one every time.” But it was whatever River was implying that had her confused.

River only gave her a knowing look, though what she knew Molly wasn’t sure, and she walked past Molly to the door. “We’re clear,” she said. “Just the Doctor and Sec in there.” She opened the door, and the confusing conversation was over.

She watched River exit, then mumbled to herself, “We’re so failing the Bechdel test right now,” then followed after her.

The secondary control room was, unsurprisingly, smaller. Which was a problem, as Molly heard banging at the two doors that led inside.

“Shells or real Daleks?” River asked, readying her gun.

“Both,” replied the Doctor. He held a screwdriver at one door, while Dalek Sec worked at a computer. Molly could see red flashing lights on the screen, which she assumed could only be bad news. Or, maybe, since they were trying to blow up the ship, good news.

River ran to find a defensible position where she could stand and shoot if either door opened. The Vashta Nerada wouldn’t be able to get inside, so the Doctor was probably holding the door closed on the Daleks. “I don’t understand something,” she said, as she tested aiming the gun at one door, and then another. “If the Vashta Nerada are a swarm, how can they organize enough to control the Dalek shells? How can they even speak through it?”

“The Vashta Nerada can work together as a sentient being if the swarm is large enough. I’ve seen it before. Last time they were able to do it because…” he glanced over at River. “Well, that doesn’t matter right now. I think they can do it now because the Daleks live inside their shells, their whole existence is locked up inside of them. They may have left some sort of psychic imprint on them, that the Vashta Nerada can repeat.”

“Sort of like the Angels did to Bob.”

“Exactly,” said the Doctor, his voice softer at the memory of the cleric he’d failed to save.

Molly went to stand beside Dalek Sec. “Why aren’t we blowing up the ship now? I thought it just had to be confirmed.”

“The Daleks saw what we were doing and locked the ability to confirm,” Dalek Sec explained. “I’m trying to find a way around it.”

“Besides that, I need a chance to speak to them,” said the Doctor. Molly could hear the strain in his voice as he fought to keep the door closed.

“The Daleks?” River asked, incredulous.

“No, the Vashta Nerada. I have to give them a chance.”

“You’re going to negotiate with a swarm?” River sounded significantly more than merely ‘skeptical’.

“I’ve done it before.”

“You have not!”

“I have so!”

“When?”

The Doctor paused. “Spoilers.”

River was practically glaring at him. “And you think this is a good idea, do you?”

“Oh, it’s a terrible idea,” agreed the Doctor. “But I have to do it anyway.”

“What are you going to do, Doctor? Invite them on the TARDIS for a ride?”

“I’ll offer to let them live on the ship.”

“And when they run out of food?”

The Doctor made a frustrated sound, but whether it was from holding the door shut or the conversation, Molly couldn’t tell. “It is the sort of plan where they only live a few more days, but a few more days is a lot better than a few more minutes. I have to offer them those days.”

Molly glanced from the Doctor, to River, and then to both doors. She took a breath. “Open the doors.”

“What?” The chorus of three voices all sounded like they were questioning her sanity.

“Open the doors,” she repeated. “They could break in at any moment, and then it’s just us versus them. The Vashta Nerada have been picking off the Daleks. The Vashta Nerada also seem to prefer eating the Daleks to us, at least for now, seeing as we’re all still alive. Let them both in, and they’ll start fighting each other, if I’m right. We open both doors, they have more targets, and it could buy us time. And we pick off whatever is left. We hope one of the Vashta Nerada Daleks survive so it can negotiate on behalf of the rest of the swarm.”

“And if you’re wrong?” asked Dalek Sec.

Molly shrugged. “Then I’m wrong and we die. Right now, we’re already headed that direction anyway. This at least increases our chances of survival.”

“River?” asked the Doctor.

“Let’s do it,” said River. “I’m ready.”

Molly moved to stand to the right of River, closer to the door the Vashta Nerada were behind. She’d try to avoid shooting them, but she had to watch Dalek Sec’s back.

“Okay,” said the Doctor. “Dalek Sec, open the other door, and then I’m coming over to take over, and you get the Dalek shields down again. In three, two…one.”

The doors slid open before Molly could even take a deep breath. No time to prepare herself for this fire fight, no time to pray to whatever it was that had heard her and sent her there to let her be right. The doors opened, and the chaos immediately began.

First, the Daleks began firing on the Doctor as he turned to make his way to the computer beside Dalek Sec. He slid across the top of the computer and ducked down in time to avoid a headshot. River fired at the Dalek to get its attention, which succeeded. But still the shields were up.

Molly didn’t have any more time to watch as one of the shells approached her. She tried a shot, hoping the shields weren’t working for the Vashta Nerada, and was surprised to find that she was right. The Vashta Nerada didn’t know how to turn the shields on. The laser bolt struck the side of it, leaving a burn mark, but no other signs of damage. She dove to the ground when it fired back, scraping her burn painfully. She turned and fired another shot straight at the eyestalk, but that didn’t seem to stop the swarm inside.

What did stop it was one of the Daleks turning on the shell and firing repeatedly, screaming something Molly couldn’t understand. The sparks flew everywhere, burning her skin wherever they landed, but it gave her a chance to crawl away and get back on her feet.

“It’s working!” she heard River shout, between Dalek Sec announcing which Dalek was the most vulnerable. Molly ran to stand at River’s left, hoping to have a better chance at hitting Daleks, and any Vashta Nerada that might become too much of a threat. She saw now that the real fight was between the Daleks and the Vashta Nerada, though with the occasional shot towards River as she fired at each vulnerable Dalek. The Doctor and Dalek Sec were left alone as the threat to the Daleks came from both sides. Even though all the remaining Daleks seemed to be here, they knew they were in danger of losing.

Still, there were threats all around them. “Behind you, River!” Molly screamed as she saw a shell approach River. But there was a Dalek approaching her from the front, at well, and no matter how many times Molly shot at it, it didn’t stop.

Before Molly could even blink, River swung around and fired at the shell low, and the metal screeched as it tried to move forward, and failed. In a heartbeat, River swung back around in an arc, and just as Dalek Sec told them that the Dalek in front of her was vulnerable, River shot it down the eyesocket. “Down!” she screamed at Molly, and without thinking she fell to her knees, and heard River shoot at something behind her. The Dalek or shell that had been approaching her – she couldn’t tell anymore which was Dalek and which was Vashta Nerada – seemed to be blinded by the shot to the eyestalk, and Molly gasped as River leapt over her, used a nearby computer to launch herself even higher, then spun around, feet landing on the eyestalk and breaking it off before sticking her gun into the hole that was left and firing.

Molly watched as River shook the hair out of her eyes. “Oh, I am so omnisexual,” Molly said, then paused. “…okay, see, that wasn’t supposed to be said out loud.”

But River just smiled at her and fired at the next vulnerable Dalek that was announced. But Molly heard the Doctor shout, “Oi! Stop hitting on my wife!”

Molly started to stand from where she’d fallen to her knees close to Dalek Sec, when her eyes locked on the floor. She felt the air leave her lungs, and stood and backed up. “Doctor,” she said, as quietly as she could while still being heard. “You need to take several steps away from Dalek Sec.”

“What? Why?”

Molly got to her feet, glanced around to be sure she was safe for a moment, and then looked Dalek Sec in the eye. “I’m sorry. I’m really, so sorry,” she said. Now she understood why the Doctor always apologized. How it felt to have to say it. “You have two shadows.”

Dalek Sec seemed confused for a moment, and then his eye widened in realization.

The Doctor slowly took a few steps away from Dalek Sec, but even as he did so, he turned to the fighting Daleks and not-Daleks and screamed, “No! No! Leave him alone!” He opened his mouth to shout again, but hesitated. Molly assumed he was looking for a good reason for the Vashta Nerada to not consume Dalek Sec, but was struggling to find any.

River was too busy fighting to protect them to see what was happening. “Sec! Are there any more real ones?”

Dalek Sec shook himself out of his daze, and returned to his task. “The one furthest to the left, one in the center. The next two to the right are Vashta Nerada, and then there’s two Daleks.”

“Well?!” she shouted in frustration. “Which one next?”

But a black shadow suddenly rose from the other four Dalek shells, filling the air above them.

“Get down!” the Doctor shouted, and they all ducked down. Molly couldn’t see what was happening, but the terrified, agonized screams of the Daleks told her all she needed to know. The Daleks were evil incarnate, she told herself. But still she knew those screams would be added to the library of things that haunted her dreams.

She wanted to stay hidden down there forever, but banging on the door made her heart sink. There were more Vashta Nerada in Dalek shells coming for them. Eventually, they would find a way to break into the room. They needed to set the timer for the self-destruct, now. But they still weren’t safe.

“Stop!” shouted the Doctor. She looked and saw him standing again, and hesitantly got to her feet. He was speaking to the shells, where some of the swarm had settled again. “I know you can understand me. This doesn’t have to happen. I can leave you alone, if you leave us alone. We don’t have to kill each other.”

One of the Dalek shells gave a loud, high-pitched sound, and then there were a series of clicks. It spun its eyestalk around towards the Doctor. “MEAT,” it said. “YOU ARE THE LAST OF OUR MEAT.”

“You have to listen to me, or you’re all going to die. Just let us go in peace. Let Dalek Sec go,” the Doctor insisted, holding his hands out in sign of being unarmed, of communicating peace.

“DEATH IS COMING,” the Vashta Nerada replied. “YOU ARE THE LAST OF OUR MEAT.”

“Just let him go! I’ll figure something out! I’ll get you back to your universe somehow, and you can have meat there.”

“HUNGRY,” The Vashta Nerada replied. “YOU ARE THE LAST OF OUR MEAT.”

“It’s not going to work,” said River, backing slowly up against the TARDIS. “We have to go.”

“Doctor,” began Dalek Sec. “There is no way to set a timer.”

The Doctor closed his eyes in an expression of defeat. He lowered his hands and turned towards River and Molly and explained, “It’s an old ship. Some of the old ships wouldn’t allow a timer on a self-destruct sequence. If the Daleks on board were too weak to avoid having to blow up their ship, they needed to be destroyed in order to avoid their contamination of the Dalek race.”

Molly looked over the Dalek Sec in horror. “There has to be something we can do.”

“There isn’t,” replied Dalek Sec. “Run. When the TARDIS is gone, I’ll initiate the self-destruct.”

“No,” insisted the Doctor, walking up to stand beside him as he extended a finger towards him, despite River saying his name in warning for getting too close to the two shadows. “You are the only hope of ending the violence of the Dalek race, of saving all those worlds and galaxies and people they’ll destroy.” He paused. “River, get them both in the TARDIS. I’ll do it.”

Molly felt a rush of cold, and her heart twisting painfully. “No, you can’t!”

The Doctor shot her a firm look. “I can and I will. This is how it’s going to happen, Molly.”

River shook her head. “She’s right, Doctor. You can’t.”

“I said I can-”

Dalek Sec interrupted. “The Vashta Nerada are attached to me now. They’ll consume your companions and live inside the TARDIS. That can’t be allowed.”

The Doctor bit his lip and shifted his jaw, a hard look in his eyes. Molly could almost see his mind turning, desperately trying to find some other solution. But a metallic sound filled the room, and they turned to see the Vashta Nerada leaving the Dalek shells to become a large, dark shadow. Molly looked to Sec, and could see the second shadow begin to creep up his body.

River threw open the door of the TARDIS. “Doctor, we have to go. Now.”

River motioned for Molly to get inside. She looked to Dalek Sec. “Thank you,” she whispered, and then turned and ran for the TARDIS, and handed her gun off to River.

She turned to see the Doctor hesitate another moment. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Dalek Sec only nodded. “It is better you live than I. The universe needs you. I’m only sorry we could not work together to create the human-Dalek hybrid race to bring peace to my fellow Daleks.”

“Doctor!” River shouted impatiently.

The Doctor tried to speak, and found he couldn’t. He began to reach to shake Dalek Sec’s hand, and realized he couldn’t. “Goodbye, Dalek Sec.”

Molly thought she saw Dalek Sec smile. “Goodbye, Doctor.”

Molly stepped out of the way as the Doctor turned and ran into the TARDIS, River a moment behind him. Molly resisted a scream when she saw a shadow reaching for them, an inch behind. River slammed the door closed just in time to shut the Vashta Nerada out.

Molly turned to see the Doctor at the console. The tell-tale shake of the TARDIS told her they had left the ship. The Doctor ran back towards them, and opened the door. Molly saw the stars and quickly backed away, but between River and the Doctor she could see the Dalek ship for a moment, before a swirl of white, blue, red, orange and yellow exploded outward, consuming the ship as the Vashta Nerada had consumed the Daleks.

This adventure was over.

Molly only realized she was crying when the Doctor turned, and she could see tears in his eyes, too. He took a few steps over to the stairs, went one step down, and sat, burying his face in his hands.

“I couldn’t save him. Again.” The Doctor’s voice was tight and low. “He died to save me. Again.”

River slowly approached, and set a hand on his shoulder. “He didn’t have a choice. The Vashta Nerada were already attached to him. He was going to die, anyway.”

“I should have known!” the Doctor snapped. “I should have known it was going to happen, I should have found a way-” He stopped, seeming to realize he was shouting. He turned to River with an apologetic look but said again, quietly this time, “I should have known.”

“You couldn’t have,” Molly said gently. “We knew the Vashta Nerada could get any of us at any time. You couldn’t have known it was going to be him, you couldn’t have known it was going to be then.”

“There was nothing you could have done,” River followed up.

The Doctor scoffed. “Then what’s the point of me?” He stood, and walked down the stairs. Molly moved to follow, but River held up a hand to tell her to wait.

“Let him have a moment,” she said. She turned and motioned for Molly to follow her towards the center console. Molly looked for a moment at the stairs, but did what River had indicated.

She folded her arms and leaned against a part of the console where she wasn’t likely to touch anything, and leaned forward to press her forehead against her arms. The adrenalin was fading, and she was feeling warm, dizzy, and sick again. Her bones ached. But the ache in her heart was worse.

“I don’t like this part,” she whispered, not wanting the Doctor to hear her. “I knew it happened sometimes. But I was really hoping to only get to do the fun stuff.”

“So do all of us,” said River. Molly looked up again, and River was looking into the monitor at the space where the ship had been a moment ago. Where Dalek Sec had been a moment ago. “But when you travel the universe, when you travel through all of time and try to help people, sometimes, you lose.”

“We made it out alive,” Molly muttered. “We stopped a ship of Daleks from spreading the Vashta Nerada. Something good came of it.”

“Yes. And that was good. But that doesn’t make it feel much better, does it?” Molly shook her head in reply. River continued, “And he carries so much of that with him, always. We come and go. But for him it’s…”

“Yeah,” Molly breathed. “It doesn’t stop.”

River looked over at Molly. “That’s why he needs us. All of his companions. To remind him that there’s still good out there. That he also saves people. That there are still wonders to discover. That’s your job, now. To help him see it.”

Molly found she couldn’t look away from River’s face as the world – the universe – was placed on her shoulders. “That’s a lot to ask of someone,” she said, then paused. “But if the others have done it, I suppose I can, too.” And something in her mind clicked. “That’s why you don’t mind the other companions so much.”

“I come and go,” River replied. “They stay longer. He needs them as much as I need him.”

Molly wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She sighed and turned, leaning back now against the console. She watched the stairs for the Doctor. Her heart hurt for him too much, for River, for Dalek Sec. She had to talk about something else. “So, you go on your own adventures sometimes, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“They all as fun as this one?”

“Sometimes more, sometimes less,” River responded. “I do enjoy the ones where I get to use hallucinogenic lipstick. Did the series show when I got to be Cleopatra?”

Molly smiled. “Yeah. You looked great.”

River laughed in reply. “Well, of course I did.”

“And you’re a professor?” A dangerous subject, especially considering Molly’s difficulty lying. But it seemed a logical question she would ask, if she didn’t already know.

“I am,” said River, a bit of pride in her voice. “Archeology. Best way to find the Doctor.”

Molly remembered. ‘I’m just looking for a good man’. “That makes sense.”

“And you’re a journalist?”

Sighing, Molly said, “I’m not sure what I am. I was a failing journalist, and a ballet workout instructor. After being shot, I had to change my identity and move away. I had a tentative job at a paper there, but…I guess I got tired of failing. I wasn’t sure what my next move was.”

“Failure can be frustrating,” said River. “But it’s also the only thing that leads to success.”

“Hmm.” Molly had heard it before. She knew it was right. But it was exhausting, trying and failing, trying and failing. “I’m not even sure it’s what I wanted to be successful at. I wanted to save the world, and just writing about it wasn’t doing enough.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw River smile. “And you ended up here, where you can save worlds and galaxies, sometimes the universe. Seems like the right place for you.”

“If only I was actually supposed to exist in this universe.”

Molly heard footsteps on the stairs. “You talking about me up there?”

“Not everything is about you, sweetie,” replied River.

As the Doctor approached them, Molly looked him up and down. He had a small smile on his face as he straightened his jacket, but a cloud of sorrow clung to every inch of him. His smile touched his eyes, but only just.

‘Then what’s the point of me?’ Molly had heard something similar before on his show. ‘Then what is the point of you?’ Amy. She hadn’t meant it, not really. Molly couldn’t even blame her for saying it in that situation, the emotional state she’d been in. But the thought had lived in the Doctor’s head ever since. Everyone had phrases like that, words that had stabbed them in the heart – or hearts – and lived there, even if they weren’t true.

Now was not the time, but Molly desperately wished she could take him aside and explain just how much he was worth.

“So, where should we drop you off River? Or are you sticking around for a bit?” The Doctor asked, his voice hopeful though he tried to hide it.

“I think I’ve caused enough trouble for one day,” said River as she stepped back from the console. She knew how to fly the TARDIS, but she was letting him do it himself. Give him something to do, something he was good at. “Back to university for me.”

The Doctor stepped up to the TARDIS and began setting the destination. “How did you get that distress call, anyway?”

“Can’t expect a girl to give away all her secrets,” she said. “Shall we do diaries?”

From the opposite side of the console, where River couldn’t see him, he closed his eyes briefly. “No need,” he replied.

“No?”

“No.” He looked around the console sheepishly. “I may have misplaced mine.”

River looked at him in frustrated disbelief. “You lost it?”

“Just a bit. It’ll turn up,” he said. “We’ll catch up next time.”

“Not exactly how that works, Doctor,” River admonished him. “But fine. You write this down when you find it, and we’ll figure it out later. Or before.”

The Doctor gave her a half-smile, and they were off. Molly grabbed hold of the edge of the console to keep her feet under her until they would land. She glanced at River, and saw the concern in her eyes. She knew something was wrong, and that the Doctor wouldn’t tell her what it was. Molly couldn’t look at River’s fear of what the Doctor wasn’t saying for long, and was relieved when they landed.

River walked back around the console to the Doctor, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you later, Doctor.”

The Doctor smiled grimly. “Later, River.”

River turned to Molly and reached out to shake her hand, but Molly elected to give her a hug instead. “Stay safe out there. You’re a lot of people’s favorite character.”

“Am I? Well, of course I am,” said River, and she briefly returned the hug before pulling away. “Good luck getting home. And with him.”

“Oi,” objected the Doctor, but there was no heart in it.

With another wave goodbye, River Song left the TARDIS for the last time.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Thirteen

Sick Day

Molly turned back to the Doctor, who was already getting them out of the university. She held the console again until the shaking was over. He placed his hands on the edge of the console, spread, and leaned forward, and hung his head.

Molly took a few hesitant steps towards him. “Doctor…”

He didn’t move as he said, “Molly. I know. Just…not now, okay? Not now.”

She nodded her head, but still walked up to him and placed a hand on his arm. “Okay. I need to go change into some pajamas and crawl into bed anyway.”

He turned toward her now with a weak imitation of his smile. “Do you need anything? Soup? Maybe some soup?”

Molly shook her head. “I’ll be fine; I just want some sleep. I’ll get a glass of water by my bed.”

The Doctor nodded, then wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Sleep well,” he said, and gave her a quick kiss on the head and gently pushed her towards the door. She smiled back at him, and began up the stairs, feeling warm for a reason other than the fever. She’d made “random kiss on the head” status.

Opening the door to her room, Molly sighed. Now absent being able to worry about what the Doctor was feeling, she now had to face what she was feeling herself. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen someone near death, she told herself, and this time the death was from a distance. But still, Dalek Sec’s face was burned into her eyes, and the explosion echoed in her head, though all they’d really heard was a rumble. He’d died helping them. He’d been there one moment, thinking, feeling, speaking – and then he wasn’t.

And River was gone now, she was sure. Meeting her twice after he hadn’t been meant to see her again was a miracle, there was no way it would happen again. As her heart ached for the Doctor, she acknowledged that it hurt her, too. She’d liked River, and would have liked to see her again.

She collapsed on the bed, exhausted, dizzy, sick. She didn’t bother to take her shoes off. Instead, she buried her face in her pillow, and cried. Later, she couldn’t remember if she’d stopped crying before she’d fallen asleep.

It still felt strange, waking in a room without sunlight streaming in. She felt disoriented. How long had she been asleep? Molly wanted a clock, but knew it would be useless. Maybe she could set a timer or something.

She turned her face back into the pillow, wanting more sleep, but knowing she should get up for a little while first. Her throat was sore, and she wanted some tea with honey, and she was sure the Doctor would have a place to make tea stashed somewhere on the TARDIS.

Finally, she turned her head and blinked her eyes open. Then she blinked again. On the bedside table beside her sat a lit candle and a silver tray, with exactly what she needed: a white porcelain pot of tea, still steaming, with a white mug upside down beside it. Next to it was a small white plate, with a circular pyramid of jammy dodgers. She also saw a bag of honey lemon cough drops, a box of tissues, and, thank heaven, a box of Dayquil. What surprised her most was the ceramic vase filled with yellow begonias. The show must have mentioned her favorite flower at some point, and he’d gone and found some. Just looking at them cheered her, as they always did, but with the extra warmth of knowing that the Doctor had gone out of his way to find them.

She sat up to find that the Doctor had also taken off her shoes for her, and had gone through the trouble of finding another blanket to put over her after she’d fallen asleep on top of hers. She hated it, but she found her vision blurring with tears. No one had taken care of her when she was sick like this since…

Molly reached to the tray and poured herself a mug of tea, and blew on it before taking a sip. Chamomile with honey. It was exactly what she needed right now. She took a tissue and dabbed at her eyes, refusing to cry, though she knew she’d always been a bit of a crybaby.

As she sipped at her tea again, the door opened, and the Doctor came in holding a sleeve of Saltines. “Oh!” he exclaimed, surprised. He turned on the light, and Molly blinked a few times to adjust. “You’re awake. Sorry, I forgot the crackers.” He held them up and waved with them.

Molly grinned. “Thanks. You didn’t need to do all this.”

“No, but I wanted to.” He walked around the bed and set the crackers on the edge of the tray, the only place there was space left. He placed a hand on her forehead to check her temperature. “You’re sick, being sick is miserable. The only good thing about it is being able to eat in bed, order someone about to take care of you, and watching lots of telly.” He snapped his fingers. “Oh! Do you want to watch something? I can get a television in here.”

“Okay.” Molly remembered days of lying on the plastic-covered couch, watching the Price is Right with a wet washcloth on her forehead. “That would be great.”

“I’ll be right back,” the Doctor said as he headed for the door. He turned and pointed at her. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Molly frowned. “Where would I go?!” she shouted at him as he took off down the corridor. Molly couldn’t help smiling, and took another sip of the tea. She reached over and opened the Dayquil, and took a few with another gulp. By the time she was setting the mug down, the Doctor came back in the room, a large flatscreen in his arms, with a base. He set it on top of the dresser across from her, and moved one of the hampers to plug it in, then brought her the remote.

“There we are! Proper sick day now,” he said with a smile. “Want some company?”

“Am I going to get you sick?”

“Nah. Never been sick a day in my life.” His face fell a moment. “No, wait, I’m lying. But it’s been at least a couple hundred years, I think I’ll be okay.”

Molly scooted herself over to the left side of the bed beside the tray, and patted the space next to her. After setting the pillows against the wall, the Doctor slipped off his coat and set it on the bedside table on his side, then took a seat next to her, legs outstretched and crossed in front of him.

She aimed the remote at the TV and turned it on. “Do you have Netflix?”

“I have everything.”

“Of course you do,” she laughed. “Anything you’re in the mood for?” She paused. “Not the…the show. I’ll absolutely ruin that for you.”

“Impossible.”

“I’ll point out every single thing that’s wrong, and all the misinterpretation, and complain about everything they got right, and say ‘I can’t believe thousands of people watched my life’ about every three seconds.”

“Millions, actually,” he said. Molly decided not to dwell on that. “But excellent point. Never would have suggested it, anyway. Besides, you’re the one that’s sick. What do you want to watch?”

She thought about it a moment. Her go-to was obviously out of the question. “…do they have Sherlock in this universe?”

“Yes!” exclaimed the Doctor. He took the remote from her hands and navigated the menu to something that seemed like a futuristic Netflix. “Love a good Sherlock story.”

“You know, Moffat wrote your seasons of the show.”

“Did he?” replied the Doctor, a note of pride in his voice. “Did he show that time I dressed up as Sherlock Holmes?”

“Yeah,” Molly laughed. “Complete with the hat. I think Matt Smith loved the hats even more than you do.”

“Not possible,” replied the Doctor. He pressed another button and the show began.

Molly spread the blanket over herself better, and handed the Doctor the edge to tuck around himself, then settled in to watch the show. It’d been a long time since she’d last watched it, and as she watched the scenes flicker in front of her, she started to wonder if it was a mistake to watch such a cerebral mystery with the Doctor.

It was, of course. It seemed every few lines he pointed out better ways every character could have done or said something, obviously showing off. But after the fourth ‘shhh!’, he finally quieted down some. They watched the first episode together with both only making a few more comments, the Doctor objecting to some of the ways the deduction was done (though with the occasional compliment), and Molly making her usual snarky comments, though no one else had ever heard them before. They went into the second episode right after the Doctor went to get his own mug for tea. Their comments had settled throughout episode three, as they both became more and more engrossed, though they were both familiar with the story.

Episode four began, and Molly thought about the little crush she’d had on Irene Adler, and the possibility that she, too, existed in some other universe. How strange it was, that of all possible universes, the infinite number of universes, she’d ended up here, after a wish on a crack in a ceiling that looked like the TARDIS, almost. Here, in bed with a mug of tea and her comfort character, watching a TV show. She hadn’t even watched Sherlock with anyone before, and here she and the Doctor were watching it, together.

“You know,” she began, “I haven’t sat and watched this with someone before. It’s fun, having someone actually hear my brilliant commentary for once.”

“You haven’t watched Sherlock with anyone before?”

“I’ve never watched anything with anybody before, not since before I left home at thirteen. I mean…Isla and I sometimes watched those videos on cryptids and urban legends and such, but usually more half-watching while working, and she wasn’t really into regular TV shows, so...yeah. Not since I was twelve.” She quickly thought of another remark, hoping to cut him off wondering about what had happened when she was thirteen. “I never really had a real friend before, just friendly acquaintances at school, other dancers I was friends with only while dancing, a friendly roommate. I don’t even really know how friends act.”

She’d gotten more personal than she’d meant to, and nerves built in her veins when the Doctor didn’t respond right away. But then he said, “Like this,” and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She looked up at him and saw him smiling affectionately, and smiled back before leaning her head against his shoulder. They watched like that for a time, when Molly had an idea. She reached down and took his hand, and pressed it against her forehead. The coolness of his skin was instant relief against her own feverish skin.

“Feels good,” she muttered, when out of the corner of her eye she saw him look at her curiously. He turned back to the screen, and she held his hand there a few moments longer before letting his hand go and leaning into his side closer. The show continued on.

As they remained settled in that position, Molly’s mind wandered back to River’s words, her mistaken reading of her relationship with the Doctor, and the potential of it. She understood River’s fear of the Doctor loving someone else, of seeing the threat of it everywhere. And if she were River, knowing that Molly had a crush on the Doctor as a fictional character, maybe she would feel the same way.

But none of River’s fears were going to happen, and there were so many reasons why. For one, she certainly wouldn’t be there long enough. She had no way to understand how long it took to find a pathway to a specific universe, but surely it wouldn’t take months or years, or however long it took the Doctor to fall in love.

For another, more importantly, they weren’t their fictional selves. Molly hadn’t seen her show, and the Doctor hadn’t seen his, but they already knew there were differences. And these moments, these little moments, like sitting and watching a TV show – they would never have appeared on screen. Shows skipped the little domestic moments; they had to. But the little domestic moments were what made a person who they were. A person wasn’t what they did at work, or in dangerous situations, or witnessing a tragedy. That was only part of them. The bigger part was who they were while they sat in a room with their friends, while they did the laundry, when they drove in a car or read a book or went to lunch or threw a party. The Doctor didn’t know her in those moments, and she didn’t know him.

And, most important of all, the idea that romantic feelings would develop between them was minimizing the importance of their friendship. It was new, just born, just starting to grow, but Molly already valued it above any other relationship she’d had, romantic or otherwise. Despite all the danger – how many times had her life been at risk in the last few days? Three? Four? – and their few arguments, she felt safe with him, with his arm around her shoulders. She felt seen and understood, as much as she hated that he could see those parts of her that weren’t always, completely confident in herself. She felt valued. She felt respected. And they hadn’t needed romance to make any of that true. A platonic relationship was just as important as a romantic one, perhaps even more so. A friendship could be just as beautiful. And she treasured theirs. There didn’t need to be anything romantic between them to be important to each other; their friendship was what mattered most.

Plus, he was the Doctor. The thought of someone like him - how ancient he was, how incredibly clever he was, how powerful, how much he’d seen and done, all the secret things he knew, all the wonder that was him – falling in love with her, was ridiculous. He loved romantically so very rarely, at least according to the show. It was absurd to think she’d make that exclusive list.

Besides, she’d made a promise. If anything did happen – and it wouldn’t – it would just lead to pain. She’d have to go home to her universe. He’d have to stay here. And everything to do with the Doctor became complicated; all she had to do was look at the Doctor and River to see just how complicated it became. No, they would both be happier with this simple, lovely friendship.

Molly felt her eyelids getting heavy before she even realized she was sleepy. She decided to rest her eyes for a moment, and slowly the sounds of the show began to blur together, then fade away.

A knock at the door woke her, who knew how much later? She yawned and stretched as she opened her eyes. “Yeah?”

The door opened and the Doctor walked in with a new tray, two bowls and two mugs, the Dayquil beside them, with her flowers sitting in the center. He set it beside her. “I have soup,” he announced, as though she didn’t see the bowl of chicken noodle soup beside her. “Just what you need, a good bowl of soup.”

“Thanks,” Molly said with a smile, adjusting the pillow up against the headboard to she could sit up comfortably. “Sorry I fell asleep on you.”

“That’s alright,” he replied, picking up the flowers to put them on the table. “You aren’t feeling well; you should be sleeping.” He set the tray on her lap, then picked up his own bowl and mug and moved to the other side of the bed.

She stared at his bowl. “You’re going to need to eat that somewhere else. I’d gag looking at it even if I wasn’t sick.”

The Doctor gave her an offended glare. “What’s wrong with fish fingers and custard?”

“It’s fish fingers and custard,” Molly replied, scrunching up her nose.

“Don’t scrunch up your nose like that! It’ll get stuck,” he objected, and poked the tip of her nose. “Have you even tried it?”

“Don’t have to. Again, it’s fish and custard.”

The Doctor picked up one of the fish fingers from an end, swirled it around the custard, then held it up to her. “Try it before you turn your nose up to it, at least.” In response, Molly stuck a finger in her mouth and faked a gag. “Oh, come on,” he insisted.

Molly sighed. “Fine. I’ll give it a shot.” Her whole mind, not to mention her queasy stomach, begged her not to, but she still leaned over and took a bite. The greasy taste of the fried breading mixed with the sweet, creaminess of the custard in a way that wasn’t pleasant but wasn’t terrible, but then the fish came in. She hadn’t even attempted to chew it, but the cheap fishy smell filled her nostrils as the flavor assaulted her mouth, clashing with the dessert in a way that her brain told her was pulverized fish pudding.

Her eyes started to water as she held the fish finger covered in custard in her mouth. The Doctor watched her for a moment, then said, “Okay, now chew.” Molly shook her head. “You need to chew it in order to swallow it.” Again, Molly shook her head. She felt lines form around her eyes and forehead as she winced at holding it in her mouth. The Doctor sighed, then held out the bowl. “Alright, fine.”

Molly opened her mouth and let the bite of fish stick fall out. The Doctor made a disgusted sound as he set the bowl back on the table beside him, and Molly reached for her tea. “Careful, it’s hot,” the Doctor warned her. 

“Good,” Molly replied. “Maybe it’ll burn these taste buds off, I don’t want them anymore.” She took a few quick gulps, and immediately regretted it. “Ow, ow, ow!” she exclaimed, and even that movement hurt her burned tongue. She set the mug down and then stuck her tongue out and tried to fan it with her hands. Realizing it wasn’t going to help, she pulled her tongue back in her mouth, and sucked in cool air a few times.

Molly looked back at the Doctor. He was looking at her with a blank expression, but she saw the laughter in his eyes. Her eyes began to show the same sentiment, and together they slowly grinned until they broke out in laughter. Every time they started to settle, Molly thought of the ridiculous moment again, and it set her off, and the Doctor followed.

Eventually, Molly wiped tears off her face. “Okay, next time, you listen to me about fish fingers and custard, and I’ll listen to you about the tea.”

“Deal,” the Doctor agreed. He settled in with a mug of tea beside her, while she began tentative sips at the broth in the soup, trying to avoid the burned parts of her tongue.

After a moment, he glanced over at her. “Tell me more about my show.”

Molly looked back at him curiously. “What do you want to know?”

“You’re sure they never say my name? Not once?”

Molly observed the tenseness in his shoulders. Despite the attempt at a casual tone in his voice, he was serious. He was afraid. “Never. Not once.”

“They never hint at it?”

“No.”

“No one ever mouths it?”

“River does in the library,” Molly explained, “But it doesn’t show her. Even if it did, the actress was just whispering things in David Tennant’s ear to try to get him to break character.” She paused, to make sure her next words were clear. “I swear; all they ever do is tease your name. There isn’t so much as a hint as to what it could be.”

The Doctor took a sip of his tea, too. He looked thoughtful as he looked down into his mug. “…you’ve never asked me what it is. You must wonder.”

“Of course I do. But even if I didn’t know better, which I do, I wouldn’t ask.”

“Why not?”

“You never gave it to me. Clearly, you want it kept a secret,” she said. “I have secrets, too. Some of which have been keeping my real name a secret. And while it was never as dangerous to share my real name as sharing yours would be – not to mention how much more private Time Lords keep their names – I know what it feels like to have to protect it.”

The Doctor nodded, and slowly his thoughtful expression turned into an appreciative smile. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she chirped, and took another sip of the soup. However much it made her tongue burn, it felt good on her throat.

The Doctor set his mug aside, then pulled his feet in to sit up, and turned his body towards her. Something was coming, so she set the spoon down. “I’m not asking you to tell me, but…” he hesitated. “You know, you must know, the things I’ve done, the things I thought I did, that I was willing to do. The bad things. The ruthless things. The…the genocide.” He paused, and Molly waited patiently to see where this was going. “What is it you could be keeping from me that makes you think I’d have any right to judge you? What could be so terrible that you can’t tell me?”

Molly felt the air leave her lungs, and turned away from him as she fought to fill them with oxygen again. Of all the things he could have said, she never expected this. The tears came before she could stop them, but she tilted her head back until they settled and wouldn’t spill. This, now – just when she’d said she respected his privacy for its own sake?

It was worse than that. He’d seen straight into her. Of course he had. The Doctor knew the reason she kept her secrets so locked up inside her was because the thing she was most afraid of was to see his disappointment in her. To see any trace of disgust, any trace of being rejected, any trace of shame. She never wanted to talk about it with anyone – but least of all, least of all…him.

She cleared her throat and turned back towards him. “You kind of are asking me.”

“I am kind of asking you, yes,” he admitted, but his eyes were earnest. “But I’m not trying to make you tell me your secret. I just want to understand why you won’t. You know why I can’t.”

Molly released the air in her lungs, this time willingly. What could she possibly say that wouldn’t make him look at her differently, anyway? But how to deny him the same knowledge she had of him? It wasn’t any fair, none of it was fair. She found herself wishing neither of them had been a television show.

She couldn’t look him in the eyes. Instead, she focused on shifting the tray on her lap to the table beside her. “You know why. You just said why.”

Molly felt the touch of his hand on her arm, and forced herself to turn back to him. He didn’t seem to have the same trouble looking in her eyes. “It can’t possibly be so terrible-”

“It can,” she said, but with those words knew she risked what she was afraid of. Just knowing that much, that her secret could change the way he thought about her, might fester in his mind and turn him away from her.

But he still looked at her in earnest. “I know that whatever it is, if it’s really so terrible as you think it is, it isn’t who you are now.”

“No,” she said, giving a gentle shake of her head. “You don’t.” She placed her hand over the one he rested on her arm, and settled it back into his lap. “This is the problem with watching each other on television. We both know each other too well, and not well enough.”

They sat in silence a moment, finding themselves at yet another impasse. Finally, the Doctor said, “You don’t have to tell me anything. I don’t have any right to any of your secrets. I already know so many of them, just like you know mine.”

Molly held her breath. She knew why he couldn’t tell her his, at least about his name. She knew his secrets were mostly dangerous. Hers was from fear of judgement. He at least deserved to know why she couldn’t tell him anything, any of it. But how could she possibly explain that without telling him too much? He was unimaginably clever. Too much information, and he’d figure it out.

She released the breath. He deserved to know something, regardless of the risk. “There are two parts to what happened when I was thirteen,” she began slowly. It was almost physically painful, but she forced herself to meet his eyes. He waited patiently for her to build up the nerve to continue to speak. “One is what was done to me, more or less. The other is what I did. I can’t tell you one without telling you the other, and the names are tied up in both.” She paused to swallow, her throat dry with anxiety. And it occurred to her now that she’d been so busy with the Doctor that for the first time since she’d started doing it, she’d forgotten to recite the names first thing when she went to bed, first thing when she woke up. Guilt echoed in her chest. “If I could tell you about the names, about what happened to me, without telling you what I did, I would. But it’s not possible. And I don’t have the courage to tell you what I did just now.” She closed her eyes and took a breath. “I don’t know that I ever will.”

It was the Doctor’s turn to sigh and look away. “People’s fear of disappointing me seems to be more than universal,” he said, though it seemed mostly to himself. She could read the frustration on his face before he raised a hand to rub at his eyes. “People take risks to impress me, they keep secrets because they don’t want to disappoint me.” This was another comment that had stuck in his heart, like Amy’s: Rory telling him he was a danger to people, because they wanted to impress him. “I am much more concerned with disappointing them.” With another sigh, he lowered his hand and looked at her. “You can’t disappoint me. I swear. Even if you believe differently. But I won’t ask again. When you see you can trust me, you’ll tell me.”

Molly pressed her lips together for a moment. “It’s not about not trusting you. Of course I trust you,” she said, and felt a flutter in her heart when he smiled. “It’s about me. But thank you.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

He winced and ran a hand over his cheek as though to wipe it off, then wiped it off on the sleeve of the jacket she was still wearing. “Germs.”

Molly looked down at the jacket. “Oh. Gross. I really should change my clothes.” She touched her forehead, which was still warm, and a bit sticky from the sweat. “And take a bath.”

The Doctor patted her on the head and stood. “I’ll get it started while you grab something to change into.”

Molly raised an eyebrow as he headed to the door that connected to the bathroom. “You’re going to, what…draw me a bath?”

“Why not?”

“How very Victorian of you.”

He stuck his tongue out at her. “It just so happens I know exactly the perfect water temperature for someone with a fever.”

She rolled her eyes as she threw the blanket back off of her. “Sure you do.”

He pointed at her. “You’re going to apologize for that later,” he said, and disappeared into the bathroom. She chuckled and shook her head, and carefully stood. She felt a bit shaky, and her muscles ached. She wasn’t sure if it was from staying in bed for an undetermined amount of time, or from being sick, or from the running, or from a bit of all of the above. Changing her elevation made her nose run, so she blew her nose quickly, and then pulled a long purple nightshirt and short black pajama shorts out of the drawers.

The Doctor came back out to the bedroom. “All set,” he announced.

“Great. I’ll go be the judge of your mystical water temp setting skills.”

“You’ll see,” he replied. He walked by and out of the room as she headed into the bathroom.

She set the clothes on the sink counter, closed the door, and started peeling off the grimy layers of clothing. She set each on top of the closed dirty clothes hamper: the jacket, the tank top, the shorts, the underclothes, the socks, each in a layer on top of the lid. She considered opening the hamper to put them inside, but then dismissed the thought as too tiring.

Molly approached the bathtub, filled with steaming hot water. She winced. She should have known the Doctor would set the temperature too warm for a human with a fever; after all, his natural temperature was so much colder than hers, how could he measure something like that? She knelt beside the tub and slipped a hand in then and quickly pulled it out. What was it – feed a cold, starve a fever? Or starve a cold, feed a fever? Were you supposed to try to heat up to break a fever, or try to keep it cooler? Was that what the phrase meant, or did it mean food?

Molly stood. Maybe the Doctor did know what he was talking about, and the bath would break her fever, even if it was unpleasant. Either way, she had to get the layers of sweat and grime off of her. Just thinking about the ship with the Vashta Nerada made her skin crawl as though they were all over her.

She took a breath and tentatively put a foot in the tub. It was hot, yes, but only just made her skin tingle with how warm her body was. She stepped in fully, then got into position to lie back – and immediately sighed as the tension began to leave her body. It really was perfect; warm enough to feel her fever rising and maybe break, but also like a warm hug. He’d used two of the oils she’d bought at the World Market – her signature honeysuckle, and something else that helped her breathe better. Eucalyptus, that was it. She sank in deeper and closed her eyes.

Molly wondered, for a moment, how he’d learned this trick. Of course, he was old enough to have figured out the best temperature for a bath, but something about how it was hot enough to maybe break a fever stood out to her. She remembered, then, that once upon a time the Doctor had been a father, and a husband to a woman on Gallifrey that he actually got to live with, unlike with River Song. They’d probably had fevers before. He really must have been a great dad. It was one of the saddest thoughts she’d ever had. His family was gone now. No wonder he was running. Her family was gone, in some way or another, and she was running, too.

She needed something else to think about, something to distract her.

It occurred to her, now, that that was what the Doctor was doing. That must be why he was so focused on taking care of her; the more focused her was on her, the less he had to think about Dalek Sec, about River, even the Vashta Nerada. She was a distraction tactic. As much as she knew it was healthier to process the bad things, she couldn’t blame him. She did the exact same thing. And while he offered it, being taken care of while she was sick was such a nice feeling, she would take advantage.

It must have been an hour she soaked in the tub before she finally got tired enough to want another nap. She was sweating, too, which she thought maybe was supposed to be a good thing with a fever. She got out of the tub, toweled off, and changed. She ought to brush her hair, but that was such a difficult task even when she was healthy, so instead she just went back into the bedroom.

He was still in there, seated on the bed, watching something she didn’t recognize on the television. He was doing something with the sonic screwdriver, pressing the button and then adjusting something in the metal she didn’t see. “I really should figure out a setting for wood someday,” he said, then looked at her expectedly. “Well?”

Molly rolled her tongue against the inside of her cheek and frowned for a moment before she said, “Yeah, okay. Maybe you’re good at drawing baths. Whatever, Jeeves.”

The Doctor pointed at her, giving her the kind of grin that wrinkled the corners of his eyes. She’d always liked that smile. “Ha! See?”

Molly walked up to the bed and collapsed on it. Then frowned. “This feels different.”

“Yes, I changed the bedding while you were in the bath,” the Doctor replied.

She tilted her head to the side to look at him for a moment. He really was desperate to not sit quietly and think. So long as he needed the distraction, she’d do her best to help. “Want to watch a movie?”

“Yeah,” he said. “What do you want? I hope something funny.”

“You pick,” Molly replied, adjusting in the bed and pulling to covers up. “I’m probably going to fall asleep on you again.”

“Alright,” the Doctor said, and reached over to tuck the blanket around her before reaching for the remote. “Time for a comedy.”

It was the first time anyone had tucked her into bed since she was maybe five years old. Molly felt another rush of happy warmth, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

Then the Doctor sneezed. Molly sat up again to look at him with an accusing look.

He looked back sheepishly. “I’m fine. Probably fine.”

Molly reached over to the table and grabbed a tissue, and offered it to him. He took it just as he sneezed again.

“Want some Dayquil?” she asked.

“…Yes, please.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Fourteen

The Jersey Devil

A little over two weeks later, Molly sat on the stairs of the TARDIS while the Doctor leaned against the railing of the stairs leading down to where he liked to do repairs. They were both focused on the little electronic device in their hands, that occasionally made little beeps. They’d picked up the Tamagotchis during a trip to the 90s, where Molly also invested in Pogs and a couple slap bracelets.

Molly finished feeding her little electronic pet, and glanced across at the Doctor. “How’s yours doing?”

The Doctor’s expression showed distress. “I think it just died.”

“Are you serious? It’s been like three days; how did you kill it? Did you feed it?”

“…was I supposed to?”

Molly sighed and rolled her eyes. “That’s one of the major interactions. Yes, Doctor, you’re supposed to feed your pet.”

“Well, I’m bored anyway,” he said, and tossed the Tamagotchi over his shoulder as he stood. He ran up to the console. “Let’s go somewhere.”

Slipping the Tamagotchi into the pocket of her shorts – hers wasn’t going to die of starvation – Molly used the railing to pull herself back to her feet. “Where do you want to go?”

The Doctor was already setting a destination. Molly watched as he worked. She should ask to learn how to fly the TARDIS sometime, at least learn some basics. They seemed to have endless time – the TARDIS was taking longer than she thought it would to get her home – even though being sick had knocked out a few days. The Doctor kept trying to come in to help her, and she kept having to send him back to bed with tissues and some cold medicine. She thought he did it more so she’d take care of him then because he wanted to keep taking care of her. He hadn’t been sick often, and he was completely miserable the whole time. He hated having to sit still and do nothing.

But once they were over it, they traveled some, mostly to Earth in various decades, and some days stayed in the TARDIS so Molly didn’t have to push her body too hard as it recovered. Today, they had a nice trip to the Wild West. She’d have been happy just to sit and take care of her digital pet the rest of the day, but she couldn’t blame the Doctor for wanting to get on the move again, now that he could finally get out of bed without Molly threatening to follow him to his room and stand there to make sure he didn’t get up again.

“Camping!” he announced. “I want to go camping. Nice, pleasant camping trip. Tents, campfire, s’mores, ghost stories, nice trees. Have you ever been camping?”

“I’m a country girl,” Molly said, figuring that was all the answer she needed to give. “Have you?”

“I’m over two thousand years old. I must have at some point.”

“Right.” Molly remembered that she really should ask sometime how long it had been since Christmas.

“Can’t remember the last time, though,” he said. “Maybe it was with the Huns? Or on a safari? On Moon Omega?” He paused to look up at the ceiling quizzically. “No idea. About time I went camping again, then!”

“Moon Omega? I swear you make some of these up.”

“Oh, like you’d know,” he scoffed. The TARDIS shook at they traveled through…whatever it was they traveled through. She could’ve had fun with this, sort of like a carnival ride, if she could pretend they weren’t in space. “So, I’ll go get some camping equipment! You head down and get the torches.”

“Where are we?” Molly shouted after the Doctor, but he was already almost out of the room. She shook her head and went down the stairs and grabbed the flashlights. She headed back and waited a few minutes before taking the Tamagotchi back out and playing with it until she heard the Doctor’s footsteps.

She looked up, and immediately laughed.

“What?” the Doctor asked. He was loaded down with two camp chairs in bags swung over each shoulder, and a full hiking backpack on each, as well, complete with blanket rolls on top. He’d hooked a lantern on one arm, a first aid kit on the other, a shovel tucked under his right arm, and he was holding two large tent bags, two tarps, some rope, and something that looked like a horizontal metal detector.  She’d never seen someone with their arms so full before.

He took one careful step down the stairs, but on the second a tent bag slipped, and down it came, taking the tarp and the rope and the other tent with it. Next the chairs and backpacks slipped off, and all of it came rolling down to the bottom of the stairs.

Molly couldn’t help breaking into another laugh while the Doctor glared, and then headed down to start picking things up. Molly walked up and slid one chair and one backpack over her shoulder. “You could have asked me to help, you know,” she said, picking up one of the tents.

“I had it,” the Doctor argued. Now with a lighter load, he headed for the door and swung it open. They stepped out into a sunny day, warm and humid but not sweltering, like a summer day approaching autumn. The smell of earth and wood filled her nostrils as she looked up at the trees that seemed impossibly tall, and she heard the birds singing to each other about them as they flitted from branch to branch. The light filtered through the leaves, giving the world an almost-green filter. They were in a little clearing in a forest, just large enough for the TARDIS, a couple tents between trees, and maybe a campfire between them.

“Where are we?” she asked again, as she followed the Doctor to the middle of the clearing.

The Doctor set his load down carefully. “Welcome to the Pine Barrens! We’re in New Jersey, in America.”

Molly opened her arms and let everything fall. “The Pine Barrens?” she said skeptically.

“Yes! Lovely forest, especially this time of year, lots of-”

“You want to go looking for the Jersey Devil, don’t you?”

He looked affronted, and then grinned. “Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Is that what this is?” she asked, gently kicking the weird metal detector. “Ghost hunting equipment?”

“Well, technically, it’s a cryptid, strictly speaking,” replied the Doctor. He snatched the equipment up as though Molly was about to stomp on it. “Very fragile equipment.”

Molly raised her brows. “Are you sure it survived the drop?”

“It’s fine,” said the Doctor, and he turned away to walk to another side of the clearing, but Molly could see him start examining it. Seeming satisfied, he leaned it against the tree, then turned back to her. “Very interesting, the Jersey Devil. Of course, it’s not real. Well, not an actual devil.”

“No kidding,” Molly said dryly as she bent down to pick up a tent bag.

“Do you want to be smarmy, or do you want to hear about the Jersey Devil?”

“…be what?”

“Smarmy.”

“That. I want to be that.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes, and then promptly ignored her. “The Jersey Devil can be traced to the Leeds family, in the early 1700s. People claimed that when so-called Mother Leeds was pregnant with her thirteenth child, she cursed it and called it a devil. So shortly after it was born, it turned into the Jersey Devil, then called the Leeds Devil, and flew away. But the real Leeds Devil was Daniel Leeds. Daniel was hated by the Quaker community for being an occultist and he hated them right back. He was hated by the colonists for being loyal to the crown. He and Benjamin Franklin picked fights with each other through their competing almanacs.” He paused. “I know from personal experience that Benny isn’t someone to get into a verbal sparring match with.”

“…you got into a verbal sparring match with Benjamin Franklin? And lost?”

“I didn’t say I lost! I said – well – it’s doesn’t matter.” The Doctor waved a hand dismissively. “There’s also the fact that the Leeds family lived in the Pine Barrens. The people who lived in the Pine Barrens were looked down on.”

Molly had been kicking a few sticks and rocks aside from the spot she’d chosen for her tent, but turned to him with an overdramatic yawn, hoping to encourage him to get to the point. He mocked the gesture back at her, and continued. “So of course, the Jersey Devil isn’t real, not in the way people believe. It was a vicious rumor that grew from a man so disliked they called him the Devil. Plus, his family crest is the wyvern, and the Jersey Devil has the characteristics of one.”

“Well, how do you know they didn’t just name the Jersey Devil after Daniel Leeds, and made up the story about his wife to pin them for the existence of the Jersey Devil?”

The Doctor paused in unpacking his own tent to look at her in surprise. “You believe in the Jersey Devil?”

Molly laughed. “No, I just like irritating you.” She yanked the tent from her bag, and looked at the bent poles in confusion, trying to piece them together. “But there are some things that can’t be explained.”

“Of course they can be, everything can be explained.” He paused a moment. “I mean, there are other stories: a scorned, weeping woman with golden hair; a white stag that leads people away from danger; a headless ghost pirate protecting his treasure. Now, that one I want to see.” He seemed to daydream about it for a moment before coming back to the present time. “We’re not here to investigate those. But they definitely have an explanation.”

Molly lifted the poles and watched them all unfold and hang from strings, unattached to each other. She sat down and decided that the best course of action was trying to put the poles back together. “So, if you don’t believe in the Jersey Devil, then what are we investigating?”

The Doctor already had his tent all laid out flat, and the poles put together. Molly decided to watch him to see if she could solve the mystery of how to put a tent up. “The Jersey Devil is often described as wyvern-like, as I mentioned, standing on two cloven hooves, bat wings, a forked tail, clawed hands, and a horse’s head with goat horns.”

Molly stood again and found herself tangled in the poles. She started trying to shake them off. “And?”

“And,” replied the Doctor, “There is a race called the Osain that have a human-like but thin torso, goat-like legs, with a deer head, horns that look like a mountain goats’, and wings. They don’t have clawed hands or a forked tail, but the description is close enough that I believe it may have been an Osain that crashed here.”

“But that was in the 1700s,” she said, and her eyes widened. “Are we in the 1700s?”

“No, no. The Osain live for hundreds of years. Well, Earth years. For an Osain it’s only about ten.”

“Then when are we?”

“We’re in, uh…” He stuck his tongue out for a moment, then pulled it back in and smacked his lips a few times. “2003. No – 2005.”

Molly gave him a blank stare. “You know no one believes you when you do that, right?”

“How could you-”

“You set the location and date when we go somewhere.”

The Doctor looked like he was going to argue, but then his chest inflated. “Fine. This is what I get for traveling with someone who has seen a whole television show about me.”

“No one else believes it, either.”

“Oh, just put up your tent,” he said dismissively.

Molly looked back down at the mess that was supposed to be her tent. “I think I should start with something else.”

“Then build a fire pit,” the Doctor suggested.

“Right, I’ll just, uh…” she walked over to the pile of things and picked out the shovel. “Dig a hole?”

The Doctor looked up at her uncertain tone. “You said you’d been camping before.”

“I have been camping.” Molly turned and gave him a sheepish look. “It might have been in a cabin. With air conditioning. And a fire pit built into the back deck. And a barbecue grill.”

The Doctor stared a moment, then ran a hand down his face. “Okay. How about you go get some firewood?”

“I can do that,” she said, tossing the shovel aside and wincing as it made a loud CLANG against a rock. She headed off towards some trees, and decided it would be better if she guessed what good firewood looked like instead of asking and exposing just how ignorant she was in the ways of camping to him.

“Don’t wander off too far!” the Doctor warned her as she walked further from him. “There are black bears. And rattlesnakes. And bobcats.”

Molly stopped dead and turned on a dime. “Rattlesnakes and bobcats and bears?”

“Oh my,” replied the Doctor.

“There are bears here?”

“We’re probably fine,” the Doctor said, and Molly knew in that phrase that they probably weren’t. “If you see one, just give a shout.”

“Oh, you’ll hear me, alright,” replied Molly, turning and taking a few more steps further away. “I’ll be screaming, but you’ll hear me.”

She continued mumbling to herself as she headed out to where she saw a few downed branches. She picked a few out that weren’t too long, but thicker around. They’d had a wood burning fireplace growing up, but bought the wood from a neighbor. She remembered her father complaining because they were given pine wood once, saying it was the absolute worst wood to burn. She looked around and spotted a few oak trees, but they would take a few minutes to walk to. She glanced back at the Doctor, and then around the forest to be certain she didn’t see any bobcats, and then headed over, watching the ground for snakes. Rattlesnakes she could handle. She’d grown up with snakes getting into the house. But that didn’t mean she wanted to step on one.

Once she started to relax, it was actually a pretty walk. Sunlight speckled the ground, and in some places she saw it peek through the leaves in beams. The dust she saw dancing in them made her a bit nervous after the Vashta Nerada, but she reassured herself by remembering that in the episode in the library, the Doctor had said that on Earth they were harmless. The trees went on forever, and seemed, to her, impossibly tall.

And the smell was absolutely incredible. The pine filled the air, with a hint of the rich earth and vegetation that grew on it. The air was so fresh. She’d lived in New York City too long; she’d forgotten what fresh air tasted like.

Okay, maybe a camping trip had been a good idea.

Molly reached the oaks and looked around for a few fallen branches and twigs. She picked up what she could find and cradled it in her arms, and continued to walk and pick up wood, making certain to go in as straight a line as she could so she wouldn’t get lost. Once she felt her arms were so full she’d drop everything if she bent over again, she turned to head back, but saw a flash of white speed by in the corner of her eye. She spun back around, and watched between the trees. For a moment, she thought she saw a white deer staring back at her from the shade about fifteen yards away, but when she walked forward and squinted to see better, all she could find was a white branch jutting out from a new tree.

She shook her head and headed back. The Doctor’s stories were stuck in her mind and playing tricks on her. She was probably going to wake up in the middle of the night and think she saw the Jersey Devil.

Molly turned and headed back to where the Doctor had already set up his tent, and was struggling with hers, though he’d managed to set it up halfway. Molly dropped the wood she’d found near their supplies and headed over, holding up part of the tent so it no longer was crashing against his head.

“Ah, I see you survived,” he replied, pulling a pole through some hollow part of the tent Molly couldn’t see.

“Almost got eaten by the Jersey Devil, but yeah, I’m good.” The Doctor looked at her with concern and hope, and Molly shook her head. “I’m kidding.”

He sighed and moved on to the next pole. She followed him and held the tent still, pretty much the only skill she had here. “We’ll just spend the day getting set up,” the Doctor said. “Finish with the tents and setting up sleeping bags, get the fire pit put together, and I’ll go back into the TARDIS and get some food for us to cook over the fire. Oh, and we’ll make s’mores. I already have that in the bags. S’mores are the most important part of camping.”

“Just so long as you don’t stick a fish stick in them,” she teased.

“Keep mouthing off and I will,” he objected. “We’ll start looking for the potential Osain tomorrow.”

“Aren’t you supposed to ghost hunt at night?”

“Again, it’s not a ghost, it’s a cryptid,” he said, then frowned and waved his hand dismissively. “No, no, I mean it’s an alien.”

“Sure.” Molly wasn’t sure if she believed his theory or not. Sure, the resemblance seemed a hell of a coincidence, but for an alien to crash on Earth and be there for hundreds of years without being caught seemed far-fetched, as did… “So, if it did crash here, why is it alone?”

The Doctor took up one of the backpacks. “Maybe the others died in the crash? Or maybe it isn’t alone, and all the sightings across various states are all its crewmates that have spread out.”

Molly thought about it a moment. “I guess that makes sense. Maybe that’s why viewings went up in the early 1900s, they decided to spread out.”

The Doctor glanced at her on his way back to his tent. “So you do know about the Jersey Devil!”

“Never said I didn’t,” Molly replied, picking up her backpack. “Isla and I used to…” Her voice dropped off. Isla. They weren’t the best of friends, but she’d still cared about Isla. Leaving her behind had been difficult. Now being in an entirely different universe was…harder. She hoped the Isla here was okay. She’d been nearing eviction when Molly replied to the roommate want ad.

She cleared her throat. “Isla and I used to watch documentaries on various creepy things on the weekends, sometimes. Usually while still working on writing our articles, but still. I think I mentioned that a couple weeks ago. But I got really into the Jersey Devil one. I missed a deadline because I was watching too closely.”

“Why am I not surprised?” the Doctor shouted from his tent. Molly dropped her bag in her tent and turned to see the Doctor coming back out of his. “Okay,” he said, clapping his hands. “Let’s get to work.”

Molly pulled her coat around her tighter as she leaned towards the fire. It was just the right time in the season for it to be warm in the day, and cold at night. After living in New York for so long, she was used to the cold. That didn’t mean she liked it one bit.

Still, the campsite had turned out pretty nice. Both tents were set up (thanks to the Doctor) with tarps over them to protect from rain (thanks to the Doctor), a beautiful fire was blazing (thanks to the Doctor), and they’d had little foil-wrapped campfire meals for dinner (did it really need to be said again?). Now they sat in their camp chairs with sticks holding marshmallows while the stars sparkled above them, even through the tree branches. While the Doctor turned his carefully to get a perfect golden brown, Molly stuck hers directly in the flames to set them ablaze, and then waved them around like a torch until the flames were put out.

Her style of marshmallow roasting disturbed the Doctor. “Why would you burn them to ash?”

“I’m not burning them to ash,” she said, but then blew on the marshmallows to get rid of the layer of ash. “I’m making them crispy and bitter on the outside and melty and sweet on the inside.”

The Doctor panicked when one of his caught fire, and he blew it out before looking over at her. “Sweet, yet savory.”

Molly grinned. “Exactly.” And then her face fell. “No. No, nothing like that. Nothing like fish pudding.”

“Same sentiment,” argued the Doctor, as he reached for the graham cracker box by his feet.

“Not at all.” Molly held her hand out until he passed the box to her. “You should try it, though.”

“I don’t think so,” replied the Doctor. “I like mine perfectly golden and roasted, not set ablaze.”

“Have you ever tried it?” asked Molly, beginning the precarious job of building a s’more on her lap.

“No, of course not.”

“Then you really should-”

“Remember when I told you to try the fish sticks and custard? And you said I should listen next time when you said you wouldn’t like it?”

Molly shrugged as she set a chocolate piece on the cracker. “Yeah, but I have good taste.” She saw the Doctor make a face at her out of the corner of her eye. “Come on. At least set the marshmallow on fire. It’s fun.”

The Doctor had just taken a big bite of his s’more, but only chewed a few times before saying around the food in his mouth: “Mmf, ders luke liyk foon.”

Molly pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. “Maybe try that again after you swallow.”

She watched the Doctor chew as she took her first bite. It was impossible to eat a s’more neatly, so she kept having to adjust to be sure it wouldn’t fall apart. After a moment the Doctor repeated, “Does look like fun.” He stuffed the rest of his s’more in his mouth, and then stuck another marshmallow on the stick. Molly tried not to choke herself laughing as she watched him stop to try to chew the giant mouthful of chocolate and marshmallow and cracker. It took almost a full two minutes before he managed to get it down.

“Hard to believe you once got Marilyn Monroe to marry you.”

The Doctor winced. “Don’t remind me. It shouldn’t even count; it wasn’t a real chapel.”

“Mhm, sure.” Molly started setting herself up with another marshmallow as she watched the Doctor stick his in the flames. It took him a couple tries before it was actually on fire when he pulled it out. He put the stick over his head and waved it around a few times, grinning.

“Okay. This is fun.”

“You’re gonna want to blow it out soon.”

She watched as he blew the marshmallow out, and then bit it off the stick. He immediately leaned over and let it fall out of his mouth. “Hot!”

“Yeah, you need to let it cool,” she laughed.

“It’s like molten lava.”

“Not my fault you ate it wrong,” she replied. But the Doctor had the last laugh when her marshmallow slid right off the stick and into the fire. She sighed and tossed her stick in. “Well, I’m done now.”

“Already?”

“I had like, three s’mores while you were telling me the history of s’mores.”

“Well, I thought you should-”

“Know you accidentally invented them,” Molly finished for him. “Yep. Got it. Campers everywhere owe you a huge favor. Now I’m going back to the TARDIS to change for bed.”

“We didn’t even tell ghost stories yet,” he objected.

Molly stood and wrapped the coat around her tighter. “Well, you can shout them at me while I’m hiding from the cold in my tent. Or, you know, wait until tomorrow night. I imagine it’s going to take more than a day to find the Jersey Devil or Osain or whatever it is.”

The Doctor nodded. “Excellent point. Can’t go through all the good stories the first night.”

Molly gave a quick wave as she turned and headed into the TARDIS to change. Once she had tracked down some good, thick flannel pajamas, she changed and headed back out to her tent. The Doctor had already put the fire out and was headed back to his own tent.

“Goodnight!” She said as she unzipped her door.

“Sweet dreams,” he responded. She wasn’t sure if he was actually planning on sleeping; she’d spotted a pile of books in his tent.

She zipped the door closed behind her and settled into the sleeping bag. Staring up at the obnoxiously orange fabric and black venting above her, she wriggled and settled, wriggled and settled, wriggled and settled, trying to get comfortable. She knew she’d cleared the area well, but she was still convinced there was a rock digging into her back.

With a sigh, she decided to ignore it and closed her eyes. But she still thought she could see the shadows of the trees against her tent, and opened them again to check. Of course she couldn’t. It was too dark for the trees to even have shadows. But now the cold was prickling at her nose, so she turned onto her side and pulled the sleeping bag up over her head. Except now she couldn’t breathe as well, and she was still cold.

It was going to be a long night.

How many hours later was it? She wasn’t sure. Was sunrise coming? She almost hoped it would. Though it meant no sleep, at least she could stop lying on the cold ground surrounded by cold air, with even the fabric of her sleeping bag chilled. Her nose felt frozen.

Time to call it quits.

Slowly, Molly sat up, unzipped the sleeping bag, and slipped out of it. She pulled her boots on, stuck the end of the sleeping bag on top of her head like a giant hat and wrapped the edges around her, and then braved the outside world.

The wind made it even worse. She should have expected it, hearing the wind blow at her tent like it had a vendetta. She shivered as she made her way towards the TARDIS, and warmth.

“Where are you going?”

Molly groaned, and took tiny steps to shift herself around to look at the Doctor, who was peeking out of his tent. “To Walmart. I thought I’d steal a few more tents to wrap around mine.” He raised his eyebrows at the sarcasm in her voice. “Where do you think? The only other place I can go here.”

“You can’t go back to the TARDIS!” he objected. “That ruins the experience.”

“What, the experience of freezing to death?” The top of the sleeping bag slipped off her head and she tilted forward to get it back on, and got rewarded with a hit to the face. She heard the Doctor half-snort as she readjusted the top of the bag.

“The great outdoors!” the Doctor said when he’d finished laughing at her. “Nature! The wild! Fresh air!”

“Icicles! Forming! On my eyelashes!” Molly added.

The Doctor peeked around her at her tent. “You set yourself in a sort of wind tunnel over there.”

Molly glanced back. “Why didn’t you say something before?”

“You told me you’d been camping, I thought you knew what you were doing.”

“Do I ever know what I’m doing?” She regretted it the instant it came out of her mouth.

She watched the Doctor smirk. “No, I don’t think you do, but I like to go along with it.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, and turned back to shuffle towards the TARDIS.

“Just come in here,” the Doctor suggested. “There’ll be more body heat, and no wind tunnel.” Molly turned to him with her eyebrows about as high as her hairline. She could see the exact moment the Doctor realized why when he opened and closed his mouth a few times before saying, “No! Not like that, I just mean – no!”

Molly was happy to get a chance to laugh at him, so soon after he’d laughed at her. “I know what you mean, you naughty Doctor.”

His face was turning an interesting shade of pink. “No – but – I,” he sputtered. He made a sound that was half sigh and half dismissive grunt, and closed the tent door.

“Hey. Let me in,” she said as she walked up to the door of the tent and kicked it with her foot. “I mean, you don’t put out any body heat, but at least I won’t freeze to death alone. And I won’t ruin the camping experience.”

She was relieved when he unzipped the door. She tried to enter the tent gracefully, but the top of her sleeping bag got caught on the door, and she had to force her way through. She half-fell in, and gave the Doctor a warning glare not to laugh. She still heard him laugh quietly.

Molly got herself situated as the Doctor closed the door. The tent was lit by a golden light, coming from a lantern. The Doctor was seated to one side, and as she expected, he was up reading a book on string theory.

Molly leaned down into her sleeping bag, pulling the top over her head. “It is a bit warmer over here.”

“Told you,” replied the Doctor. “Get some sleep. We have hiking to do tomorrow.”

Molly groaned. She’d tried to hike a few times. She’d always given up partway through. Isla had been right in calling her out on that. And hiking when she hadn’t slept enough? She didn’t look forward to it. But then, the Pine Barrens were really pretty. It’d be worth it to see more of it. And maybe pick up a stranded alien.

She had just started to feel herself fade, when she heard a scratching sound behind her head, on the other side of the tent. Her eyes darted open, and she pulled the sleeping bag down so she could turn and look at the back of the tent. She didn’t see anything.

“Did you hear that?”

The Doctor glanced over at her from his book, looking over the rim of his glasses. “Hear what?”

Molly’s eyes narrowed at the space behind the tent she’d heard the scratching coming from. She reached out and poked it. “There was a scratching sound.”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

The sound came again, this time on the Doctor’s side. He turned around, and put the glasses on top of his head. “Okay. That time I heard it.”

“What do you think it is?” Molly asked, and the sound came from nearer the top of the tent. Her heart was racing as her imagination fed her all sorts of images of devils and ghost pirates.

The Doctor stared up at the top of the tent for a moment, then shrugged and put his glasses back on. “Probably an insect of some kind.”

 “A bug?” she squeaked.

“Yeah. Nothing to be worried about.”

That was worse than ghost pirates.

She whipped her head around when the sound came from her left. She scooted away from it, closer to the Doctor. “Can it get inside?”

“Shouldn’t think so.” He looked her up and down, at how tense her body was, and wide her eyes were. “Are you alright?”

“I’m scared of bugs.”

The Doctor looked skeptical. “You’re afraid of bugs?”

“Yes.”

“You’re scared of bugs, scared of space. Anything you’re not scared of?”

Molly cleared her throat as she thought about it. She turned to him with as serious an expression as she could muster. “Time Lords.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Ah ha ha, very funny,” he replied dryly, reaching over to gently bonk her on the top of her head with his book. “Go to sleep.”

Molly sighed and collapsed backwards again. It took her a while to stop listening for the scratching – which thankfully seemed to have stopped – and closed her eyes again. She focused on settling her breathing.

Then a soft ‘whuff’ing noise came from behind, and she sat up again. It sounded something like a cow, but higher pitched. She looked at the Doctor. “You heard that, right?”

The Doctor lowered his book and looked behind them uncertainly. “Yes. Yes, that I heard.”

The sound came again, louder this time, and closer. “What do you think it is?” She didn’t know why she was whispering.

“No idea.” At least he was whispering, too.

The sound came again, even louder, now accompanied at the end by a quieter sound that almost sounded like a scream or a whine, despite its softness. Molly swallowed. “How about now? Any idea now?” The Doctor shook his head, and she held her breath a moment. There was the distinct sound of tiny footsteps approaching. “Is it the Osain?”

The Doctor shook his head. “They walk on two legs. Whatever this is has four.”

The screaming sound started again, and got louder and louder until it was like a woman shrieking behind them. Molly remembered the golden-haired wailing woman the Doctor had mentioned, and shot up to her knees. “That’s it, I’m going back to the TARDIS,” she said, as she jerked the zipper open in a panic.

She heard the Doctor drop his book. “I’m right behind you!”

Molly stuck her head out and didn’t see anything. Whatever it was, it was still behind them. “The TARDIS is unlocked, right?”

“Yeah.”

Molly peeked back. “After you.”

“After you.”

“Coward.”

“Yup. Go, go!” The Doctor gave her an encouraging nudge and it was all she needed. She was on her feet and bolting to the TARDIS in a heartbeat. She practically flew inside, and turned and saw the Doctor just in time to step out of his way. He slammed the door shut, then peeked back out as Molly backed away from the door. “I don’t see anything.”

“I’m not going back out there.”

The Doctor shut and locked the door. “Me, neither. Forget camping, camping is terrible. Nature? Blech. We’re much better off sleeping on the TARDIS.”

“Hear, hear.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Fifteen

Hiking (and Running)

“Molly! Wake up! I made breakfast.”

Molly groaned and rolled over to look at her door. Instead, she found herself looking at the Doctor, standing unexpectedly close. She shouted and sat up so quickly the room spun for a moment. “What the hell are you doing?!”

“Waking you up for breakfast.”

“You couldn’t do that from the other side of the door?”

“You might not have heard me from the other side of the door. You’re a heavy sleeper.”

Molly stuck her tongue out at him, and he responded in kind. Then she yawned. “How long did I actually get to sleep?”

“I don’t know. Couple hours. I don’t keep track of those things.”

Molly ran her fingers through her hair. “Fine. Get out.”

“But I said-”

“I need to change!”

“Oh.” The Doctor shifted his gaze to the side has he pressed his palms together, and then looked back at her. “Right.” He turned and left the room.

With another yawn, Molly got out of bed. She did a few stretches, washed her face, and changed into what she hoped were decent camping clothes: jeans, tank top with red and black flannel tied around her waist in case of more cold wind, some hiking boots, and long socks with jeans tucked in, in case of ticks. After slathering herself in sunscreen, she realized she’d forgotten to repeat the names again. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” A quick ponytail, and she was ready to go.

She headed out of the TARDIS, to where the Doctor stood beside a fire. Beside the fire was a cast iron pan, and in her chair was a plate of bacon and pancakes. A classic campfire breakfast.

Molly headed over and picked up the food, then took her seat. “So, what’s on the agenda today?”

The Doctor swallowed his mouthful of pancakes. “On the agenda today,” he began. He looked around their campsite and then gestured behind him with his thumb. “We’re going that way.”

Molly waited for him to continue. “…that’s the whole plan?”

“That’s about it, yes.”

She pointed behind the Doctor, and said flatly, “We go that way.”

“Yes. And we bring the backpacks,” he added. “We’re going to be going that way for a while.”

“A few hours?”

“A while more than that.”

Molly stared. “We’re not sleeping out there again, are we? Last night didn’t exactly end well.”

The Doctor waved a dismissive hand. “We’ll be fine. I doubt whatever it was will follow us.”

Molly was skeptical, but if they were searching the massive Pine Barrens for a potential stranded alien, it would probably take more than a day, and they’d have to look a little further away than where the TARDIS had landed. “Okay. So, I’ll just keep my fingers crossed some screaming monster doesn’t eat us.”

“That would be preferable,” he replied.

It was definitely the prettiest hike she’d been on. Granted, that may be because she’d always given up in the first twenty minutes, but she doubted she’d been many places lovelier than this. The trees, the bits of sunlight and clear sky peeking through, the gentler wild animals scurrying about. Of course, she was on high alert for bears and bobcats, but still. It was relaxing.

Also, a bit tiring.

“If we keep stopping, we’re going to get nowhere,” the Doctor complained as she sat with her back against a tree.

“Just give me a minute. I only started being able to walk without pain a few days ago, remember,” she reminded him.

The Doctor grumbled, but took a seat in front of another tree. He used the opportunity to examine the weird metal detector-looking thing he’d been carrying outstretched in front of him.

Molly stretched her legs in front of her and leaned over to touch her toes. “What’s that do, anyway?”

The Doctor was adjusting the handle so he’d have a tighter grip. “It goes ‘ding’ when there’s stuff.”

Molly looked up at him, raising her eyebrows. He’d said the same thing in Blink. She thought about calling him out on it, but decided to be nice this time. Just this once. He hadn’t thrown anything from her show in her face yet.

She sat up and stretched her arms over her head. “And it’s going to help us find the Jersey Devil?”

“Osain,” the Doctor corrected, then frowned. “Well, possible Osain.”

“So…Jersey Devil.”

“Yes. It will help us find the Jersey Devil. And, hopefully, a ghost pirate.”

Molly thought of the night before and shivered. “I’m going to hope not,” she said.

The Doctor made a face. “You’re no fun.”

“Hey, I’m all for ghosts!” she objected. “Of all the things I’m scared of, I’m not really scared of ghosts. Some of the kids from my school would go to this supposedly haunted bridge, or to this nearby abandoned asylum and ghost hunt. They let me tag along a couple times. It was great. I’m down for the wailing golden woman, or whoever it was. But I did a paper on pirates in high school. I have zero interest in meeting one, even if it is a ghost.”

“Maybe he’d lead us to his treasure.”

Molly snorted. “No way a pirate gives away his secret treasure horde, even if he is dead,” Molly commented as she folded her legs under her and got back to her feet. “Okay. I’m good to go.”

The Doctor stood and flung his backpack back over his shoulders. “Great. I think I know what our next step is.”

“You mean walking aimlessly in another direction?”

“No,” said the Doctor. “Kayaking aimlessly in another direction.”

Molly stared at him a moment, and then looked around them, at the empty space of earth. “With our hands?”

“I’ve got one in my backpack.”

“…you have one in your backpack?”

“Of course. Where else was I going to keep it? You have one in yours, too.”

Molly’s mind felt like a tangled mess. Where to begin? “So, it’s like a Bag of Holding?”

“Bag of Holding?”

“Bigger on the inside.”

“Ah,” replied the Doctor. He pointed to her briefly as he said, “Yep.”

“Okay. Next question,” Molly started as they began walking again. “Where are we kayaking? I don’t see a river.”

The Doctor led the way. “There’s one about a mile ahead. I checked the map before we left.”

A thought occurred to Molly. “You’ll know the way back? We’re not going to be lost?”

“Of course not!” He paused to turn back to her with a reassuring smile. “I have an innate sense of direction.”

This did not reassure her. “You have the map on you, too, though, right?”

“Don’t need one!”

Molly stopped suddenly and watched as he kept walking forward. “This is one of the times you’re lying, right? Tell me this is one of the times you’re lying.”

In response, he peeked over his shoulder and winked at her. This also did not make her feel any better.

They walked for another half hour before they reached the river, the silence mostly being filled by the Doctor rattling off information about various trees and animals, or whistling. Molly spent most of it trying to keep her breath even. It was getting hotter, and the backpack, while not extremely heavy, was feeling heavier over time. She’d done a lot of sprinting lately, but not a lot of marathon walking. She genuinely reveled in the lack of back pain, but not so much in trying to act like she’d never stopped being able to walk easily.

They arrived at the bank of a beautiful and calm river. The Doctor set down his backpack and reached inside. And out came a kayak, that kept going on and on, and seemed to go on forever. It made her a little queasy to watch this impossibility come true. A whole kayak, including oars, came out of such a small space.

He looked up at her. “Well? Get yours ready, too.”

She slipped the backpack off her shoulder and held it out to him. “You do it. That’s way too freaky for me.”

He sighed as though heavy-burdened, but did so anyway.

It took some time and setting up before they finally headed out, the Doctor again leading the way, the detector across his lap. Molly had been kayaking once before and wasn’t over-confident in her abilities, but besides a few near-misses with the bank, it went fairly well. It was a beautiful day, and though the water did invade the inside of her kayak at times, it was cool and felt good. She almost wished she’d brought a swimsuit so she could jump right in and cool off. Kayaking itself gave her arms the workout they probably needed, and the views were nice.

They’d been going for maybe forty-five minutes when she was a flash of something moving out of the corner of her eye. She turned her head, afraid to see a bear even if it was on land and she was in the middle of the river. She stared hard, looking for the cause of the movement, and again saw something flash between trees, though she couldn’t get a good look at it. But she swore she saw antlers or horns and a deer-like head, but all in white.

She put an oar in the water to turn towards the embankment. “Doctor!” she shouted, as he’d gotten quite a bit further ahead. As she made her way to the bank, he turned.

“What is it?”

“Is the thing going ‘ding’?”

“If it was going ‘ding’, I would have mentioned it,” he replied. “Why?”

Molly rowed a little closer and peered up at the ground. “I thought I saw something with antlers or horns and a deer head.”

“Possibly a deer,” the Doctor suggested. He had that ‘everyone around me is a little bit slow’ tone of voice.

She glared over at him. “It was all white.”

“Well, Osain aren’t all white,” he said, and started to turn his kayak around. “Might be an albino deer, that happens sometimes. Let’s keep moving.”

Molly stared a moment longer, but couldn’t spot anything. With a sigh, she turned her kayak around and continued to follow the Doctor.

After another hour, they pulled up on a small beach – more a clearing with pebbles – and took a break. The shared a lunch of various kinds of trail mix, some not from Earth, while they were stretched out on a woven blanket the Doctor had in his bag.

Molly took a sip from her canteen and then leaned back to look up at the clear sky, enjoying the warmth of the sun. “So, do you have a particular destination in mind, or are we really just wandering around aimlessly?”

The Doctor was packing up a trail mix that was mostly just unmeltable chocolate. “There are a few ghost towns in the Pine Barrens. We’ll be coming up on one soon. If I was stranded on an alien planet – well, they’re all alien planets to me. But if I was stranded on one, a ghost town full of empty buildings is where I’d spend most of my time at, if I had to hide.”

She turned her head slightly to the side and looked down to peek over at him. “We’ll look for evidence of an alien living there?”

He nodded. “We’ll check out all the ghost towns. If we don’t find anything there, I’ll have to come up with another plan.”

She gave him a thumbs up, which he returned, and turned her face back up to the sun. “How will you know if it’s really just a coincidental myth?”

The Doctor took a little while to answer. “I suppose when I know, I’ll know.”

Molly prepared to say something snarky in return, but his tone was too serious to mock the statement. It was, after all, not just a pleasant hike. It was a rescue mission.

With that thought, she sat up, and reached for her hiking boots. “Let’s not waste any more time, then,” she said, slipping them on her feet and lacing them back up.

The Doctor finished packing the rest of their things, and then the blanket once they were off it. Detector in hand, they headed off again.

They’d been walking for another twenty or thirty minutes – entertaining themselves by teaching each other camp songs they’d both learned at some point – when they arrived at what was most definitely a ghost town. A collection of short, empty buildings, some of wood, some of stone stood before them, forest debris spread across what must once have been walkways. A few of the buildings had graffiti sprayed across the side of a wall. Inside the mostly glassless windows was pure darkness. Molly could almost imagine phantoms of the previous residents walking by them.

“What do we look for?” Molly asked.

The Doctor was making his way down a path, stepping over branches and peeking into the nearest building. “Well, the Osain are grazers, so there won’t be bones or really much sign of food. There may be signs of a fire for the cold nights, but it also may be trying to remain hidden and chose not to light one.”

Molly shifted the backpack off her shoulders and set it down to make it easier and quicker to move through the buildings. She opened it and started digging for a flashlight. Searching a bag that was bigger on the inside was tricky. “So, some kind of bedding, maybe a water supply, maybe something that can be used to treat injuries. Anything else?”

“Possibly bits of technology from the ship they crashed in,” he said, though he looked over his shoulder with an appreciative look that she’d thought of some signs on her own. “Something it may have brought here with it initially hoping to find a way to send a signal. It would be worn down, probably not working, maybe even with moss grown over it at this point; easy to miss by random passers-by, but since we’re specifically looking for it-”

“We’ll be better at spotting it. Got it,” she replied, finally finding the flashlight and standing up. “Do you want to split up? You take the buildings on the left, I’ll take the right, shout if we see anything?”

“Sounds like a plan,” the Doctor replied. “When you’re done looking, I’ll do a quick sweep with this,” here he held the detector a little higher, “And we’ll move on to the next location.”

Molly nodded. “Okay. See you in a bit.” The Doctor gave a thumbs up in response, and they went in opposite directions.

Molly entered the first building, switching her flashlight on and shining it around. She jumped as unexpectedly two squirrels leapt out the back window, but managed not to shriek. Carefully, watching for any other wildlife, she stepped inside and shone the light all around her. There was a scattering of leaves and pine needles all around the floor, half of a wood bedframe standing with the other half collapsed. In the top corner was an abandoned wasp nest, which made her shiver. There was an old folded table by the window that was fairly new, at least in comparison to the rest of the room. But it had also been covered in graffiti that was faded, so it had been at least a couple of years. Maybe some campers had brought it and not bothered to take it away. There was nothing else in the room to suggest any kind of occupation, not even junk food wrapper litter. She stepped out and headed to the next building.

This one was a multi-room house, and took some time to explore. Multiple birds had made nests there, most of which were abandoned but one had a couple of angry little birds that swooped at her and tried to chase her out. Her search revealed nothing but abandoned furniture and empty spray paint cans, and a wall with so many tags she couldn’t make a single one out.

This went on for some time: enter the building (mostly small houses, and one brick building that might have been some kind of fire station), find nothing but potential places the Osain could have slept, avoid mice and birds and squirrels, and then move on to the next one.

She came upon one of the last houses, a two-story but tiny wooden house. She hesitantly looked through the cupboards – in one of the other buildings a family of mice had practically leapt at her when she’d opened the door – and then headed up the stairs, wincing as they creaked as though they would collapse. There were three rooms here. One old bathroom, with the copper tub beginning to sink into the floor, and one small bedroom that was empty save a large branch that had crashed through the window in some storm or other. The last was the master bedroom. She opened the door, using some force as the hinges were rusted. There was a large window behind the bed, the glass and most of the inner frame broken away. Branches from the tree behind the house had started to grow through the opening. There was an old dresser missing some drawers, the bed frame with a rotten mattress, and to her left what seemed to be a walk-in closet.

She heard an odd scratching sound in the closet. Molly tried to think of what kind of animal it could be – squirrels set up with a nest? More mice? Something bigger? – but really just hoped it was a ghost. She was tired of dodging wildlife.

Still, there was no avoiding it. It might be the Osain hiding. She took a deep breath and took a few steps forward to peek inside. At first, all she saw were black spots against tan, and she thought for a moment it was a cheetah print coat. And then she saw the paws, the wriggling kittens nursing, the ears, the nose – the eyes. She was making eye contact with a mother bobcat.

Shit. Shit. Shit, she thought in place of the usual names. What was someone supposed to do with big cats? Make themselves look bigger? Back away slowly? Were you supposed to keep eye contact, or look away?

As the bobcat made a deep growling sound, Molly settled on slowly backing out of the room, closing the door, and bolting down the stairs, barely even touching a single one. She heard scratching on the ceiling above her and slammed her way out the front door. “Doctor! Doctor!”

She ran so fast that everything around her was a blur. She tried to tell herself that the fact she hadn’t been tackled and disemboweled yet meant the cat had decided not to follow her, but she could hear a sound like ripping bark far enough back to be at the house.

“DOCTOR!” she shrieked, taking off into his side of the town. She saw him bolt out of a two-story stone building, detector in one hand, sonic outstretched in another.

His face looked eager. “Did you find it?”

“BOBCAT!” she screamed. Evidently, it really was following her, because his eyes darted behind her and went wide. He dropped the detector and grabbed her hand, and dragged her into the building he’d just exited and slammed the door shut. But there were windows empty of glass.

She turned to him. “Now what?!” She screamed again as the bobcat hit the door they’d closed, and raked it’s claws down the wood. It would head for a window soon.

In response, the Doctor grabbed her hand again and dragged her up the stairs, went into a bedroom and shut the door behind them. He ran up to a window and used his foot to kick out the rest of the glass, and stuck his head out and looked up. “We can get to the roof. I don’t think it can climb stone.”

“Well then, go go go!” She ran to the window and stood so close to him she might have felt his body heat if he had any, and watched as he slipped the sonic back into its pocket, stepped onto the ledge, and carefully turned on a dime. Then his legs slowly disappeared upward.

“Come on!” he encouraged, but she didn’t need it. She heard the bobcat scratching at the bedroom door. She gripped the edges of the frame as she stood, and ducked so she could stick her head outside. She straightened, and tried not to lose her breath at the height. She turned and faced one foot the other way, and slid her other foot around. That’s when she heard the door break open, followed by a loud hissing.

Molly screamed and reached up to pull herself up, but was met by the Doctor’s hands. She gripped them and jumped, just in time for the first swipe to go under her feet. The Doctor pulled and she was nearly to the top when the second swipe tore a large chunk of the sole of one of her boots clean off. The Doctor dragged her up the rest of the way, and she got to her feet quickly. They both backed away from the edge, and waited for the bobcat to find a way to climb up.

When she saw a paw appear at the edge of the roof, she grabbed the Doctor’s hand again in terror. But she heard the cat screech when it slipped and fell. A new kind of fear gripped her and she rushed over to the edge to peek over to see if the bobcat had broken its neck, or its back, or a leg, and felt sick thinking about the litter of kittens. But it had gotten to its feet, and was pacing back and forth while growling up at them. She heaved a sigh of relief, backed from the edge, and sat down.

The Doctor sat beside her as she pulled her boot off to look at the damage. “What happened?”

She struggled to catch her breath enough to speak. “I checked the walk-in closet of a house, and she was in there nursing a litter of kittens.”

The Doctor frowned. “Late in the season for her to be having a litter.”

“I don’t think she cares,” Molly replied. Yeah, the sole of her boot was shredded. She’d been lucky the cat had been low enough to miss her foot. Walking was going to be even more of a challenge now. “I bet she’s going to be trying to find a way up for a while. Mama cats don’t take too kindly to strangers near their babies.”

The Doctor nodded in agreement and glanced around them, and Molly did the same. No nearby roofs or trees. It would have to climb straight up the rock. By the thudding sound, it was trying to jump up. “We’ll be able to wait her out, and move on. I didn’t get to every building, did you?”

Molly shook her head. “No, but I only had a couple left. You’d think if someone was living here there would be more evidence of them walking around. A hoof print, or something.”

“I agree,” replied the Doctor. “We’ll just move on to the next town when we’re free. Avoid her hearing us and coming after us again.”

Molly pulled her boot back on. “Actually, can we head back to the TARDIS, and just move her a bit closer to the next one? This shoe is going to be hell to hike in.”

The Doctor peeked over at the sole of her shoe. “Ouch. Fortunate it wasn’t your foot.” Molly nodded in agreement before he continued, “Yes, we can head back. I know we could have taken the TARDIS to each town, but I wanted to be able to look through the forest itself.”

Molly shrugged. “The hike’s pretty, too. I don’t mind.” She pulled the laces on the boot tight. “So should we just go back the way we came?”

“We can take a more direct route; the TARDIS is right over-” He stopped speaking suddenly. Molly looked over at him and followed his pointed finger off to the distance. Out a few miles in that direction, she saw it.

She pressed her lips together a moment before she said, “You mean in the direction of the giant cloud of smoke?”

“Er. Yes.”

She sighed heavily through her nose, trying to control whatever it was she was feeling that felt hot. Frustration? Anger? Fury at the fates? “We didn’t do that, did we?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No. That must have been burning for a while now.”

She decided not to mention that this was something he probably should have checked before they arrived. He didn’t travel like that. “So…is the TARDIS exactly under that cloud?”

“Uh…” the Doctor quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonic. He opened it and checked…whatever it was he checked when he was looking for information. She wasn’t sure how it worked. “No. The HADs got it out of there.”

“Do we know where it is?”

“…not yet.”

Molly sighed and fell back. She stretched her arms over her head and stared at the sky a moment. “It’s gonna send a signal to you at some point, right? Like in Cold War?”

“Cold War?”

“You, Clara, Russian submarine.”

“Oh! Yes.”

“You’ve fixed the HADs since then, right? It’s not like, on the other side of the world, is it?”

The Doctor hesitated. “I meant to get to it.”

Molly looked over to where the Doctor sat. “Come here.”

“Why?”

She reached an arm out towards him. “Because you’re too far away for me to hit.”

The Doctor looked chastised, yet insolent, but still he leaned back and laid down beside her. She gently tapped him on the shoulder. He was quiet for a moment. “That was nice of you. Clara would have hit me harder. And Amy. And Donna. And Ace. And…all of them.”

“I’m tired,” was Molly’s excuse, though really, she didn’t think he deserved too hard a hit. He was stranded in a wildfire now, too.

They listened together for a while as the bobcat continued to circle the house and make attempts to get up. It made Molly a little nervous, but if there was still danger, the Doctor would likely be on alert.

“So, something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Molly said, finally.

“Yes?”

She turned her head to look at him, uncertain how to approach the subject. “How long has it been since Christmas?” The direct approach was usually her go-to.

The Doctor’s eyes drifted across the sky for a moment. He looked to be counting. “I don’t know. I think maybe ninety years? A hundred and twenty? A hundred and fifty? No, not a hundred and fifty. Can’t be a hundred and fifty. Probably closer to a hundred. Yes, that seems about right. A hundred years or so.”

Molly’s eyes widened, and she turned to look at the sky again so he wouldn’t see her surprise. She hadn’t expected it to have been so long. She supposed that wasn’t very long to the Doctor, but still. “We’ve been traveling for a little while now. I know the TARDIS is a time machine and all, but aren’t you due to meet Clara by now? You could drop me off somewhere for a bit. You must miss her.”

There was a long moment of almost-silence, save for the sound of the cat’s claws on the stone and birds in the distance. She wondered if she’d crossed some sort of line, but she couldn’t figure out what that line might have been. Did he want to keep her entirely separate from Clara? Why?

“Yes,” he said, finally. “I do miss Clara. I miss all of them.” He paused another moment. “We don’t travel together anymore.”

Molly felt an ache in her heart for him. Of all his companions that she’d seen, she really thought the two of them had the best chemistry. Not just romantically – although, it occurred to her, that might have been part of her reasoning to be certain she didn’t develop feelings for him, because clearly, they had feelings for each other – but the way they worked together. It had been beautiful. And he missed her.

 Of course he did. He missed all of them.

She didn’t want to ask. It was none of her business. But, again, she found the direct approach her go-to, and her mouth ran away with her. “What happened?” She took another quick breath and was able to add, “If you want to talk about it.”

“Nothing, really,” he replied, his voice soft. “For her, it had been minutes, hours. For me, it was a thousand years. My lifetime, all over again. Things had changed. The way I felt about…” The sentence drifted off and the implication of it hung in the air for a moment. “Anyway, things had changed. I still wanted to…you know, travel with her. But she wanted me to promise I wouldn’t leave her behind or send her away for her own good again. And I…you know. I lie. I could have lied. But I didn’t want to lie to her about it, I couldn’t break her heart that way again. And I couldn’t promise her. She wasn’t sure if she could travel with me anymore, knowing I might do it again. So I dropped her off. She asked me to check in, every few months for a few years, to see if she’d change her mind. For her a few months, anyway, for me a few minutes. Eventually she asked me to stop.” He turned his head towards her and added quickly, “We’re still friends. We still talked. She asked me to come round for Christmas. I did, for a while. Sometimes the same Christmas twice, accidentally,” he seemed for a moment to wince at an embarrassing memory. “But it’s done now. Clara is happily settled, teaching, married, kids. I like her kids. She should have kids. But I don’t see her anymore.” 

Molly waited a moment before speaking, to process the story, to let him have a moment to remember. It was, maybe, one of the happier goodbyes to his companions. But still, so sad. It was hard, sometimes, to remember that everything she’d seen on television had been real. Had this story played out on the screen, she’d have cried. Now she didn’t have a right to it. It wasn’t her story.

“I’m sorry I asked,” she said softly. “It wasn’t my place.”

“It’s alright,” he assured her. “You’re just asking about someone I used to know. Like friends do.”

Molly gave a little smile. That was still a nice thought. Friends. “Have you met anyone else since?”

“Well…I met Molly Quinn.”

She gave a small laugh. “You know what I mean.”

“No,” he replied, faster than she would have thought he would. “No, I’ve been traveling alone. I didn’t want to…” he paused a moment. ‘Lose anyone else’, were the words she thought sat on his lips. “I’ve been traveling alone.”

Molly considered a moment, that she didn’t need to say every thought that came into her head. But no, she really did. “You’re not supposed to do that.”

“What are you, my mother?” But his tone was light-hearted.

She elbowed him in the side, as lightly as when she’d swatted him on the shoulder. “Everyone tells you that. I figure it’s my turn now.”

“Oh, I was fine.”

“Were you?” Maybe if she whispered it, it would be less invasive, she decided.

“I’m always fine.”

“No, you’re not,” she replied.

“No, I’m not,” he admitted, and then sat up. “I was probably about as fine as you were, changing your identity and running to England.”

It was a fair enough comment. Molly sat up, too. “So…not fine at all, in other words.”

The Doctor was silent. “No,” he finally confessed, and turned to her with familiar big, sad eyes. “Not fine at all, in other words.”

She gave him a sad smile. The lonely god. She was no goddess – Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla; focus, stay here, don’t slip back, not here, not now, not with him -  but the loneliness she understood.

Molly turned back to the ghost town. She saw the bobcat slinking away. And then her eyes went to the smoke. “If the fire gets too close to this ghost town, do you think we can come back in the TARDIS and try to save the babies?”

She felt his eyes on her a moment before he wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Yeah. We can try.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Sixteen

Wildfire

Molly wrapped her arms a little tighter around the Doctor’s neck, trying to hold on while also trying not to choke him.

She failed. “Molly. Air.” The Doctor made a sound like he was legitimately choking, so she decided to loosen her grip.

“Sorry.”

She held his backpack on her back, and he carried her on his. They only did it for ten or fifteen minutes at a time, but those ten or fifteen minutes were a relief. Not only was it difficult to walk with a shredded boot, but blisters were forming all along wherever the boots were tight around her skin. Her backpack had been abandoned; the bobcat, it turned out, had gone to investigate it, and had likely smelled the food at the way it clawed at the fabric. She was in for a surprise when she found it could crawl inside, but the Doctor and Molly decided it wasn’t worth staying to watch. At least they’d managed to grab the detector on their way out, and the Doctor continued to hold it out in front of him.

The Doctor let her slip to the ground a few moments later.

“Okay,” he said breathlessly. “Break.”

Molly nodded in agreement and let the backpack slide off her shoulders the way she’d slid off of his, then took a seat. “How much further to the next location?”

The Doctor looked around, then set the detector aside and pulled out the sonic. After a quick scan he said, “Maybe another hour or so.”

“We should probably think about camping out there. It’s safer than the middle of the woods, maybe, and the sun is probably going to be going in down in another…” She looked up at the sun, immediately regretted it, and said as she rubbed her eyes, “Three hours-ish.”

“I’d like to get a little further out. I’m not worried about the fire, but I’d like to stay out of the way of the smoke, just in case.”

Molly nodded as she stretched her legs out in front of her. What she would prefer was to leave the Pine Barrens and not have to worry about burning to death at all, but they’d need the TARDIS for that, probably. She hoped it was nearby and not in Australia or something.  “Should I be worried at all?”

“Of course not.” He paused. “Well, not of the fire. Wild animals fleeing the fire…”

She blinked a few times before saying, “Rattlesnakes and bobcats and bears, oh my?”

“I should think so.”

Molly groaned, lowering her head to her knees. “Are we going to have a single trip where we don’t maybe die?”

“Hey, it happens!” the Doctor objected as he took a seat across from her. “…sometimes.”

She glanced up as he opened the backpack. “Any anti-bear spray in there?”

He peeked inside. “I have some spray sunscreen. D’you suppose that would work?” In response, Molly lowered her head to her knees again. “Oh, we’ll be fine.”

“You mean ‘probably’?”

“I probably do, yes.”

Molly sighed and sat up again. “The Doctor lies.”

He grinned. “And I’ll never tell you when.”

“At least I know you well enough to start looking for tells,” she responded, shrugging.

His smile faltered. “You really do know too much.”

She laughed, and shook her head, but a thought did occur to her. “My show didn’t actually say any of the major things about me, about what happened when I was thirteen, about the names. What did it say? What do you actually know about me?”

The Doctor looked at her curiously. “You didn’t want to know before. Are you sure you want to know now?”

Molly stretched her arms over her head as she considered. “Tell me some things. I’ll tell you if it’s too much.”

“Alright,” replied the Doctor. He leaned back and held himself up with his hands behind him, looking up at the sky as he searched his memory.  “Well, it did open with police sirens when you were thirteen, and you sitting in the back of a police car, watching the rain on the windows. It showed you going to your first foster home, and throughout the series had flashbacks to various other ones.” He hesitated. She knew why. There must have been scenes that would be difficult for her to hear. But she wanted to know how well he knew her. Needed to know.

He continued. “It showed the reason the first foster home decided you weren’t…a good fit.” She was quiet and strange and her flashbacks were frequent and intense. They didn’t know how to handle a crazy girl. She didn’t blame them. The only time she was remotely stable was when she was in front of the television watching Doctor Who, because it anchored her. Most of the rest of the time she was just staring into space or screaming. Some of the time, without meaning to, she’d hurt herself, or them.

“And why the second one did.” The mother walked into her room without knocking and caught her kissing a girl. They’d wanted to send her to conversion camp, but her case worker took her out instead. “And…and some of what had happened at the third.” That was the abusive one. They’d had another foster kid, ironically named Foster, and he’d warned her to keep her mouth shut around the adults unless being directly spoken to. The few times she’d mouthed off she’d ended up with a split lip, and a threat of more pain if she tried to tell her case worker. Foster was the one who’d been brave enough to call his case worker at school, who called hers. “…are you still okay?”

Molly nodded. These weren’t the best memories, but they weren’t her worst. “I’m okay. I got through all that okay.” Maybe not okay okay, but while they seemed horrific to some people, for her they were merely things that had happened. It was just her life.  “You can keep going.”

He leaned forward again, brushed the dirt off his hands and onto the backpack. He reached in and tossed her a water bottle before continuing. “There were a few other foster homes, but there weren’t many details of them, except the one you spoke about with Jack.” The others had been fine, really. She’d been lucky and never ended up in one that was overcrowded, never ended up abused again, or neglected. To their credit, despite her reputation and the town’s general dislike of her, they’d still tried to support her. She’d been the problem - skipping school, staying out all night, sneaking marijuana into the house, refusing to help with chores or cooking, shoplifting, getting into fights, blaring Doctor Who the few nights she did stay in so no one else could sleep. Skipping from home to home at that point had been her fault. No one could control her, not even herself.

The Doctor continued. “It showed a little of you living with your aunt and cousin. Enough for everyone to be annoyed whenever they appeared in a scene.” Molly snorted at that one. She was also annoyed whenever they appeared in her life. “The publication of your book was one of the major flashbacks. It never gave details of what was in it, but it showed that you regretted it when it became a bestseller. That you’d been forced to change your identity. Mostly, though, it was about your life in New York City. Those adventures, forcing a negotiation with companies and lawyers and doctors for various reasons, helping people who needed shelter or food or healthcare. My favorite episode was when you went on that volunteer mission, and found out some of the higher-ups were stealing funds, and got them to accidentally confess through sheer annoyance. A couple of the people you briefly dated, but mostly your relationship with James-” 

“Ohhh,” Molly breathed. “We don’t need to talk about James.” James had been a messy relationship, and she’d done things in it she wasn’t proud of. She was too desperate to keep him (and his penthouse, as she was verging on homelessness), and had resorted to emotional manipulation and even a little stalking. James had done the same sort of things, not that it was any excuse for her own behavior. It was toxic for both of them, and it didn’t end pretty, and she didn’t like the idea that the Doctor had seen that part of her. In this case, she really wasn’t that person anymore. “We can stop. I get the idea. You basically know everything except what kicked it all off.”

The Doctor’s face was a little apologetic. “And what happened after you were shot. Where your father is. And a lot of the smaller details, the things that make a person a person.” His voice had shifted from apologetic to something more earnest. She thought he wanted her to believe that she still had some things to herself. It was kind.

But untrue. “My favorite flowers, probably my favorite color, the fact that I tend to just throw clothes and keys and books in the general direction of where they belong and hope for the best. Probably my favorite snack, too, though maybe not. It didn’t show my Doctor Who obses-” Back up, back up, back up. “Uh, that I watched it a lot.”

Sheepishly, the Doctor reached into his backpack and tossed her a little bag. She looked at it and smiled. Sour gummy worms. So, it had shown her favorite snack. She ripped the bag open as the Doctor said, “We’re only just getting to know each other as real people. The things that make us laugh. The things we enjoy talking about. The unremarkable things we do with our time, when we’re not trying to save the world in our own ways. Our little facial expressions and gestures.”

She decided it wasn’t wise to mention that she had already memorized his every facial expression and gesture while watching the show, and had since compared Matt Smith’s interpretation to the real Doctor, and found they matched up almost exactly. It might have come off a little creepy. A little James-era stalker-y. But, “You have a point.” These were things she’d thought of before, but she’d thought of them in terms of her knowing him, not the other way around. Her stomach squirmed again at the thought of people knowing her so well – of the Doctor knowing her so well – without her ever having told them a thing. She figured a gummy worm would settle it and stuck one in her mouth. When she finished it, she took another out of the bag. “Catch.” She held it up to warn him, and then tossed it in the general direction of his mouth.

But she had bad aim and it landed in his eye. “Ow,” he commented, rubbing his eye, and tossing the candy that had fallen to the lap aside. “Try again.”

The next one was another miss, but he caught the third. She gave him a little applause and he took a fake bow.

There were plenty of little things to learn, Molly decided. And it was fun along the way. Even with the rattlesnakes and bobcats and bears.

She decided not to wonder just how much longer she was going to have to get to know him personally

They arrived in the ghost town just as the light was beginning to turn less the bright yellow of an afternoon summer sun, and more the white of an autumn evening. They decided to search the town together, in case they came across another bobcat, or a bear. Molly watched the ground constantly for snakes. She also watched the sky. It seemed to her the smoke was getting closer, not further away, but the Doctor didn’t mention it, and she trusted his eyes over hers.

This one was smaller, mostly a few collapsed walls or arches, a handful of buildings. Molly could sense the Doctor’s disappointment as time went on, and there were no traces of an Osain.

“There’s still a few more ghost towns to check for the Jersey Devil, right?” She was trying to reassure him.

“It’s an Osain,” the Doctor corrected, though his heart didn’t seem to be in it. “Yeah, there are a few more.”

“And then we could get a few dozen miles between us and the fire and just look around the forest. We have all the time in the world. I mean, we still need to know where the TARDIS is. If the TARDIS is in the Pine Barrens, maybe the Jersey Devil will recognize non-Earth technology and will wait by it.”

“It’s an Osain. And you’re right. We have some time,” he replied, giving her a little smile. She wasn’t sure if he believed her, but he seemed to appreciate her attempt.

She grabbed his arm and squeezed gently. “It’s only been one day of searching. We can’t give up yet.”

His smile brightened a little. “Who said anything about giving up?”

“That’s the spirit,” she said, grinning. It was getting cooler, so she untied the flannel and pulled it on. “Is the next one close enough for us to get there before sunset?”

The Doctor looked up at the sky and shook his head. “No. You’re right, we should probably just stay here for the night.”

Something in his tone made her suspect there was something he wasn’t telling her. Whatever it was, though, it couldn’t be worse than the encroaching wildfire and the possible stampede of wild animals. And if he was lying, there was probably a good reason. And maybe he wasn’t lying at all.

“Should we pick a couple buildings and then build a fire? Or…maybe not a fire.” Still, she looked around for a potential place to sleep and a place that might be safe to build a fire.

“We should probably stay in the same building. Safer to get away, if an animal wanders in, and besides, we only have the one tent now,” he replied. “I think we can start a fire safely enough. Plenty of rocks, plenty of dirt. It’ll keep us warmer.”

Molly nodded and peeked inside the nearest building. It was small, with one room. Harder for any wild animals to shelter in without them noticing, and just in case a bobcat was outside one door, there was another on the other side. There was also space for a fire, and very little roof left, so smoke could vent out. “How about here?”

The Doctor looked inside and stepped in. “Perfect. I’ll set up the tent. You find some more firewood.”

Molly winced. “What about bears?”

“You’re very concerned about bears.”

“I’m scare-”

“Scared of bears, yep,” he replied, rolling his eyes. “Scared of firewood, too?”

“I will, absolutely, hit you again.”

The Doctor slipped the backpack off and reached inside. “Okay. I’ll go look for firewood, and you start digging a hole for the pit.”

She winced again. “What if the bear comes in here?”

“First, importantly, I want to point out that this is a theoretical bear,” he replied. “Not a real bear. A potential one. An imaginary bear, if you will.”

“I repeat: will hit.”

“Second,” he went on as though she hadn’t threatened him with physical violence, “If a bear is going to wander by, it will happen regardless of if you’re collecting firewood or digging a hole. If one shows up, we’ll leave.”

“And walking away from a bear is the best plan you have?”

“Yep.”

Molly sighed. “Okay. I’ll get some firewood, you put up the tent. But if I get eaten by a bear, I’m going to haunt you for the rest of your life. We both know how potentially long that is. And I’ll sing ‘The Song That Doesn’t End’ the entire time, until you utterly lose your mind.”

“That’s hurtful.”

“So is getting eaten by a bear.”

“Noted. Don’t get eaten.”

“Well, now you’ve dissuaded me,” she said, and headed back out.

It was a pretty ghost town. She’d always loved looking at old things, imagining their history. Moss covered brick. Bits of stone fallen here and there. Historical buildings even had a certain smell she loved. She wasn’t a history buff at all, but she enjoyed things with a past.

Maybe that’s partially why she’d liked the Doctor so much.

Molly headed towards where the trees were thickest, picking up a branch here, a branch there. She stuck some leaves in her pocket, in case they worked as a starter. She didn’t really know anything about building a fire. After gathering a few more sticks, she turned to head down a different direction, just to get a better feel of where everything was in the ghost town.

She bent down to pick up a longer stick she thought they might be able to break into pieces, and all the branches came tumbling out of her arms. She groaned, looked around to be certain there were no snakes hidden among the debris of nature, then bent down to pile them up again. Her first attempt to pick them up failed, with them spilling out of her arms once more. It was on the second attempt she saw it again: the flash of white out of the corner of her eye.

The branches fell from her arms for the third time, and she stood quickly to look around. Nothing. Not a deer, not a rabbit, no new branches on trees.

“That’s it. This time I’m doing something,” she muttered to herself, then turned and ran back to the little house she and the Doctor had claimed.

The Doctor looked up and saw her distress. “Don’t tell me there’s actually a bear out there.”

“Give me the thingy.”

“Thingy?”

“The ‘ding’ thingy.”

He seemed offended. “It’s not a ‘thingy’, it’s advanced-”

Molly growled. “Would you just give it to me?!”

The Doctor stood and went to the backpack, and as he pulled it out asked, “What’s wrong? Did you see it?”

“No, it’s not the Jersey Devil-”

“Osain.”

“I know, I say that to irritate you,” Molly said, waving her hand dismissively. “It’s the white thing again. I think it’s following us.”

The Doctor seemed remarkably unconcerned. “I told you, sometimes there are deer that-”

“That follow people for miles?” She walked up and grabbed the detector from his hands. “I’m going to go check it out. If it doesn’t go ‘ding’, fine, it’s nothing. But what if it does? Could an Osain have albinism?”

The Doctor frowned. “I hadn’t considered that.” He seized the detector from her. “Lead the way.”

Molly took off to where she had left the firewood, the Doctor trailing behind her. She spun around a few times until she spotted the tree she’d thought she’d seen it disappear behind. “That way,” she said, pointing.

The Doctor held the device up and waved it back and forth as he walked towards the tree. She held her breath, and she thought she could see him holding his breath, too. It seemed each step echoed with the crack of a stick or the shifting of a rock. He moved around the tree, and then around a few in the other direction. No sound came from the device. He went a little further in, and still, nothing.

He turned back to her, a little disappointment on his face. “There doesn’t seem to be anything here but usual Earth wildlife.”

She sighed the breath out. “Sorry. I could have sworn I saw something.”

“It’s alright, don’t worry about it,” he said, walking up to her. He patted her on the shoulder a few times before walking by. “It’s better to have hope.”

Ever the optimist. One of her favorite things about him. She wanted to be like that so very much.

She picked the branches back up and they set up their camp properly, with the tent and a little fire, just big enough to heat a pan for more pancakes. When Molly asked if he’d brought anything else, he’d just grumbled something about it being last minute.

They sat outside on a fallen pillar of some kind and watched as the sky turned a brilliant orange. Molly breathed the fresh air into her lungs that was perfumed with pine and maple syrup. It felt oddly like being home, though home had never smelled anything like this.

“Question for you,” she said.

“Answer for you,” the Doctor replied past the pancakes in his mouth.

She speared a few pieces of her pancakes onto her fork. “Do you think time is still moving ahead in my universe? I mean, I know it isn’t frozen or anything, but when I go back, will I go back to just after I disappeared, or will as much time pass there as time is passing for me here?”

The Doctor didn’t reply immediately. She put the pancakes in her mouth and turned to watch him chew, though she could have sworn he was chewing slower than he had before. There was a hesitance around his eyes, a tenseness in his shoulders she hadn’t noticed before. She prepared for him to lie to spare her knowing that her world had moved on without her.

He swallowed, and kept his eyes on the sunset. “I don’t know, really,” he said. “It depends on the path the TARDIS finds. It may be seconds after you left. It may be weeks. It may be…”

Molly waited, and when he didn’t finish the sentence, she finished it for him. “Years.”

He looked over at her, some amount of pity in his eyes. “Yes. It could be years.”

She took a deep breath, pursed her lips together, and nodded. She looked back at her plate, but found she wasn’t hungry anymore. She gestured for him to bring his plate closer and shifted her pancakes onto his. “I thought maybe…” she paused to clear her throat. She hated being a crybaby. She was supposed to be strong. “I thought that might be the case. I’d go missing. Not really anyone to look for me but the hotel staff. They’d figure out who I really am through the papers under the mattress. Maybe my aunt would ask the police to keep an eye out, but…” And that was it. Her aunt would go through the motions of caring. Her cousin would, too. Maybe Isla would notice she was gone when Molly never called again. The job she’d had lined up would shrug their shoulders. But that was it. That was all she had anymore. Her disappearance would barely be noticed at all. “It’s alright. If that’s the case, I’ll just make another identity. I’ve done it before; it couldn’t be too difficult to do it again. At least everyone would think I’m probably dead and I’ll never have to deal with a call from Aiden or anyone shooting me because of the book again.”

Molly set her plate aside. She kissed him on the cheek as she stood, as though it was already second nature. Her little way of saying she forgave him if he couldn’t get her back until years after she’d disappeared. “I’m tired and my feet hurt,” she said. “I’m going to go get some sleep.”

The Doctor seemed to have lost interest in the pancakes, and set his own plate aside. “Sleep well.” His voice sounded tired. She wondered how long it had been since he’d slept. Time Lords could go months without sleeping and still only need an hour or less. Maybe it’d been long enough he needed a little nap.

She patted him on the shoulder before she went back into the tent, took off her shoes and socks, and slipped back into the sleeping bag. The flannel would help keep her warm through the cold night. Sleeping would probably be even more difficult than the night before, she thought, but she was so thoroughly exhausted she was asleep the moment she closed her eyes.

It felt like a minute later that the tent door opened and the Doctor came in, but glancing back at him, the light was gone. It must have been enough time for the sun to set, at least.

“Mmmf?” was the best she could ask as she looked sleepily at him.

He stretched out on the ground beside her. “I might just…doze for a minute.”

Probably a literal minute, she thought, but closed her eyes again.

Another perhaps-minute later, she woke to the high-pitched screaming they’d heard the night before. She gasped and sat up just as the Doctor did the same beside her. It was immediately apparent that it hadn’t been a minute. It had been long enough for something flickering to surround them with light.

The Doctor reached around and tore at the zipper of her sleeping bag and threw it open. “The fire!” he shouted. “We need to get out, now.”

There should have been a wave of panic, but instead she felt remarkably calm and clear-headed. That was what scared her most. She was only ever this focused in an emergency.

Molly sat up and got to her knees while the Doctor tugged the zipper of the tent open, and looked out. The fire hadn’t invaded the house yet, but it was licking the inside of the door to their right. Smoke filled the room so thick she couldn’t see the other side of the room, and she immediately started coughing. The Doctor shrugged his waistcoat off and threw it to her.

“Hold that over your nose and mouth!”

“What about-” she paused, and coughed into the fabric. “What about you?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said. “My lungs can hold oxygen longer than yours. I just won’t be able to talk for a few minutes.”

She nodded as he took a deep breath, and followed him as he stepped out of the tent, wishing desperately there was time to put on her boots, as in shambles as they were, but she grabbed the backpack he’d stored inside and threw it over her shoulder. He grabbed her hand, and they ran out the left door. A loud growl greeted them, and they jumped backwards, Molly’s heart in her throat. A coyote sped by them with a glare. Molly turned her head back and she saw the fire that was already consuming their tent dance in her eyes. The heat was choking her as much as the smoke was, the burning on her skin almost unbearable.

The fire behind them. A horde of scared wild animals in front of them. Molly’s calm increased as she felt death near.

But the Doctor squeezed her hand, and pulled her out behind him. They raced forward until they saw flames jumping in front of them, and then turned to follow the path the coyote had taken. Sparks exploded from where the fire ate at the wooden houses, but she didn’t have a free hand to put them out as they burned through the flannel. If she let go of the Doctor’s hand, he would have to slow down to her pace. Better to have little burns and live, if they could.

They were soon met with another wall of flames, and Molly felt sick as she heard the cries of some animal inside burning. The Doctor darted to the left and picked up speed, but now she felt like she was going to suffocate between the heat and the heavy fabric. All she wanted to do was lower the coat and take a deep breath of air, but she knew the smoke would burn her from her mouth straight down her throat and into her lungs. She couldn’t afford to hurt her lungs now, but the faster they went, the dizzier she became.

Finally, the Doctor seemed to have found a path that led into the darker woods. She felt mice dart across her bare feet as their steps slowed, which only brought attention to the little wounds at the bottom of her feet, the bursting blisters. They were only maybe twenty feet from the fire when her lungs gave out, and her vision went dark as she fell.

She woke seconds later to the Doctor pulling her up by a grip under her arms. “Get on my back!” he gasped. He turned and she threw the jacket over his shoulder and hopped up. As he lifted her, she buried her face in the jacket and covered his mouth and nose with the sleeve. She held on tight around his chest with the other arm as he started running, but he immediately stopped dead again and she felt she would slip off by the force of it.

At first, she thought it was a large, dark shadow shifting in front of them, but the longer she stared the more she saw the orange reflecting off the dark fur, and the odd circular shape began to shift into a bear. She screamed into the jacket as the Doctor backed away a few steps.

The bear saw them. All they could do was hope it was more afraid of the fire than it was hungry or angry with them, or that the fear made it violent.

It approached them, one large, clawed paw after another, its struggled breathing getting louder and louder as it got closer and closer.

The Doctor slipped his mouth out from under the sleeve. “You have to go away now! You have to get away from the fire! Bad fire! Bad, ouchy fire!”

Molly watched as the bear hesitated. “Do you speak bear?”

“Of course not, no one speaks bear, bears don’t have a language,” the Doctor said. “But just in case I’m completely wrong…” He took a tentative step forward and shouted again, “Fire bad! Running away good! Go on! Go!”

The bear started and Molly almost swore it growled. This was it. It was going to charge at them, kill them, or knock them into the flames.

But then it took a few steps back, and with a grunt, turned and began to run. Molly felt the wave of relief like a cooling blanket, until the heat blisters on her legs started to ache, along with her lungs. As she coughed, she covered the Doctor’s mouth again. He waited a moment, and then took off in the same direction the bear had gone, before turning right again.

As the light slowly dimmed, the Doctor slowed. She pushed against his shoulders to tell him to let her down. He set her down more carefully than he had before – perhaps mindful of her bare feet – and Molly took the coat away to take a few breaths. The air wasn’t entirely clear here, but it was better than it had been.

They both took a moment to catch their breaths, but as Molly was still wincing from the oxygen deprivation headache, she saw a flash of white. “Doctor,” she choked, and pointed in its direction. He looked at her, and then followed her pointed finger. They could both see it clearly now: an unusually tall stag, with enormous, intricate antlers, and all white from the tip of them to the hooves on the ground.

“Okay,” he said steadily. “I see it this time.”

It made a short screeching sound, and Molly realized that this is what the screaming had been. The screams that first night, when they hadn’t known about the wildfire yet. It had been warning them.

She looked around. Fire to the right, and probably ahead. Wild animals to the left, behind, and ahead. Likely more bears, and snakes we won’t be able to see. White stag that’s warned us of danger. “We need to follow it,” she decided.

The Doctor took out the screwdriver, scanned, and then slammed it against his palm a few times, groaning, “Come on, come on!”

“What is it?”

“The TARDIS still hasn’t told me where it is!”

Molly gestured back to the white stag. “We really need to follow it.” When the Doctor looked a little hesitant, she continued, “You said it yourself. Stories of a white stag that helps people. It warned us about the fire. I think it’ll get us out of here.”

He looked back at the stag. “Ghost deer. Yeah, lets follow the ghost deer.” She wasn’t sure if the note in his voice was sarcasm or excitement, but he helped her back up onto his back, and ran towards the deer. It took off, and Molly hoped it really was a ghost deer leading them to safety, and not an albino deer they’d spooked that wasn’t leading them anywhere at all.

They ran after it, and the forest grew darker as they moved away from the fire and the smoke. When it got too far ahead, the stag would pause and look back at them. Sometimes it would bolt off in an entirely different direction. Molly began to despair that it really was just a deer, until far ahead of them, it darted right, and she looked left to see another coyote wandering too close to them.

Molly lost track of time as they followed, and felt guilty when the Doctor’s breath grew labored, but she wasn’t sure what else they could do. She’d move at a snail’s pace across the forest debris in her bare and blistered feet. This wasn’t like walking down New York City sidewalks.

Flickering light appeared up ahead, and Molly’s heart raced. They were headed back into the fire. Why would something trying to help them lead them back in?

“Aha!” the Doctor screamed so suddenly, she screamed in response. She saw the corner of his eye wince at the loud sound directly in his ear.

“What is it?” she whispered, hoping not to make his ear ache any further.

“Look ahead, slightly to the left!”

Molly narrowed her eyes, and for a moment all she saw was trees and darkness. But then, as they approached, there it was: a flash of blue, partially surrounded by flames.

“Oh, thank the universe!” Molly shouted, now heedless of the Doctor’s ear. “She didn’t go to Australia!”

The Doctor ran to the door and set Molly down, and shoved the door open. Molly turned, but couldn’t see the stag anywhere. She stepped inside and shut the door. “Do you think the stag will be alright?”

“If it’s a ghost stag, I think it’ll be fine,” replied the Doctor as he ran to the console. “If not, it’s clearly clever enough to lead us here, so it’ll be clever enough to get away from the fire.”

Molly jogged up to join him and dropped the backpack at her feet. She gripped the edge of the console, and resisted the temptation to kiss it in gratitude. But the console behind her suddenly shot sparks, and Molly jumped. “What’s happening?”

The Doctor moved around, and pushed her back away from the center console as he flipped switches he needed. “She’s overheating! The fire is too close. I can’t get her engines going!”

“Oh. Good. That’s great,” replied Molly dryly. They’d escaped the fire, only to be trapped in it again.

The Doctor turned and ran to the other side, doing something with a side console as Molly held her breath. What would happen if the TARDIS started to burn? Could she burn? More sparks exploded along with a few flames and Molly hit the ground to get away from them. Clearly, if the TARDIS couldn’t burn, there would still be consequences. Yet another layer of fire.

It was as she started to get back to her feet that she heard it. Ding. Ding. Ding. The sound was muffled by the fabric of the backpack. She hurriedly opened it, reached inside, deep, deep inside, and grabbed what she hoped was the handle of the detector. She pulled it out, and the dinging got louder.

“Doctor!” she shouted, jumping to her feet. “It’s going ding!”

She saw him peek up from the other side, and then rush to the monitor. She leaned over to look into it, and at first saw nothing but the flames approaching them. But the trees began to take shape, and then – there it was. A creature with goat-like legs, a human though fur-covered torso, a deer-like head with goat horns, and great bat-like wings.

“It’s there!” the Doctor shouted. “It’s right there!” But then he dropped to his knees, opened a panel, and began ripping wires out.

Molly knelt to watch him. “What are you doing?!”

“I’m fixing the HADs!”

“What?!”

“I can’t have the TARDIS disappearing again while I’m trying to get the Jersey Devil onboard!”

“It’s an Osain!”

The Doctor gave a frustrated yell and gave one more yank to the wires. In half a second he was back on his feet and running for the door. He swung it open, and then jumped back as smoke began to invade the TARDIS. She saw him cover his mouth with a corner of his shirt, and then step out of the TARDIS. She moved closer, but the smoke grew thicker and heavier and she was forced to move back as her lungs began to burn.

“It’s okay!” she heard the Doctor shout. “I’m a Time Lord! I’m one of the good ones! Let me help you get back home!” Then she heard his footsteps moving away.

She waited with baited breath to see if the Osain would trust them or not. The seconds stretched on and she wondered if the fire would meet the door of the TARDIS before the Doctor would come back. She started to wonder: could she get a bucket of water and dump it over her and go out after him? Was there a handkerchief she could tie around her nose and mouth? Maybe she could use a rope tied to the door to lead them back?

But just as she started to move towards the stairs down to find something – anything – that could help, the Doctor burst back through the door, and behind him she heard hooves clicking on the metal floor. The Doctor snapped his fingers and the door closed, and he ran back to the console. “Just give me a moment! I’ll find a way to get us out of here!”

Molly stared at the Osain, unable to help it while something so unearthly was in front of her. “I can’t believe you were right,” she mentioned softly to the Doctor.

“I am, sometimes,” he responded distractedly. A moment later, and the tell-tale shaking of the TARDIS moving began. She’d never been more grateful to be in space.

The TARDIS, she realized, had refused to leave until the Osain was rescued.

The Doctor peered over the console at the Osain. “You’ll be home in a minute. I’ve tried to get you back not long after you disappeared, but I may be off by a few months. Or years. Just prepare yourself.”

The Osain nodded. “Thank you,” it said, it’s voice seeming to almost have its own echo, a reverberation. “We crashed so long ago. The others died. I never thought to go home again.”

“Just in time, too,” Molly noted as she slipped her flannel off and began using it to put out the fire inside the TARDIS that still burned.

“Yes,” the Osain agreed. It approached slowly, and turned to the Doctor. “A Time Lord?”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. “I know our species were once at odds with each other. I’m not one of the ones that wanted to control your planet; I stood against it.”

The Osain didn’t respond for a moment. “I thought Gallifrey was gone.”

Now it was the Doctor’s turn to be silent for a stretch of time. “…it is,” he admitted. “Gallifrey and the Time Lords are gone. It’s just me, now.”

“It was just me, too, on this strange planet.”

The Doctor looked up at the Osain with a small, but grim smile. It was a moment of strange comradery. “But now, it’s time to go home.” He gestured to the doors.

The Osain looked back at the doors, then turned back to Molly, then the Doctor. “How can I repay you?” 

As Molly shook her head, the Doctor replied, “Just go, see your people, enjoy your planet. Be home.”

The Osain made some expression that looked like it might be a smile, and without another word, turned and rushed out the doors, home at last. She followed and closed the doors behind him, catching a glimpse of the Osain’s golden planet.

She turned back to the Doctor. His clothes were singed, and his face was covered in grey and black ash. She looked down and saw she was in much the same condition; there were holes burned into her top, and quite a few red marks on her arms from the sparks. Her hands were grey, and she assumed her face and hair had the same color covering them. Her flannel had been burned to pieces by the flames in the TARDIS. She walked to the Doctor’s coat where she’d dropped it, and saw that it also had holes where the flames had licked at it. She hadn’t fully realized how close they’d been to burning.

She held the coat out to the Doctor. “Sorry. You might need a new one.”

“That’s okay, I have plenty of backups,” he said. He took it, but just flung it over the railing nearby. He then took to the controls to move the TARDIS. He probably didn’t want anyone too curious about the rescuers of the lost Osain to wander in. At least, Molly didn’t want that.

The TARDIS settled, likely somewhere in space. She set that fear aside for the moment. “You look pretty good in just the shirt and suspenders, anyway.”

The Doctor grinned. “Oh, do I?” He took another breath, but didn’t say anything. Molly tried to think of something flirtatiously teasing, but her mind was blank. They were both too exhausted to be witty. Instead, the Doctor knelt to begin looking through the wires he’d ripped out from the main console.

Molly stepped a little closer. “The kittens are dead, aren’t they? And the mama?” Her vision went blurry, and she hated herself for crying again.

The Doctor paused, and looked up at her, before slowly standing. She knew the answer by his somber expression. After a moment, he stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. “Yes. Probably. I’m sorry. I know you wanted to save them.” She felt him kiss the top of her head as she wrapped her arms around his middle. It felt nice, being held while she cried, even if the tears were few and falling silently. To be comforted while her heart ached. How was she ever going to go back to believing she could do everything alone?

She stepped back and gave him an appreciative smile, and patted him on the cheek. “Thanks. We got the Osain out. I’ll focus on that.” It was easier said than done as her mind wandered to the screams of the animal burning and applying it to the little kittens, but she forced the image of the Osain smiling in its place.

A beeping sound came from her pocket. With a frown, she reached in, and pulled out the Tamagotchi she’d forgotten all about. “Of course,” she breathed. “It died.” What a mockery of reality.

The Doctor patted her on the head, then knelt back down to keep working on the wires. “We’ll need to spend a day or so just repairing her,” he said, and Molly was grateful for the change in subject. “She took some heavy damage from overheating. Plus, I may have torn out more than just the HADs wires.”

Molly sunk down to sit with crossed legs beside him. “One more thing.”

He was still working on detangling the wires. “Yeah?”

“The White Stag,” she began. “It tried to warn us of the fire, and the animals. It led us to the TARDIS. It couldn’t have been an alien, because the detector never went ‘ding’. And real ghosts seem unlikely, so…what was it?”

The Doctor glanced up at her through a curtain of his hair. “I suppose some things just…can’t be explained.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Seventeen

Hello, Good Morning

Molly was holding – something. She wasn’t sure what. It was a bright yellow, thick cord with a metal thingy on the end, anyway. The other end was held by the Doctor, and being plugged into one hole, then removed and plugged into another. She was concerned this was because the Doctor didn’t know where it went and that he’d taken something apart in the TARDIS that he didn’t know how to put together again, but the last time she’d commented on that he’d gone on a ten-minute rant about…something technological, she wasn’t sure what that had been, either; she’d disassociated as a form of self-preservation. But she was sure he’d done it just to irritate her into not questioning him again, and so far, it had worked.

So, she stood silently and held the cord and watched the Doctor do whatever it was he was doing, Amy’s glasses balancing on his nose, dressed in shirt and suspenders and a purple bowtie with tiny stitched swirls in black. If she’d known she’d be helping repair the TARDIS, she would have worn something other than a dark blue mini dress. But the fabric of her shirt and pants had kept rubbing against the burns painfully. The Doctor seemed to have gotten away with only singed clothes; he blamed the burns she had on her “delicate” human skin. She’d collected a few of them, between the fire around the crater caused by the Mechanas, the Daleks, and the wildfire. Maybe they would scar, despite the seemingly magic burn cream the Doctor had provided that had gotten her past the worst of the healing process. At least she’d have a memento when she got home again. If she ever got home again, which was seeming unlikely as this moment of watching him theoretically repairing the TARDIS seemed to stretch on forever and ever. Place the cord, remove the cord, place the cord, remove the cord.

The memory of the ten-minute rant was fading fast in her mind, and her natural state of filter-less commentary was winning the fight until finally, “You have no idea what you’re doing and it’s painful to watch. There’s got to be an owner’s manual somewhere.”

The Doctor looked at her as though she’d just insulted his dog. “I know what I’m doing! I’ve had the TARDIS since before your great-grandparents were born. Before your great-great-grandparents. Before your great-great-great-great-”

“Yeah, my grandparents, they’re great,” she said dismissively. “You’ve been plugging that cord in and out for what has to be about twenty-eight years now. I’m going gray as we speak.”

“You were already going gray,” the Doctor remarked, turning back to his work.

Molly’s jaw dropped. “No, I am not! You take that back!”

“Little silver hairs round your temples.”

Molly reached up and pulled hair out from behind her ear and examined the strands closely. There was one, single, tiny sparkle of silver. That shimmer temporarily chased all thought of anything but oh no oh no oh no I’m old away, but then reality came crashing back when she decided to be angry about it instead: specifically, at the person who had made her notice it.

She took a few steps forward and kicked the bottom of his foot.

He didn’t even look away. “I’m doing some very delicate work here, if you don’t mind!”

She kicked him again. “I hate you!”

“No, you don’t, you’re obsessed with my show.”

Molly frowned at his knowledge of that, though she’d known she hadn’t exactly been subtle about it. “I’m not anymore. It’s the worst show. The main character is a jerk.”

“I just pointed out the obvious.”

Fury filled her. “What do you mean, ‘obvious’? There’s one hair, it’s barely noticeable!”

“I noticed.”

Molly’s fury turned towards her brain when it failed to come up with a scathing comeback. After a moment she took a breath and calmed down, and in another moment, she found the comment. “So, you pay that close attention to my temples?”

The Doctor stopped moving for a moment, though his eyes were still locked on…whatever the cord was. She waited for him to respond and began formulating another comeback, but after a moment he seemed to decide to pretend she hadn’t spoken, and went back to work.

“Fine, be that way. You can find someone else to hold things while you fail to fix the TARDIS,” she said, and dropped her end of the…thing.

The Doctor immediately shot up to a straight sitting position and stared at the dropped cord in horror. A moment later he shouted, “Molly! That is a piece of a machine that travels through space and time and universes, a-” and Molly blacked out again until he finished with, “You could have blown up the galaxy, or wiped out the 80s!”

Molly glanced around the TARDIS. “But I didn’t, did I?”

“No, but that’s not the point.”

Molly shrugged. “You should know better than to hand me important things.” Her eyes narrowed. “You do know better than to hand me important things. You’ve made me stand here just to try to impress me with how clever your repair skills are, haven’t you? While I hold something completely useless?”

The Doctor cleared his throat. “Of course not, I-”

“And then you realized you didn’t know what you were doing with it, so you’ve been pretending this was all part of the plan the last twenty minutes while you try to figure out where this thing plugs in.”

She watched as he worked his jaw up and down before responding. “Molly, the TARDIS is a very powerful, very fragile piece of machinery. In fact, she isn’t really even machinery at all, she’s organic. She was grown. Every little piece of wiring can have connections to every little piece of time and space. And she’s old. It takes a very careful hand and very clever mind to keep her running properly.”

Molly raised her eyebrows, widened her eyes and nodded, feigning being impressed. Then, “You didn’t actually respond to what I said, you know.”

He stared back for a moment, then turned back to his work. He reached into what seemed some kind of socket, and then shouted as she heard an electric buzzing sound that made her flinch. “OUCH!” He pulled his hand back and shook it.

“And now you’ve electrocuted yourself.”

The Doctor scowled up at her. “I’m fine, thanks.”

Molly shrugged. “I figured, since you were still moving.”

“Can you just run up and get my sonic, please?” 

Molly sighed and rolled her eyes, but turned and headed up the stairs anyway. She glanced to where the wires were still hanging out of the central console and hoped it really was nothing but the HADs. He’d left the sonic resting on the central console after scanning it and claiming there was no serious damage. But his eyes had shifted a little as he’d said it.

She picked the sonic screwdriver up, felt the weight of it in her hand, all the little lines of metal that came together and formed it, saw the green light at the top. She knew it worked psychically, somehow, but she wondered exactly how. It really was a wonder; a catch-all tool that worked psychically and sonically and could do anything (except wood, of course, unless the Doctor had actually fixed it this time). Nothing like this could possibly exist in her universe. Nothing like the TARDIS. Nothing like the Doctor.

It happened still, now and then. A sudden dizziness. A shift of visual perspective, as though light gathered itself around the Doctor. A moment of clarity, she figured, where she remembered that this was really the Doctor, from her comfort show, not just someone who looked like him and acted like him. Except now it was less about being star-struck, and more like being in awe. The moments of the show were all real here; all the times he’d saved the universe were real. The Reality Bomb, Big Bang Two. He’d really defeated an entire alien military base without anyone dying – up until the end. Turned humanity against their enslavers without them ever knowing. He’d ended more wars than she could count, prevented what was probably an infinite amount. She could sometimes hear the whole speech from Rings of Ahkaten: I saw the birth of the universe, and I watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained – no time, no space, just me.

He was the only truly infinite thing. The closest thing to a god she believed in. A legend, not just in the colloquial way, but an actual, real legend, on hundreds of worlds. Even deleting himself from every database in the universe couldn’t have erased that, even if they didn’t have the name anymore. There were still stories, still verbal legends.

Of course, she would rather be tarred and feathered than to ever let the Doctor know even a miniscule speck of this. When those moments came, she’d blink or shake her head and figure out something teasing to say to shrink him back down to a size she could comprehend. There was always plenty of material. Still, sometimes…

“Are you coming back?” she heard the Doctor say from behind her. She turned around quickly, still holding the sonic out the way she had been the last few minutes or so as she’d gotten lost in thought.

She saw the light gathered around him. There he was. The literal man, the literal myth, the literal legend. “You have some kind of oil or grease on your chin. Looks like a soul patch.” There was always material.

He wiped at his chin with his fingers and walked up and leaned into the monitor to check that it was clear, and then took the sonic as she held it out to him. “Did you get lost?”

“I was just looking at the TARDIS.” She got away with this lie, because it was partially true. It’d been in her peripheral. “If you really want to show off, you should show me how you fly her. You know, teach me something I haven’t seen yet.”

She was baiting his ego in an attempt to get a TARDIS flying lesson, and she was sure he knew it, too. She was also sure it would work.

“Fine, yes, we can have a little flying lesson when I’m done repairing her,” he said with some impatience, but she saw a smile on his lips when she took a moment to hop excitedly and clap in victory. “It would go a lot faster if my assistant would stop dropping things and disappearing.”

“It would go a lot faster if you knew what you were doing.”

He turned to her with narrowed eyes and pointed at her with the sonic so close it almost touched the tip of her nose. “Why do I put up with you?”

“You’re obsessed with my show,” she replied brightly. He tapped her nose with the sonic in retribution but was still smiling when he tucked the sonic into his pocket.

“How about a break?” he asked. “Bit of a breather?”

Molly stretched her arms over her head and yawned dramatically. “Yeah, it’s been exhausting standing there holding a cord and watching you do absolutely nothing with it.”

A pause. “Well, I suppose I could explain to you exactly what the cord does and where it goes and its purpose with the manipulation of certain wormholes, and how those specific wormholes work, and how that connects to the way the TARDIS moves through the matrix of time and space, and-”

She held her hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Mercy, mercy,” she replied. “I surrender.”

The Doctor grinned, and moved to lean against the railing. “I’ll have her up and going again in no time. We’ll be off on our next trip soon.”

Molly leaned her hip against the console. “What do you want to do in the meantime?”

He shrugged. “Up to you! Do you want to go watch something in the cinema room, check out the library, go for a swim?”

Molly ran through the options in her head. The problem was, when she got home she could still watch a movie, look through a library, or go swimming. She wanted to take advantage of being here while she still could. What was something she’d wanted to do with the Doctor while she watched the show that didn’t involve moving the TARDIS?

She remembered something she’d been curious about for a long time. She walked over to him, and pulled herself up to sit on the railing. “Teach me some Gallifreyan. Like, ‘hello’, or something.”

The Doctor slowly took a few steps forward as he turned to face her, and stared at her with wide, almost suspicious eyes for so long she wondered if she’d said some kind of secret code that revealed her to be a villain, before he said, “Why?”

She was looking back at him with suspicion, now. “Well, I’m curious. And they never really speak it on the show, or maybe they did in one episode in the Classic Who, I don’t know, I never got much access to it, but it’d be nice to hear it. I mean, if the TARDIS doesn’t just translate it; does it translate Gallifreyan? I think the show said it didn’t. Also, I think we could…” she let her rambling drift off as she finally noticed his almost bewildered expression. And then it clicked, and she could feel the blood rushing to her cheeks. “Oh! Unless it’s too…personal. Like the last time you heard it was…” The last time he’d been on Gallifrey, before he believed he’d blown up everyone else who spoke the language. “…and it’d make you sad. You know, nevermind, forget I said anything. How about we go swimming?” How insensitive could she possibly be? She’d made social gaffes before, but this was by far the worst. This one was going to haunt her.

But the Doctor started shaking his head. “No, it’s not that. It’s okay, it’s fine. It’s just…no one has ever asked me that before. This is…new.” He bit his bottom lip for a moment, and she watched his expression go from confused, to some mild excitement at the concept of doing something new – he must have been running out of those by now – and then to a sort of studious professor. “Gallifreyan doesn’t translate. It’s expected that the main language spoken on the TARDIS would be Gallifreyan. But it’s complicated, very complicated, for a human to pronounce. Most of it impossible.”

Molly folded her hands in her lap while she considered this. “Anything I might be able to say at all? I don’t care if it’s something a child just learning to speak would say. I don’t mind sounding silly.”

The Doctor turned and paced away, his hands behind his back. He seemed to be brainstorming, looking for any word or phrase a human might have a hope to pronounce. After a moment, he turned back to her. “We could try ‘good morning’. It’s much longer in Gallifreyan than in English, but the words are easier for a human to pronounce.”

“Okay,” said Molly smiling. The excitement of hearing the language of the Time Lords spoken for the first time filled her heart. “Hit me.”

The Doctor was smiling as he said – something. It took quite a few seconds longer than she’d expected, and for a moment, she wondered if he was joking with her. But it was beautiful, so beautiful. It seemed less a spoken phrase than a short, sweet song. It wouldn’t have been possible to write it down with any letters in any alphabet she knew of, not without added musical notation, at least. It didn’t sound anything like ‘good morning’, but it felt like it, almost like a reverse lullaby, like a hymn to a rising sun. No wonder no one knew his name – no one could hope to comprehend it, let alone pronounce it.

Molly almost lost her balance on the railing, and reached out to either side of herself to grip it tight. It took longer than she would have liked to force her mind to return to her own language. “Say it again,” she said, not even fully intending to. The Doctor repeated what seemed to be a short song.

What she wanted to say was that it was glorious, and truly incredible, and the most awesome (with the original intent of the word, awesome) thing she had ever heard. What she actually said was, “Oh, I am going to butcher the ever-loving hell out of this.”

The Doctor laughed. “It’ll take some practice. I’ll break it down for you.”

After around twenty minutes of sitting on the railing and butchering the words, Molly now sat on the floor beside the main console butchering the words. The Doctor was to her right listening, while to her left was a pile of tools the Doctor had handed her so that she could hand the right one to him while he worked on the HADs wiring. Most of them looked more like musical instruments to her, but even with human tools she couldn’t say which was a Philips screwdriver and which was a circlehead. Trianglehead? Flathead? Was it a Philips hammer?

“The Hyzurin,” said the Doctor, gesturing towards the pile between her attempts at his language. “It’s the one with the side that looks like a saxophone.”

She dug through the pile and tried pitching her voice differently for the next attempt. As she handed him the Hyzur-whatsit, he said, “Oh, that one was close!”

As he went back to work, she leaned over to try to look him in the eye. “How do your babies learn to talk?! I’ve been sitting here repeatedly trying to say ‘good morning’ like an idiot for like, thirty minutes!”

“We might look a lot alike, but humans and Gallifreyans aren’t the same. It’s simpler for us. Besides, it’s our native language, so it’s easier,” he said as he threaded a wire through the side of what seemed to be a tiny saxophone. “I don’t know if a human has ever made an honest attempt at it. You’re getting better.” Molly sighed and made another attempt, and he froze for a moment and turned toward her with a hesitant expression. “Er, maybe don’t say it like that.”

“Why? What did I do wrong this time?”

“You just asked me if I wanted to get in bed with you, with, uh…certain implications.” Molly redirected her embarrassment into anger, as she usually did, and hit him on the shoulder. “Hey! I’m not the one who said it!”

Molly threw her hands up in the air. “I give up! You’re right, humans can’t handle it.”

The Doctor patted her on the knee. “You were doing really well, though. Come on. One more try. Open the back of your throat a little more.” She frowned, but then took a deep breath and tried again. His eyes widened with excitement, and he grinned. “There you go! You got it! Good morning!”

Her eyes widened. “Are you serious? I actually did it right?”

“Yeah!”

“Are you lying?”

“Yep,” he said, and turned back to his work. “But you shouldn’t give up. You’re doing better than any human has ever done trying to speak Gallifreyan.”

“You said I’m probably the only one.”

“And therefore, the best!” He grinned, then pointed to the tool pile again. “Oxylvator. It has a few tubes at the end.”

Molly reached over and dug around until she found it and handed it over. She watched him work again for a little while. It felt like watching her dad fix her car, if that had ever been a possibility in her life. It was like she was pretending to try to learn how to fix it herself, though she had no hope of retaining any of this.

It was nice, though. Watching him work. The TARDIS really was the closest he had to a constant, dependable family, and it showed. He was constantly at work keeping her running the best she could. Not just big repairs like this, but consistent smaller ones. It seemed to be as much a passion of his as going to different worlds. He really loved her. And it turned out, she was his only companion for a hundred years.

“Hey,” she said, lowering the pitch of her voice to prepare him for a shift in the tone of their conversation. “What are you going to do after I go back home?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, finished now with threading the wires through the tubes, which now glowed a faint gold. “I’ll do what I’ve always done. Travel.”

“I mean…” she began, and paused, frustrated. She crossed possible lines with him left and right, and with anyone else she wouldn’t mind. But she feared making him angry more than anyone else. He wasn’t ‘anyone else’. But this wasn’t something she could pretend she didn’t care about, either. “I hate to sound like a broken record, but you really shouldn’t be traveling alone. I’ve seen what happens when you do, and you told me yourself that you weren’t fine.”

The Doctor sighed and set the – thing – down, and turned towards her. “And what do you suggest I do? Take out a classified ad?”

“No, but there must be something. At least on the show, you always end up finding someone.”

“It isn’t that easy in reality,” he replied. His voice was growing sharper. “I can’t just stand around and hope to run into someone who can do this like you can, like the others could.”

She tried to think of some way he could find someone after she left, but nothing was coming to her. “You were alone for a hundred years. You really never met anyone with potential?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it and turned back to his work. He started to peel the tubes off the wires, now the golden light was gone. “I’m old, Molly. Very old. I don’t need a babysitter.” He set the wires down again, and looked up at the orange TARDIS light. She wished she could read his mind.

Instead, she reached over and straightened his crooked tie, and he looked back to give her an appreciative smile. She gave a small smile back, trying to keep the pity from her eyes. But in his, she could see some of the secret pain he carried. How ancient he was. Some kind of dark sadness.

“What happened?” she finally asked. “During the hundred years. You said you weren’t okay. Something must have happened.”

“I was traveling. A good number of things happened.” The Doctor tried to joke, but his gaze grew distant. She thought - she knew - he wasn’t going to give her a real answer. She knew it even as she’d asked it. But she wanted to give him the chance to talk about it.

He surprised her. “I told you, when you first arrived, that the last adventure I had was saving the Ood from some Sontarans. It was…a bit more complicated than that.” He turned and started to put the wires back where they belonged, she assumed because he couldn’t look her in the eye. “The Sontarans wanted an energy that was buried deep in the Ood home world; it’s part of what makes them psychic. The Sontarans needed it to power their ships and return to their own home.” His voice was growing quieter with every word. “There was a moment - just a moment - where I could have spared the Sontarans. I could have given them what they needed to get home and ended their hostilities with the Ood, without the Ood losing an essential part of their home world. But they’d taken some Ood hostage, and then killed them. So instead, I destroyed their fleet. I killed every last one of them. No mercy. I chose justice instead. No…I chose vengeance.” He sighed as he put the metal hatch back in place. “That’s only part of it. I went dark, Molly. Very dark. And cold. I threatened planets, toppled kings, trapped men in a time loop. It was always for the greater good, I told myself. But I knew I was lying. I shouldn’t even call myself the Doctor anymore.” A ghost of a sarcastic smile. “I should call myself the Valeyard.”

She had never seen the classic episode, but she’d heard about it. A future version or regeneration of the Doctor, meant to be between his 12^th and final, at least in the classic era. An amalgamation of all the darkest parts of the Doctor. It made sense, that he would feel like the Valeyard now. Maybe it was her arrival that prevented it. Maybe that was why she was here.

He looked at her, and in his eyes, she saw her own fear. The fear that the way he thought of her would change if he knew her secret. He was waiting for her to pass judgement. She only knew a little of what he’d done, but she could imagine. She’d seen enough of his darker moments on the show to know what he was capable of becoming.

But how could she pass judgement on him? She hadn’t been there. She didn’t know what he knew. And could it possibly undo all the good he’d ever done? And how could she judge him, knowing what she’d done herself?

He had been alone too long, that was really what the problem was. There’d been no one to restrain him, to bring him back to himself. That was why he’d initially been so cold towards her, when she’d first arrived. And that was why he’d been so ready to travel with her. Not because he was a ‘fan’. Because he needed someone with him, and then there she was, like magic. Maybe it’d been his wish that helped bring her here, too.

Molly reached over and grabbed one of his hands in each of hers. “See? You need someone. I’ll help, if I can.” She couldn’t grant him forgiveness for the things he’d done; those things had nothing to do with her. But at least she could offer him support. “We’ll figure something out together. In the meantime, I’ll call you out if you’re ever nearing a line.”

He made a sound as though he’d considered chuckling. “Don’t I know it,” he said. But his smile was genuine. “I suppose you’d know better than most what it looks like, when I need someone to hold me back.” He gave her hands a little squeeze.

She gave them a little squeeze back, and then folded her hands back into her lap. “I guess. Probably. Same as you would about me, anyway.”

The Doctor began gathering up the bits of wire that seemed too damaged to be put back. “I don’t think you ever resorted to violence in the show. Well…” he paused. “Maybe once or twice. When it was well deserved.”

Molly tried to think of what he was referring to. “Oh. You mean that guy at the bar I punched for grabbing and shaking that woman because he was mad she was a lesbian?”

“Did you really break your hand?”

Molly shrugged. “I was a ballerina. I didn’t exactly learn how to throw a punch right.” She paused. “Or to think things through, clearly, if they showed his buddy shoving my face into the bar after. And that police officer arresting me when I mouthed off to him. And flipped him off. …I should have just flagged down a bouncer.”

The Doctor stood and slipped the wires in his pocket. “Still, it’s a part of why I like your show. It’s a rare dramatic mystery show that shows a woman who is…usually…more inclined towards pacifism.” He offered a hand to help her up, which she gladly accepted.

She’d never really considered herself a pacifist, but she supposed he was right. She couldn’t think of a drama or mystery show that didn’t contain violence, and she’d never really needed to use it. “Well, there aren’t that many scifi shows that have a main character who uses a screwdriver to solve problems rather than a weapon,” she replied. “I think that’s partly why I started watching. I wasn’t really up for heavy violence at the time I was introduced to it. I needed to see someone who didn’t immediately turn to violence to change a situation.”

The Doctor nodded understandingly. “Whenever I was frustrated when things that I tried to solve peacefully became violent, it was nice to see a show where the main character used her wits and negotiation skills rather than violence as the solution.”

Molly laughed. “Yeah, I guess I used to do that a lot. I feel like I haven’t helped much since I got here, at least, I haven’t really used any negotiation skills.”

“You don’t think so?” he asked, and when she shook her head, he said, “The Vannique?”

She considered. “Okay, maybe a bit there. But it wasn’t like it was complicated.”

“The Mechanas?”

Shrugging, Molly replied, “That was more a desperate apology than a negotiation.”

“Do you really think just anyone would have been willing to get on their knees to something that fully capable of killing them, and ask for peace?” The Doctor walked around her and started towards the stairs, down to where they still had repairs to do. “Not to mention how quickly you organized people to start taking care of rescue operations.”

“I said, like, five things,” she replied.

He stopped on the stairs and turned back to look at her. “You negotiated with two alien races, and helped humans on another planet to organize to save as many of them as possible. Since you couldn’t negotiate with the Daleks and Vashta Nerada, you instead instigated a fight between them to help us get out safely, and without having to kill them all one by one. You can’t negotiate with a wildfire, but you trusted the White Stag that got us out of the fire. You’ve done quite a bit more to help everywhere we’ve been than you think.” 

Molly stopped on the top step and looked down at him. “Okay. You have a point. I’m pretty great.” She always swung so wildly between overconfident and self-doubting that she was sure it gave him whiplash as much as it gave her. Her therapist would have said she was covering her insecurity, but she hadn’t had a therapist in years, save for the one she was forced to see for the trauma of being shot, so Molly felt free to ignore examining that possibility.

The Doctor smiled and turned, taking a few more steps down the stairs and glancing to the left – and then stopping dead. “Oh, hello there,” he said, his voice polite, but uncertain. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

He continued down the stairs and began walking towards something, and Molly followed quickly so she could see what it was he was speaking to. It was immediately obvious; a crack hanging in the air near where they’d been working together earlier. A familiar crack, with a specific shape, leaking golden light.

She started to follow him all the way down, but the Doctor held out a warning hand. “Stay there. Don’t move.” She watched his face as he took the screwdriver out of his pocket. He was drained of color, almost to a sickly grey. His lips were trembling. His hands shook ever so slightly as he held the screwdriver out, and began scanning the crack. His eyes were wide, and apprehensive. More than apprehensive. She hadn’t seen him this afraid before, at least not in reality.

He looked at the scans, then back at the crack. “What are you doing? You should have closed.” He took a few careful steps towards it. “According to the scans, you’re not really here. But you are here. You both exist and don’t exist. So why are you here? And why now?”

Molly held her breath as she watched him inch closer. She wanted to tell him to stay back, that they didn’t know if it was safe or if he might get sucked in or if it was just an echo of the crack or if it was the Time Lords trying to get his name and return again, or to take away his new regeneration cycle, or, or, or…but she knew better than to try to hold him back from a mystery. Especially one so personal.

The Doctor stepped close to it, and leaned down to look into the crack. She couldn’t see his reaction from there, even after taking a step backwards to get a better angle. But she saw the determination on his face when he took a few quick steps backward and held the sonic out. The high-pitched sound it practically screamed hurt her ears, rising in pitch every few seconds. She thought she could see beads of sweat forming on his brow.

At last, the crack widened an inch, and the Doctor lowered the screwdriver. He moved forward and looked inside again.

“Do you see anything?” It wouldn’t be ideal to break his concentration, she knew, but she had to know.

He leaned in closer to the crack. “I don’t know. It’s just sort of…taupe with dots of color. Maybe stars? Colored stars against a fawn-colored sky? I can’t see…” he leaned back and tried the sonic again. The crack widened another fraction, but then snapped shut and disappeared so suddenly the Doctor leapt back as she jumped in surprise. He immediately started circling the area with a sonic, rushing around to scan the entire lower area. He focused in on where the crack had been, and then waved his hand around as though he might catch a thread of it like catching a bit of spiderweb. Then he turned and rushed back up the stairs, brushing by her as he did. She turned and followed him up, to find him already at the TARDIS console, plugging the sonic into something.

“Do you have any idea what it was doing back here?” she asked as she approached. “Any theories at all?”

“Oh, hundreds,” he replied, as he started examining the scans he’d made on the monitor. “Not one of which make any sense.”

She watched the scans, and then watched him watching the scans, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to read any of it, but might possibly be able to read a reaction on his face. An expression from him would tell her more than the numbers on the screen.

After a few minutes, he looked at her out of the side of his eye, then back to the screen, then back to her. “Stop staring at me like that.”

“Okay,” she replied, and turned to look over at the TARDIS doors. “Not sure what else I’m supposed to be doing right now, though. Is there anything I can fix?”

“There’s no part of the TARDIS you could hope to be able to fix on your own,” he replied, and when she turned to hit him, he was already wincing in anticipation. She decided to lower her hand instead. “I just need a few minutes to look at this. I don’t think I’ll find anything, but there must be a reason it appeared here. There must be.”

“It’s freaking me out, too,” she admitted. She glanced down at herself, at the dust and frizz and something like oil that was more silver than black that she’d managed to get on her dress while helping him. “I’ll just go change really quick.”

The Doctor nodded distractedly, and she turned and headed out of the control room and back to her own. Upon opening the door, she found the room filled with laundry hampers, all across the floor and leaning against the dresser and piled up on the bed.

“Hmm.” Molly looked around the room, and stepped inside, having to immediately sidestep a hamper in order to do so. “This is because I keep leaving clothes on the bathroom floor, isn’t it?”

She didn’t really need an answer. She fought her way to the dresser and changed into high-waisted denim shorts and a blue tank top and her leather jacket, and, in retribution, found a small space of available floor to drop the dress. She stuck her tongue out at the ceiling, and then started towards the door – and immediately thought better. She was supposed to be trying to make friends with the TARDIS, not end up lost inside her for an eternity. She quickly turned and picked the dress up and dropped it in the nearest hamper, and then looked up again with an apologetic look. “Hi. Sorry. Sorry. Really sorry. I won’t do it again,” she lied. She knew it would definitely happen again, even though she’d try not to.

Molly returned to the control room as the Doctor was switching off the monitor. “No luck?”

The Doctor picked up the screwdriver and stuck it in his pocket. “None. I’ll have to wait and see if it turns up again.”

Molly nodded. It was unnerving, knowing that a crack in time and space could show up at any time and do…something, anything really. A crack that had already threatened the universe more than once. But what could she possibly do about it? Nothing. Especially if the Doctor couldn’t.

But it was frustrating, for him so much more than her, she was sure. He’d already had to save the universe from that crack twice. The things he’d had to do to stop it…

Molly knew in an instant, though she’d never say so. If she could die to stop it instead of him, she would. He was so much more important than she was. So maybe it wasn’t so bad that the TARDIS was taking so long to find her way home.

His face was distant. She wanted to do something to cheer him a bit.

She walked up and tapped him on the shoulder, and he turned away from staring at the blank monitor. “Yes?”

Molly cleared her throat, and prayed to whatever force it was that had brought her there she’d get it right this time, and made one last attempt at ‘good morning’.

He smiled, and pulled her into a side hug. The twinkle in his eye made her feel that, this time, she really had gotten it right. “Good morning to you, too, Molly.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Eighteen

Stay for Dinner

“No, no,” the Doctor was saying, a few hours later. “You need to hold the light blue button on the helm panel down while you release the time-rotor handbrake, then set the plotter, then twist the gyroscoptic stabilizer, and then run your finger across the…what did you call it?...pearl pad.”

Molly clung as tightly to what looked like an updated zig-zag plotter as she could with one hand, and a switch with the other. It took a minute for her to convince her brain that letting go of the plotter wouldn’t actually send her hurtling into space, and then she slowly released the plotter and pressed the button and flipped the switch, then let go of the button and moved the plotter, and then twisted the…gyro-something…and then swiped her hand over the pad.

“Good!” the Doctor said with approval. “Now, three steps to the right, and spin the – the – the thingy, four times counter-clockwise.” Molly took the three steps, and reached for the crank the Doctor had indicated, but the Doctor shouted, “Counterclockwise!” She adjusted her hand and spun it the right way. Or, left way, rather.

She wasn’t sure why she’d thought learning to fly the TARDIS was a good idea. Theoretically, yes, an excellent opportunity any Doctor Who fan would die for. In reality, she had only just started to stop feeling like she was going to vomit every time she remembered they were in space. It was like someone afraid of heights deciding to fly a plane.

The Doctor, at least, was encouraging. Mostly. At times he was a bit like James when Molly had tricked him into letting her drive his Porsche 911 despite not knowing how to drive manual and only just barely being able to drive at all, but whenever she got something right, she could feel the Doctor beaming from the other side of her. That made it worth it. Sort of.

“Molly, focus!” he shouted, and then pushed her out of the way. He moved so quickly she wasn’t quite sure what he did until he had already stepped back and gestured for her to take his place. “You almost crashed into 1561!”

The obstacles were a lot more interesting than driving through the country, anyway.

Molly stepped up and flipped a switch he indicated. “What next?”

“Okay, okay, now…walk around to the keypad, and…gently…press the top left, bottom right, and then the middle button twice. Then pull the lever.”

She moved around the console, repeating the directions to herself, until she pressed the keys – top left, bottom right, middle, middle – and then pulled the famous lever, and was rewarded with that wonderful TARDIS landing sound. She turned to the Doctor with wide eyes. “Wait – did I just – are we -”

“Landed!” He shouted, rubbing his hands together. He leaned into the monitor and pointed into it. “Perfectly, too, by the looks of it.” He turned towards her with an uplifted hand, and Molly gave him a high five.

“Are you serious?” she breathed. “I just flew the TARDIS somewhere?”

“Not just somewhere! London, 2015. We’ll just pop out for a bit.”

Molly leaned towards the monitor, and saw that they were parked in an alley, with people walking around a few feet away down the street. “I can’t believe I just flew the TARDIS.”

“And we didn’t crash!”

She wanted to be smart about him expecting them to crash, but honestly, she was surprised, too. “This is amazing.” 

“You did great!” He replied, as he headed for the door. She followed him out into the alley, and they walked out onto a busy London street.

“I didn’t really have the opportunity to look around London much before I got here. Pretty much just the airport,” Molly said as she looked up and down the street. “It’s so exciting to actually be here.”

“All of time and space, and London still excites you,” the Doctor said, sounding a little surprised.

She shrugged, looking over to him. “I could say the same about you. You’re here all the time.”

“Fair enough,” replied the Doctor, as they started moving down the street. “I do like to drop in now and then. Keep an eye out for any alien invasions. These particular decades seem very popular for it.”

“Probably why the show is centered on this time period,” Molly mused. She peeked into windows to see London fashion. It was a lot like American fashion had been at the time. She remembered wearing all those layers. What had everyone been thinking?

“Speaking of alien invasions…” the Doctor said softly, pausing in his walking.

Molly almost groaned. “You’re kidding me. What did you see?”

The Doctor pointed down the street, towards another alley. “A couple of beady eyes glancing up and down the street from behind the wall. Short. Grey body. One little fang.”

Molly looking ahead and scanned around, but didn’t see anything. “An Adipose?”

“Yep,” the Doctor replied, headed for the alley.

Molly half-jogged to catch up. “What is an Adipose doing here, now?”

“No idea,” replied the Doctor. “Quite a few years ago they used Earth as a sort of breeding ground for them, and then left with them all. Theoretically them all. It may have gotten left behind.”

“For all these years?” That was a long time for one little Adipose to be hiding out. How long were their lifespans?

They turned down the alley. There was a dumpster with a few trash bags piled beside it on one side, an abandoned bicycle on the other, covered in rust. But no Adipose.

“Is it hiding?” Molly whispered to the Doctor, not wanted to alarm the Adipose if it was nearby.

The Doctor took out the sonic. “Probably. That’s how it’s gotten by for so long, without getting caught and experimented on, or imprisoned. It’s a clever one.”  He began to scan the area. “It’s alright. We won’t hurt you,” he said louder, reassuringly. He followed where the sonic seemed to lead him, towards the dumpster. He tucked the sonic back in his pocket, and peeked behind the dumpster. “Hello there. I’m the Doctor. I’m here to help. I can get you home, if you like.”

She saw the Adipose hesitantly stick its little head out, like a stray cat nervously deciding whether or not to trust someone. The Doctor crouched down, and held his hand out, palm up. The Adipose took a step out, and braced itself as though expecting an attack. But after a moment, it took another step forward, and touched the Doctor’s fingers experimentally. Molly crossed her fingers behind her back, and was glad when the Adipose stepped up to sit in the Doctor’s hand.

“Alright. I’m just going to put you in my pocket while we head back to my ship, so no one spots you. Don’t worry, it’s bigger on the inside,” he explained as he opened his coat, and held the Adipose up to his pocket. The Adipose lifted itself up by the edge of it, then dove in, head-first. The Doctor carefully closed his jacket, and gave Molly a thumbs up.

Molly gave a sigh of relief. “Finally, something goes smoothly.”

The Doctor frowned. “Don’t jinx it.” He headed out of the alley, Molly trailing behind him, stepped out and turned to walk back to the TARDIS – and then immediately stepped back, his face going pale.

“What is it?” Molly asked, her stomach sinking. Maybe she really had jinxed them.

“Saw someone I really shouldn’t run into.”

Knowing the Doctor and remembering the ballet, she asked, “Is it you?”

“No. Worse.”

“Who?”

“Not me,” he said. “We should be going. Don’t want them knowing it’s me. I already…it might cause problems.” He turned and grabbed her arm and started walking quickly to exit at the other side of the alley. They were about halfway down it when Molly heard a shout.

“Hey!” Footsteps approached from behind them. The Doctor stopped, but didn’t turn, so Molly did.

She was a terrible liar, but she hoped she covered her shocked expression well, because approaching them quickly from the other side was unmistakably Martha Jones. Jeans, graphic tank top, red leather jacket, determined look in her eye.

Molly swallowed, then tried for a casual tone. “Hey. Is there a problem?”

Martha shook her head, as she glanced around the alley. “I’m just looking for something. Have you seen anything weird around here?”

“Weird?” Molly repeated, and knew exactly how bad she was going to butcher this before she even spoke. “No, no. Nothing weird. I’ve never seen anything weird. All totally normal.” Molly pinched the Doctor’s arm to try to get him to turn around and save them.

Martha’s suspicious eyes moved to the Doctor’s back. “How about you, mister? See anything strange?”

The Doctor took a moment before turning with a large, overly-friendly grin on his face. “Me? Of course not. The epitome of normal, that’s me. Call me Mr. Normal.” He paused, and made a face. “No, don’t call me Mr. Normal. How boring is that? Call me – ah…” He seemed to realize what he’d been about to say. “Call me John Smith.”

“John Smith?” Martha’s eyebrows went up. “I used to have a friend called John Smith.”

“Unsurprising. Very common name. Anyway, we should be off, my friend here needs to head to A&E. Twisted her…” He looked up and down at Molly, looking for something that could be wrong with her that wouldn’t be immediately evident. “Eardrum.”

“Eardrum?” Martha said skeptically.

“Yes. Very painful. Isn’t it, Molly?”

Molly wished he wasn’t making her speak, but it was better than sitting by and watching this train wreck. “Uh. Yeah. Ow.”

Martha folded her arms over her chest. “Well, I’m a doctor, maybe I can take a look at it.” Clearly testing them.

“No need. We’ll just be going,” replied the Doctor, as he grabbed Molly’s arm and started to drag her behind him, making his way around Martha. Molly saw him tuck the Adipose’s head back into his coat as they hurried away.

They made it out to the alley without Martha stopping them, but Molly still looked back to make sure they weren’t being followed before leaning closer to the Doctor’s ear. “She totally knows it’s you.”

“She doesn’t know. Of course she doesn’t know. How would she know?”

“As much as you lie, you kind of suck at it sometimes. And we both know I’m the world’s worst liar.”

“I don’t think you’re being very fair to yourself,” he replied. “You’re not the worst liar in the world.”

Molly chuckled. “You’re wrong, but thanks.”

“You’re the worst liar in the universe.”

“Oh, thanks,” she said sarcastically. “But seriously, she definitely knows it’s you. Even with a new face, you’re pretty recognizable.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, no. She has absolutely no reason to be suspicious.” They turned down the alley, headed for the TARDIS. “I’ll just drop this little fella off in here, and we’ll head back out. Opposite direction. Best she not know it’s me.”

“Okay,” Molly said doubtfully. She glanced back, but still didn’t see Martha following. Maybe she’d decided to pursue the Adipose instead, and search the alley thoroughly. She must have been tracking it down.

The Doctor unlocked the TARDIS and headed inside while Molly waited outside. It wasn’t long until the Doctor stepped back out again, and turned to lock the TARDIS up. “All settled in a nice bath. He’s clearly been out on the street awhile. I think-”

“I knew it!” came Martha’s voice from down the alley. Molly smirked and turned as Martha approached with long strides. “I knew it was you.”

“I told you so,” Molly said, making sure to put as much arrogance in her voice as possible. “You’re very distinctive.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes, but then turned with a smile. “Can’t get anything past you, hey?”

“Never,” Martha replied, smiling as she stopped a few feet from them. She looked him up and down. “Your face is different.”

“I regenerated. For real, this time. No hand to use to cheat the process and keep the old face.” He paused, a thoughtful look spreading across his features. “Well, that time, that is.”

“You look…” Martha began, looking him up and down again, and took a step closer to peer at his face. Molly saw the Doctor straighten his bowtie and stand straight, clearly ready for a compliment. But Martha said with a softer voice, “…older.”

The Doctor’s face fell. “Well, so do you, but I wasn’t going to mention it,” he said grumpily.

Martha was still looking into his eyes, smiling as she clearly found something familiar in them. “You really are the same old Doctor, aren’t you?”

The Doctor gave a begrudging smile. “That’s me. Silly old Doctor, as ever.”

Martha leaned back and looked at him expectedly. “…well?”

“Well,” the Doctor responded.

“Are you gonna hug me, or what?”

Molly saw the lines form around his eyes as he smiled, a sign that despite his hesitation in meeting her again, he was truly happy to see her. He gave a small laugh and surged forward, seizing her in a tight hug. “Good old Martha Jones!” It took a little while before he kissed the side of her head and pulled away. “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” Martha replied, still smiling. “The last time I saw you…it looked like you were saying goodbye.”

The Doctor nodded. “I was. I was dying, about to regenerate. I wanted to see everyone first.”

Martha’s expression turned to something a little more serious. “Did you get to see Rose?”

“Yeah,” replied the Doctor. “Well, not the Rose that I knew, that knew me. I stopped by the New Years before she met me.”

Martha’s smile returned as she nodded with approval, and then she turned to Molly. “And this must be your new friend. Glad to see you aren’t alone. I’m Martha, Martha Jones,” she said, holding out a hand.

Molly stepped forward with a grin and shook her hand. Martha Jones. She was shaking the hand of Martha Jones. “Molly Quinn,” she introduced herself, and hoped her handshake was strong enough, but also not crushing her hand. She always felt Martha was severely underrated, and wanted to make a good impression. “It’s so nice to meet you. The Doctor’s told me all about you,” she added, just in case she let some knowledge she had of Martha from the show slip.

“Has he?” Molly glanced back to the Doctor nervously. “Only the good stuff, I hope.”

The Doctor waved a hand dismissively. “It’s all good stuff, remember?”

Martha stuck her hands in her pockets as she turned back to the Doctor. “What are you doing here? Were you here for the Adipose? Something else? Nothing too serious, I hope.”

“Not serious at all!” declared the Doctor. “I was showing Molly how to fly the TARDIS. This was as good a place to stop as any.”

“Then you have some time available?” Martha asked hopefully. When the Doctor replied in the affirmative, Martha said, “You really should come and see Mickey, then. He’ll be furious if you don’t.”

The Doctor clapped his hands together. “Mickey! Yes! Let’s go say hi to Mickey.”

“Excellent,” Martha said, and turned to begin back down the alley. The Doctor followed beside her, and Molly followed a bit behind, giving the two a chance to have a bit of a chat together and catch up. Martha didn’t live too far from where they’d landed, so all they’d really had a chance to discuss was it had been “a few hundred” years for the Doctor (Molly assumed he was concerned a real estimate would prompt questions he wasn’t ready for), and that Martha and Mickey were semi-retired from UNIT, only brought in for special cases.

They reached the door and Martha took out her key to open it.

“Ah! You still have the TARDIS key,” said the Doctor, pointing at where it dangled beside what seemed to be a car key.

“Of course!” replied Martha. “You never know if you might need it again. Besides, it’s a nice keepsake, a little reminder of when we were traveling together.”

As Martha turned back to the door, Molly spotted the Doctor’s expression. He was touched by Martha holding on to the key all this time. And as Martha opened the door, she saw that warmed expression turn a little anxious, and he hesitated to follow Martha inside. He seemed nervous to see Mickey again, to spend time with Martha. Molly reached out and squeezed his arm reassuringly, and then stepped inside ahead of him, to buy him another few seconds.

She walked down a little hall to the living room, and shortly heard the front door close behind her. The living room was as normal a living room as Molly had ever seen, not just with neutral-colored furniture, but with the lived-in look she felt so much more comfortable in then places that looked so neat and clean they could be found on the cover of a magazine. A few mugs sat on the coffee table, beside the coasters they were meant to be on. A couple books sat on the edge of it, one on black holes, one an Agatha Christie mystery, and two children’s books on top of them. One armchair had a pile of laundry, and across the couch were strewn a few teddy bears, and more laundry draped over an arm. Under the coffee table Molly spotted a child’s brightly colored xylophone, and there were a few blocks around the entertainment center. The television showed an action movie Molly thought had been popular at the time.

In the other armchair sat Mickey Smith, his feet up against the coffee table, one hand on the remote, dressed in a plain black t-shirt and blue jeans.

“Mickey, guess who’s dropped by for a visit,” Martha said, as she stepped in and began picking up the laundry on the couch.

Mickey glanced over to Molly and the Doctor, and looked confused as he paused the movie and stood. “Hi. Sorry,” he apologized. “I’m sure we met sometime, but I don’t remember.”

“That’s alright, it’s been a while,” said the Doctor, taking a big step over a wood train set to stand next to Mickey. “I look a bit different.” 

Mickey’s face scrunched up a bit as he stared at the Doctor, trying to place him, while the Doctor stood there, beaming goofily. Mickey glanced around the Doctor at Martha, who looked like she was holding back her excitement, and then over to Molly, then back to the Doctor.

“Still not sure where I know you from,” replied Mickey apologetically, but as soon as he’d said it, his eyes widened with realization. “Wait – no way. Doctor?”

“Hi there, Mickey!” replied the Doctor eagerly, now seizing Mickey’s hand in an overenthusiastic handshake. Mickey still looked stunned. “It’s lovely to see you again, really. It’s been a long time. Well, for me it’s been a long time. Not sure if it’s been a long time for you. It’s…what, six years? Is that a long time?”

Mickey still seemed taken aback, especially by the rush of words. The Doctor moved away from Mickey and started looking around. “I don’t under…” Mickey began, but then his face broke out in a smile. “I mean, it’s really good to see you, too, Doctor.”

The Doctor picked up a doll sitting on top of the entertainment center and looked under it, then set it down and turned, examining the place. “See you redecorated, Martha. Not to my taste, but if it’s what you like.”

Martha seemed confused by this comment. “You haven’t been here before, Doctor.”

The Doctor looked at her with surprise. “I haven’t?”

“It’s not the same place, Doctor,” explained Molly, then she turned and offered her hand to Mickey. “I’m Molly Quinn. Nice to meet you.” What a delight to introduce herself by her real name.

“Nice to meet you,” said Mickey, giving her a firm handshake. “You must be the new us.”

Molly shrugged. “Pretty much. Not quite as physically tough, but witty and cute.”

As Mickey laughed, the Doctor came back to clap him on the back. “So, Mickey! Mickey Smith! And Martha Jones! What have you two been up to since I’ve been gone?”

“I mentioned we both work for UNIT, just on special occasions. We still freelance sometimes, but not as often,” said Martha, “Since we…you know.” She gestured around the living room, and the Doctor nodded sagely.

“Martha went back to work as a doctor,” said Mickey. “I’ve been doing computer programming from home. It’s not much, not saving the universe, but it’s a good paycheck, and I like it. I’m good at it.”

“You did always have a mind for computers,” replied the Doctor, with a hint of pride in his voice.

Again, Mickey seemed a little confused. “You know, if you were this nice to me to begin with, we might’ve gotten on better.”

The Doctor looked thoughtful as he appeared to think back to when they’d first met. “I was bit of a Mr. Grumpyface at the time, yeah,” he admitted. “But look at us! We’re best mates now.”

“Best mates,” Mickey repeated skeptically. “Yeah. Speaking of that, we tried to invite you to our wedding, but you didn’t answer the call.”

The Doctor looked from Mickey to Martha, surprised. “Are you married?”

Molly lowered her face into her hands with secondhand embarrassment as Martha laughed.

“Yeah,” said Martha, holding up her hand to show him her ring. “We got married a bit before you came to say goodbye.”

“Ah,” said the Doctor, rubbing his hands together. “Sorry. I was busy. Forgot to check my messages for a bit. A decade or so.”

“He would’ve just embarrassed you with his dancing,” Molly interjected.

“I am an excellent dan - no, no, wait!” the Doctor interjected, pointing a finger at Martha. “There was another bloke. What was his name? Tom. Tom! What happened to Tom?”

Martha shrugged. “It just didn’t work out. It’s hard, you know. When you’ve been on so many adventures and you’re trying to share your life with someone who’ll never quite understand them. He didn’t really approve of me working for UNIT, either. Thought I should just focus on being a doctor. But I wanted to stick with UNIT at the time.”

“We’re a much better match,” said Mickey, sounding a bit defensive now.

“Right, yes,” agreed the Doctor. “Martha and Mickey. Mickey and Martha. This is lovely.”

Martha turned and started headed for the kitchen that Molly could see just around the corner. “You want to stay for dinner?”

 “I’m making some shepherd’s pie. There’ll be plenty,” added Mickey.

The Doctor wrung his hands together nervously. “Oh! No, thank you, thank you, we really shouldn’t impose.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” said Martha. “You’re staying. We’ve barely even started catching up.”

“Oh. I don’t…” the Doctor still seemed uncertain. Molly figured it had been a long, long time since he’d stayed anywhere for dinner, especially with friends. And it wasn’t something he did often in the first place.

“I’m starving, so I’m staying,” she said, making the decision for him. “You can go back to the TARDIS alone if you want.”

The Doctor hesitated, but slowly he smiled. “Well, in that case, I’d be glad to stay. Thanks.” He was, as he usually was, touched that Mickey and Martha wanted him to stay.

“Good, because I wasn’t giving you a choice,” replied Martha, and she turned and headed into the kitchen. She came out with a pile of plates and headed for the small dining table in the living room. She started setting the table, including one little bright orange plastic plate.

“Here, let me help,” Molly offered. “Where’s the silverware?”

“You don’t have to do that,” replied Martha.

“But I’m going to anyway. Where’s the silverware? I’m just gonna start opening random drawers otherwise,” she said, as she headed into the little kitchen. It smelled wonderful.

As Martha helped guide her to the silverware drawer, Molly listened in on the conversation in the living room. The Doctor was saying, “You’ve done really well, Mickey. Nice home, if you like that sort of thing. Great wife. A job using your talents. It’s good to see that.”

As Molly came out of the kitchen, she saw Mickey shaking his head in disbelief. “Are you really the Doctor? You’re being way too nice to me. It’s starting to freak me out.”

“Don’t be silly,” said the Doctor, clasping his arm for a moment. “I’m always nice to you.”

“That’s a laugh,” replied Mickey, but a moment later he added, “But thanks, Doctor. I appreciate it. I really do.”

Martha set the shepherd’s pie on the table. “Alright, we’re all set,” she said, then turned to shout down a nearby hall, “Maggie! Dinner! We have guests!”

The Doctor seemed confused, and even more so when a little girl about three and a half feet tall came trotting out of the hallway, a teddy bear that had clearly once been white in her arms. She eyed the Doctor suspiciously, then Molly.

The Doctor looked from Maggie to Mickey, then Martha. “…you had a baby?”

Molly again lowered her face into her hands. “I swear. I promise. He’s not always this stupid.”

The Doctor turned to Molly. “That’s the nicest thing you ever said about me.”

Molly narrowly avoided holding a finger up at him that would have been inappropriate in front of a child.

Martha was laughing. “Yes, Doctor. We have a daughter. This is Maggie. Maggie, this is an old friend of your dad and I. He’s called the Doctor. And that’s his friend Molly.”

Maggie waved her fingers nervously and held the bear tighter. The Doctor stepped up to her and crouched down to her level, and offered his hand. “Hi, Maggie. It’s very nice to meet you,” he said, his voice gentle.

Maggie hesitated a moment, then gave a shy smile and put her hand in his. “I’m five,” she informed him seriously.

“Five!” the Doctor exclaimed, shaking her hand. “That’s practically a grown-up.” He stood, and measured her height against him, exaggerating where she came to on his body. “You’re going to be taller than me, soon. And what’s their name?” He asked, briefly poking the nose of the teddy bear.

“He’s Bailey,” Maggie replied, holding him out proudly. She pressed a button in its paw and the bear announced ‘I love you!’. “He protects me from the monsters.”

“Ohh, monsters,” the Doctor replied seriously. “Are there very many scary monsters in your room?”

Maggie nodded. “They run under my bed.”

“It’s mice,” Martha explained. “Somehow mice got in. That reminds me, Mickey, did you place the traps?”

“I may have forgotten that,” Mickey admitted as he took his seat at the table. “I’ll get to it.”

“It’s monsters in my closet, too,” insisted Maggie.

The Doctor turned back to Maggie. “You know how to protect yourself from monsters, right?”

Maddie nodded. “Pull the covers over your head. Mummy taught me.” 

“Your mum’s a very smart woman,” said the Doctor.

“And a nightlight,” added Maggie.

“Nightlights essential,” replied the Doctor. “And you’ve got Bailey, and your mum and dad. I think you’re well protected. I think it’s the monsters that should be scared.”

Maggie giggled, then ran and hid behind Martha, who guided her to the table. “Bedtime after dinner,” she announced, helping Maggie onto her chair. There was a chair beside her for Bailey.

Molly and the Doctor moved to join them at the table. Molly smiled at the Doctor. He really was good with children. She’d always wanted to be that good with kids, but she never quite got the hang of it. It was probably for the best. She wouldn’t make the best role model for a kid.

Still, watching the Doctor with Maggie was heartwarming. He must have been an amazing dad, she thought, not for the first time.

“Well, let’s eat,” announce Mickey, and he began serving the shepherd’s pie.

It occurred to Molly that this was the first real family meal she’d had since she was a kid herself.

It was a lovely meal. She hadn’t had Shepherd’s Pie before, and it was delicious, despite her usual dislike of casseroles. But better than that was watching the Doctor reconnect with Martha and Mickey, occasionally giving a comment to Maggie. Molly mostly stayed silent, enjoying watching the old friends. Plus, well – it was Martha and Mickey. More characters from a show she loved that were absolutely real here.

She dodged a few questions about who she was and where she was from, except to say she was from Texas and had sort of stowed away on the TARDIS. Otherwise, her first real family meal in over a decade had been lovely.

Mickey cleared the table as Martha helped Maggie down from her chair, and handed her Bailey. “Okay, sweetheart, time for bed.”

“No, no, no, no, no!” Maggie screamed. “Not time for bed!”

“Yes, Maggie,” said Martha, picking her up. “You have a playdate tomorrow, remember?”

Maggie squirmed, trying to get free. “But it’s dark!”

“You have your nightlight,” Martha reminded her, headed for the hall.

“It’s still too dark! The monsters will get me!”

“Hey,” the Doctor started, and he stood and walked over. He held his arms out in a request to take Maggie from Martha, and as shy as Maggie had been, she dove into his arms to get away from the mother who was trying to send her to bed. “Are you scared of the dark?” Maggie nodded enthusiastically, and Molly could see tears in her eyes. “You know what? Me, too.”

“Grown-ups aren’t scared of the dark,” Maggie insisted.

“I’m only kind of a grown-up,” explained the Doctor. “You know what helps me?” She shook her head. “Knowing I have very brave friends who would help me if anything happened. Your mum and dad are some of those friends. Did you know that they’re very, very brave?” Maggie looked to Mickey, then Martha, then gave a small nod. “Yeah. They’re superheroes. They help me save the world.” Maggie giggled at that. “No, really. You don’t have to be afraid of the dark, because you’ve got your superhero dad and your superhero mum to watch out for you, don’t you? And Bailey will let them know if any monsters are trying to hurt you.” He shifted Maggie to one side and reached into his pocket and pulled out the sonic. The high-pitched sound seemed to echo on the walls as he pointed it at the teddy bear. As soon as he put his sonic back in his pocket, two cell phones gave little text alert sounds, and then announced in the same voice Bailey used, “Extraterrestrial nearby”. Mickey and Martha both reached for their phones and checked them. Martha slipped it back in her pocket with a smile.

Maggie looked confused. “What does extra-rest-sale mean?”

“Don’t worry about it,” replied the Doctor as he handed the little one back to her mother. “You just hold on really tight to that bear. Don’t lose him.”

Maggie held Bailey a little closer. “I won’t,” she promised.

The Doctor patted the curls down at the top of her head. “Think you can go to bed, now?”

Maggie considered it. “Mmmhm.”

Martha rested her cheek on top of her daughter’s head. “Say goodnight, Maggie.”

“Goodnight, Daw-tor,” said Maggie, then turned her head towards Molly. “Goodnight, Molly.”

“Goodnight, Maggie,” Molly replied. The Doctor waved as Martha headed down the hall.

Mickey approached the Doctor and patted his shoulder. “Thanks, Doctor,” he said. “That was really nice of you.”

“I told you I’m always nice,” the Doctor replied, but then added, “Don’t worry about it. Least I could do.”

“You sticking around this place and time for a while?”

The Doctor shook his head. “Just dropping by, as I said. People to go. Places to see.” He frowned. “Other way round, I think.”

Martha came back down the hall. “We really appreciate that, Doctor. It can be a bit nerve-wracking, raising a kid and knowing what’s out there.”

The Doctor nodded in understanding. “Now you’ll know if there’s anything to be worried about. And hopefully, when not to worry. About aliens, at least. Wait until she’s a teenager. Then you’ll have to worry about…you know…rock music, hanging out in pool halls…Twitter.” He didn’t seem to remember what it was teenagers actually had to deal with.

“We’ll, uh,” started Mickey. “Be prepared for that.”

“Well, good, good, you should be,” replied the Doctor. He paused a moment. “Well. We should be off.”

Molly wanted to object, to give them more time together, but she had already made him stay this long. She didn’t know what was going on in his head, didn’t know how well he was dealing with this. It was probably his turn to make a decision here.

Martha stared up at his face for a moment, as though trying to memorize it. Then she gave him a tight hug. “Don’t be a stranger,” she said, wiping tears off her face as she pulled away. “I know you will be, but still.”

“Oh, don’t cry, Martha,” said the Doctor, squeezing her shoulders. “You’ll get me started. And Molly is a crybaby, so that’ll get her started, and then poor Mickey will have to just stand and watch us all cry.”

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “It’s not like I’m gonna cry or anything.” Molly glanced over to him, and saw that he did, indeed, have tears in his eyes. He stepped up for his turn to hug the Doctor. “You be careful, alright? Don’t get into too much trouble.”

“I’m never in any trouble,” the Doctor replied. “Well, any real trouble. Well, I haven’t died. Well…it hasn’t stuck.”

“That’s my Doctor,” Martha laughed. She turned to Molly. “You look after him, now. He’s prone to do reckless things, I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I’ll try my best,” replied Molly. “It’s been really good to meet you, Martha. And you, Mickey.”

“Nice meeting you, too, Molly,” replied Mickey, as he reached out and shook her hand.

Martha came over and gave her a short hug. “It’s really nice to meet you.”

Molly gave Martha one tight squeeze before they separated. Martha and Mickey followed her and the Doctor towards the door. Molly opened it and stepped outside, and the Doctor followed behind her. He turned back towards his old companions, looking at them one last time. “See you later,” he said, his voice strained. He really hated goodbyes.

“Goodbye, Doctor,” said Martha. Mickey waved, and Molly thought he might be too scared to speak, in case his voice caught.

Then from the phone in Martha’s pocket came the words: “Extraterrestrial nearby.”

Chapter Text

Chapter Nineteen

Extraterrestrial Nearby

 “Extraterrestrial nearby.”

A look of alarm came over everyone’s faces, and the Doctor shoved his way past Martha and Mickey back inside, running for the hallway with Martha and Mickey on his heels. Molly stepped in and shut the door, and followed after them in time to see Maggie’s bedroom light come on.

“Maggie!” Martha shouted, running for the bed. Maggie was blinking at the light, a whine building in the back of her throat. Martha seized her daughter in her arms. “Thank God.”

“Mummy, what’s going on?”

The Doctor was searching the room with the sonic, throwing aside dolls and princess costumes and books, kicking aside a remote-control princess-themed car. “Has there been anything unusual lately? Has anything changed?”

As Martha whispered assurances to Maggie, Mickey said, “I don’t know. Not really. We moved here before Maggie was born, everything’s been the same.”

The Doctor turned to face Martha. “You said something about a mouse infestation.”

“They’re just mice,” said Martha. “They’ve been crawling around in Maggie’s closet and under our beds at night.”

“Only at night?”

“Yeah, usually when we’re just falling asleep,” said Mickey.

Molly made the connection and felt her heart sink. “Cybermats?”

“Cyberwhats?” asked Mickey. “Cybermen?”

“Cybermats,” the Doctor corrected, as though it clarified anything for Mickey. He dropped to the floor and searched under Maggie’s bed. “How long have the mice been here? Have you seen any of them?”

“I saw one,” replied Martha. “Under Maggie’s bed, a few nights ago.”

“Did you get a good look?”

“Not really, it was moving too quickly and ran into a pile of clothes.”

“Anything that hinted at silver?”

“No, it was black,” she said, then added, “It was just sort of…big. Not big enough to be a rat, but…oval. I thought it was just well-fed.”

Molly looked at the Doctor. “Are Cybermats ever black?”

The Doctor’s eyes were wide with surprise. “I…sometimes. Sometimes, yes. They used to be. But there was a very specific…” he sighed. “How long ago did you start hearing them?”

“About a month back,” replied Mickey with a note of panic. “We weren’t sure what they were at first. What’s going on? Are the Cybermen back?”

The Doctor continued his search of the room. “Cybermats are sort of little scouts for the Cybermen. I don’t know what the Cybermen would want with you, why they’re so focused on a little girl’s bedroom.”

Molly turned to look up and down the hall, in case the Cybermat had gotten out. She saw the door to the master bedroom open, and went to stand in the doorway, but didn’t want to go inside without permission. Her hesitance disappeared when she saw something move under the bed.

“Doctor! I think it’s in here!” she shouted. She heard footsteps rush down the hall and stepped out of the way when the Doctor arrived, followed again by Mickey. Molly pointed under the bed. “I saw something move.”

The Doctor rushed forward and dropped to his knees, searching under the bed. Martha came up behind her. They walked into the room and began looking around the dresser and hamper and curtains.

“Ah! Ah!” shouted the Doctor a few moments later as he pulled the pillows off the bed. Molly heard a ‘thud’ as something hit the floor, then shouted when she saw it running towards her, its body lifted to expose the mouth. She dodged it, then tried to dive at it, and missed. Martha came up from another way, but the Cybermat slipped out from under her. Mickey seemed to come out of nowhere with a broom and swept it in the Doctor’s direction. The Doctor threw a blanket towards it and dove onto the blanket, but it escaped the blanket too quickly for the Doctor to hold it still. When the Doctor stood again, Molly jumped forward and grabbed the blanket, spun around, and held it up in preparation as the Cybermat headed in Mickey’s direction. He swung the broom again and the Cybermat spun towards Molly. She fell to her knees with the blanket under her, crossed her ankles, and leaned forward with her palms, trapping the Cybermat under the blanket.

“Now what?!” shouted Molly, carefully shifting a knee to hold the Cybermat down.

“Hold on!” the Doctor knelt beside her with the sonic, and after a moment the Cybermat stopped struggling. “Okay. It’s deactivated.”

Molly moved off the blanket slowly, still hesitant. The Doctor threw the blanket aside and picked up the Cybermat, scanning it. “Is it telling you anything?”

“It will,” said the Doctor with a determined voice. “I just need to find out where it came from, where the Cybership is. We can go from there.”

Martha shrieked, but by the time Molly turned, she had darted out of the room. In less than a second, Mickey was out the door, too. Molly jumped to her feet and ran after them, and felt the Doctor next to her. But she only made it as far as the doorway before she froze in horror.

A large, black-colored Cyberman was in Maggie’s room. Molly watched, sickened, as it had Maggie halfway out of her bed, the blanket falling from off her head. Maggie started screaming. The Doctor rushed past her as Mickey began assaulting the Cyberman with the broom until the handle broke, and Martha clung to her daughter’s legs. Mickey turned to Molly. “Get the box in-” But his struggle to pull the Cyberman back took all his breath. Molly glanced over her shoulder to look for a box. She heard the Doctor using the sonic, and he was shouting something Molly couldn’t hear over Maggie’s screams and Martha and Mickey’s shouting. Molly charged ahead to try to get between the Cyberman and the closet it was backing into, but an odd buzzing sound from the Cyberman reached her ears.

And she was gone.

Rough brick against her back. Cold everywhere. Red dancing in front of her eyes as the light overhead swung back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The smell was coppery. The taste in her mouth was bitter. She could still hear the buzzing over the screams. She thought maybe her wrists were bleeding. Her throat ached something awful. The buzzing paused in time for a soft, wet thud on the ground to be heard. The screaming didn’t stop. The screaming got louder. And louder. And –

Now she was back, and it was Martha screaming. “Where is she?! Where did it take her?!”

What had happened while she was reliving that memory was clear. Maggie had been taken, and Molly hadn’t helped prevent it. She hadn’t helped.

Molly couldn’t understand when Martha had gotten so tall, but then she realized she was on the floor. The strange huffing sound was her own ragged breathing. Her heart was pounding as though it would burst out of her chest. Everything was fuzzy, like it was all spinning to a blur. She couldn’t make her mind focus. Everything was too bright, too loud.

But still, despite nothing feeling entirely real, she dragged herself to her knees, then used the wall to pull herself to her feet. She made her way down the hall and to the doorway of Maggie’s room.

The Doctor had been saying something while she’d been trying to readjust to where and when she was. Martha was on the bed, switching from looking at her phone – that was constantly saying, extraterrestrial nearby, extraterrestrial nearby, extraterrestrial nearby, counting how very surrounded Maggie was – and at the Doctor, who was in the closet, ripping out the carpet. Mickey stood to the side, looking both incredibly angry, and incredibly scared. 

“Why did they take her?” he wanted to know. “What would they want with a little kid? What could they use her for? She can’t be converted, she’s too small.”

“Are they going to hurt her?” Martha asked, though her face showed that she already knew the answer. She wanted reality to shift to give her hope.

Molly remembered a horrific detail she’d picked up during her time on Doctor Who fan forums, and thought of the Cybermat and what organic material it may have been made of. She hoped the Doctor wouldn’t say.

Of course he wouldn’t. “I don’t think they have a reason to,” he lied. He paused in his work and turned to Martha, placing a hand on either side of her face. “But I promise, I’m going to get her back, and unharmed. I swear.”

Martha nodded tearfully, and the Doctor turned back to his work, but spotted Molly in the doorway. “What happened to you?” There was a hint of accusation in his voice. She couldn’t blame him. A Cyberman was stealing a little girl away, and she hadn’t helped.

That failure crushed her lungs for a moment, and she watched the Doctor go back into the closet to finish off the carpet. When she could breathe again, she took a few steps into the room and said, “Flashback. Sorry. Can’t help it.” She saw him glance back at her curiously, and then decide to put those questions on hold. Just like she had to set aside the anguish of failing in the only reason she was alive. There were more pressing matters.

Mickey stepped up to help drag pieces of carpet out. Molly moved forward and peeked into the closet. Under the carpet, there was an odd hexagonal pattern of silver on a backdrop of deep blue and red, with shots of colored wire in between. Lights moved up and down the colored wires, back and forth, back and forth. Molly looked away.

“What is it?” Mickey wanted to know.

“Transporter,” replied the Doctor, taking a step into it and looking around. “The monsters in the closet were real. They’ve been using this to get in and out. I can use it to get-” And he vanished.

“Doctor!” Martha cried, rushing into the closet. “Doctor!”

“Where’d he go?” asked Mickey.

“They must have transported him to the ship,” said Molly, her heart in her throat. “I don’t – I don’t know what to do now.” She’d been separated from the Doctor before, but not like this. Not with no obvious path forward.

“We have to get him and Maggie back,” said Martha. She turned to her husband. “Do you think you can find out where the ship is?”

“Yeah,” said Mickey. “How are we gonna get on it, though?”

“I don’t know yet. I’ll figure it out. First, we need to know where they are.” Molly was grateful that Martha had taken charge.

Mickey ran into the living room, and Molly heard what she assumed was him pulling out his laptop. Martha was examining the transporter. And Molly was standing there, useless, buzzing still in her head.

She couldn’t be useless. She’d already failed them once. That couldn’t happen again. So – what could she do?

“You have any weapons?” she asked.

“In the bedroom closet,” Martha replied. “But just the one. I’m like the Doctor, I don’t like to carry a gun if I can help it. But Mickey’s used to them after living in that other universe. Made him nervous not to have one on hand. UNIT gave it to him.”

Molly turned and ran for the closet. She dug through piles of winter coats and a few storage bins before she found a box locked with a padlock. This was what he’d been asking her to get just before her flashback. “Do you have the code?!”

“I don’t remember it,” Mickey admitted. “I was gonna go get another lock.”

Molly ran back into the hall, where she’d seen another closet. Hopefully, she opened the door, and was rewarded with a tool kit. She pulled out a hammer and ran back, and hit the padlock repeatedly, until the lock broke off. She threw the case open and pulled out the gun. It was bigger than she was used to. She hoped she wouldn’t have to be the one to fire it.

Molly went into the living room, where Martha was pacing and Mickey was typing away at the laptop.

“I think I’ve almost got it,” he said. “I’m using Torchwood and UNIT satellites. I don’t think they’ve noticed it yet. It looks like its hiding behind the moon.”

“How do we get there, then?” asked Molly.

“The TARDIS?” Martha suggested. “Do you know how to fly it?”

“I…I…” Everything was moving too quickly. She felt like the Doctor immediately after regeneration. She hadn’t had time to recover yet. Her brain was a mess of kidnapped children and buzzing and lights and red. “No. Yes! No, not really. I just flew it here. The Doctor guided me the whole way.”

“Well, we’ll figure it out together, then.”

Mickey reached into his computer bag and pulled out a pile of Post It notes and a pen, and scribbled down something on the screen. “I have them. The coordinates. We can go get them, and wipe the Cybermen out.”

“I don’t have a key to the TARDIS,” Molly admitted. She wasn’t supposed to be in this universe this long, there was no reason for the Doctor to give her one.

“I’ve got mine,” said Martha, grabbing her keys off a side table.

Molly tried to think of everything at once. How to fly the TARDIS, what to do if they got there, how to distract the Cybermen, how to find the Doctor and Maggie, how to get them out, how to stop whatever it was the Cybermen were planning. She was usually good at thinking a few steps ahead when she needed to, but it was all failing her now. Shifting lights. Buzzing sounds. Red. “We need something…” she started, and waited for it to come to her. She looked around the room. Mug on the coffee table, magazines on the end table, TV remote, laundry, princess dolls –

“Aha!” she shouted, set the gun aside, and ran back to Maggie’s room. She grabbed the remote-control car, and then went to the tool kit for some wire and wire cutters. She headed back to the living room. When she got back, Mickey had put the gun in a gym bag.

“What’s that for?” asked Mickey.

“I’m hoping it’s a decent recon and distraction. If we tie one of your phones to the car and start a video call with the other on mute, we can use it to look into rooms before we enter them, and they may think the car is a human version of a Cybermat and go after it. Either way, at least it’s something we might be able to use to get at least one Cyberman out of the way.”

“Good thinking,” Martha nodded. “Okay, let’s go.” 

They ran at full speed for the TARDIS, pushing their way through the evening crowd headed home after a dinner out. When they arrived, Martha was in such a rush to get in she fumbled with the keys a little, but they got the door open quickly and burst inside. Molly ran for the console, looked down at it, and was instantly overwhelmed. Where did she begin? How did she set the coordinates? The Doctor had done that bit.

Mickey handed her the Post It. “Let’s get going.”

“Right,” Molly breathed, setting the toy car and wire aside. Please, please. If the universe was ever going to help me, let it help me now. But the universe wasn’t the right non-human source to be asking for help.

She looked at the light of the TARDIS. “Okay,” she said softly. “The Doctor is in trouble. Martha and Mickey’s daughter is in trouble. I don’t know how to do this.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know how to do this?!” shouted Mickey, but Martha shushed him.

Molly continue, “You flew for Clara once, to save the Doctor. Please help me, too.” She paused. “We can’t let them…” She couldn’t say ‘die’, not in front of Maggie’s parents.

“Can you do this?” Martha asked, clearly trying to force her voice to be gentle despite the panic. “I can try to help, but you’re the one who has flown it before. Can you do it again?”

Molly looked at Martha and forced a smile. “Me? No. But the TARDIS can help me. I only believe in two things in the universe: The Doctor, and the TARDIS.” She looked back up at the light, thinking of some way she could beg or bribe. All she could think of was – “Come on, sexy!”

“Sexy?” she heard Mickey’s voice behind her, and chose to ignore him. Explaining that it was one of the TARDIS’s names was a bit much for the moment.

She reached for the console almost subconsciously, and pulled a lever. A true smile of relief crossed her face as she ran around the console, flipping switches, and paused in front of the keyboard. She looked at the Post It and typed it in. Two hits of a button, a pull of a lever, and that glorious sound echoed in the control room.

“Oh, thank God,” Martha sighed. They all moved to the monitor, and the camera switched on. They seemed to be in a small room, with odds and ends of Cybersuits organized on shelves, or in large bins. “Some sort of storage?” Martha guessed.

“Or a repair room. Look on the wall, those look like tools.” Mickey pointed to a row of odd shaped metal hanging on a wall Molly hadn’t noticed. One looked vaguely like a wrench the Doctor had used repairing the TARDIS.

Molly grabbed the car and wire, and Mickey handed Molly his cell phone after starting a video call with Martha. Molly fixed it the best she could to the top of the car, and then went to the TARDIS door as Mickey pulled out his gun. Molly cracked the door open and sent the car outside, driving all the way around the TARDIS as Martha held her phone out for everyone to watch. There were a few platforms that looked a bit like hospital beds, more tools, and what seemed abandoned Cybersuits with their heads removed, but no sign of any Cybermen. Molly stepped out, followed by Martha and Mickey.

“Okay,” she whispered. “Anyone have any real plan?”

“That’s usually the Doctor’s job,” said Martha.

Mickey held the gun up towards the door of the room, ready in case something came inside. “I’ve dealt with Cybermen before, a lot. We can find a way to shut them all down or overwhelm them with emotion, and then search the ship for Maggie and the Doctor. There’s usually a main computer somewhere.”

“Any idea where?” Molly asked.

“Not a clue,” replied Mickey. “We’ll just figure it out as we go.”

“My usual way of doing things,” replied Molly. She picked up the car and set it in front of the door, then moved to one side. Martha and Mickey moved to the other, and Martha opened the door. Molly held her breath as she moved the car out, and then turned one way, then the other.

“Clear,” said Martha, and they moved out into the corridor.  This, too, had a mess of Cyberman parts all against the walls, silver and black, all scattered around. “Okay, this seems…unusual.”

Mickey agreed. “I haven’t seen this before. They’re usually more organized.”

“This is a mess,” muttered Martha as she picked her way through some of the parts. “Any ideas why it’s like this?”

Mickey shook his head. He turned to Molly. “Think you can still navigate the car?”

Molly picked it up. “It mostly seems to be keeping to the sides. It should be fine.”

“So, which way?” asked Martha.

Molly turned to Mickey. Of them all, Mickey was a better expert on the Cybermen.

He looked one way, and walked down it a few paces, and then turned to look the other way. “This way,” he said. “There’s a humming.”

Molly took a few steps towards him and listened. She couldn’t hear it at first, but as she moved forward, she hear it, so faintly she would have thought she was imagining it if Mickey hadn’t pointed it out. Martha came with them as they moved down the corridor. They came to a turn, and Molly set the car down, and moved it from around the corner. Seeing it was safe, they continued forward.

The walk was tense. They all jumped or moved to a fighting position every time the ship around them creaked. It happened a few times before Molly asked, “Is that normal?”

“I haven’t been on a proper Cybership before,” said Mickey. “But I’ve never heard something like that in any other place the Cybermen set up for themselves.”

Their creeping down the corridors continued, as the humming got more pronounced. Molly felt pinpricks up the back of their neck every time it grew louder. The car worked to assure them that each turn was safe, but Molly was beginning to feel a little silly as, about fifteen minutes in, there didn’t seem much point in having brought it.

But her choice to grab it was justified when she moved the car down one side of a turn, and drove it a little further down to look up and down what seemed to be a T in the path. The unmistakable mechanical sound of marching Cybermen immediately met their ears through Martha’s phone. She turned the volume back down quickly, but kept her eyes locked on the screen. A row of Cybermen walked down one side, headed straight for the car. Molly tried to back it up slowly, but the row stopped as the Cyberman in front noticed the movement.

“Shit,” Molly breathed. She turned the car around and headed straight down the other hall. She wasn’t sure how far the remote would reach the car, but she hoped it would be far enough to draw the Cybermen away and leave a path open for them to run.

In the distance, Molly could hear the voices of the Cybermen, but couldn’t make out their words. She spun the car in a quick, neat circle, and the camera caught the Cybermen advancing on the car. Carefully, she peeked around the corner and saw the last of the row run by. She nodded towards Mickey, who stepped out with his gun aimed forward. Martha followed after him, and slowly, Molly made up the rear, looking over Martha’s shoulder at her phone to make certain the car didn’t get stuck anywhere.

They moved ahead quickly, and Molly tried to watch both the car and the way they were walking. The connection between the remote and the car seemed to cut off once they reached the hall the Cybermen had marched down. They turned and darted down that hall, taking the first left turn available to them.

Martha suddenly shoved Mickey aside and took off running. A moment later, Molly heard why: Maggie was ahead, crying.

She and Mickey were on Martha’s heels. He grabbed Martha’s shoulder and pulled her back as she reached a wide, closed door. “We need a plan,” said Mickey. Martha looked back at Molly, and then followed Molly’s gaze to Mickey, who was looking between them both. He sighed. “No ideas?”

“I’m kind of thinking our only option is to go inside and see what’s happening, and try to pull a Doctor and talk our way into a plan,” replied Molly.

Mickey’s eyes slowly closed in an expression of defeat. “Okay. Fine. But I’m going in first,” he replied, holding up the gun.

“Zero objections.”

He looked to Martha, who looked at him, her fear of losing her daughter and losing him evident in her eyes. She leaned over to give him a solid kiss. “Let’s get her out of here. And kick some Cyberman ass.” The fear was replaced with determination.

Mickey agreed. “Ready?” Molly and Martha both nodded in response. “Okay. Let’s do it.” He pushed a button on a pad near the door, and the doors slid open. He ran inside, gun raised, before Molly could even understand what was happening in the room.

There were more of those computer consoles Molly assumed were just on every single spaceship. A few Cybermen were scattered around the room, two silver, six black. One of the black ones was missing an arm; a silver one was set to sit atop a console, a leg barely hanging by a few wires.

The Doctor stood behind a console, hands up in surrender, while Maggie sat on top of the console beside him, sobbing and clinging to Bailey. “Ah! I told you, Maggie,” the Doctor said encouragingly as the girl continued to cry.

The silver Cyberman that was standing raised its arm towards them, and Molly’s heart skipped a beat. “You will surrender your weapon!” it screamed, but its voice box seemed in disrepair, and there was a slight echo of its words a second behind.

Mickey raised his gun to shoot, but paused when the Doctor shouted, “No, no!”

Mickey didn’t lower his gun. “What’s the plan, Doctor?”

“Put the gun down,” replied the Doctor. “And I would appreciate it if you all came and stood over here.” Molly looked from the Cyberman aiming a weapon at them, to the Doctor. The Doctor was patting Maggie’s hair, seeming remarkably calm. “See?” he said as Molly took a tentative step towards them. “What did I tell you, Maggie? Your superhero parents are here to rescue us.”

Maggie was still sniffling as Martha took a nervous glance at the Cybermen, then rushed forward and pulled Maggie into her arms. Mickey hesitated a moment more, sending a glare in the Doctor’s direction, before setting the gun on the ground, and rushing to hold Maggie on the other side from Martha. Molly turned back to the Cyberman, whose weapon was only on her now, and gave a nervous wave before stepping across the room towards the others, never turning her back on the Cyberman. Her back was pressed against the computer console, with the Doctor on the other side. “Okay. Tell me there’s a step two.”

“Step two, we stand here awkwardly until the Cybermen tell us what to do next.”

Mickey looked over at the Doctor. “Tell me you’re joking.”

The Doctor’s response was to wink over at Mickey. He glanced down, and Mickey followed his gaze, but it was at something on the other side of the console and Molly couldn’t see it. But she felt somewhat reassured that there was some sort of plan in place.

“What’s going on?” Martha asked, pressing Maggie’s head into her chest. “What do they want?”

“They’ve been drifting a long, long time,” the Doctor explained as they all watched the Cybermen return to their work. “Their engines were taken out in a firefight with Sontarans. They’ve been in disrepair since, their bodies and ship slowly falling apart around them. But they found a signature on Earth, a strong signature, and used that to transport themselves to Earth.”

“What signature?” Mickey wanted to know.

But the Doctor didn’t answer that question. “The black ones, they’re scouts. So were the black Cybermats. They sent them to Earth to search for more organic material, along with anything else they could use to repair themselves. Then they realized…” his voice drifted a moment. He cleared his throat. “The signature they found. It was Artron energy. They knew about me. Their systems are so old that – at one point I tried to delete myself from all databases.”

“We noticed you disappeared from UNIT records,” said Martha. “Captain Jack called and told us you weren’t in the Torchwood records anymore, either.”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. But Molly noticed his arm moving ever so slightly near where he and Mickey had looked earlier. “I got too big. There were consequences. So, I tried to delete myself from all the records in the universe, but this one ship was set adrift before I did that. They knew what the signature was, that it must have come from a time traveler, that it must have come from the TARDIS. They knew it was connected to me, and they knew if I caught them on Earth, I’d stop them. They also knew you must be important to me, to have been in the TARDIS.”

Martha stared at the Doctor from over Maggie’s head. “So they set up a transporter in our daughter’s closet so they could do something to us and try to draw you out, into the line of fire.”

“They targeted us because we used to travel on the TARDIS?” asked Mickey, his voice thick. “This is cos of us?”

“No,” said the Doctor, his voice soft, his expression a sad guilt. “It’s because of me.”

Martha held Maggie closer. “They wanted to kill you to make it safer to take Earth.”

The Doctor nodded. “Yeah. They need me to help repair their ship enough to make invasion easier, too. And the worst part is, we all need to get ready to run.”

Molly blinked as Martha and Mickey grew tense. “…run?”

“Yeah,” said the Doctor. His hand shifted again, and he shouted, “Run!”

In a second Martha had Maggie in her arms, and she and Mickey were headed for the door. The Doctor grabbed Molly’s hand and they followed. A second after, there was an electrical buzz – and the Cybermen started to scream. It was all a blur as they raced out the door, and Molly started to feel a rumble under her feet.

“Which way to the TARDIS?” shouted the Doctor.

“This way!” Mickey replied, leading the charge down the corridor.

They raced ahead, taking the sharp turns so fast Molly crashed into the wall once. “What did you do?!” she shouted at the Doctor.

“Recorded Maggie crying on my mobile, plugged it into the computer, transmitted those feelings into the Cybermen and broke their ability to repress emotion,” the Doctor explained quickly. “Bit more complicated than that, but seeing as we’re running for our lives just now…”

They half-crashed through the door into the repair room, and Mickey threw the TARDIS doors open. Molly slammed the door closed behind her as the Doctor rushed to the console, and very carefully set aside a bouncing Adipose. He put in coordinates so fast Molly couldn’t keep track of him, and in a moment, they were leaving the ship. Once they landed, he breathed a sigh of relief, then reached down to his feet and picked the Adipose up again. He turned towards them. “The ship was in such a state of disrepair, the moment the Cybermen stopped inputting commands, it started to fall apart.” He stepped up to Maggie, who was still crying. “Hey, look. I’ve got a friend here who wants to say hi.” He held the Adipose out, and Maggie pushed herself further into her mother’s arms, but a moment later reached out and poked its belly. It laughed and hopped over, grabbing onto Martha’s arm to balance itself, then moved to poke Maggie back on the cheek.

As they took turns poking each other, Martha turned to the Doctor. “Oh, no. She’s too young for a pet alien.”

“Oh, no, no,” insisted the Doctor. “I’m taking him home. I just thought he might cheer her up a bit.”

The Doctor turned back to the console. He was flipping the same switches he did when he didn’t want to meet someone’s eyes, Molly realized. He was feeling the guilt of believing he had called this threat down on Martha and Mickey, just for having traveled with them. She looked to Martha and Mickey. They were both focused on Maggie, but Martha kept giving the Doctor small, concerned glances. Mickey seemed a little angry, though at the Cybermen, the Doctor, or himself Molly couldn’t tell.

Martha handed Maggie and the Adipose over to Mickey, and then walked to the console to stand by the Doctor. “The TARDIS looks great,” she said casually. “Very sleek.”

“Thanks,” replied the Doctor, looking around the TARDIS. “This is the second new design she’s had since we traveled together. I like the spinny bits. I don’t know why they spin, but I like them.”

Martha glanced up at the spinning Circular Gallifreyan. “Me, too,” she said. She looked back at the Doctor. “Doctor, it’s not your fault.”

“I know. I didn’t pick the design, the TARDIS did that herself.”

Martha gave him a playful shove. “You know what I mean. It’s not your fault the Cybermen came after us. In fact, if you hadn’t been there, I don’t know what we would have done.”

The Doctor ran a hand down the front of his face. “But if you hadn’t-”

“Hadn’t what? Decided to travel with you? I made that decision on my own, and I don’t regret it, not for one minute,” she responded. “What other people do because Mickey and I travelled on the TARDIS is on them. Not you, and not us.”

“Besides,” started Mickey, setting Maggie down to continue playing some odd version of paddycake with the Adipose before going to join the Doctor and Martha, “How many people did we save together? How many more people would be dead if we hadn’t been with you?”

The Doctor still seemed doubtful. Molly stayed where she was to keep an eye on Maggie, but decided to speak up. “Look. You could, potentially, live forever. If you stopped trying to help people, if you stopped traveling, if you just put the TARDIS somewhere in space where it’ll never be hit by a meteor or a rocket or whatever, and just sat quietly in a room, you could live forever.”

The Doctor turned to her. “Well, actually-”

“No, shut up, I don’t care about your physiology right now. You get my point,” replied Molly. “Never being in danger isn’t really an option for anyone on Earth, but yeah, we could limit how much danger we’re in by staying inside and not doing anything. But what’s the point in a life like that? Would it really be worth giving up actually living just to try to guarantee you can live a bit longer? Forever in a small room, does that sound good to you?” She paused, though she knew his answer. “We don’t get to choose whether or not we ever experience a time when our life is at risk. We do get to make decisions that increase the frequency we’re at risk. And sometimes, it’s better to make the choice that puts you in danger more often. It’s worth it, especially if it means you get to help people whose lives are at risk, and who may not have a life to be at risk if you weren’t there. I’m happy with my choices, personally.” She paused again. “Well, no, not most of my choices, my choices are overwhelmingly terrible, but my choice to be on the TARDIS, absolutely.” Technically, she hadn’t had much choice, but she thought – hoped – the Doctor knew that if there had been a choice, she still would have chosen to be here. Besides, she didn’t really want to try to explain her situation to Martha and Mickey.

The Doctor took longer to respond than Martha liked. “Look,” she said, pointing to her daughter playing with the Adipose. “Maggie is fine, she’s safe. We’re all safe. And we stopped the Cybermen from invading Earth. That’s what matters.”

Mickey added, “You know when I first met you, and Rose went with you, I hated it. I hated all of it. But then I went with you, and I saw what you do, and then I found a place where I could do something that really mattered. Then I met Martha, and we had Maggie. If I never set foot on the TARDIS, my life would be completely different. And I like my life. So…no regrets.”

“No regrets,” Martha echoed enthusiastically, as she touched the Doctor’s shoulder.

The Doctor’s forlorn expression slowly turned to a smile. “No regrets,” he said. “Okay. You’re right. No regrets.”

Molly wasn’t sure she believed him, but at least he was smiling again.

“We need to get her to bed…or at least, get her calmed down enough to get some sleep,” said Mickey, going to pick up Maggie again. The Doctor followed and gently took the Adipose from her. Both the Adipose and Maggie seemed disappointed, but they also both seemed exhausted enough not to complain about it.

Martha walked up beside them. “I guess we got one more last adventure, huh?”

“And over fast enough to get you both home before midnight! No carriages turned to pumpkins here,” replied the Doctor, smiling over at Martha. After a moment of hesitation, he pulled her into a hug. “I wish we hadn’t, really, but I am a bit glad we got one more.”

“I know what you mean,” said Martha, squeezing him tight for a moment, then pulling away to smile at him. “One last hurrah.”

Mickey shifted Maggie to his other side. “If we do it again, maybe we can get a babysitter, first.”

“Deal,” the Doctor said, grinning. “Well, off with you. Little Maggie needs some mum and dad time.”

Martha turned to Molly. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime,” breathed Molly, and bit her tongue to not add on her guilt that she hadn’t been there to try to stop the Cyberman from taking Maggie in the first place.

“And, um, another thing…”

“Yes?”

“How’d you know it wasn’t the same place?”

Molly frowned as she tried to remember what Martha was referencing, and then frowned deeper when she remembered telling the Doctor that Martha wasn’t living in the same place he’d seen her last.

“Oh. Um…” Her mind raced, but she couldn’t think of a cover.

Mickey shrugged. “Probably saw it on our show.” All three of the others replied with a quick ‘what?’. Mickey laughed. “Took me a bit, but I remember you. Molly Quinn. That show the Doctor used to talk about. And it’s not like being from other universes is a weird concept to me. Being a TV show is, but…I mean, that’s it, isn’t it? You saw where Martha used to live on a show about the Doctor.”

There was a moment of silence before the Doctor said, “I really did used to underestimate you.”

“If that’s not right.”

“I was in a TV show in another universe?” Martha seemed more rocked by the information than Mickey was. “Like, really? I was on the telly?”

“Yeah,” Molly admitted. “It’s a great show. And you were great. The both of you.”

“So…you saw…” Martha winced.

“You came to your senses eventually and upgraded,” said Molly, and she ignored the Doctor look of indignation. “Mickey’s definitely a better choice for you. I was so excited when it showed you got married, I actually applauded.”

“Thanks,” said Mickey, sounding proud.

“Okay, this is too weird,” said Martha. “Time to go home.”

There was one more round of goodbyes, a few hugs, and the Doctor gave the half-asleep Maggie a kiss on the head. With a long look back, Martha closed the TARDIS door behind her.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty

The Un-Farewell Tour, Part One

 “…I guess I need a new mobile,” said the Doctor, as he began inputting the coordinates to take the Adipose home.

“And I need a bath in aloe vera,” Molly complained, feeling her burns getting warmer after the action. She moved to stand beside him. “Their kid is really cute,” she offered by way of a conversational topic.

The Doctor nodded. “She is.” He turned his head towards her as the TARDIS took off. “Did you ever think about having children?”

Molly shrugged. “I hadn’t decided. I like kids, though I’m not great with them. I don’t make responsible decisions, so I was leaning towards no before the shooting, but I did sort of want them anyway.” It still made her heart ache. Sure, she hadn’t been 100% certain, and she was nearing her 30s before the attempted murder, so the thought seemed less and less likely…but she’d always wondered exactly what it would feel like to hold this tiny, fragile, precious human being you created in your arms, and be their whole world for a little while, make them her whole world. She’d wanted the choice to give that up to be her own.

“Before the shooting?” the Doctor repeated. “Did the shooting change your mind?”

“Well, yeah,” replied Molly. She reached out to wiggle a switch, careful not to actually shift it, to copy the Doctor’s way of wanting to avoid a topic. “Or, at least, the second bullet made up my mind for me.”

The Doctor turned to face her wholly now. “Second bullet?”

Molly blinked over at him. “Yeah, the…” she paused. “Did the show only have one?”

The Doctor nodded. “The screen went dark, and there was one gunshot. You were shot twice?”

She nodded. “The first one hit the side of my spine and lodged there. The second tore straight through my uterus. That was two of the surgeries I had, attempting to fix it. But the chances were low I’d ever be able to carry a baby, and it became a choice of keeping my uterus and maybe being able to have a baby but living with a lot of pain, or giving up the baby and getting my uterus removed and have that pain, at least, gone. I already had to deal with the spine damage and trying to walk again, I just…couldn’t cope with more pain. I had them take it out. So, I guess it was three of the surgeries.”

He just…stared at her, for a moment. Molly was always uncomfortable with any kind of pity, and for the first time in…however long she’d been here after that first day…she felt the walls creeping back up. This was one pain she thought she’d gotten over. Apparently, it wasn’t the kind of thing you were ever fully over.

She hated his sad eyes. “I’m so sorry that happened to you,” he said, finally.

Always ready to deflect to hide her vulnerability, Molly shrugged her shoulders. “It’s life. It happens.”

The Doctor seemed to realize how much she wanted to not talk about it, and provided a subject change. “Can we talk about what just happened?”

Molly frowned, a crease appearing between her arched brows. “I thought we already talked about the Cybermen?”

“No,” said the Doctor, his voice in that soft tone that made her walls continue upward. “Before they transported me.”

She pressed her lips together, then cleared her throat. “The flashback?”

“Yes.”

She turned and walked away, sliding her hands into her back pockets. “What’s there to say? I have PTSD. I have flashbacks sometimes.”

Molly heard the Doctor’s footsteps following behind her. “Your show did have moments like that. A flashback. The images were in black and white and too blurred to make much out, even with the amount I studied the show.”

She spun, eyes wide. “They showed the flashbacks? Like…what happened in them?” Molly felt panic build in her chest, and her heart seemed to clench, and her brain sent out the signals of fear and anger. He’d said he didn’t know what happened. He’d promised.

The Doctor seemed to sense this change in her, and held his hands out in a disarmed fashion. “Again, there really wasn’t much to make out. A swinging lamp, surrounded by darkness. Brick. A flash of ginger hair. A sound, a sort of-”

“Buzzing,” Molly supplied breathlessly.

The Doctor’s face lit for a moment as he must have realized what had triggered her flashback, and then he nodded. “That’s all. And other than the people who actually made the show, I probably know more about it than anyone. If I don’t know what else was shown, certainly no one else does.”

Molly nodded, and the tension slowly began leaving her body. “Okay. Good.”

“I have…” he started, then hesitated before trying again. “I’ve watched you, since you’ve been here, in case of...well, you never mentioned the flashbacks to me, but I knew from the show. And I’ve seen moments where…your mind seems to drift, and you seem a little more tense. I didn’t know if you still…”

She bit her lip a moment. The PTSD wasn’t something she wanted to talk about. It too quickly circled around to the trauma itself. “It’s been mostly under control. I don’t have my medication here, though, so I’m not that surprised they’ve gotten more intense. I haven’t been using my grounding techniques,” she admitted. She’d pretty much blown off everything her therapist had said when she lost her job at the Times. There didn’t seem to be much point in trying to keep herself together when she couldn’t keep her life together.

“Why didn’t you mention this at the hospital? We could have gotten you your medication.”

Molly snorted. “I use cannabis. I don’t think I need to take the chance at being high when people’s lives are at risk.”

“…Ah,” said the Doctor, holding up a finger. “Yes. That was probably a good decision.”

“I’ll be fine,” Molly reassured him. “I’ve lived with this a long time. It’s just part of my life.”

“You use that to excuse the terrible things you’ve had to deal with quite a lot, you know.”

Subject change. She turned toward him. “Speaking of life. Jack, River, Martha, Mickey. It’s like the universe is giving you a ‘Doctor: this is your life’ moment.” She spread her hands as if reading the words from a marquee.

He frowned. “Yes. Yes, it is very much like that…” He got that distant look that told her he was thinking of some sort of mystery, and one he wasn’t going to share with her, at least not yet. That seemed odd to her. What kind of mystery could be involved here? 

“Who else are we going to run into?” she wondered, once again feeling uncomfortable, now with the added feeling of being left out of something important. “Craig and Sophie?” she paused. “…do Craig and Sophie know you’re still alive? Did you ever go back and tell Craig you didn’t die?”

The Doctor’s expression shifted to one of guilt. “Mmm. Possibly. Possibly no. I might have…not done that. Yet.” She thought she might have heard ‘ever’ under his breath.

She stared a moment. “Well. I know where we’re going next.”

The Doctor’s face almost seemed to go a shade paler. “I really don’t think I need to-”

“Doctor,” Molly cut him off with a sharp word. “You don’t just let your friends think you’re dead. Or even maybe dead. You can’t do that to them and still call them friends.” He still seemed hesitant, so she continued, “You have friends who have died. If any of them were secretly alive and never told you, how would that feel?” She didn’t care if there was a line here.

The Doctor started to turn back to the console, and Molly grabbed his arm. “Doctor,” she said. “Not this time. Look me in the eye and tell me one very good reason you shouldn’t let Craig know you didn’t die.”

He sighed, and she watched him shift his weight from one foot to the other, pressing his lips together and shifting his jaw. Finally, he settled on declaring, “I don’t do social visits!”

“Nope. Not good enough,” she replied. “It’s not a social visit. It’s letting someone know you aren’t dead. Besides, we just had dinner with Martha and Mickey. Try again.”

He grumbled a bit, then said, “Because I’m eventually going to be dead anyway.”

Molly rolled her eyes. “Even you know that one’s bullshit.”

“Yeah, yeah. I heard it as it was coming out,” he admitted. “Ah – fine. It’s because he’s going to be mad at me.”

“Mad at you?” she asked.

“That I never told him I wasn’t dead. I don’t want Craig to be mad at me, we’re mates.”

She released his arm. “Can’t we just go back to shortly after you left?”

“No,” he said. “River told me. I talked to some kids on my way out, and it turns out their accounts of that were written down, and it was while River was studying those accounts that she was stolen and put in the astronaut suit. Do you know about that?” Molly nodded. “I don’t want to risk them seeing and recognizing me again and somehow creating a paradox.”

“So, we’ll have to go ahead a few years so if they see you again, they probably won’t recognize you,” she continued his logic.

He nodded. “It will have to have been a few years since I told him I was about to die. Or…tried to.”

“Well, let’s just not mention how long it’s actually been for you, and we’re good.”

“He’s not going to be happy with me.”

“No, he’s not,” Molly confirmed. “But you’re his friend. He loves you. And he’ll just be happy to see you again. Even if it’s just for a little while, even if it’s just for a proper goodbye. He’ll want to know you’re still alive. He deserves to know.”

He looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes traveling from her face to the top of the TARDIS before looking back at her. “Is that how you would feel, if someone you knew who was dead showed up at your doorstep?”

Now it was Molly’s turn to try to move to the console and not look in his eyes, but he repeated her strategy and took her arm. She sighed and turned towards him. “I only really know one dead person, and the situation was very, very different,” she said. She heard the note of chill in her voice, but couldn’t help it, though she didn’t know if it was at him for making her talk about this, or at the very concept of her dead mom showing up alive someday. “Her death was what…” her throat closed. No. This was too close to the truth about her. She couldn’t be fully honest. “It shaped me in the worst ways. And there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about her, sometimes multiple times a day. Despite not having a phone here, I’ve reached for a phone to call her and tell her about something more than once. If she was alive this whole time and I didn’t know…” She didn’t finish the sentence. The cold anger in her eyes expressed her feelings clearly enough. “The situation with Craig is different than with my mom. He’s not going to hate you. And you know that. You choose your friends carefully, you’ve said it yourself. You wouldn’t choose someone who would hate you for being alive.”

He frowned. Molly figured it was because he knew she was right. He was out of excuses. She knew going back wasn’t something he usually did, but she couldn’t stand here and let him leave Craig thinking he was dead. She liked Craig. And she liked Sophie. So, while he still seemed resistant, Molly continued to stare the Doctor down.

Finally, he threw his hands up in surrender. “Fine. Fine! We’ll go visit Craig tomorrow.”

Molly raised her brows. “Tomorrow? And give you time to chicken out? No way.”

“Molly,” began the Doctor, exasperated.  “You realize we’ve already had a full day, between the TARDIS repairs, the Adipose, dinner with Mickey and Martha, and the Cybermen?”

She considered this. “Yes, I do realize.”

“And that yesterday we were in a wildfire?”

“Yes.”

“It’s essentially one am for you right now, and you’ve barely slept in days.”

“Oh.” Now that he mentioned it, her body felt worn. Her mind was still sharp, she thought, though maybe that was a lie the sleep deprivation was telling her. “I had no idea.”

“Keeping time is difficult on the TARDIS,” the Doctor explained.

Molly nodded. “Okay. Sleep first, then the Un-Farewell Tour.”

The corner of the Doctor’s mouth twitched upwards. “‘Un-Farewell Tour?’”

Molly started headed for the stairs. “Well, you have to go to people you told on your Farewell Tour that you didn’t, in fact, die, so…Un-Farewell.” She turned back towards him. “Gives you some time to emotionally prepare. Just don’t chicken out.”

“Cross my hearts,” the Doctor promised, doing exactly that.

Molly nodded. “Okay. Goodnight.”

“Sweet dreams!” replied the Doctor, and Molly headed back to her room.

She was unhappy to discover that it was still filled to the brim with hampers. “Oh, come on,” she sighed. “I said I was sorry.” She took a moment to find a strategy, and then began moving hampers out into the corridor. But every time she set one down, she turned to find it back it’s in place. “Really?!” she exclaimed. Finally, she decided to just fight her way to the bed and toss those hampers aside. She took off her clothes and threw them into a hamper, and decided the fight to the dresser wasn’t worth it and crawled back into bed, hoping the Doctor wouldn’t burst in first thing in the morning again.

Burying her face in the pillow, Molly pulled the covers over her head. The Doctor was right, and probably saw the real reasons she needed to go to bed better than she had up until this moment. They were the same reasons she stepped away to let him process when he felt that he’d failed someone, though she wanted to stay there and talk him through it.

She hadn’t been there to help save Maggie. Yes, Maggie was safe now, but Molly knew better than most that being safe and being okay were not the same thing. Maggie would live with those memories. She would remember that buzzing forever.

Molly lived for one reason, and one reason alone: to put good into the world. As much of it as she could. But a little child was being dragged to an unknown fate by an incredibly dangerous force, and where had she been? Lying on the ground in the hallway.

Realistically, she knew she could not control the flashbacks. She hadn’t been given the choice. Still, this was another thing that would haunt her: the image of little Maggie in a Cyberman’s arms, being pulled from her parents and the Doctor, and the space behind the Cyberman where Molly could have stood to block it from making an escape. She would see that space in her dreams tonight. In her nightmares.

Molly had found relief from the near-constant nightmares on the TARDIS.  She almost hadn’t realized they were gone until now, and it was a shame it was only when she noticed she wasn’t afraid to sleep anymore that the new nightmares would surface.

Well, what’s one more?

The usual morning routine: Names, stretches, bath, fight to the death with her hair, makeup, dress, experience elation that this was all really happening and giggle like a little girl, and she was ready to go meet with the Doctor.

As she walked into the console room, she saw the Doctor with a cloth in his hand, shining up the glass around the central light. She’d never thought about the regular chores to keep the TARDIS clean. Maybe the TARDIS could do it herself, and the Doctor just preferred to take the time and care for her. Maybe she should ask for a broom to help out. She still wanted to make a better impression on the TARDIS, even though the hampers had been gone when she woke up.

“Good morning,” she greeted.

The Doctor looked up from his work. “Morning!”

She stretched her arms over her head and yawned a bit before saying, “Ready to go see Craig and Sophie?”

“Already done!” the Doctor announced, turning his attention back to his work. “Popped in while you were asleep, told him I wasn’t dead, shook hands. It’s all done, all handled, no problem.”

“Mhm.” Molly slowly raised her brows. “You didn’t really think I’d fall for that, did you?”

The Doctor shrugged and set the cloth aside. “Worth a try. I did bring the Adipose home, though.”

“Come on,” she said, walking over to his side and hooking an arm in his. “It’ll be great. You’ll be happy you did it.”

“Probably,” the Doctor admitted begrudgingly. He still seemed hesitant.

“Hey.” Molly stared up at him until he finally turned to look at her. “I know it’s hard for you. I know you’re worried he’ll be mad. I know you don’t usually go back. But, though it’s hard, it really is going to be worth it. Besides, don’t you want to see him again? You’re mates.”

She waited, hoping he’d feel better about this trip she was forcing him on. She felt another bit of elation as he slowly smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, it’ll be lovely to see him again. And Sophie. And little Alfie. Haven’t seen them in ages.” He thought about it for a moment. “Literally, ages.”

Unhooking her arm, Molly smiled back. “Let’s get going, then.”

The Doctor walked around the console, setting the coordinates as usual as Molly watched. Then he looked up at her. “Come here.”

Frowning, Molly walked around the console to him. “What’s up?”

The Doctor pointed to one of the controls. “Pull that lever,” he said. “Flip this switch, then this one, two steps left, and wind the crank.”

Molly was surprised. “You’re trusting me to fly the TARDIS again?”

“Why not? You did perfectly last time.”

“I thought I almost crashed into a year, or century, or something.”

The Doctor shrugged as he folded his arms. “Well, it takes practice. Go on, then!”

Molly had to admit that she felt both excited and bit terrified. The first time had gone okay, but past performance was never an indication of future success - or whatever the quote was - in her life.

But it was nice he trusted her, and this was simpler than last time, and how many chances was she going to get to fly the TARDIS? “Okay,” she smiled. “Here we go.” She stepped up and pulled the indicated lever, then the two switches in the order he’d flipped them, two steps left and wound the crank. The Doctor pulled the lever closer to him.

Off they went. The shake of the TARDIS was more exciting to her now, and gave her a feeling of anticipation. Somewhere new every time. Granted, this wasn’t an alien planet, or that far into the past, but still. Outside the doors, somewhere and somewhen she’d never been. It was much better than a tiny  basement bedroom at a foster home, or New York City.

The TARDIS landed, and she turned to the Doctor. “Ready?” she asked, and he nodded. She paused a moment as something occurred to her. “Do you want to do this by yourself?” He might want the privacy. “Or do you want me to come with you?”

The Doctor opened his mouth, then shut it again. It was a moment before he said, “Come with me. Please.”

She took his arm again. Emotional support. She could do that. “Let’s go, then.”

They left the TARDIS, then began down the street to Craig and Sophie’s house. It was strange, being on that familiar street, and not only was it real, it was really where Craig lived. They were walking to his house, not on a set. This was still so mind-blowing.

Molly turned her head toward the Doctor. “Do you know what you want to say?”

The Doctor nodded, and then shook his head. “I’ll wing it,” he replied. “That always goes well for me.”

Molly decided not to disagree as they turned off the public sidewalk and walked towards the familiar house. Despite the afternoon sun, she could see lights on, and hear voices inside she assumed was the television.

The Doctor hesitated at the door. Molly gave him a moment, but when she looked over to him, she saw a mix of sadness and hesitance in his eyes. He was going to make this harder for himself, spiraling through all the possibilities of this going poorly. She knew, because she did it, too.

She gently elbowed him, then released his arm. “Come on. You can do this. He’s going to be happy to see you, I swear.”

He took another second, and then reached out and gave a few firm knocks on the door. He straightened his jacket and bowtie, as Molly took a small step to the side to give the Doctor more space by the door. It didn’t take long for the door to swing open, revealing an already-smiling Craig, saying, “I thought you said you weren’t going to…” and he stopped. His face fell, and Molly’s chest filled with anxiety. No. He was going to be happy. She was right. She had to be right.

The Doctor gave him a small smile. “Hello again, Craig.”

The few seconds of silence before Craig spoke only made her anxiety grow. She wasn’t wrong about Craig, was she? “Doctor?” Craig finally said, his voice full of confusion. But Molly’s anxiety melted as a great, beaming smile came across his face. “Doctor! You’re okay!”

“I’m okay!” The Doctor agreed cheerfully. She saw his own anxiety begin to melt away.

“I thought you were going to – I really thought you were…but you didn’t die!”

“I didn’t die!” The Doctor repeated happily. He reached forward to pat Craig on the shoulder. “Well, good to see you again, mate. Until next time.” The Doctor started to turn, but both Molly and Craig reached out and turned him back around.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Craig. “Not this time. You’re coming in to see Sophie.”

“Sophie’s here?” the Doctor asked excitedly.

“Yeah, she lives here, of course she’s here. And a few other people,” said Craig, as he stepped aside and half-dragged the Doctor into the house. “It’s a bit of a family reunion. Just a couple people, though, don’t worry, and they’re on their way out. It’ll be nice to have another reunion with you here.”

“Ah – family reunion,” the Doctor said as Molly stepped inside and closed the door behind them, cutting off his escape route. “Maybe I should come back.”

“Don’t be silly,” replied Craig. “You’re the reason Sophie and I are together. I mean, you’re the reason I’m alive at all. You’re basically family.” Molly caught the almost-glow around the Doctor’s face as Craig called him ‘basically family’. It was a glow she was sure she’d have in his position. “Besides,” Craig added, “I know you wouldn’t actually come back, so I’ll just have to hold you hostage.” He was leading the Doctor towards the kitchen. Molly followed, feeling strange that she was already familiar with the layout of this house she had never been in. 

The kitchen was a little crowded, though thankfully not by much. Sophie sat at a table with an older woman beside her at the head, and one that seemed a couple years younger across from her. The older woman had long, silver hair pulled partially back by a golden clip, while the younger’s hair was the same shade of blonde as Sophie’s, but formed perfect beachy curls. At the end of the table nearest them sat a young boy, maybe six years old, with messy blond hair and fingers covered in colorful stains from the markers he was using to color in a space-themed coloring book. He was coloring in a star with green.

“Sophie, look who’s come around to visit,” Craig announced, pushing the Doctor ahead of him.

Sophie looked up from her conversation with the other two women, and her jaw dropped a little when she saw who it was. “Doctor?!” she exclaimed, standing from her chair so fast it tilted over as though threatening to fall to the ground, and she rushed over and threw her arms around him. “I can’t believe it’s you,” she said in amazement, but when she pulled back her eyes were accusatory. “Craig told me about your last visit. You didn’t stay to say hi to me.”

“Sorry,” the Doctor apologized, though he was still smiling. “I had an appointment to keep.”

“About the appointment…” Craig began, lowering his voice. But the Doctor stepped past Sophie to look down at the little boy.

“And this little fella must be Stormageddon!” he greeted, mussing the boy’s hair. “It’s good to see you again, Stormy.”

The boy looked up at the Doctor with clear annoyance. “My name is Alfie,” he insisted with all the attitude of a teenager.

The Doctor frowned. “You were much nicer to me when you were a baby,” he said, a little offended.

“You’re silly,” said Alfie with an accusatory note in his voice. “I couldn’t talk when I was a baby!”

“Oh, you said plenty,” replied the Doctor. “Called everyone peasants. I am silly, though, on that point you’re right. Nothing wrong with silly.”

“Sophie,” said the younger woman, her voice friendly. “Who are your friends?”

“Especially this handsome young man?” the older woman said, her eyes on the Doctor, her voice even friendlier.

“Oh, grandmother,” Sophie chided.

“This is the Doctor,” said Craig, gesturing to him as the Doctor gave a little salute. “And this is – ah…sorry. I didn’t ask you name, did I?”

Molly shrugged. “It’s fine, don’t worry about it.”

“This is my Companion, Molly Quinn,” the Doctor introduced her. 

Molly had to turn away for a moment to fight back a too-big smile. As awkward as it was to be introduced to people as a ‘companion’, his saying it out loud so casually was thrilling. She was a Companion.  Capital C.

She only turned for a moment, playing it off at fixing her hair, then turned back. “Nice to meet you all.”

While most of the others returned the sentiment, the grandmother looked back to the Doctor. “Companion? And here I was hoping you were single.”

“Grandmother!” Sophie said, scandalized.

“Oh, we’re not…” Molly began correcting, then pointed from herself to the Doctor and back again a few times. “We’re not together like that. It’s not…we’re not dating. We travel together. Just…go around, looking at stuff together, not…together.”

The grandmother grinned. “Oh, so I still have a chance, do I?”

The Doctor smiled at her. “I’m a bit too old for you, I’m afraid,” he replied.

The grandmother took it as a flattering joke, of course. “Well, everyone calls me Grandmother June, but you can call me June.”

The younger woman beside her gave a half-wave. “I’m Tanya, Sophie’s younger sister.”

“Good to meet you both,” the Doctor said, going around for handshakes before sitting at the table by Alfie, as far from Grandma June as he could get. “Been pals with Craig and Sophie for a while now.”

“Since before we got together,” Sophie added, taking her seat again. Molly took the seat next to Tanya that Craig gestured to, and watched him head to a cupboard before turning back. Tanya seemed about her own age, maybe a year or so younger, with pretty curls and striking hazel eyes, and a nice figure with legs that went on for miles.

Molly set her elbow on the table and rested her head in her palm as she turned toward Tanya with her most charming smile. “Hi there.”

“Don’t,” the Doctor warned.

Molly looked over and gave him an insulted expression. “What? What am I doing?”

“If you start acting like Jack, I’m kicking you out.”

Molly considered this threat for a moment, then chose to ignore it and turned back to Tanya. “How’s it going?”

Tanya didn’t seem to mind, as she gave a slow smile, showing perfect white teeth. “My day seems to be getting better.”

“Don’t,” Sophie warned her sister. “You are such a hopeless flirt.”

Molly curled a strand of hair around her finger. “So am I. We complement each other so well.” She turned as Craig set a mug of tea on the table next to her, and reached over to set one in front of the Doctor. “Thanks,” she said.

“So, where do you travel to?” Grandmother June asked.

“Oh, here and there,” offered the Doctor as he lifted the mug. “Cheers, mate,” he said to Craig before taking a sip.

“Here and there and everywhere?” Tanya asked, though she clearly directed the comment to Molly.

“Precisely,” the Doctor replied anyway. “Here and there and absolutely everywhere.”

Tanya continued to speak to Molly. “Sounds like fun.”

“Oh, lots of fun. I could use a little more fun, though,” Molly said with a wink.

Grandmother June stood. “Well, there’s only so much fun one old woman can handle in day. Take me home, Tanya.”

Tanya nodded and stood from the table. She looked to Molly. “You have a number?”

“Oh, how I wish I did,” said Molly, shaking her head. She offered her hand. “Nice to meet you, Tanya.”

She shook hands with both Tanya and Grandmother June, and they said their goodbyes (Grandmother June offering a ‘See you around, handsome’ to the Doctor), and they headed out the front door.

She felt the Doctor’s stare and turned back to him with a smile. “What? I’m going to get rusty if I don’t practice my flirting.” Honestly, it hadn’t been her strongest game, anyway.

The Doctor pointedly turned to Craig, who was now taking Grandmother June’s previous seat. “How’ve you been, Craig? Sophie?”

“We’ve been grand,” replied Sophie. “Craig got a big promotion. Alfie’s doing well; healthy, creative.”

“How long’s it been, Doctor?” Craig asked. “For you, I mean. Been a few years for us, obviously.”

Molly looked to the Doctor and realized he’d looked at her first. Dodging subjects was her specialty.

“Well, enough time to meet me and start traveling,” she replied. It was true enough that it didn’t spiral into an embarrassing lie. “It hasn’t been that long since we met. A couple weeks and some change, I think.” Only a couple weeks? She counted the days in her head. Yes, that was about right. It felt like months and months. She’d even gotten sick and gotten better in that time. Maybe it was some futuristic Dayquil.

She’d wandered off her task. “So how did you all meet?” She asked, by way of finishing off the subject change. Craig looked to the Doctor for permission to tell the whole story, and the Doctor nodded, then leaned over to Alfie. As Craig gave a quick recap of his episodes, the Doctor watched Alfie color, his face becoming more and more disturbed by what he saw over time.

When Craig finished speaking, the Doctor pointed at the page in the coloring book Alfie wasn’t coloring yet. “No, no, those constellations are all wrong,” he said. “It’s clearly meant to be the Echo star system, but everything’s arranged wrong. How did they get it so mixed up?”

“I really don’t think it’s supposed to be a particular star system,” said Molly.

The Doctor didn’t look away, but shook his head. “Of course it is. What else is it supposed to be?” He looked over at Alfie. “Say, mate, could I have that page? I’ll fix it for you.”

Alfie looked at the Doctor as if he had two heads, but sighed beleagueredly, and tore out the page and offered it to him. “Sharing is caring,” he grumbled, then pushed his markers closer, too. 

“Right you are, Alfie,” the Doctor agreed, seizing the black marker and beginning to draw on the page. All Molly saw was the classic star shapes scattered around a planet that looked like Saturn, and a smaller version of the planet in the background.

“But no, really, Doctor,” said Craig, setting his tea aside. “How long has it been?”

The Doctor remained focused on correcting the coloring book page. “A while.”

“How long’s a while?”

Molly had promised this wouldn’t happen. She tried again, this time looking to Sophie. “So, what do you do?”

Sophie opened her mouth to answer, but Craig continued. “Doctor, come on. How long’s it been?”

Molly watched as the Doctor turned the page to another angle. “A few years. Maybe.”

“A few years,” Craig repeated in surprise. He paused a moment and Molly thought he was done, but then he shook his head. “No, not good enough.”

Sophie reached over and took Craig’s wrist. “Craig-”

“No. You’re different, Doctor. How long’s it been?”

Molly saw the Doctor winced. She mouthed ‘sorry’ in his direction, though she knew he couldn’t see it. This was exactly what she didn’t want to happen. But the Doctor took in a slow breath to answer. “It’s been a while, Craig. Amy…left. Clara came, then left. I’ve been through some things. Bound to have changed a bit.”

“And now you’re with Molly.”

“Yep.”

“I bet she made you come back.” Craig glanced at Molly, then back to the Doctor. “So how many years?”

The Doctor sighed in frustration and set his marker aside. “A few hundred. I don’t know.”

Sophie’s eyes widened. “Hundred? A few hundred?”

“Why didn’t you come back sooner?” Craig wanted to know. “I thought you were dead.”

“It’s…” the Doctor started, and then made a frustrated gesture with his hands when he couldn’t think of a way to explain.

“Complicated,” Molly supplied.

Craig was already shaking his head. “No. You could have come back sooner; I know you could.”

Molly’s heart dropped. She’d lied to the Doctor. Craig really was angry. The Doctor would never trust her again. She would never trust herself again. And she’d thought she was so good at reading people.

The Doctor sighed again. “I’m sorry, Craig. I am.”

But Craig extended a hand out across the table towards the Doctor. “It’s not about being sorry,” he said. “I think you avoided coming back here partly because you thought you’d waited too long. And it’s never too long, Doctor. You can always come back here, no matter how long it’s been. Always.”

“We always want to see you,” added Sophie.

“We’re mates,” Craig finished.

The light in the Doctor’s eyes was becoming familiar, and Molly loved it. He’d been able to reconnect with so many of his old friends now, old family, and seeing that he was still cared about, even when he disappeared from their lives, really meant so much to him. It once again felt like a bit of an invasion of privacy to be witnessing this moment, but it was exactly the kind of moment on the show that would have her gripping her pillow to her chest and crying. Thankfully, despite being a crybaby, she seemed to be able to avoid tears falling freely down her cheeks. They merely gathered in her eyes.

Just as they did in the Doctor’s. “Thanks, Craig. Sophie.” He paused, and then shook off the sentimental moment with a smile. “Maybe I should come around again. You know, check in. Never really done that before, just check in with people. Someone does need to make sure Stormy doesn’t learn his star systems wrong,” he finished, reaching over to pick his marker back up again and continue to ‘fix’ the page.

Alfie, who had mostly been ignoring the conversation the adults were having, looked up with irritation. “It’s Alfie,” he insisted. He turned back to his coloring for a moment, then looked back up at his parents. “Can I ask the teachers to call me Stormy?”

“I think it might be best if you stuck with Alfie,” said Craig.

“Oh, why not?” Sophie shrugged, standing to take everyone’s empty mugs back to the sink. “At least, you can ask your friends.”

Alfie nodded seriously and turned back to his coloring. The Doctor grinned. “See, Stormy? You picked a great name for yourself.”

“So, Doctor,” began Craig, “About your last visit.”

“What about it?” the Doctor shifted the paper around again, and switched to a blue marker.

“The way you were talking, it sounded like…” the sentence drifted. “And I swear while I was falling asleep, you said something about…well, it sounded like you were dying. What happened?”

Sophie came back to the table. “We’re glad you’re still here, Doctor,” she said warmly, now sitting next to Molly. “We just want to know you’re okay.”

“Oh, I’m okay,” the Doctor insisted. “Of course I’m okay. Molly would tell me if I wasn’t.”

“Not that he listens,” Molly said, looking to Sophie.

“But…” began Craig. “Can you tell us what happened? How you’re okay?”

The Doctor switched markers again. “Oh, nothing too complicated. I just got miniature-ized, beamed into a robotic version of myself, failed to convince the woman who was supposed to kill me to kill me, watched time and space unravel, got married, fixed time and space, and then faked my death. Pretty simple. Straightforward.” 

There was a long stretch of silence. Finally, Sophie said, “You got married?”

The Doctor grinned up at her. “To the woman who was supposed to kill me. Fancy that.”

“So…” Sophie turned to Molly. “Is this your wife, then? Are you two married?”

Molly shook her head, almost too violently. “No. No. Again, not together like that. Not at all. Just friends.”

“Thanks for the enthusiastic denial,” the Doctor said dryly. “No, Molly and I travel together. My wife and I are…ah…”

“Separated,” Molly supplied.

“Right! Separated.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Sophie.

“Wait,” Craig began, seeming to find his voice at last, “What was all that other stuff?”

The Doctor looked at Craig for a moment, his expression unreadable. Then, he said, “Just a bunch of…timey-wimey, spacey-wacey stuff.”

Alfie chuckled. “Spacey-wacey. You’re funny.”

“Thank you, Alfie,” replied the Doctor warmly. “You thought so when you were a baby, too.”

“You were miniaturized?” Craig asked. “Into an android version of you?”

The Doctor shook his head and scoffed. “‘Course not, Craig, that would be ridiculous.” He looked over to Craig, looking a little like a displeased professor. “Androids are completely different. You can’t be inside them.”

“But…” Craig began, then shook his head with a laugh. “Okay. Shrunk into a robotic version of yourself in order to fake your death. Sounds like you all over.”

“Aha!” exclaimed the Doctor suddenly. He held up the picture he’d been working on to show them. He’d somehow managed to change the fake stars into something more realistic looking, shifted a planet that had been in the background a few inches right, added a what appeared to be a sun in the foreground, and something that might be a space station beside it. The sky was colored in blue-black, but otherwise it was ready for coloring in. “Now, this is the Echo star system. Here you are, Alfie.”

Alfie took the offered picture and looked at it, then grinned back at the Doctor. “This is cool. You can call me Stormy if you want.”

“Thanks, Stormy,” replied the Doctor, patting him on the head. “You can call me the Doctor. That’s just what I’m called, like with you being Stormy. It’s fun to have a nickname.” The Doctor paused, and his expression told Molly that he hadn’t really considered ‘the Doctor’ a nickname before.

“‘Doctor’ would be a weird name,” remarked Alfie. “What’s your real name?”

The Doctor and Molly met each other’s gaze again. The Doctor slowly stood. “Well, we better be off.”

“Already?” Sophie objected.

“Never overstay a welcome, that’s what I always say,” replied the Doctor.

“You’re not overstaying anything,” insisted Craig, standing too. “You’ve only just got here.”

“Other calls to make,” said the Doctor apologetically. Molly stood hesitantly. She felt like they needed more time together, but she’d been dictating who the Doctor spent his time with quite a lot lately. At least he’d come here to give them some closure. “Happy to see you doing good. Are you doing good?”

“We’re good, Doctor,” said Sophie, going around the table to give the Doctor a hug. “We’re very good. I hope you are, too.”

“Oh, I’m grand,” replied the Doctor as he pulled away from the hug. “Don’t worry about me.”

“We’re going to worry, anyway,” insisted Craig, who also gave the Doctor a short hug. “We’ll walk you to the door.”

The four of them headed through the living room after the Doctor waved goodbye to Alfie, and Craig turned back to the Doctor. “Do you have a mobile? Maybe that would be an easier way to check in once in a while.”

The Doctor opened his mouth with an excited expression, then frowned. “Oh. No. It was blown up on a Cybership,” he explained. “I need a new one.”

“Wait right here,” said Craig, and he hurried up the stairs.

Molly turned to Sophie. “It’s been great meeting you.”

“You, too,” replied Sophie. “I really didn’t know if the Doctor had many other friends.”

“I have loads of friends,” the Doctor said, offended.

Craig came back down the stairs, holding out a cell phone. “My cousin sent me this for Christmas, but I like the one I have. You can take it, if you want.”

The Doctor took it from Craig’s outstretched hand. “Oh, thanks, Craig,” said the Doctor. He took out his sonic and began work on the phone. “I promise I’ll take better care of it than the Stetson.”

“What happened to the Stetson?”

“It was shot.”

“It was shot?”

Sophie seemed equally as disturbed as Craig. “Why? Who would shoot at you?”

“My wife,” the Doctor explained, now turning the phone on. “She doesn’t like hats. Well, she doesn’t like hats on me, specifically.”

“So she shot at you?”

“At the hat. River has rather excellent aim,” the Doctor explained. He grinned as the phone turned on. “Perfect! Here, give me yours,” he said, holding his hand out towards Craig.

“What? Why?” Craig wondered, though he did as he was asked. The Doctor used the sonic on his phone, then handed it back. Craig turned the phone over in his hand. “What’s this going to do now? Shoot lasers?”

The Doctor shook his head as he held a hand out for Sophie’s phone. “No. I just boosted the roaming capabilities a bit.” He started work on Sophie’s phone. “You’ll be able to call from and to anywhere in space and time. Of course, as I’m the only space and time traveler you know, it really only works for me.” He frowned and looked up at Sophie. “I’m the only space and time traveler you know, right?”

“Of course,” Sophie laughed, taking her phone back.

“This is wonderful,” said Craig, beaming down at his phone. “Thanks, Doctor.”

“You’re very welcome,” the Doctor replied, sliding the sonic back into his pocket. “Give me a ring sometime.”

“We will,” Craig promised. He held out a hand to Molly. “It’s good to meet you, Molly.”

“You, too, Craig,” she said cheerfully, shaking his hand. Craig and Sophie and Alfie. It felt good to have the chance to meet all these characters – now people – that she’d loved watching. “See you around, maybe.”

“See you,” said Sophie. “We’ll definitely phone.”

“Definitely do,” replied the Doctor, already halfway out the door. Molly followed him and they turned to wave goodbye to Craig and Sophie, who waved back before the door shut.

“See?” Molly said, nudging the Doctor with her elbow. “That was really nice.”

The Doctor didn’t answer for a moment, but stared back at the closed door with a small smile. “Yeah. It was really nice.” He draped an arm around her shoulders and they began walking for the TARDIS. “Thanks for bullying me into it.”

“I never bully!” Molly objected. “Guilt and shame, sure.”

The Doctor looked at the phone Craig had given him with appreciation. “This saved me a trip. Oh!” He stopped suddenly, and opened the camera app. “Take a picture with me. Proof I met Molly Quinn.”

Molly laughed and rolled her eyes, but then moved closer to the Doctor, almost close enough to tuck her head under his chin. She smiled and gave the peace sign she usually did in photos, back when it had been safe for her to share pictures of herself on social media. The Doctor’s somewhat goofy smile made her start laughing just before the picture was taken. But when the Doctor brought it up, she liked the way it looked, both of them just about to start laughing.

“Okay,” she said, pulling him back when he started to move away. “We have to do a funny one now.”

The Doctor agreed and aimed the phone again, pulling a funny face. She spotted the bunny ears behind her head but chose to allow it for maximum silliness, and stuck her tongue out at an angle and winked at the camera. The picture was taken, and then reviewed.

“Why does your funny face not look funny?” the Doctor wanted to know.

Molly shrugged. “I’m just cute that way.”

He playfully shoved her a little, and then wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “How about some brunch?”

“Sounds good.”

“On a moon in another galaxy?”

She grinned up at him. “Let’s do it.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-One

The Un-Farewell Tour, Part Two

“Molly,” the Doctor said from the other side of the center console.

“Doctor.”

“Molly.”

“Doctor.”

“Molly.”

“Doctor.”

He leaned around to look at her with mild irritation. “Why do you keep saying ‘Doctor’?”

“Because you keep saying ‘Molly’.”

She saw the Doctor frown for a moment. “Right.” He paused and cleared his throat. “Molly, would you mind swiping your fingers down the ‘pearl pad’ in a ‘Z’ shape? It’ll be easier to land if I’m holding this switch down over here on this side.”

Molly walked over to the pad, and double-checked to make sure she remembered which way a Z went, and then did as he asked. “Where are we going? We never discussed it over brunch.”

“You were too busy talking about how grey everything was.”

“Well, it was.”

“It was a moon,” the Doctor reminded her.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t cool. I just said it was grey.”

“We’re going to Hatch,” he said, finally answering her question. “They have a kind of safari there where you can see the wild animals on the planet, but they love being pet.” 

Molly smiled, a little wickedly. “Sounds amazing. Put a pin in it.”

“A pin? Why?”

She leaned around to look at him. “We’re not finished with the Un-Farewell Tour, are we?”

The Doctor scowled. “Well – I – I let Craig know, didn’t I?”

“There must be someone else,” she said, walking around the console to be able to actually face him.

He waved a hand dismissively. “No, no, no one else.”

She felt her eyebrows raise just a little, almost involuntarily. “You forget that I watched the show,” she said. “That includes the spinoffs.”

The Doctor turned to her with surprise. “Spinoffs? You didn’t mention those before. What spinoffs? Tell me about them.”

She shook her head. “Nope, no changing the subject. I know about the last time you saw Sarah Jane. You didn’t get much time together. And what about Clara?”

“What about Clara?”

“Think about the last time you saw her,” said Molly as she walked around the console to stand closer to him. “If Kate Stewart was to call you today and tell you Clara had died, would you be okay with how you left things? Would you be okay with that being the last time you saw her?”

The Doctor, predictably, looked away to the controls on the console. She could see the tension in his eyes anyway. She knew that, maybe, again, she might be crossing a line – but while she was here, she was going to do her best to set him up to not go dark again when she left. Relieving any guilt at the way he left things with people who were important to him would help.

“I’m never okay with the last time,” he said finally, his voice soft. “It’s never…right. And it can’t be.”

Molly leaned back against the console to face him the best she could, and crossed her arms across her chest. “You’re right. The last time we see someone is never exactly what we wish it could have been. There’s always something we wish we’d said, something we wish we’d done, something we wish we’d done differently…” It took a breath to keep her mind from wandering back to her own flawed goodbyes. “But you, uniquely, have a chance to make it better. You can have what most people don’t – something more than the average day and a casual ‘see you later’ that never comes. I’m not saying you need to make a whole thing of it, but at the very least you can keep them from wondering if you didn’t come back because you chose not to, or because you died. Or at the very, very least, leave things off a little better than you did originally.”

Though he frowned, she could see the debate in his head. She thought he was looking through all his lasts with all the people he’d traveled with. All the ones he could have done better. “I can’t possibly go back and redo my last meeting with every single person I’ve ever met.”

“No, but there are people you’ve gone back to relatively recently. You can go to them. You can go spend some real time with Sarah Jane before you get the call about her. You can go spend some time with Clara before you get the call about her.”

His jaw began to shift, and she took it as a good sign. If he was debating, he was listening. He was considering. Maybe she could get a better goodbye for Sarah Jane and Clara. Maybe she could get a better goodbye for the Doctor.

Maybe part of her was hoping to get an example of the kinds of things she should say when it was her turn to say goodbye to the Doctor.

“Okay,” the Doctor breathed. “One more Christmas with Clara, why not? And then maybe we’ll swing by Sarah Jane’s. I’d like to check in on K9, make sure he doesn’t need any repairs.”

Molly grinned. “Great! Let’s get going.”

While the Doctor was already dressed appropriately for Christmas dinner, Molly ran and changed into an emerald green dress. Nothing too dressed up, nothing too casual. She was unfamiliar with Christmas in reality, but cheesy Christmas movies had taught her that some families did PJs, and some wore their best clothes, so this was a good compromise.

When she’d gotten back to the control room, the Doctor was just pulling the lever to send them hurtling through space and time to Clara’s, and Molly gripped the railing tight. She breathed a sigh of relief when they landed. “Are you ready?”

“If you’re going to stop bullying me into visiting people I’ve said goodbye to,” he grumbled, but there was an air of excitement around him.

“We already discussed this. The problem is you didn’t say goodbye, and also, I’m not a bully,” she said smiling. “Let’s go have Christmas. You’re sure she’ll be okay with me tagging along?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “She’s never been too particular. Wasn’t even upset when I showed up twice one Christmas – she’d saved a couple extra crackers in case that happened.”

“As long as you’re sure,” said Molly, though she was tempted to point out that he hadn’t actually addressed her concern about an extra person who wasn’t him. 

“I’m sure!” The Doctor went to the TARDIS doors and stepped out, and Molly followed just behind him.

She immediately wished she’d thrown on a coat. The snow covered the ground everywhere, pure white and sparkling in lamplight. Thick flakes were falling from the sky, and looking down at her bodice, Molly could make out the shape of each snowflake. It was lovely – and freezing.

The house to her left was a little more than modestly sized. Two stories, brown brick, lots of windows. On an upstairs balcony a telescope was left pointed towards where the stars would have been, if not for the cloud cover. The house was covered in little white lights, with a few lit snowflake shapes to fit in with the snowy landscape. It was more isolated than Molly had pictured; she could see the lights of the next house, but not make out its exact shape.

Clara had done well. Or her husband had, since she was making a teacher’s salary. Still, doing what she loved was ‘doing well’. The mostly-dirt road around the house suggested a small town, and she wondered how long the commute was for Clara.

The Doctor also glanced around, and rubbed his hands together. “Brr! Sooner we get inside the better,” he said as he headed towards a white front door with a green wreath hung on it. Molly followed, a little more hesitant now as she was preparing to meet yet another of her favorite characters from her favorite show. She might never recover if Clara didn’t like her.

They stepped up on the porch and now it was the Doctor’s turn to hesitate a moment, before he knocked. It wasn’t long until Molly heard the scrape of a chain lock being undone, and the door opened.

“Doctor!” Clara exclaimed, her brown eyes wide. She was a little older now, maybe early forties, little lines about her eyes and the corners of her mouth, but she still had the dimple when she smiled. “It’s been ages. What’s wrong with you? Here, get inside, you and your friend.”

She stepped aside to let the Doctor and Molly in. The inside was decorated similarly to the outside – twinkling white lights, lush green garland wrapped around the handrail for the stairs, paper cut-out snowflakes taped over a couple archways.

“Happy Christmas!” the Doctor greeted Clara warmly when she shut the door and turned back. His hesitance was completely gone when he pulled her into a hug. “I am in time for Christmas, yes?”

“Right in time,” said Clara, hugging him back. “I mean, you’re three years late for the next Christmas you were supposed to visit, but right in time for this one, yes.” She turned to Molly. “Hi, sorry. I’m Clara.”

Molly did her best to wipe her too-wide-for-a-stranger grin off her face. “Hi. Hi, Clara. I love – I mean, it’s lovely meeting you. I’m Molly.”

“Lovely to meet you, too, Molly. Come sit in the sitting room? Dinner should be ready any minute.” Clara gestured to one of the archways, and Molly glanced at Clara before heading in. She was wearing a red dress at about the same level of casual as Molly’s, though hers had a bit of a sparkle of gold that dressed it up some.

The living room was another well-decorated room, with a tree like the ones Molly had seen in movies, with silver tinsel and a popcorn-and-cranberry garland, and big sparkly ornaments in various colors. There were still gifts under the tree in red and green paper.

The Doctor went straight to the tree to pick up one of the boxes and shake it by his ear. “You still haven’t opened presents?” He set the gift down and glanced around the living room. “Where are the kids?”

“They got snowed in with Thomas,” she said, moving a cozy white blanket from a chair by the fireplace, the flames dancing merrily to a record that was playing some old Christmas song Molly had once sung in choir at school. She arranged the blanket over her lap when she settled into the chair. “They went to visit his parents in Norway a couple days ago. No flights out. Just me this Christmas.”

Molly shot a look at the Doctor. “Good thing we came to visit, then, huh?”

The Doctor turned to fluff a cranberry-and-pinecone-themed pillow on the white couch across from Clara, hiding his face from both her and Molly a moment before taking a seat with a smile. “Perfect timing, I’d say! No one should be alone on Christmas.”

Molly went to take a seat by the Doctor as Clara said, “What took you so long, Doctor? Why are you so late? How long’s it been? Last time you only waited five minutes in between, on your side. You’ve made a new friend now.”

“Oh – ah…” the Doctor glanced at Molly, almost helplessly. He didn’t want to disclose how long it had been. Of course, Clara more than most would know what it meant that he’d been away so long. That he hadn’t planned on coming back.

“That long, huh?” asked Clara a bit dryly.

“Well…maybe…” he cleared his throat. Molly half-expected him to lie. That was Rule One, after all. But she also felt that Clara would be one person he wouldn’t want to have to lie to again, not after what had happened in Christmas.

“Go on, Doctor. Can’t be that bad. You haven’t aged a day in this regeneration.”

“It’s been…” He sighed, and finally said it: “A hundred years. Bit less, maybe.”

Clara stared for what felt like a very long moment as the sound of the crackling fire and the record player’s scratchy rendition of Auld Lang Syne echoed in the festive room.

When the long moment came to a close, she smiled, though it was small and sad. “You were done, then. Makes sense. You never liked goodbyes, not a one of you.”

“Clara, I…” but the Doctor couldn’t seem to find any more words.

Clara turned to look at Molly. “You convinced him to come back, didn’t you?”

Molly wasn’t sure if Clara was angry, and felt her heartbeat quicken at the terrifying thought. “Yeah. I did. He’d…um, mentioned you.” It was true, so she didn’t have to worry about lying to Clara, either. “Said it’d been a while. I thought it was best if he went back and said hi to some people. Let them know he wasn’t dead.”

“Took some convincing, did it?”

“A bit.”

Clara turned her gaze to the Doctor, an impatience in her eyes as she stood. “Doctor.”

“I’m sorry, Clara, I am,” the Doctor said, his voice the sound of regret. “I just thought…maybe it was time. For you to move on.”

“I think I’ll decide that for myself, thank you very much,” she replied. “You can decide when you’re ready. I’ll decide when I am.” She paused. “When did you decide you weren’t ready? Because if you were completely done, you wouldn’t be here.”

“…about when Molly insisted,” the Doctor confessed.

Clara gave an exasperated sigh, and reached down to pull the Doctor to his feet. But her voice was gentle when she laughed. “Oh, you silly old man.” She smiled up at him. “You don’t ever hesitate to come see me. You’re a more important part of Christmas than a tree, or presents.”

“Not more than presents,” the Doctor quickly disagreed, a longing eye on the gifts behind her.

“You’re my present every year,” insisted Clara, straightening his bowtie that had gone crooked when they’d hugged. “Every year, I get to see my Doctor. Don’t go taking that away from me again, you hear me?”

The Doctor returned her small, genuine smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

“We’ve missed too many Christmases already.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Call me ‘ma’am’ again, and I’m taking away one of your presents.”

The Doctor’s eyes lit up. “I have a gift?”

Clara laughed. “Of course you have a gift. You get one every year, and I bought and wrapped one every year, just in case. You’ve got three of them under the tree. Go on and find them.”

The Doctor happily went around Clara to search through the pile of presents for his, and Clara moved to sit on the couch beside Molly. “I’m sorry there’s nothing for you. I’d offer you one of the Doctor’s presents, but they’re all, well…very specifically for him.”

Molly shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve never really done Christmas before. And I didn’t bring you anything, either.”

“You brought me the Doctor,” replied Clara, smiling over as the Doctor was setting his own gifts in another pile, pausing to shake each of them. “I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

Molly felt a wave of warmth. Maybe this was the real reason she was here. To help the Doctor reconnect. To give him people to turn to when he was traveling alone again. Still, “He wouldn’t have come if he didn’t want to.”

“True.” Clara turned from watching the Doctor finish finding his gifts to glance at Molly. “How did you two meet? I’d tell you our story, but it’s…a bit complicated.”

“The Doctor…mentioned some things.” Sticking to the bare minimum of truth. “And we sort of…bumped into each other. I wound up sort of…a stowaway on the TARDIS.” She turned to Clara with an apologetic smile. “I guess ours is a bit complicated, too.”

Together they watched the Doctor enthusiastically open his gifts, each a different hand-stitched bow tie. He was as excited for the last as he was the first, and immediately switched to a pale purple one with snowflakes stitched in white.

“I’ll just go check on dinner, make sure the turkey’s ready,” said Clara when he was finished.

“I’ll help,” the Doctor immediately volunteered. Molly opted to stay behind in the living room to give them some time alone together.

She stood and looked around. It was well-decorated, even without the Christmas décor. White chairs and couches that were somehow pristine despite the children. They’d all likely grown up a lot since the Doctor had last seen them. On the mantle were photos of each of them individually – an older girl about sixteen with freckles, a boy around thirteen grinning on a sled, and a girl maybe ten with braided pigtails. At the end was a photo of Clara in a tea-length wedding dress and birdcage veil, almost nose-to-nose with a man with long blond hair wearing a tux, surrounded by rose bushes. Their wedding must have been beautiful. She wondered if Clara had tried to send the Doctor an invitation.

Molly wandered back into the hall to look at some of the photos on the wall. She was thrilled to see the oldest in a tutu that suggested Snow in the Nutcracker. Another showed the boy holding up a gold medal for something. Another was the littlest holding what looked like a handmade comic book she’d drawn. Another showed the whole family sitting on a bench in the park, Clara and her husband almost falling off the ends.

As Molly examined the happy family photo with a longing that almost made her sick, she heard a sudden shout behind her, and span around to see Clara breathing deep with a hand on her chest. “Sorry!” she apologized. “I didn’t see you there, I thought you were still in the sitting room.”

Molly smiled. “It’s okay.”

“What is it?!” came the Doctor’s voice as he quickly approached from the other room. “Dalek? Cyberman? Christmas-themed Weeping Angel?” He arrived in the room, holding a meat fork as though he were holding a trident. He glanced around the room. It was cute, the way he rushed to defend Clara, even if there was nothing to protect her from. “Or perhaps a Molly?”

“It was a Molly,” said Clara with a laugh, reaching over to disarm the Doctor. “I just came to let her know dinner’s ready.”

“Oh.” The Doctor sounded almost disappointed at the lack of adventure. “Well. Alright then. Dinnertime.”

They all sat around the table, and Molly was excited to see Christmas crackers on the plates. Every BBC show that they appeared in made her wish she had easy access to them, though they didn’t seem as much fun on your own. They all crossed their arms to hold the ends of each other’s, and pulled. The ‘pop!’ made Molly jump and they all laughed. They put on their paper crowns and read the jokes, then settled down for turkey, and stuffing, and roasted potatoes, and Brussels sprouts with walnuts, and pigs in blankets, and red currant jelly, and bread sauce with nutmeg and clove. She ate until she couldn’t anymore while the Doctor and Clara caught up and told funny stories of their adventures together – most of which hadn’t even been in an episode, so Molly adored it – but she still managed to find room for some sticky toffee pudding, despite having brunch only maybe an hour before. It was everything her BBC-loving heart could have wanted.

They went back and sat by the fire for a while as the stories continued. It must have been late in the night when things wound down, and it was feeling more and more like it was time for them to go.

“Give my love to the kids,” said the Doctor. “Thomas, too. Tell him I intend to keep my promise about the mistletoe.”

Clara laughed. “I will. You’re coming back next Christmas, yes? Understand that it’s not a request.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Clara reached up and pulled the snowflake tie loose, and pulled it off him. “I did warn you. You can come back for it next Christmas.” The Doctor pouted, but didn’t argue as Clara turned to Molly. “You keep him in line, alright?”

“No worries on that front,” said Molly, feeling bold enough to give Clara a hug. It was so amazing to hug a favorite character, it still didn’t feel quite real.

“Good,” said Clara, as she opened the door for them. “Well. Until next Christmas, Doctor.”

“Until next Christmas,” he promised.

Molly followed him outside, then turned to wave goodbye to Clara. “Merry Christmas, Clara.”

“Happy Christmas…” began Clara, then she paused. “Oh! Wait a moment.” She disappeared back into the house.

Molly glanced with confusion at the Doctor, who shrugged. After a minute of shivering, Clara returned, and held out a small box wrapped with green paper. “Thomas bought it for Olivia, but he keeps forgetting she hates this sort of thing.”

Molly stared down at the green package wrapped in a red bow as though she couldn’t quite believe it really existed. “I can’t…”

“Really, she’ll never miss it,” said Clara, holding it closer to Molly. “It’ll just end up sold or donated. You said you’ve never had a real Christmas before, and this is part of the experience. Go on.”

Molly hoped the tears in her eyes wouldn’t freeze to her lashes as she reached out and gently took the box. “Thank you, Clara,” she could barely whisper.

“Open it,” the Doctor encouraged, seeming even more excited than she was for her first Christmas present.

Molly took a breath, and ripped at the paper, wishing she knew the balance between being excited enough and being respectful enough to tear the paper the right way. Still, the butterflies in her stomach were more from excitement than nerves as she handed the paper to the Doctor, and then slipped the lid off the little golden cardboard box.

Inside was a little, dainty necklace, a teardrop emerald (or perhaps another stone that looked like an emerald) on a golden chain. Her favorite color, something akin to her favorite stone, a little piece of jewelry she could wear next to her heart to remember this moment. It was perfect. The perfect first Christmas present.

She looked back at Clara. “It’s too much.”

“If it was, I wouldn’t have given it to you,” she said. “So, you like it?”

Molly started back down at it in wonder. “It’s perfect.”

“Good,” Clara smiled. “Next year I’ll have something even better, so you make sure he comes back.”

“I will.” Molly immediately began searching her memory for something that would be perfect to bring Clara.

“Happy Christmas, Clara,” said the Doctor, instead of ‘goodbye’.

“Happy Christmas, Doctor,” said Clara. Then she turned to Molly with a wicked smile. “Happy Christmas, Molly Quinn.”

She quickly shut the door, and left Molly staring at the red ribbon of the wreath for a long time before she turned to the Doctor. “Did she know who I was the whole time?”

“Probably,” the Doctor admitted, though he also seemed a bit stunned. “I watched it with her more than anyone.”

Molly sighed, and shook her head. Maybe next time they could explain what had happened.

If there was a next time, Molly remembered with disappointment. She’d likely be gone before the Doctor came back.

To take her mind off the sadness, she began pulling her new necklace out of the box as she headed back to the TARDIS. “Okay, off to the next one.”

Another change of clothes (back to the first, at least) and they were on their way to 13 Bannerman Road.

Stepping into the TARDIS in winter and out of the TARDIS in summer was a dizzying experience, but of course the Doctor never seemed to notice. That was his normal.

They walked up the drive to the front door under the bright, warm sunshine, and this time Molly took the initiative and knocked. Sarah Jane must have heard the TARDIS arriving, because Molly had to quickly pull her fist away from the door as it swung open while Sarah Jane shouted – “Doctor!”

“Sarah Jane!” the Doctor shouted warmly back.

Sarah Jane Smith stood staring for a moment, her mouth hung open slightly but her eyes bright and sparkling. But it didn’t take long for her to pull herself together, and the pleasantly surprised expression turned to concern. “What are you doing here? Has something happened?”

“No, no, nothing,” replied the Doctor, stepping in as Sarah Jane stepped aside to let them in. “Just dropped by to say hello, that sort of thing.”

“To say hello?” Sarah Jane repeated back, confused. She shut the door behind them. “You don’t do that.”

“Trying it out,” replied the Doctor as he invited himself further into the house and looked around. “Thought maybe it could be a new hobby.”

Sarah Jane seemed a bit speechless at this major change in the Doctor’s behavior. But she turned to Molly with a little smile. “You look familiar.”

Molly couldn’t keep from her eyes going a bit wide, and she looked back at the Doctor to glare accusingly, but he was actively looking everywhere but at her. She turned back to Sarah Jane and hoped a disarming grin would erase that moment. “One of those faces,” she said, hoping the fewer words would help her get away with lying. “Nice to meet you. I’m Molly.”

“I’m Sarah Jane. The Doctor and I go way back,” explained Sarah Jane, in case the Doctor hadn’t. “It’s good to meet you.”

Sarah Jane’s smile expressed that she was genuinely glad to meet another of the Doctor’s friends, to know who it was that was keeping an eye on him now. Molly’s smile became more natural. She wished she’d spent more time watching the classic episodes.

The Doctor headed up the stairs suddenly, and Sarah Jane quickly followed. “What are you looking for?”

As Molly followed, she heard the Doctor reply, “Don’t you have a son in here somewhere?”

She heard Sarah Jane laugh. “It’s summer holidays. He’s out with his friends. Should be back in a few hours if you want to say hello.”

“No, no,” the Doctor said, distractedly looking around the attic now. “Just popping by. Making sure everything’s alright.” He paused, and looked back at Sarah Jane. “Is everything alright?”

“Yes, Doctor, everything’s fine,” Sarah Jane replied warmly, moving forward to take him by the shoulders and pull him to face her instead of going through a pile of drawings on a desk. “Now, what are you really doing here?”

“Really here to see you!” said the Doctor, grinning, removing Sarah Jane’s hands from his shoulders, then tapping the tops of hers to reassure her. “It’s new. Just trying it out, as I said. Any invasion problems lately? Anything I can help with?” Searching for adventure with her.

“Oh, nothing we couldn’t handle. It’s been quiet lately,” said Sarah Jane, sitting at her desk and crossing her legs. “How about you, Doctor? Busy, as always?”

“Not always,” the Doctor said, now turning to look through the room again. “Almost always, yes.”

Sarah Jane watched as the Doctor seemed to examine every inch of the attic. “What are you looking for?”

“I think he’s looking for K9,” replied Molly, smiling as she leaned against the doorframe and folded her arms.

“Oh! You should’ve said so,” said Sarah Jane as she stood, and she moved beside Molly to shout down the stairs: “K9! Come to the attic!” She turned and went back to stand by her desk and explained, “He’s probably in Luke’s room. Luke is going to take him to university next year.”

Molly heard something mechanical behind her and turned just in time to see K9 manage to roll up the last step, and move past her towards the room. She fought back the urge to scream his name at him or to throw herself on the ground and wrap her arms around him, but it was a closer fight than with anyone else she’d met so far.

“Master!” K9 shouted the moment he laid eyes on the Doctor. It didn’t matter that the Doctor had a different face now, K9 would always know him, it seemed.

“K9!” screamed the Doctor the way Molly had wanted to, and he got on his knees in front of him. “You look well taken-care of. No repairs needed?”

“Negative, Master,” replied K9.  “Mistress and Luke perform any repairs I may need.”

“Good boy,” The Doctor pet his metal dog for a while before standing and grinning at Sarah Jane again. “Glad you’ve been able to keep him in shape.”

“Oh, it’s mostly Luke,” admitted Sarah Jane. “Mr. Smith helps sometimes, too, though he seems to resent it.”

The Doctor waved Molly over. “Come meet my dog! Well, Sarah Jane’s dog.”

“Our dog.” Sarah Jane made it a little simpler.

Molly smiled and rushed over, kneeling on the ground beside K9. “Hi, K9,” she greeted.

The Doctor gestured to Molly. “K9, this is-”

“Greetings, Molly Quinn,” said K9. “You are listed as a fictional character in the TARDIS records.”

“Molly Quinn?” Sarah Jane sounded confused while the Doctor quickly stepped over K9 to stand next to her. “Why is that name familiar?”

The Doctor winced. “Uh, well-”

K9 cut in. “Molly Quinn is the main character in the drama television program the Phoenix. It was cancelled after its third season. The first episode has been played on the TARDIS ninety-t-”

“That’s enough!” the Doctor cut in. “I think she’s got it.”

By now Molly’s slightly panicked eyes met Sarah Jane’s bewildered ones. “Molly Quinn? You’re that Molly Quinn? From that program the Doctor used to watch?”

There was nowhere else to go from there. “Um. Yeah.”

Sarah Jane looked at the Doctor. “What do you mean by saying ‘nothing’s happening’? This is nothing?” 

“I mean…”

“How did this happen?”

Molly turned to K9 while the Doctor filled Sarah Jane in. She wondered if she could get away with petting him. “Hey. K9.”

“Yes, Molly Quinn?”

“You’re a good dog.”

“Affirmative.”

“You’re my favorite dog.”

“Explain?”

“You’re a great dog. And also, the only dog I’ve ever met.” Save for the occasional dog out on a walk, it was, sadly, true. No one she’d lived with had owned a dog, and she’d never had friends and therefore no opportunity to bond with a friend’s dog, so this was her first chance to sit and pet a dog. Even if he was metal. “But mostly the ‘great’ part.”

“Correction available.”

“Correction?”

“I am the best dog.”

“Absolutely the best dog.” She hid her crossed fingers. “May I pat you on the head?”

“Affirmative.”

Thankfully, her squeal was soft enough that neither the Doctor nor Sarah Jane seemed to hear her, and she reached out and pat K9 on the head, right between the ears. She grinned when his ears wiggled.

Molly continued petting K9 as she turned to listen in on the Doctor and Sarah Jane, who seemed to now be past the story of how Molly had gotten there, and were now on Sarah Jane’s recent adventures with the kids. Molly listened in as though watching an episode, and felt that maybe this day made up for all the time she’d lost for rewatches.

Eventually the conversation got to the Doctor, and what he’d been doing since they’d seen each other last, and Molly noticed he kept mostly to the more optimistic highlights. It was fun, though, seeing Sarah Jane’s reaction to stories about Amy and Rory, River, and Clara. And she was surprised that, though he tried to keep to the happier parts, the Doctor didn’t hold back from any personal details of the stories he told, even details with River. Sarah Jane really was his best friend.

Molly gave as short and impersonal explanation of everything that had happened to her after she’d been shot on the show as she could (she kept mostly to ‘had surgery, went to physical rehab, flew to London’). K9 and the Doctor sat together for a bit as Molly asked Sarah Jane questions about her time with the Doctor, and Sarah Jane did the same for her.

It must have been over an hour before the Doctor gave K9 one last pat, stood, stuck his hands in his pockets, and looked over at the stairwell. “Suppose we’d better be off. Lots to see. Loads to do.”

Sarah Jane nodded, and walked with them back down to the front door. She gave the Doctor a hug, and Molly saw Sarah Jane’s eyes a little sad, but understanding. She was the Doctor’s best friend, after all. She knew he didn’t come to stay for long. “Have a trip ‘round a planet for me,” she said, and turned and gave Molly a hug. “And keep yourselves safe.”

“Goodbye, Master!” K9 had followed behind them, it seemed.

The Doctor smiled down at K9. “Be a good dog for me.”

“It is statistically proven that I am always ‘good’.”

“That’s right,” replied the Doctor, smiling.

Molly gave K9 a quick pet, and gave Sarah Jane a wave, and it was already time to say goodbye to 13 Bannerman Road.

Neither of them spoke until they were back on the TARDIS. Molly waited, but the Doctor’s expression went from happy to thoughtful, to some sort of regretful sadness, and Molly felt the universe crushing her as she thought that maybe that visit hadn’t gone as well as she’d thought. Maybe he wasn’t coping as well with seeing Sarah Jane as she’d thought, maybe he was thinking about the call he’d get about her someday and it was all her fault. Maybe it had all been a mistake.

If he wasn’t going to talk, she had to change the subject. She had to get him smiling again. “Okay, well, we’re all done now! I can stop bullying you into seeing someone. Zero to go. Off to Hatch?”

She watched as the Doctor leaned back against the center console, his arms folded as he looked down. He didn’t say anything, or even seemed to have noticed she’d said anything at all, until he shook his head. “No. No. One more stop for the Un-Farewell Tour.”

Molly stared back at him, half in relief that it hadn’t been a mistake after all, half in wondering. “Who?”

The Doctor stared down for a moment longer, then looked up at her, and gave a small, sad smile.

The TARDIS landed outside the little house. He’d moved out of the city, somewhere quieter, surrounded by green hills. Molly wondered if he’d chosen Scotland for a specific reason.

They walked up a little dirt path to the door. Molly looked back to examine the well-trimmed bushes, sparkling in the light mist of rain and the setting sun, and then over at a few plots along the inside of the fence that looked like they usually contained flowers, but most of them had died in the autumn chill. She turned forward to look at the rough woodgrain of the door.

The Doctor stood very still. Neither of them moved to knock. It was a full minute before the Doctor swallowed, then whispered, “Do you think he hates me?”

“No. I don’t think so.” But she didn’t know.

Almost another minute, and then, “The reminders I asked you to…remind me of, please.”

“He doesn’t have many people to talk to, who know what really happened to them.”

“Another.”

“He deserves to get to talk about them with you.”

“Another, please.”

“He deserves to hear about all the things they did those last days.”

“Another.”

“He deserves to know about all the people they saved.”

The Doctor didn’t speak again, but he took a deep breath. He stared down at the ground for a few, long seconds, and then took another deep breath, and quickly knocked, as though terrified he’d lose his nerve. He glanced at Molly and she saw, only briefly, a sort of melancholy panic. This was one where she couldn’t promise that everything would be fine.

The door rattled as it opened, and he was revealed. He looked older, more lines in his face, significantly more grey in his hair. He wore a worn beige bathrobe over the top of his clothes, to protect from the chill Molly could feel inside the house. She waited as her heart pounded to see what expression his familiar-but-older face would form.

He stared at the Doctor as though wondering if he was hallucinating. The Doctor shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and finally tried – and failed – to smile. “Hello, Brian.”

Brian frowned, still looking as though he wasn’t sure what he was seeing could possibly be real. “Doc…Doctor?”

“Been a while,” the Doctor said softly, what might have been raindrops falling from his eyelids as he blinked. “Mind if we come in?”

Molly would understand if Brian wouldn’t let them in. She thought the Doctor would understand, too. The Doctor felt very small in this moment, almost as though he was someone else entirely, as he waited for Brian’s response.

Brian stood, staring so intently at the Doctor that Molly wondered if he even realized she was there. He blinked a few times. Then he took a step back from the door. “You’re really here? You really came?”

“Yes, Brian. I’m really here.”

“It’s just…” he started, and for a moment he sounded as lost as he looked. “It’s just it’s been so long. I thought by now, there was no chance you’d…but you’re really here.”

“Brian…” the Doctor began, the slightest crack in it, but he couldn’t seem to say more.

“Yeah. Come in. Of course, come in,” said Brian, turning and headed back into the little house. “I’ve got the kettle going. We can have some tea.”

The Doctor glanced at Molly, and she tried to smile encouragingly as the Doctor stepped into the house. Molly closed the door behind her as they followed Brian through a narrow hallway to a little kitchen, a fold-up card table used in place of a regular kitchen table. A clean white kettle was on the stove, and Brian went straight to the cupboards to pull out two other mis-matched mugs. He glanced back while he rinsed the dust out of them in the sink. “Sorry I’m…” he paused as he poured water out of the mugs. “I’m just surprised, is all. Didn’t think I’d be seeing you again. After…well.” He set the mugs on the counter beside his. “You know, that friend of yours, the one with the hair and that…that unusual name…”

“River?” the Doctor asked as he took a seat. “River came to see you?”

Brian nodded, not looking back over at them, but focused on drying the mugs. “She came over one day, when Rory had been gone long enough that all his friends thought…” He cleared his throat. “She told me about what happened. About the Angels, and the graveyard. I asked if you were coming, and…” He set the mugs carefully on the counter again, and turned them all so the handles were all perfected spaced from each other. “We both thought you wouldn’t. Now it’s been…six years? Seven years? I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

“Brian…”

“My grandson came over one day, before that. A week after you and Rory and Amy left.” Brian continued as though he hadn’t heard the Doctor speak. “He was older than me. How do you like that? Your grandson, few years older than you. But he brought me a letter, from Rory. It was a good, thick one. Rory wrote it when my grandson was a baby, and then added to it over the years, letting me know what his life was like. I’d say ‘at least I got that’, but that’s a lot more than most people get.”

“Brian-” this time, the Doctor was interrupted by the kettle screaming. Brian took it off the heat, and poured water in the cups over the tea. He set the kettle down and carefully brought the three mugs over, then pulled the chair beside Molly around to sit at another edge of the table.

“Let me know if anyone needs any cream, or sugar, or anything,” he said as he picked up his mug and tentatively sipped it, setting it back down when it was clearly too hot still.

“Brian…” the Doctor tried again. It seemed to take some force for him to move his eyes from the bottom of his mug to Brian. “I’m sorry.”

Brian stared back a long moment. He picked the mug back up and went to take a drink from it just for the excuse to look away, but then paused and set it aside again. He looked back at the Doctor, and for the first time Brian’s face seemed to have some real movement in it as he smiled a little. “Doctor…I’m glad they went with you. Because I was right – how many people get that chance? How many people did they save when they were with you? And then they settled down and had a baby. If you think that wasn’t exactly what Rory should’ve done, you didn’t know my son at all.”

This moment was too private for Molly to feel comfortable witnessing, and it felt an insult for her to be in the place Rory would’ve been if he hadn’t died, here, in front of his father. But she was grateful to him for the olive branch. He had every right to be furious, but instead, he said exactly what the Doctor needed to hear.

Brian continued, “And I told Amy’s parents. I’m not sure if they believed me, but I told them, and I showed them the pictures Rory sent me. I thought they should know what happened to their daughter, too.”

The Doctor stared down at his hands for a long time before he could reply. “I should have kept them safe. And…I tried, Brian. I did. I’m so sorry it wasn’t enough.” As the Doctor tried to explain all the ways he’d tried to save them both, Molly looked around the kitchen. There wasn’t much that made it stand out: it was perfectly ordinary, white tile counters, dark cupboards. Whereas in America there might have been more cupboard space below, instead there was a washer and dryer. A few plates sat in the sink that were brightly colored but didn’t match, and the appliances all seemed white, though the fridge was covered in postcards and polaroids.

Molly couldn’t hold back a gasp as she recognized someone in one of them. “Is that Wilf?”

The Doctor stopped mid-word and turned his head quickly as if expecting Wilf to be standing behind him. “Wilf? Where?”

“On the fridge,” Molly pointed.

The Doctor hopped out of his chair and searched the fridge, and pulled the polaroid of Wilf and Brian standing beside each other wearing sunglasses on a beach off the fridge and looked down at it, and then continued to search the fridge for the other pictures of Wilf, and a few of the postcards. “What? What’s this?”

“Oh, so you’ve met Wilf, too?” Brian asked Molly, and then turned to the Doctor. “We met online. We both talked around the subject for a while, but finally it came out that we both knew you. He told me about Donna. I told him about Rory. I still like to travel sometimes, and I’ll send him postcards, and he’ll send me postcards back, though they’re all from London.” He stood and took the postcards, and flipped them around to show the Doctor that they were all typically London tourist-y. “We met up a couple times. He’s nice to talk to. I don’t have to pretend I don’t know where my son is, and he doesn’t have to pretend he doesn’t know what it is his granddaughter can’t remember.” He handed the postcard back, and turned around to face Molly fully. “Sorry. Forgot to introduce myself. I’m Brian.”

“Hi, Brian,” Molly said, hoping her smile was somehow respectful. “I’m Molly.”

“You’re the new one, then?”

Molly wasn’t sure how to answer that without sounding like she was taking Rory’s place. “I didn’t meet the Doctor that long ago.” Maybe hearing that the Doctor hadn’t gone straight out to find a replacement would help the awkwardness.

“Yeah? Been anywhere interesting yet?”

Molly glanced over to see the Doctor still flipping through postcards, then back to Brian. “I met mermaids from space?”

This got a genuine laugh out of Brian. “Mermaids from space! That’s exciting. I met dinosaurs from space, once.”

“That sounds even better.” Watching the episode had definitely been more fun than being kidnapped by mermaids from space, anyway.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

The Doctor finally looked up from the postcards. Now it was impossible for the water in his eyes to be rainwater. “You talk to Wilf?” It was the Doctor, now, who was struggling to understand reality. But he didn’t seem horrified – he seemed reassured. These two people who had been companions for only a brief period of time, who had one way or another lost their children or grandchildren in a way no one else would understand, had found each other. Brian had someone to talk to all this time, after all.

“We’ll meet somewhere near him, sometimes. Went to a beach once. Played golf. I think he purposefully aims his ball at the lake so we’ll have to give up and go back to the clubhouse for a drink.”

“But you…you’ve talked about Donna?”

Brian sat back down. “Yeah. She’s doing well, he says. He mentioned she…” and Brian paused now, seeming to have realized what he was saying, and that it would really mean something to the Doctor. “She had a baby, Doctor. A while back. And they’re both well, mother and baby. Child, now. I’m not sure how old they are, but apparently old enough to be getting on his daughter’s nerves.” That sounded like Sylvia Noble.

The Doctor moved back to his chair and sat, dropping some of the pictures on the table while he stared down at a particular one. When he noticed her looking, the Doctor showed it to Molly: A photo of Donna, looking a little irritated up at the camera, but a smile still on her mouth as she held a tiny baby in a white blanket.

She would never know Donna personally like the Doctor did, but it still made her fight back tears to see Donna so happy. And if she was feeling overwhelmed, she couldn’t imagine how the Doctor was feeling now.

There seemed to be too many people in this kitchen. There was one of them who didn’t need to be there. So, she stood, and smiled at both the Doctor and Brian. “I think I’m going to head back to the TARDIS. You two stay and talk. Take your time.” She held her hand out towards the Doctor for the key. The Doctor watched her hand for a long moment, but then he handed her the key, and she thought she saw an expression of gratitude in his eyes.

“Thanks for…” began Brian, standing, and he offered his hand. “Thanks for coming by.”

“Thanks for having me,” she said. She considered thanking him for the tea, but she hadn’t even gotten around to taking a sip, and it felt rude to draw attention to that. “I’m glad we met.”

And even more glad to see him get one last chance to talk to the Doctor about Rory and Amy, and their son.

Molly walked back into the TARDIS, her heart oddly racing, as though she were the one who had gone in to apologize to Brian. The nervous energy wouldn’t leave her alone, and she started pacing around the center console. Finally, she turned and headed for her ballet studio. She didn’t know how long the Doctor would take, but she needed to do something, and he could always find her when he was back.

It was about forty-five minutes later that she’d finished her stretches, warm up, and short practice, changed, and headed back to the control room. The Doctor was just walking in the door. His face was pensive.

“Everything work out okay?” she asked anxiously.

When he looked over to her, she noted a sort of relief on his face, or something deeper, like an old, haunting memory was finally put to rest. “We talked. We talked about a lot of things. It was good. I think…I think he doesn’t hate me, after all,” he said. His next words were colored with a little guilt. “I think he still likes me, actually.”

He seemed both happy with Brian’s forgiveness, and that he regretted it. He still hadn’t forgiven himself for Amy and Rory. But she still believed talking to Brian was a major step to healing, and she was proud of him for making that choice himself.

The feelings of relief and pride built in her chest until Molly walked forward and hugged him tight, without thinking about it. “I’m really proud of you for doing this. I know it wasn’t easy.”

He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tight. “Thanks, Molly.” He didn’t seem able to say much more than that, but it was okay.

She pulled back, and headed over to the console. “So. Do you still want to do Hatch?”

She felt the Doctor approach behind her. “Molly,” he began, and then hesitated. “You never talk about your dad.”

The walls shot up with remarkable speed. She stared down at the pearl pad, refusing to let him see the flash of emotion in her eyes. “No,” she said, her voice tight. “I don’t.” She hoped she said it solidly enough it made him set the subject aside.

But he persisted. “The show never said, exactly. We were told he was somewhere far away, that he called sometimes while you were growing up. But not why you ended up in foster care, why he wasn’t a part of your life anymore.”

She tried not to be enraged at him. It wasn’t his fault he was curious. She would have been, too. “He isn’t a part of my life anymore. He’s irrelevant. That’s all.”

“Molly-”

She finally turned to him. “I know I have a lot of secrets. I know it’s not fair. I know so many of yours, but you don’t know mine,” she said. “They’re all connected to the same secret. That’s why I can’t tell you. That’s why I can’t tell you what happened when I was thirteen, or about the names, or why I have PTSD, or how my mom died, or what I did when I didn’t help someone, or where my father is and why he isn’t in my life anymore. And I’m sorry. I just…can’t tell you. I can’t.”

The Doctor stared back at her a moment. His eyes were narrowed with curiosity, or concern, or both. “…so your father is involved with all of it, somehow,” he theorized.

She made a sound of disgust and turned to walk away. This wasn’t a conversation she was willing to have. But he took her arm and turned her back towards him, and said, “I’m sorry, Molly. I solve mysteries, it’s what I do. I’m trying not to think about it too much, I promise. But I-”

“Can’t help it,” Molly finished. “I know. It’s who you are. You can’t turn your brain off, and your ability to examine and deduce and predict is much more advanced than pretty much anyone else.” She paused, as a thought occurred to her that made her stomach twist. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a number of theories already that are pretty close to if not exactly what happened. And you’ve shown a lot of self-control not asking me, or talking about it around me, and I appreciate it. But I’m not going to talk about it. I’m not.”

He slowly released her arm. “Understandable.” He turned back to the controls. “So, can we officially declare the Un-Farewell Tour finished?”

Molly smiled and nodded, relieved at the change in subject. “Yep. All done. You did great.”

“Brilliant,” the Doctor responded, smiling back. “Ready for some springtime? To Hatch?”

“To Hatch.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Two

Glimmer

They went on a safari, and Molly petted all sorts of alien creatures. Her favorite had been one that looked like a cross between a cheetah and a baby elephant.

The next day was breakfast in London in 1882, lunch in Mexico City in 2082, dinner on a planet whose name she couldn’t pronounce but for dessert had a fruit cobbler so sweet and rich she could only manage a few bites. Between meals they’d explored each place. No exciting adventures, but it was nice just to wander and see everything. Seeing the past come alive was just as exciting to her as alien planets, though the planet they’d gone to for dinner had offered rides on something that resembled camels, and they’d rode through a path that went by some cliffs and had amazing vistas. She made the Doctor take a hundred photos.

The next morning he’d woken her early, excited to go to another sight-seeing planet. They were tied to something that seemed akin to a ski lift that followed a track, only the track was some kind of magnetic field in the sky, so they seemed to float. Molly only had one minor panic attack, a wild success considering her fear of heights. She again stole the Doctor’s phone to take photos of their surroundings, and a few more selfies with him. The lush purple rainforests and pink mountains had been something to behold. It took the whole day to complete the sightseeing circuit.

The day after that she declared another rest day. She went through a couple hours of ballet practice, then hunted him down in the larger library.

“Good morning,” she greeted, then paused. “Or afternoon. Or…whatever.”

“Hey,” he greeted a little more sensibly. He was seated in an armchair, reading a book that, while in English, she couldn’t quite translate from the science-y speak. “How’d you sleep?”

“Good,” she responded. Surprisingly good. She kept waiting for the nightmares, and though Dalek Sec and the space behind the Cyberman that took Maggie had appeared, they hadn’t been as haunting or common as she’d thought they would be. “Keep busy last night?”

“Oh, busy enough,” he said. “Popped by a religious ceremony on Millenia, planet a couple galaxies over from yours. Did some tinkering on the TARDIS. Read a book on different sorts of gravity on different planets throughout the universe. Working on this one, now,” he said, waving the book at her as though she could comprehend the title.

Molly turned to one of the shelves and drifted a hand across the titles, many of them seeming to be etched in gold. This felt less like a library, and more like a rare book store. “Glad you weren’t bored,” she responded. She spotted a few titles that caught her eye. She pulled the first book – tome, really - of the series out, and held the title toward him. “Would this be safe to read? No dangerous secrets or anything?”

The Doctor stood and approached her, taking the book from her and looking down at it. “The Complete History of Gallifrey.” He read the title out softly. He looked back up at her, his expression mildly surprised. “Why would you want to read this?”

She shrugged. “Always been curious about Gallifrey. I didn’t have much access to the classic episodes that showed it a bit more. Is that okay?”

The Doctor glanced back down at the cover of the book, then nodded and held it out to her. “Yeah, of course it is. I’m used to getting a few questions, but not many people wanting to read a book this thick about it, not to mention the entire encyclopedic series. It even took me a few years before I got through it all.”

“Well, I expect there won’t be time for me to even finish the first book,” replied Molly. “You know, before I get home.”

“Oh. Right,” said the Doctor, his voice a little softer again as he turned away to go back to his seat.

Molly opened the cover and flipped through the pages. “I might just skim through them all, to get as far as I can before it’s time.” She found a seat near the Doctor, folded her legs under her, and began to read the first few pages. It was mostly dry introduction to the material and the author, the kind she usually found in textbooks, so she skipped ahead to the first chapter.

That was how most of the day was spent. They sat and read together, occasionally sharing what they were reading about, though Molly mostly asked clarifying questions about her book, followed by many, many clarifying questions about his until they both gave up on her understanding.

It was another few days of sight-seeing – or weeks, she was already losing track – later when Molly went through her regular morning routine, and added reading a few pages to it, then she headed for the console room, where the Doctor was shining up the controls.

“Where to today?” she asked. It was almost becoming commonplace, going on these adventures and seeing and experiencing these incredible things. She never took a second of it for granted, but the idea that she could casually ask what planet or time they were seeing that day felt so unusual, yet it also almost felt like home.

Another thing she’d examine with a therapist, if she had one that understood traveling with an alien in his space-and-time ship.

“I was thinking Allista,” he said, setting aside the rag. Today he wore a grey vest with his dark purple bowtie. “They collect stories, and exchange them as their main form of currency. You can’t find a better fairytale than on Allista.”

Molly smiled. “I love fairytales.”

“Me, too,” replied the Doctor, beginning to set the coordinates. “Lots of magic and hope and happy endings. In the best ones, at least.”

“Very wholesome,” Molly said, holding on to the railing as they took off. This part was definitely not feeling very commonplace. “They’re sort of like Alice in Wonderland, like they take place in a different world, even if they technically take place on Earth.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor agreed as they landed. “We’re bound to hear some good ones here. And there are little moons around the planet, where they keep even more stories. The main planet has all sorts, but each moon focuses on a different genre. They’re even decorated to match the theme.”

Molly grinned. “I love that. We should definitely visit a moon or two.”

“Done!” replied the Doctor. He grabbed his coat off the railing and shrugged it on. “Shall we?”

Molly felt she practically skipped to the door, and pulled it open, and stepped outside before taking a look around. Outside was a city that seemed made of glass, though she couldn’t see through the walls. The glass sparkled and reflected the buildings around them. It was filled with spires and domes, the glass bending and twisting in ways that reminded her of the architecture in very old cities she’d seen in pictures online, reaching towards a lavender-and-turquoise sky. The streets looked like the Yellow Brick Road from the Wizard of Oz, but with a sparkle to them that suggested gold but wasn’t quite.

She stepped out, knowing her face was a painting of surprise and awe, but she let the Doctor have that moment of victory. She heard him step out and stand next to her, and gently nudged him with his elbow. “You didn’t tell me it looked like heaven.”

“Is this what you think heaven looks like?” replied the Doctor. “I’ve always been interested to hear what other cultures view as paradise.”

“Close enough,” she breathed. “I mean, if I believed in such a place.”

The Doctor hooked an arm around hers. “Well, let’s go have a look at heaven.”

It took Molly only a few minutes to become very grateful that the sun on this planet shone gently; the glare of the light off the glass was harsh enough as it was. Still, everything was just as pretty up close. She could have sat for hours listening to the architects of the city explain how it had all been done - even though that wasn’t usually her thing – but that wasn’t something they offered. Instead, there were people standing on the corners of the golden streets holding large tomes and telling stories, like people back home had stood on corners and proclaimed the end of days. This was much more pleasant. They mostly dressed in long, dark red robes, which apparently denoted their status as public storytellers. People would stand and listen for a while before going about their day. When they stepped inside a café, instead of music there played a woman with a soothing voice telling a story that sounded like a Just So story from her childhood. The Doctor paid with a short story, a miniature recap of his first adventure with Rose, and then they sat and listened to the story playing on the speakers as they had their coffee, before moving on.

They decided to visit the Fairytale Moon, but when they went to the booth to get a ticket for the flight there, they found it closed. As they wandered, they found all the booths were closed. Finally, the Doctor stopped someone to ask about it.

“The flights?” the person – pale blue skin and drooping earlobes giving them away as a native - asked, shifting their purchases in an iridescent bag from one hand to another. “The flights have all been cancelled for a year now. Where’ve you been?”

“Ah…” began the Doctor. “We just arrived.”

The person seemed confused. “How? The energy crystals are run out. No flights in or out.”

“We mean, we just arrived to, um, this specific street,” said Molly. She wasn’t sure why she was trying to cover. Lying was not a gift she had. “So, we…weren’t sure about, um…” This had been a horrible mistake.

“The energy crystals ran out a year ago?” the Doctor asked. She looked to him with gratitude for saving her, but he had what Craig would have called his ‘noticing’ face on. “For all the ships?”

The person nodded. “Yes. We expected another shipment from Llaythe, but apparently there’s nothing left on the mountains, and they didn’t have the equipment to go digging in the tunnels. They made it back, but we’ve been waiting for another way to get there with equipment to get into the tunnels and caves.”

“For a year? You’ve all been trapped here for a year?”

“And everyone who was on a moon has been trapped there,” they said. “Not many supplies out there. We’ve been so worried.”

“But-”

“You can go to the City Hall to talk about it more. I don’t really know anything else, sorry,” said the person, and they turned and walked away. 

The Doctor turned to Molly, and even if she hadn’t studied his every expression, she would know what it was he wanted to do next. Which was fine by her – it was exactly what she wanted to do next, too.

She jogged forward a few steps to get in front of the person they’d been speaking to. “Which way to City Hall, again?”

They sat in a little waiting room, in chairs that were a little too hard, but on the coffee table and side tables were all sorts of books, so at least visitors didn’t notice how hard the chairs were while they were reading. The Doctor was pacing, his face distant, so Molly busied herself with the books. She was surprised by the variety – children’s, cozy mystery, horror, even erotica – and kept picking one up and flipping through them. She was so excited to see an Agatha Christie one that she didn’t notice the secretary stand up from behind her too-tall desk.

“He’s ready for you,” the secretary said, gesturing to the tall green doors behind her. The Doctor headed for them and Molly dropped the book back onto the table and followed after him as quickly as she could.

“Welcome,” a man said, standing and walking around his desk to shake the Doctor’s hand, then Molly’s. His beard almost reached his waist. “I’m the Mayor. My secretary said you thought you could help our energy crisis? We haven’t been able to call off-planet since the crystals ran out. We couldn’t get into the tunnels on the last visit.”

Molly remembered the Doctor had said something about how here, the Mayor was the same as a King – this man was in charge of the planet and its moons, but he was elected in for ten years of service. He seemed tired to Molly, but she’d be tired if she ruled over a planet with some of its people trapped on different moons, too.

The Doctor reached into his pocket and pulled out the psychic paper, flashing it at the Mayor. “Yes! Hello. I’m the Doctor, this is Molly Quinn. We’re energy crisis experts from the Halian Embassy.” The Doctor put the paper back in his pocket and walked over to the desk, and poked through its contents while he spoke. “We have a ship that could get us into the underground tunnels on Llaythe, no problem. We can hop over, grab some crystals, and get you enough to charge up a ship and equipment for a proper dig.”

The Mayor turned towards the Doctor, and though she couldn’t see it, she could feel his expression of surprise and disbelief. “The ground on Llaythe has become hard as the crystals themselves. You believe you can make it underground with just your ship?”

“She’s special,” Molly replied. “She can get us down there. But…” she walked around the Mayor to face the Doctor. “How do we dig up the crystals? I’m not exactly an experienced miner.” She didn’t have enough information to be making many comments, but she was sure the Doctor at least had an idea what he was doing.

“Most of them aren’t part of the rock,” the Mayor explained. “They were dug up by the Lutumedes and brought down into their caves.”

“Lutumedes?”

“Insects,” said the Mayor. “Ancient insects on that planet with large tunnels that cover almost the entire planet. They were attracted to anything that shines. They’ve been extinct a few hundred years now.”

Molly didn’t like the thought of going into the tunnels of even long-dead bugs, but the Doctor didn’t seem to notice. He turned away from the desk and approached the Mayor. “If I’m right, these crystals are related to the Energy Gems of SGH-I. Even just one could power lights in this city for a year.”

“Exactly,” the Mayor replied. “Llaythe has helped power our planet for centuries. The air aboveground is too thin to support us, but the energy from their crystals has helped power our spacecrafts. We know there’s plenty underground, but I didn’t think the mountain had run so low.”

“Not a problem,” replied the Doctor with a smile, already headed for the door. “We’ll just pop over, grab a few crystals, then come back over and you should be able to get your real dig team up there pronto.” He paused by Molly’s ear. “And we’ll just hop ahead a few years and try again.”

“Seems straightforward,” said Molly, though she hoped he didn’t see how nervous she was. The fact the bugs were dead aside, she also was terrified of being underground. Besides, these things never seemed to be that simple. Still, “Let’s do it!” An adventure was an adventure, and she wasn’t going to say no to helping get those poor people stranded on the moons home.

“We’re absolutely, completely certain the bugs are dead.”

“Yes.”

“We’re absolutely, completely certain the tunnels won’t collapse.”

“Yes.”

“We’re really, really, really, really-”

“Molly.”

“Sorry,” she said, as they stood at the door of the TARDIS. “Have I mentioned I’m scared of being underground?”

The Doctor was holding the handle to lead them out of the TARDIS, but paused as they had this conversation. Again. “Six or seven times since we left City Hall.”

“It has not been six or seven times.”

“Okay, fine, three or four,” replied the Doctor. “The tunnels won’t collapse. I promise.”

“And the bugs are dead?”

“The bugs are dead,” he replied, and then threw the door open. “Only one way to get over this fear.”

“…stay inside?”

The Doctor reached out, and gently shoved her out. She wanted to object, but really, it was the only way she was going to leave the TARDIS. “Fair,” she said, as he stepped out and closed the door behind them.

“Torch,” he said, offering her a flashlight. She took it and switched it on with relief. The dark was one thing she hadn’t been afraid of before, at least not always, but since the dark Dalek ship, it made her feel a little nervous.

Despite her fear, she had to admit that every time she stepped on a new planet, a thrill went through her. She’d been excited enough to go to England; this was a whole new world not very many humans would ever see, that none from her place and time and universe would ever see. None but her. And it was going to be wholly new, more so than England had been to her. She’d felt that thrill when they entered the city, she’d felt it on Earth 2.0. It was always exciting, as was the idea of an adventure.

But really, there was nothing terribly thrilling here, other than the fact that it was another planet. She couldn’t actually see the surface, of course, where things actually were. She couldn’t see the sky. It was all just brown, round tunnels, large enough for six people to walk side by side. The ceiling was tall enough to make her feel assured they wouldn’t run out of air, and the Mayor had mentioned openings here and there that let air in, but were too small and the ground too hard for people to slip inside. The dirt had a faint, silvery sparkle to it as the lights moved across it.

“Traces of the crystals,” the Doctor explained. “Some of them must have broken down into almost sand over millions of years.”

Molly nodded. “Okay. Time to start wandering?”

“Time to start wandering.”

They began down the tunnel, which was longer than she thought it would be with no offshoots. They been walking in silence for three minutes when the Doctor couldn’t seem to take it anymore.

“So! What should we chat about while we look for the crystals?”

Molly brainstormed for a moment. “I don’t know. Not me. We talk about me too much.”

He turned a bit to shine the light in her face. “What do you mean? How else are we supposed to get to know each other better?”

Molly reached out and pushed the light down and out of her eyes. “We could talk about you for a change of pace.”

“What about me?” the Doctor wondered, shining the light ahead of them again. “You seem to already know everything.”

Molly thought about that. “I mean, I know a lot of the big things, the bigger adventures and meeting the companions and such. There’s obviously more to you.”

“Like…? What do you want to know? I’m an open book.” the Doctor prompted her. “Well…half open. A smidge open. A bit.”

Well, of course, the moment she was asked she couldn’t remember anything she’d ever wanted to ask. “I don’t know. What’s your favorite movie?”

“My favorite movie?” the Doctor asked incredulously. “That’s what you want to know?”

“I’m just getting warmed up before we get to the hard hitters. I was an investigative journalist, you know. I can come up with some good questions.” Granted, it had been a while since she’d conducted an interview, and none were coming to her now, but she’d figure it out eventually.

They were quiet again as they moved forward a few steps. The Doctor moved the light of his flashlight along the walls as he looked for a turning. “Abyss of Venus. It doesn’t come out for another few decades for you. I don’t watch a lot of scifi – as it’s my life – but I liked that one. The aliens in it were so similar to Ice Warriors, I wondered if it wasn’t written by someone who’d met them. It was really more part horror, part comedy.”

“You’ll have to show it to me,” Molly said, and the Doctor promised to do so. She turned towards him a moment, considering his face. Well, there was nowhere to run, no TARDIS controls to stare at and use to pretend he wasn’t quite paying attention. She’d said the questions would get harder. “How do you feel, now?”

“A bit on edge, to be honest. D’you think I landed in a completely closed off tunnel?”

“Couldn’t have. The tunnels were a bug nest, they have to get in and out somewhere. But that’s not what I mean,” she said. “I mean, after everything that happened. Those hundred years alone. You seem to be doing better, but you usually do when someone’s traveling with you. When I leave, do you think you’ll go back to who you were then?”

“This again?” he asked. She didn’t need to shine the light directly at him to see his expression out of the corner of her eye. It was a scowl. Not quite yet a serious one, but she knew how quickly he could change. It didn’t matter. They had to discuss it. She had to get him thinking about the future, as much as she knew he hated it. “I told you, I can’t exactly put an advertisement in the paper. ‘Wanted: One Companion to Travel Space and Time. Ability to show compassion to people who try to kill you and be impressed by me considered a plus’.”

“I know that,” she replied. “You didn’t answer my question.” She paused, and she only saw his scowl deepen. They would cross to the territory of a truly irritated Doctor soon. It didn’t matter. She pressed on. “Come on. Consider me a therapist. I’ve been to enough therapy that I can fake it.”

“Are you going to ask me ‘and how does that make you feel’ every few minutes?”

“Only if you ask nicely,” she teased, laughing a little to try to keep the serious conversation from becoming too heavy. “And maybe get you thinking about a plan. Coping mechanisms. Something.”

“Why?” he asked, pausing now to turn towards her. His expression seemed almost suspicious, his shoulders tense. “Why are you so concerned about what happens after you leave?”

She stopped and turned towards him, aiming her light at his chest so she wouldn’t blind him. She tried, desperately, to throw a filter on before the words came spilling out, but she failed. “Because I do know you well. Because I know how much guilt you carry with you when you go dark. Maybe not then, maybe not right away, but eventually. Because I know that guilt feeds into your self-hatred. Because I know that self-hatred is why you didn’t want me trying to save you anymore after the Mechanas, at least partly. It’s why you feel guilty whenever anyone gets hurt to save you, because despite everything, all the incredible goodness you put into the world, you don’t think you’re worthy of that, or at least because you place everyone else’s lives ahead of yours. Because I know you feel like every time they’re hurt, it’s your personal failure, which brings you back around to the guilt and self-hatred cycle. Because I know that vicious cycle very well and very personally, guilt to self-hatred to guilt to self-hatred. Because I know it doesn’t just…disappear. Because I know what that does to a soul, if you believe in that kind of thing. I know how it wears you down to nothing. Because I know, if you go dark again, it’s going to haunt you just like this time does. And I know, if there’s any way to avoid that, we need to start planning for it now. I know how important coping mechanisms are, and how important managing guilt is.” She finally was able to stop herself from continuing this awful call-out that she hadn’t intended to do, not now, not like this. She took a slow breath. “Why do I care what happens to you after I leave? Because we’re friends, and I care about you. Because I want you to be happy, and you’re happiest when you’re with people. That’s why.”

She took a deep breath as she absorbed how his face had changed while she’d talked, from his scowl to true anger, then to something blank, and then to a curiosity she hoped to avoid, but now it had settled into some mix of hurt and sad. She cursed her mouth for running off without her brain.

She watched his mouth adjust a few times before he said, quietly, “Hard-hitters, huh?”

“Yeah, I kind of wish I hadn’t said all that. Sorry,” she breathed. “This was maybe not the best time or place for this conversation.”

“You think so?” His voice was tight, tighter than she’d heard it before, except for when he’d told her the story of the Ood and Sontarans.

She winced. “I never said I was a good therapist.”

He began to shake his head. “I don’t want to fight with you now. We should keep moving.” He turned to walk, but she grabbed his sleeve.

“Then don’t fight with me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to go off like that, I promise. But you implied I shouldn’t care about you enough to care what happens to you when I go home, and I do, and I went off. That’s not an excuse to go off, it’s just the reason. But you know everything I said was true.”

“Not everything,” replied the Doctor, but he didn’t continue to specify what she’d said wasn’t true.

She let go of his sleeve, and turned to continue down the tunnel. After a moment, she hooked her free arm in his, and was grateful when he didn’t try to pull away. “I just care about you, you know? Not just because of the show. As a real person. And I want you to be safe and happy. And I know you aren’t always, so don’t try that line with me.”

He made a sound that was like a cross between a chuckle and a snort, but she felt him squeeze her arm a little tighter for a moment. “I care about you, too, Molly. And I don’t mean to imply you don’t care about me. I know that you do.”

She smiled and leaned her head against his arm for a moment in lieu of a thank you. “And how does that make you feel?” She joked, and was rewarded with a chuckle. They continued down the long, straight tunnel for a while when she said, “So, bad timing, I know. But we need to talk about this. We can hit pause, though.”

He seemed to be thinking about it, so she made the responsible decision for once and decided to stay quiet while he thought. Their journey through the tunnel continued on in silence.

“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I don’t know how to hold myself back, it’s true. I do need someone, I know that. But it isn’t easy, finding people. I just sort of…come across them. And if I don’t, I don’t. What else am I supposed to do?”

She considered for a moment. “After what happened…when I was thirteen…I sort of spun out, for a while. Made bad choices on purpose. Hurt people, occasionally, though not usually on purpose. I saw a lot of therapists. One gave me a good piece of advice that helped me start figuring out how to end the self-destruction: W. W. J. D. – What Would Jesus Do? Now, I’m not Christian or anything, but she suggested putting a different name in there. The name of someone I admired.” And so, the recitation of names began, but she couldn’t say that. “And pause to think about it before making any choices. You could pick, you know, yourself. The person you want to be. The person you pictured when you made your promises and chose the name the Doctor. That sounds like someone who would make decent decisions.”

“Hmm,” replied the Doctor. She’d hoped for more detail, but it didn’t seem like he was going to add any commentary, until a few seconds later, “How about W. W. M. Q. D.?”

Molly immediately saw what he was saying. “No.”

“‘What Would Molly Quinn Do’?”

“Make the absolute worst decision. I’m a terrible idea. Just in general.” She laughed lightly at the concept of someone trying to use her as a role model. “But you’re not. ‘Never cruel or cowardly. Never give up. Never give in’. That’s someone to want to be like.”

“I made those promises a long, long time ago. So much longer than I thought possible,” he replied. Molly heard in his voice just how ancient he was now, remembered the extra thousand years on Christmas, the extra hundred without Clara. “Sometimes I think I’ve lived too long, maybe even too long to remember what those words mean.” He hesitated. “They’re still what I want. Who I am. But every hundred years, it feels more like a distant goal I want to achieve than who I really am. Isn’t a person most who they are when they’re alone?” She heard something like fear in that question.

Molly considered his question for a moment before answering. “I don’t know. But I don’t think so. I think a person is more who they are when they’re around people, how they treat people, how they speak to them, the connections they form, more so than they are when they’re alone.” She stopped walking again for a moment, and the Doctor turned around when he realized she’d stopped. “A lot of that, honestly, sounds like your self-hatred speaking. It’s hard to remember who you wanted to be sometimes, but most of all when you’ve lost sight of who you are to other people.”

He took a step closer. “And who am I, to other people?” His voice was soft, genuinely questioning who she thought he was.

She took a breath. “I know a TV show isn’t the real you. But I’ve been with you a while now, and mostly it is very much you. Not all of you, but you, in the things you do, the things you say. And that show – your life – is so important to so many people in my universe, that I’m sure it’s saved lives. It saved mine. It was a life raft for me when I most needed one. And I’m not alone in that.” She paused, for dramatic effect, she had to admit. “You are saving lives in a universe you don’t even exist in. So how many more have you saved here, where you really are? Is it even possible to count them all? And how many lives are better because of you?” She took a small step closer to him. “You want to know who you are to other people? You’re not just one thing. A hero, sure. A friend, absolutely. Most of all, a Doctor, saving and healing people and worlds, even other universes. You’re not perfect. No one is. You make mistakes, you let your anger get the best of you, and you exist on a larger scale than anyone, so those mistakes can be big. But the Doctor is who you are. Even on the days you don’t feel like it.”

She wished now that they were on the TARDIS. She wished he had the option of staring down at the controls or giving her some reason to leave the room for a moment. Because watching this sort of thing on television was so very different than in reality. At home, on TV, the sparkle of the light on the track of a tear running down his cheek only would have made her emotional, to feel for him, to maybe cry a little, too. But now she was physically there and it had been something she’d said and she didn’t know if it was a hurt tear or happy tear or sad tear. She’d always been awkward around crying people, she never knew what to do or say, and now there was a tear running down her comfort character’s face and it was because of her and it was awful and awkward. If this was on a screen, she would have been able to judge his reaction better, if he was touched or crushed somehow. In person, her ability to read people was dampened by her mind screaming that she had no idea what to do or say to make it stop.

Thankfully, this was the Doctor. He turned away, and she saw a hand rise to his face quickly and just as quickly move back down, and then there he was, pretending he saw something very interesting on his flashlight. But still, Molly didn’t move. She barely breathed. She waited to see if her own outpouring of emotion was a horrible mistake – even though she wasn’t sure she would take a word of it back.

She heard him clear his throat, and then he turned back towards her, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I thought you said I was the one who gave big speeches.”

She rolled her eyes and started walking again. “Shut up.” But she was grateful he’d been the one to remove the tension of the moment. He followed beside her.

“Molly.”

“Hmm?”

“…Thanks.”

She gave a little shrug of a shoulder. “It’s just the truth.”

“Really, though,” he insisted, this time reaching out to stop her. “Thank you. I don’t…” He paused, holding his hands out and moving them forward as though he could hand her whatever words it was he was trying to find. “Ah…” He paused again, lowering his hands and aiming the flashlight downward. “Hmm. I don’t really know how to express this.”

Molly smiled a little to hide her confusion. “You already said thanks, a couple times. Let’s just…” She tried to take a step forward, but he took a step to the side to keep her from being able to turn to walk forward.

“No, no,” said the Doctor, and she could see him rubbing his fingers against his thumb. “I mean, Molly, I mean that…” He sighed, then tried again. “Your show felt like that to me, sometimes. Like a life raft.” She snorted and tried to turn away again, feeling that discomfort she always experienced when he implied he’d been a fan of hers. But he stepped in the way again, blocking her from walking away from this. “No, Molly, listen. Please.” She forced back a sigh but couldn’t find a way to remove the look of irritated resignation when she looked at him. Immediately, she wished she hadn’t looked at him at all. His eyes were doing that gentle, earnest thing they did when he was trying to make her feel better about herself. That suggested she might, in any way, be vulnerable – and she couldn’t stand anyone seeing that vulnerability outside a stage. “Your face was a constant companion for me when I was alone, or when everyone else was asleep, and I wanted a moment of quiet to recover before going off on the next adventure. Especially these last hundred years or so. I mean…it had been a thousand years, I had a lot of rewatching to catch up on,” She was grateful for the little levity in his voice. “It was comforting to me to return to the show and see you again, even in the darker moments. Even in the times when I didn’t feel like a ‘savior of worlds’ at all. And now you’ve told me that the character that I turned to when I needed to feel less alone feels the same way about me, and that I saved her life, just by…” He seemed lost for the right word again, gesturing as though searching for it. “…ah, existing? Living my life, as myself?” He paused, and the tears in his eyes and small smile on his lips made her stomach squirm. “What better moral compass could I have, then to stop and think what my favorite character would think of me, if I did this? If I was being the person Molly Quinn said helped her in her darkest times? Forget W. W. M. Q. D. – what would Molly Quinn think, if she could see me doing this, when I’m alone with no one to hold me back? Would I still be someone she turned to for comfort?” He paused. “What reminder of my promises could work better than that?”

Molly tried to pretend she didn’t have tears in her eyes, too, but what was the point? They both knew she was a crybaby. She lifted her hand carrying the flashlight and wiped the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand, closed her eyes, took a breath, and shook her head, as though she could shake off that moment and those words.

She turned her face back towards him, and cleared her throat. “Alfie was right. You are silly.”

He seemed a little uncomfortable. “Molly, I’m actually trying to be serious for once, here.”

“Me, too,” she said. “You are absolutely absurd. Absurd. The idea that I could have that kind of influence on you, is – is – frankly, it’s-”

“Absurd?”

“Yes. Absurd,” she replied, but she was shaking her head. “I’m not…I’m just not that kind of person. And even if I was – I – it’s just…” she sighed, and looked down the tunnel, watching the dirt sparkle. “I can’t imagine that it’s possible I’d be your favorite character, ever, or that you’d have felt anything about me as a character as I did you.”

“Molly, if you could just-”

“But,” she interrupted him. She looked back towards him. “I’m trying. It’s just…too weird, thinking that you were your favorite character’s favorite character.”

“Oh, you’re telling me?” the Doctor asked, a little incredulously.

She laughed. “Okay. Okay. I guess I’m not the only one in this tunnel who experiences that feeling. I…will go as far as to admit that.”

“Good,” replied the Doctor. He finally let her begin walking back down the tunnel, and followed a half-step behind her. “Now, if I could get you to admit you’re totally cool enough to be my favorite character, almost even cooler than me….”

She gently elbowed him. “Dream on, space boy. No one’s cooler than me.” He gently nudged her back. “I am, however, willing to concede that, if What Would the Doctor Do makes sense to me, maybe, maybe, possibly…What Would Molly Quinn Think might work for you.”

“Ah! See?”

“…but you still need another companion after me.”

“Yes, mum,” she heard him grumble. “We’ll talk about it – oh!” She saw the light on his side of the wall bend oddly, and realized it was an opening. “Good. It’s not a dead end.”

“I told you it couldn’t be,” she said, speeding up so she could shine a light down the tunnel, hoping it would be as easy as turning this one corner and being met by the glimmering of crystals.

Something was glimmering at the end of that tunnel, but it wasn’t crystals.

“Doctor,” she said, her voice a sign of warning.

She could feel the Doctor shift from comforting friend to detective and protector in a breath, and he was suddenly in front of her, shining his own light down at the glimmering, leaking golden light at the end of the tunnel.

“No…” she heard him whisper. He took a hesitant step forward. “Not again.”

They were both staring down the long tunnel at the unmistakable crack in the universe.

A thought came into Molly’s head. “Is it me? Is it following me?”

“Why would it be following you?”

“I came from another universe. Maybe somehow, I made the fissure break again?”

She was relieved when she saw the Doctor shaking his head. “No, no…that’s not…it wouldn’t work like that.” But something in his voice made her wonder if he was lying. “I need a closer look. But not too close – remember not to get too close.” She nodded her agreement, and then took the hand he reached behind him. “Come along, then.”

He hesitated a moment, but then quickly was leading her down the tunnel, the crack in the universe getting closer and closer, and though it was nearer her middle it felt as though it was looming over them, reaching out to them, preparing to greet them with as much urgency as they were coming to greet it with, opening maybe another fraction of an inch, maybe becoming bigger, maybe –

And in the next step, the ground fell away, and the Doctor slipped downward, and she was being dragged down with him.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Three

Flash

They were sliding down and down and down, the light from their flashlights sliding ahead of them as they’d both dropped them to try to hold on to the ground while still clinging to each other’s hands. Molly thought it might have almost been fun, like a waterslide, if she’d known how they would land. It took some time for her to realize what they were sliding down was thick, sticky mud. She tried to claw into it to stop their descent, but the mud just came down with her in clumps. Suddenly, they were freefalling, and she could just hear the Doctor’s scream over her own. It felt like they’d been falling for minutes, but she was sure it was just seconds before they landed in a pile of mud so high it reached just below her waist. She waited for some sort of agonizing pain, in case one of her legs had broken, but all she felt was the chill of the mud. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes, and the chill faded for a second, and then she heard the Doctor shouting and the cold returned.

“Molly?! Molly!”

“I’m here,” she said. She didn’t remember letting go of his hand, but at least he was right beside her. She could see a faint outline from him, though one of the flashlights seemed to have disappeared, and only half the light from the other was visible.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I’m okay,” she breathed. “Mud is supposed to be good for the skin, right?”

“Oh, good,” he said, reaching for her shoulders as he breathed a sigh of relief. “I would never forgive myself if I killed Molly Quinn.”

“Are you okay? You’re not hurt?”

“No. No, I’m alright,” he replied. He looked up and around, and she followed suit. They couldn’t see much, but it was clear they’d fallen maybe nine feet. Chunks of mud were still rolling down at them, and Molly lowered her head to keep from it landing in her eyes. She looked around again, and saw what seemed to be a small cavern.

Molly tried to walk, but couldn’t get her legs to move. “Where did all this mud come from?” she wondered.

“Shhh,” the Doctor replied, holding a finger to his lips, then pointing upwards. She listened, but couldn’t hear much over the mud still sliding above them. “There’s a waterfall. Must be an underground lake somewhere above us, and it’s leaking out.”

“Oh,” replied Molly. “…and you’re still sure the ground isn’t going to collapse on top of us?”

“Reasonably sure.”

“Reasonably?”  Great. She looked around again. “It’s like a swamp here. How are we going to get out?” She paused. “…we’re going to be able to get back up, right?”

“Of course we are.”

“How?”

“Oh, I don’t know. But there always seems to be a way.” She saw the Doctor’s outline shift as he slowly turned, then leaned forward as far as he could, and grabbed the flashlight. He shined the light around them, revealing that Molly’s description of a swamp seemed accurate. But the light came across what looked like slightly more solid ground. “Alright,” he said, turning back to Molly. “Let’s make our way there.”

“I can’t get my legs to move very far.”

“Here,” he said, holding out the flashlight. She took it, then grabbed his offered hand. “You push, I’ll pull.”

She nodded, and leaned forward, and forced a leg ahead of her while he moved back, taking her along with them. He turned, and reached an arm out, and as he crawled to pull them forward, she kicked to push them. It took much longer than she would have liked, the cold seeping in through the mud and the fabric of her leggings, her exposed shoulders and arms, biting at her nose. By the time they made it across to the bank, she was out of breath, and despite the mud here still almost reaching her knees, she collapsed back into it, gasping for air. She heard the Doctor do the same beside her.

When they were breathing easier, he turned to look at her. “You know, you’ve got a little dirt on your face, just right here,” he said, pointing to her cheek.

She could feel the mud covering her from her toes to her hair. “Oh, just a little?”

“Just a bit.”

“You’ve just got a bit right here,” she said, feeling wicked. She reached out and smeared some mud on his nose, one of the few clear places on his face.

“Did you get it?”

“Yep. You’re totally clean now.”

They laughed a moment as they both sat up. Molly looked down, and realized that the mud had sucked her shoes off, and that was why she could feel the mud on her toes. “Great. One of us always seems to end up barefoot.” 

“I’d offer you mine, but they wouldn’t fit. Oh! Here,” he said, and he pulled his coat off and wrapped it around her shoulders. “It’s a bit chilly in here, and I’ll be fine without it.”

“Thanks,” Molly said gratefully, and slipped her arms into it. At first she was worried about getting it muddy, but of course that was ridiculous. She could feel the weight of the mud on it, without even standing up. “So. What now?”

The Doctor stood and looked up. He reached towards his chest, frowned, then turned back to her. He reached down and helped her to her feet, then slipped his hand inside the coat just at her waist, and pulled out the sonic. She was about to call him out for putting a hand dangerously close to somewhere he shouldn’t, but decided she was too tired from the fight with the mud.

She watched him swing it around, the sound almost seeming to echo in her ears. He looked down at it. “Pathway just to our left. Looks like it might at least lead us out of the mud.”

“With the crystals putting off so much energy, couldn’t the sonic pick it up?”

The Doctor shook his head as he turned to the left. “The signature they put out is faint. I was able to narrow it down to this area of the planet with the TARDIS, but the sonic is going to have trouble finding the signature until we’re a bit closer.”

They began down the next tunnel, each step having to pull their legs out of the mud again, holding their arms out to keep their balance. Eventually, the mud lowered until it was just at their shins, then ankles, then below their feet. Molly noticed that rather than the smoother walls above, these tunnels looked as though they’d been dug by rakes.

“They said the tunnels covered the whole planet,” Molly said. “That’s a lot of tunnels to search.” She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t thought of this before.

“We’re close enough, I’m sure. We’ll run into them eventually.” He turned back to glance at her. “What, are you already bored?”

“Uh, let’s see,” she began. “We’re on an alien planet in the tunnels of extinct bugs, saw the crack in the universe, slipped down a miniature mudslide, and now we’re wandering looking for crystals so powerful they can charge up a planet. Yeah, it’s completely dull.” She laughed. “It’s pretty hard to be bored around you.”

“I know,” the Doctor laughed. “It’s the best.” 

A sprinkling of dirt came down from the wall of the tunnel to their left, and then above them. The Doctor stopped to look at it, aiming the flashlight around to look for what had caused it.

“…Doctor.”

He looked over at her. “It’s fine. See? Still holding up.”

“Doctor, why is the dirt coming down?”

“Dunno,” he replied. “I’m hopeful it’s just…shifting.” 

Molly fought the whining sound she wanted to make back. “We’re pretty close to the crystals, right?”

He looked back at her, and she didn’t appreciate the mild alarm on his face. “I very much hope so.”

Molly didn’t like that answer, but what other option did they have? They had to find another way up, and they couldn’t just abandon people to what might well be their deaths on the moons. They continued forward for a while, when a scratching sound met Molly’s ears.

“There are most definitely bugs in here,” she said, trying to keep her voice pitched lower than Mickey Mouse.

“Well, yeah, of course there are,” said the Doctor. “Not all life is dead on this planet. It’s just whatever was strong enough to take the crystals that’s dead.”

“Why didn’t you mention this?”

“I thought it was common sense.”

Molly wanted to give a biting comment back, but admitted it was true. She should’ve known. “Maybe it’s the bugs making the dirt fall.”

“It would have to be quite a lot of them…” began the Doctor, but the way his voice drifted told her that the Doctor had thought of something. He stopped dead, then turned back to her. “Or I’m slow. Oh, I’m very, very slow! Everyone knows that!”

This was not something she liked to hear. “What do you mean?”

“The tunnels,” he said.

“What about them?”

“They’re big enough for us to walk through.”

“I noticed that. And?”

“Why are they so big?”

Molly paused to think about it, and her stomach near sunk to her feet. “No. No. Nope.”

“It might be that…”

“Don’t say it.”

“The bugs that took the crystals were very, very big.”

“I told you not to say it.”

“Well, it needed to be said.”

She shuddered, and looked around. She hated to admit it, but it made sense, and she cursed herself for not noticing earlier. “Okay. Okay. At least they’re dead.” As she said it, more dirt fell from the wall beside them. She slowly turned toward it. “Doctor…”

“Uhm. Yes?”

“They’re dead, right?”  He didn’t answer, and instead looked at her with alarm. She spun around in case something was behind her and didn’t see anything, then turned back to him. “I changed my mind. I want everything to be boring. All the time.”

More dirt rained down on them. The Doctor looked up at it. “I think, maybe, we should be moving. Faster.”

Molly groaned, but kept up with him as he quickened his pace to almost a jog. She was glad now for the mud, rather than trying to run over bits of rock with her feet, but it was quickly running out. Soon they were jogging across dirt, some pieces dried into clumps. They found a three-way opening, and the Doctor scanned. He looked at the sonic, and grimaced.

“What?” Molly asked.

“Well, the good news is, I’ve found the crystals.”

“Tell me this is a ‘good news’, ‘better news’ situation.”

The Doctor glanced at her. “I’m afraid we’re not that lucky.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and asked the universe for strength. “Where are the crystals?” The Doctor gestured his head to the left. “Of course. In the direction of the gigantic bugs.”

“I sure hope they aren’t spiders,” said the Doctor softly. “I hate spiders.”

Molly shuddered. She was okay with spiders, usually. They ate bugs, so they were her allies. But thinking of something with eight legs and endless eyes towering over her… “My fingers are crossed we don’t see them at all.”

The Doctor began down the tunnel, and Molly walked with him. “I sort of would like to catch a glimpse,” he admitted. “I don’t see giant bugs very often. Usually just when I go back to the Carboniferous period.”

Molly was busy trying to keep her heart from jumping out of her chest at every little sound. “I invite you to pop back here when we’re done while I hide safely in the TARDIS.”

“Might do that,” replied the Doctor. “Might…not.”

They were approaching a dead end, but Molly saw another opening to the left, this one with rocks in the dirt around the entrance. Right on the other side of the wall the dirt had been falling from. “Okay,” she breathed. “Okay. Awesome.”

“We might need to go down another offshoot once we turn,” the Doctor said hopefully. “And not run straight into them.”

Molly gulped, but then forced her feet forward. “Why are the rocks around this entry?”

“Maybe to cause a collapse in case of attack? There are some species on other planets that do similar things.”

They continued forward, listening. Molly heard the scratching ahead, but far enough that she –

And there it was, crawling down the tunnel at them. It was big – very big. Its head nearly scraped the top of the 12-foot-tall tunnel. It looked more like a grasshopper than a spider, all green, crooked legs, wings tucked back, walking in a sort of crouched position. But along with the beady black eyes on either side of its head, it also had two eyes at the front. Its antennae split off at the ends, spreading out like the whiskers on a cat, and its mouth was constantly moving. Worst of all, the six legs it walked on were more like curved blades, and it walked along at the sharp tips of them. Molly could imagine the pain of a swipe from it, and wished it really had been spiders instead.

“What a whopper! Hello there, gorgeous!” the Doctor greeted it delightedly, and Molly glared at him incredulously. “You’re a big fella, aren’t you?”

The Lutumede moved forward a couple steps, and it seemed it blurred from the speed. “Doctor…” Molly began, her voice shaking. “Chances of it eating us on a scale of one to ten?”

“Depends,” said the Doctor. “If it doesn’t eat people, zero. If it does, probably a seven.” The bug moved forward another step. “Maybe a nine. We should be going.”

“Back the way we came?”

The Doctor looked beyond the bug, then clapped his hands together. “We still need the crystals. There’s an offshoot just behind it. We can get around it.”

“…we can?”

The Doctor nodded and grabbed her hand. “This sort of thing tends to work out for me. Ready?”

“No.”

“…how about now?”

She made a whining sound, winced, and then said, “Geronimo.”

“Geronimo!” The Doctor shouted, then grinned, and then they were running directly towards it.

Molly found herself screaming, though she hadn’t exactly chosen to. There was just enough space between the Lutumede and the side of the tunnel to squeeze past it. It made a sort of creaking sound in its throat and rushed forward, past them. Molly heard it continue to move, and assumed it was turning around to pursue them.

Molly wasn’t sure if she had ever run faster. She was even pulling ahead of the Doctor, who was taller and had more experience running for his life. This was even scarier than running from the Vashta Nerada-controlled Daleks for her. She hated bugs. She hated them. So she felt sick when she heard what sounded like a second pair – sextuplet? – of legs behind them. And then a third.

“I think it called some friends!”

The Doctor glanced back. “They’re mostly curious, I think. They aren’t following quickly. If they did, we’d be dead in a few seconds.”

“Thanks for the comfort!” She saw an offshoot to the right, and circled around so she could drag the Doctor down it. He stumbled for a second trying to change directions, but they gained some speed. There were more openings ahead, and now they were zig-zagging through the maze. Molly was fairly certain they would never find their way out again.

The Doctor tugged at her hand suddenly, and she slowed and stopped when he did. She was panting as she turned back, and saw him looking behind them. “I think they’ve stopped. Or we lost them.”

“Good. I…hate…bugs…” Molly spat out between breaths. Her heart was pounding, and her stomach hurt the way it did back in her physical therapy days when she’d pushed herself too hard. Her usual calm in an emergency had never kicked in, thanks to the deep-rooted fear of the bugs. It was the worst time for that mechanism not to work.

She leaned against the wall of the tunnel, and the Doctor leaned against the opposite. He was breathing deeply, too. Neither of them could say much between the breaths for a while. Finally, Molly swallowed and said, “Do you think we’re hopelessly lost?”

“There’s always hope,” replied the Doctor, glancing down the part of the tunnel they hadn’t been through yet. It didn’t reassure her that he didn’t go on to explain a plan.

“If we die to a bunch of bugs, or die of thirst while trapped in a bug nest, I am going to be really, really mad.”

“Not for long,” the Doctor pointed out.

Molly rolled her eyes, and opened her mouth for a retort, when a sound met her ears that made her vision shake as she shuddered violently.

Buzzing. From the tunnel ahead of them, there was the distinct sound of buzzing from a mob of bugs shaking their wings.

She choked back vomit. “Doctor…” she said fearfully, placing her hands over her ears. There was that bitter taste again. “This is very, very bad.”

The Doctor’s panicked face showed that he didn’t need to be told that. He ran down the tunnel a few feet, and Molly closed her eyes tight, trying to block out the repeated buzzing as best as she could despite feeling as though tendrils had closed around her and were tugging her back into the past. She could almost see the swinging light when she felt the Doctor’s hand on her arm.

“This way,” he said, his voice unusually serious. He began to guide her down the tunnels, walking quickly, but not running. Molly wasn’t sure she was capable of running while the buzzing of the bugs filled her ears and mixed with the sound of another kind of buzzing in her head.

“Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla,” she muttered to herself, trying to keep herself grounded. If she fell, the bugs would catch them. It was only now that she realized she’d stop repeating the names every time she was scared. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.”  She had to hold on to them. To her promise.

She forced her eyes open and saw the Doctor looking back at her with concern. But the buzzing grew closer, grew louder, and as he glanced behind her, his expression shifted to something more akin to fear. She didn’t need to look behind her to know that a group of the Lutumedes were following right behind.

As they sped up, Molly continued her chant: “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. Phoebe, Heather-” she screamed when the scene in front of her flashed from the Doctor and the tunnels to the brick and the swinging lamp and the chair, then flashed back.

“Doctor,” she gasped, and realized now she was crying. “I’m spiraling. I don’t know if I can hang on.”

They turned a sharp corner and ran a few feet forward, and the Doctor turned to her just in time to catch her as her legs failed, wrapping his free hand around her waist. She grabbed his shoulders and forced her feet back under her, forced her muscles to hold her weight, even though it felt like her hands were chained. Cold brick behind her. Red. Buzzing. Screams. Smell of copper and something sweet and sick. Buzzing. The ache of her throat. A wet thud. Buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. The buzzing was still approaching and she felt coolness on both her cheeks and she opened her eyes she hadn’t meant to close and saw the Doctor with a hand on either side of her face. He was saying something. What? “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Elanore, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” He was saying the names. He was saying them with her, trying to help ground her.

He disappeared again, for a moment, as she looked around the basement at the strange shadows around her and - she fought her way back as though kicking to the surface of water, and then the Doctor was back, and it took her a moment to realize he was saying something different now.

“- tell me! What was the buzzing sound the first time, Molly? What was the original?” She gasped and shook her head, but he gave her a gentle shake. “Tell me what the buzzing was. I can try to use a sound from the sonic to counteract it, but I need to know what it was!”

She shook her head again. No, no. She couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t.

But the buzzing was getting closer and louder and closer and louder and her mouth opened and without permission from her mind she gasped, “A bone saw!”

Even with her vision blurring, she saw the look of sick horror flash across the Doctor’s face. But a breath later, he’d reached into his pocket and taken out the sonic. She heard it echo, one octave, then a higher one, then a higher one, until the pitch hurt her head. But the hurt chased most of the buzzing in her head out. She grabbed the sonic from the Doctor and held it to her ear, desperately, like clinging to a life raft in a hurricane on the ocean. He grabbed her free hand and they were running. 

The sound was holding off the worst of the memories. As long as she could outrun remembering any specific detail the way they were outrunning the Lutumedes, there was a chance they could get away without her falling into a flashback. But she felt it coming on like a cold anyway, and her flashbacks had become more intense since being shot, and they didn’t have time. So, as she listened to the sonic, she hummed along. But then it came to her suddenly, the reason she’d always thought of the sonic as echoing around her: it echoed in her head, another distant reminder of the buzzing of the bone saw. The pitch was helping keep it away, but the memory of the sonic making a buzzing sound that unconsciously brought the bone saw to the surface was pulling that memory up and up and up and then she’d thought about it for too long.

The basement was cold. The chains around her wrists felt like ice. The Doctor dragged her around another corner as her legs begged for mercy, for rest. The lamp was swinging, always was swinging from the force of the ceiling fan. The fan spread that sick, sweet smell around the basement. The Doctor looked back at her, but it was like he was a ghost. “We’re gaining some distance on them!” he encouraged.

She spat blood out of her throat, gone raw with screaming. “Please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop, please, stop!” She was screaming with the Doctor, too.

“We can’t stop! Not yet!” he shouted back, and the voice was distant, going on and on, saying those same hateful, worshipful things again and again, that voice was The Doctor pulled her around another corner, and now they were sloping upward and the fear alone was going to kill her, she wished it would, she wanted “They’re following shine of the sonic,” he said and she’d rather it was her, she begged any deity that was listening to make it her she felt dirt against her face and then she felt herself lifted up the buzzing of the saw started, and she couldn’t stop it.

“Don’t do it, don’t do it – I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She couldn’t tell which world she was in now. Everything blurred and spun together. She screamed her frustration, determined to stay here with the Doctor, to fight this off. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla, Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla, Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” She repeated it for as long as her lungs had air in them, and then took another breath and kept going. It helped. It was anchoring her.

But she heard the buzzing just behind as the Doctor spun around another corner. He stopped and set her down and took the sonic from her, and she heard the sonic change pitches again, and it was another buzzing, and then a there was a crashing, crushing sound. The tunnel had collapsed, the way they’d come. She took a breath, and then drowned.

The words kept coming, long after she’d stopped listening. The chains dug into her wrists, which felt like they were being frozen solid. The brick scratched at her back, rough even through her pajama top. She could only take this information in a little at a time. Her face felt like it would wrinkle from the endless stream of tears, her head was swimming in confusion, her chest was filled with fear and sobs, and her ears were full of words, words, words.

She never remembered them praying, not over meals, or during emergencies, or before bedtime. She hadn’t even ever been to a Christmas service. Her mother mentioned, now and then, her old gods and goddesses, but she didn’t have the time to worship them anymore. But prayers were being spoken over her now, along with the bloody explanations.

But her eyes were stuck on the waterfall of red ahead of her. The chair. The ropes. She only now was seeing the table behind the chair, filled with kitchen utensils and power tools and things she recognized from the medical dramas her mom watched like it was her true religion. And she was starting to see things she didn’t want to see around the edges of the room.

The words stopped. She prayed for them to start again, prayed as hard as she could, even though she didn’t know how to pray. Prayed it was a dream. Prayed it was a joke. Prayed someone would come down the stairs.

But maybe she offended whatever gods there were, because the words didn’t begin again, and instead, everything else began.

It was a blur of screams and scalpels, begging and screwdrivers, sobs and knives, blood and bone saws. Pins and lighters and thumbscrews, eyelids and ears and fingers. She didn’t know where her screams and pleas and sobs began and where the others ended. They were one and the same.

But it stretched on and on, into eternity, until she was a different person, a wretched person, a terrified person, an empty person, not Molly Phoenix. Never again Molly Phoenix.

Molly Phoenix died.

“Molly, Molly!” she heard the Doctor shouting, far away, so distant he may as well have been on another planet, in another galaxy. “Molly, come back. Come on, Molly. Come back to me.”

She blinked her eyes open, though she wasn’t entirely sure she had eyes. She saw his face around her, and thought it was on a screen until he pressed his forehead against hers. She shifted forward in time, from that other, safer basement and television and Doctor Who, to whatever now was. “Molly,” he breathed with relief in the air. “Stay with me.”

Her lungs were breathing. She thought that maybe she should have been choosing to do that, but they did it on their own, anyway. Fast, too fast, and hard. Hyperventilating. Her body did that sometimes.

Something rough was behind her back, but it wasn’t brick. Dirt and rocks. There were dirt and rocks beside her, too, piled high. The flashlight sat beside the Doctor, making the shadows stretched and threatening. Was she a shadow?

“I don’t know what’s real,” she gasped. “I don’t know what’s real. I don’t know what’s real, I don’t know what’s real…”

She felt the Doctor’s hands on either side of her head, his skin cold against her burning face. “You’re real,” he insisted. He reached down and put her hands (were they made of clay?) on his face. “I’m real. This is real, okay? This is real.”

It didn’t feel real. The Doctor was a TV character. None of this could be real. What was real was that other world, the basement with the brick and the chair and the red and the buzzing.

The buzzing. She listened. The buzzing that had been following them was gone. The buzzing that had chased her and the Doctor.

“Doctor?” she asked weakly, needing to confirm it was him, not her imagination, not a fantasy she invented to protect herself from reality, that she wasn’t still thirteen and trapped.

He nodded, and she could feel the movement under her hands as though it were real. “Yes, Molly. It’s me. The Doctor. I’m really here.”

“Doctor…” she whispered, her voice the definition of wonder. Her eyes were wide. Yes, of course. This was real. Maybe she wasn’t, but he was. Almost too real, so real it hurt her.

Depersonalization or not, she had to pretend she was real. She was remembering the crystals, the tunnels, the bugs. They were lost in a maze of tunnels. She had to come back, even if it was all an act.

She took a slow breath. “Remind me to invest in earplugs.”

The Doctor smiled, kissed the top of her head. “Ah, there’s my Molly. Welcome back, hey?” He stood, and offered his hands to help her stand, too. It was difficult while her legs felt like a plastic doll’s legs, but she managed to stay standing. He held on to her hands, though, which helped keep her stable. “Think you can walk again?”

She didn’t know, so she didn’t answer. “What happened?”

“Well, we left the Lutumedes behind. I collapsed the tunnel so they couldn’t follow us,” he said. “Thankfully, we were chased right in the direction of the crystals. They should be just up ahead.”

“And how long do you think until we can find the TARDIS?” She just wanted to be inside, safe. The thought of hearing those bugs buzzing again and having to go back to that hell almost choked her. It felt like she wouldn’t survive a second visit to her past.

The Doctor slowly let go of her, and held his hands out as she swayed, but she found her balance and he bent down and picked the sonic and the flashlight back up. He tried to hand her the flashlight, but it slipped through her fingers. She apologized, and they tried again, and this time she was able to hold on tight.

The Doctor scanned the area. “I think she might be just above us.”

“Convenient,” she sighed.

He patted her on the shoulder. “I think we’ve earned some convenience.”

Molly nodded – oh, right, she was Molly, not she – and found her arms wrapped around the Doctor before her brain told her that it had decided to hug him. “Thanks,” she said, trying to put more power into her voice.

“Of course, don’t be ridiculous,” he said gently, giving her a tight squeeze before pulling back. He offered her a hand. “Let’s get this finished so we can go home.”

Home. It felt beautiful and painful. She hadn’t had a home in so long – a house, an apartment, a hotel room. Never a home, a sanctuary. And the Doctor had just called the TARDIS her home.

But for how much longer would she get to have a home?

The pile of crystals had been beautiful, though they didn’t sparkle quite as much as she’d imagined. They had a sort of layer of dullness to the outside. Maybe that was because she still didn’t feel quite connected to reality. Still, they were pretty, and she helped the Doctor fill his pockets with a few, carefully in case they were volatile, which was a detail the Doctor hadn’t mentioned until then.

They walked another few minutes, mostly in silence save for the Doctor pointing out each direction. He seemed to realize she needed more time to recover, to leave the memories fully behind and become a part of the real world again, for which she was grateful.

She was feeling more herself as they walked down a long tunnel, longer than the others, until she saw an opening to their right, and deep inside it she saw the crack again. The TARDIS was up ahead. Which felt a miracle, partially because she felt so dizzy and weak she wasn’t sure she would be able to keep going for much longer.

The Doctor stopped. “I just…need a moment,” he said, taking out the sonic again. “I need to know why it’s here.”

She wanted to object, but she could hardly blame him. He moved down the other tunnel. “Careful,” she insisted. “Don’t get too close. If you slide back down it’s going to be hours before you find your way back again. If you find your way back.”

“I’m watching the ground,” he promised. He inched closer and closer to the crack, and Molly’s heart beat wildly, terrified she’d see him disappear again. She wouldn’t be able to follow him, she didn’t have the strength, and she didn’t have a key to the TARDIS. She’d be vulnerable, waiting out here for him to come back, not knowing if he would – terrified he wouldn’t.

But he stopped while still on solid ground, and reached the sonic out as far as he could. She heard him scan for several minutes, scan and check the results, scan and check the results. He turned back to her after a time, and his face told her he hadn’t learned anything.

“Sorry,” Molly said. She was afraid of the crack in the universe. She could only imagine how much more afraid he was.

“S’alright,” he replied. He sighed heavily. “Just another mystery.”

But it wasn’t. And they both knew it.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Four

What Happened

Molly forced herself to leave the bathtub. She watched the water drain, slowly. Then she dried herself with the towel, and neatly put it in the hamper. Then she grabbed a hand towel, and wiped the traces of mud left on the porcelain away. She put it in the hamper, and then folded her dirty clothes and put them in, too. She dressed for comfort rather than style: an emerald-green t-shirt four sizes too big for her she’d found in the wardrobe, black pajama shorts she’d bought at the World Market. She brushed her hair. Then brushed it again. Then again.

Finally, she had to admit, she couldn’t waste any more time. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew what was waiting on the other side of the door. She’d heard him come in. She knew why he was here.

She took a deep breath. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.”  And she stepped out of the bathroom.

The Doctor was there, clean, too, in the grey vest, sitting on the edge of her bed, reading the book on Gallifrey she’d left in her room. He looked up when she stepped out, then set the book back on her bedside table, placed his glasses on top of it.

“Molly.”

She winced, as though he might hit her. What was coming was worse than if he actually had. “Yeah.”

“It’s time.”

She looked up, as though the ceiling could help her out of this, then met his eyes. “I know.” 

He gestured to the bed beside him, and she walked around to the other side, sat down with her back against the headboard, clung a pillow to her chest like it could save her. He shifted to face her, crossed his legs in front of him. “Molly,” he started. He paused, and part of her hoped he would change his mind, but she knew it was too late for that. It had to happen now. “What happened when you were thirteen?”

Her heart was pounding. The last time she remembered it beating so fast and so hard and so painfully was those long, agonizing minutes after she’d been shot, before the neighbor had finally heard her banging on the door and saw the blood leaking out to the other side. She was scared like she hadn’t been since she’d had to take the stand and testify against Ivy’s daughter.

This was her worst nightmare come true. From now on, the Doctor would look at her differently. Look down on her, for what she did. Maybe ask her to leave. She wouldn’t blame him for a second. Maybe she’d make it easier on him and volunteer.

Molly cleared her throat. Swallowed. Sighed. And then she could do nothing else to avoid it. It was time to dive straight into the deep end, like she always did.

She looked him in the eyes. “I found out my father was a serial killer.” She watched as he sighed, and rubbed at his eyes. “You guessed?”

“Not…” he began, then lowered his hand to look at her, his hands folded in front of him. “I didn’t know. It wasn’t a theory I had, until…until we talked about your father, the way you reacted. I never realized his not being in your life on the show was such an intense thing. And then…the names sort of…drifted into place. What the book was about.”

Molly nodded. From there, he could put most of it together. “You can probably guess everything else, then.”

He gently shook his head. “No. There are still so many…” he began, then changed his mind. “I need to know what specifically caused the PTSD. So I can protect you.”

She’d been a liability, she knew. She had to tell him everything, no matter what she assumed the Doctor already knew. “Okay, then.” She cleared her throat. “The whole story. It begins, actually, when I turned twelve. I had a birthday party. Not by choice, really, but my parents had been arguing a lot and wanted to throw a guilt party. They invited everyone at school, not realizing that most of my sort-of friends were in the ballet, though they lived too far to go all that way for a girl they only hung out with in class. The kids at my actual school thought I was…weird. And I was. The loud girl who bullied the bullies, like that made me any better. Who didn’t care about anything but being a ballerina. So…they didn’t respect me, my parents, or our house when they came over for the party. They were tearing the place apart, and none of the adults could control them. I had enough, and got on top of the dining table. I don’t remember what I said, but they all shut up and went outside for the piñata.” She paused. That had all been easy to say. A weird kid’s birthday party. Nothing strange about that.

But now it was time for the part where it all went up in flames. “My father pulled me aside for a moment. He told me how amazing it was I got all the kids to listen to me, even when they didn’t listen to their parents, and asked if I was a goddess. I laughed and said yes. I…I thought he was joking.” The Doctor didn’t know it, just like she didn’t know it at the time, but that was the second worst thing she’d ever done. The first was coming.

“A year later, at about two am on my thirteenth birthday, my father woke me up. He told me he had a birthday surprise for me in the shed. We crept by the master bedroom, so we wouldn’t wake my mom, and went out the back door, then to the shed. Our shed had access to our storm shelter, which we called a basement, and which had been extended out to a couple rooms by the previous owners, and Cillian – my father - turned it into a woodworking shop. I went down the stairs, and it was dark. My father had me by the arms to help me down the stairs. He closed the door behind us, then guided me to a wall. And then…and then I felt him put chains on my wrists and ankles, so quickly I didn’t have time to react.”

He hadn’t reacted much to her story about the birthday party. She hadn’t expected him to. Though she didn’t like admitting she’d been a bully, it wasn’t exactly earth-shattering news.

But now she was seeing the vague horror and pity in his eyes that she hated more than anything. She’d had to see it, repeated over and over and over again while person after person had come to question her after. And it would only get worse, and eventually, soon, it would shift from pity to something else. Disgust, disappointment, anger? She couldn’t predict. Maybe all three.

It was easier not to look at him, so she looked down at her hands, as she twisted her fingers this way and that. “I noticed a smell in the room. It smelled like when a rat had crawled into the vent in my bedroom and died, and sat there for days, but stronger. I choked and gagged on it. I heard shallow breathing ahead of me. But I couldn’t see anything. It was still dark when he started talking.” And here it came: the truth of her first mistake. “He told me I was a goddess. That I only seemed to realize it sometimes, like at the birthday party. I was a reincarnated goddess, and her spirit was inside me. He told me her name.”

She heard his sigh, saw him make some sort of movement in her peripheral vision. “The Phoenix.”

Molly nodded, her throat too tight to make a sound for a moment. She wished she had a glass of water. “He was going to complete the ceremony to release her, and she was going to rain a cleansing fire on the earth, and then a better world, a paradise would be reborn from the ashes.” She paused. “I never understood the attraction of that. Burning the world means burning you, too. Why would anyone want that?” Her attempt at levity fell flat, as she knew it would. She had to keep speaking, and she did, quicker now so she wouldn’t give into her cowardice and refuse to tell him any more. “He told me about the ritual. How the Phoenix demanded a series of sacrifices. Not just human life, but pain and blood. Over the last year, he’d gone to the neighboring cities to find and hunt the right women for the ritual. Then he kidnapped them, brought them to the storm shelter, and then tortured and killed them. He always said he was traveling for work, but he was finding women with the right first initials.”

“Phoebe. Heather. Olivia. Eleanor. Nina. Ivy. Xyla.” He named each of them slowly.  “P. H. O. E. N. I. X. Phoenix.” He said it as though this was something he already knew, but hadn’t realized the context of. Of course he’d noticed what the names spelled.

She nodded. “That’s when I realized what the smell was. He’d set the bodies in a circle around the edge of the shelter, in a sort of circle. I wanted to burn my nostrils, but I could barely move, just shift my wrists some, move my arms a little, move my legs, though not enough to stand straight. He kept talking, saying it was time for the last two sacrifices.” She paused, remembering the terror that gripped her when he said that, though she’d thought she wasn’t capable of being any more afraid. “He turned the light on, finally. There was a woman in front of me, tied to a chair, her auburn hair a curtain concealing her face. She was starting to wake up.”

“He hadn’t killed Xyla yet,” he said. His voice sounded sick. He had no idea yet just how sick he would feel when the story was over. How sick she would make him.

“No,” Molly replied. “He needed me there for the end of the ceremony, so immediately after she died, he could cut me open and release the goddess.”

“Molly…” he began, his voice distraught. She finally looked up at him. Already, she saw the tears in his eyes. But she wasn’t crying. She wasn’t sure she could cry over this part of the story anymore. It numbed her.

“He started saying prayers,” continued Molly, still watching him. “I couldn’t follow them. The woman was shouting at him. He explained it all again, as he stepped into the shadows. The light was faint, hanging over the woman, attached to a ceiling fan so it swayed. I couldn’t see the edge of the room past the woman, but he came back with…” her throat closed. No. He didn’t need that many details. She wouldn’t make him carry that with him, too. “He started. Still chanting, still praying, he tortured her. And I watched, every single second, as he wanted me to. I screamed until I could barely make sound anymore. And he…he used all kinds of things. Including…”

“A bone saw,” the Doctor whispered, when she couldn’t force the words out.

Molly closed her eyes tight as she heard the echo of the buzzing of the saw bounce around her head. “Yeah,” she said, her voice shaking. She opened her eyes again. “It went on for hours. I don’t know exactly how long. But in that time, I noticed that the cold grip of the chains felt less and less tight, as my wrists became slippery with sweat and blood from where they cut into me when I pulled on them.” She lifted her hand to point at the thin white line of a scar that went halfway around both of her wrists, though she was certain he’d noticed that, too. “They were made to fit an adult. And I’m bendy, stretchy. I figured out that, at the right moment, I could slip the chains off my hands, maybe get them off my ankles. The tables for his torture devices were right behind her, but now and then he disappeared into the other room, where the electrical outlets were. If he could just go back there, I had a chance. And it came soon after I realized I might be able to escape. The bone saw ran out of charge, and he went back into the room. I immediately got to work, managed to slip the chains off my wrists. It took a few seconds longer than I wanted to get my feet out, but I managed it. I got to my feet as quickly as possible. I looked at the door he’d gone through, with the padlock on my side. The woman in front of me, covered in blood, missing parts of her body now, all tied up with ropes, with knives behind her. Then at the stairs.”

She stopped speaking. No. No. She didn’t want to say this. She couldn’t say this. She couldn’t. This was what was making her cry now, the tears slipping off her eyelashes and falling soundlessly down her cheeks. Not the memories. The fear of what lie ahead. Of his face changing. Her one friend, her comfort character, all she had in this universe and hers, turning away in revulsion. It was coming now. Right now. And she couldn’t do it.

“Molly,” he urged her, gently. “What happened next?” She swallowed back bile, and shook her head. He reached to take her hands, and she pulled back sharply. She had to pull away before he did. He took her shoulders, instead, and didn’t let her lean away. “You can tell me, Molly. I promise. I told you…I am far more concerned with disappointing you than I am of you disappointing me.”

“Not possible,” she said, or tried to. Her voice was too tight, it came out in simple syllables, but he seemed to understand what she said.

Though she had her eyes locked on the purple bowtie, tracing the swirls of the fabric in order to avoid looking at him, she could see his jaw move side to side a few times before he spoke again. “It is,” he insisted. “Listen. I told you about what I did. That I killed all those Sontarans. You can tell me this.”

“It’s not the same.”

“It doesn’t have to be for us to be equally ashamed of what we did,” he said. “I haven’t heard any reason you should be ashamed, and I do not think I will. But even if I do, that won’t change what I think about you.”

“It will.”

“Did how you think of me change?” She knew it was a test, but still in his voice she heard a similar fear to hers.

“No. Of course not,” she replied, and forced her eyes back on his concerned face, the expression making her stomach twist uncomfortably. “But you were in a battle zone. They’d killed people. It’s not the same.”

“They didn’t have to die,” he reminded her. “I didn’t have to do it. And there were other things, things that I…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. He took her face in his hands. “You can trust me not to hate you, Molly. You really can.” He patted her on the cheek, and pulled his hands away. “The door. The woman. The stairs. What happened next?” He re-centered their conversation.

Molly ran her fingers down her face, hoping to wipe the tears away without his noticing. Fine. No avoiding it. Jump right in. “I heard her make…a sound. A sort of gurgling sound, from the blood in her mouth and down her throat. She spat some of it out, and made the sound again. Then I heard her. ‘Help’, she said. Another gurgle, and again, ‘help’. Gurgle. ‘Help’. And I…” No no no no no no no this was everything she’d feared since that first night. But she had to do it. She had to. “I ran up the stairs.”

There it was, the worst of her laid out. She felt naked, sitting there beside him, every awful thing about her, every flaw on display. She watched his eyes for the change, but he had them carefully guarded now. That made her stomach sink. He was an emotive man; he’d said it himself. He’d just been showing emotion. And now she couldn’t read it. Now he hated her. Probably almost as much as she hated herself.

The story wasn’t finished, but she found she couldn’t continue until she had some read on him. Some idea of what he was thinking, feeling. She needed to know if he even cared to hear the rest.

The wait for his reaction wasn’t long. “Molly,” he began, his voice almost a whisper. “…what was your mother’s name?”

A wave of pain. Another wave of fear. The awful truth. “Xyla.”

His eyes closed to that horror. Now he ran his hands down his face. She thought she maybe even saw him shudder. When he looked back at her, she saw the tears on his face, watched him wipe them away, less discreetly than she’d tried to wipe away hers. “He tortured your mother in front of you,” he said, his voice thick. How could he still care?

“Yeah.”

It was silent for a moment, before he took a breath. It even sounded as though his chest rattled, the way hers did when she fought crying. “How did you get away?”

It was almost over, at last. “I ran up the stairs and out the door and out the shed and just kept running. I ran past the house and into the woods, that I explored almost daily and that I knew my father wasn’t as familiar with. And I heard him then, behind me. I ran through every hurtle I could think of, down a steep drop, through a dried creek, over boulders. He was gaining on me, but it was fine, because I knew exactly where the neighbors land started. I saw it ahead of me, the tall barbed wire fence. I was skinny, and flexible, and I’d slipped through their fence before to see the cows. I was almost through when he grabbed my ankle, and tried dragging me back over. But I’d been dancing since I was three years old, and kicked back as hard as I could. I don’t know where I hit, but he let go of me and I got through. He didn’t try to follow. He told me he’d be back to release me someday, and that he was going back to finish killing my mom, so all he had to do was find a way to kill me to release the Phoenix. I ran straight into my neighbor’s house as the sun was rising. They were both already awake, and called the police. My father hadn’t even tried to get away. He sat in the house, having a cup of coffee while he waited to be arrested.”

The silence stretched on. She watched his face as he absorbed all of this, watched for every little movement and tic that she’d memorized watching the show. It was confusing. Yes, the shock was there, there was always shock. Some pity. People still pitied her. But she waited for the cold shift of his eyes, the anger just under the surface he always showed when someone he cared about did something awful. That she’d seen when she’d injured the Mechana. What she’d done was worse than what any of his other companions had done, to her memory.

But he was good at hiding it. She saw a small lowering of his brow, a shift in his jaw, his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. A small exhale of air. He was being merciful, she realized. Trying to be kind despite his repulsion, because of the trauma. She wished he wouldn’t. She always hated people letting her get away with awful things because of her trauma. She’d tested how far it would go before they’d stop when she’d lived in foster homes. And the sooner he showed her the anger and disgust, the sooner she could break from it, the sooner she could know what happened next.

He seemed to be watching her as much as she watched him. “And then the police came, put you into the car as it rained, and took you to the hospital.”

“Yes. I wasn’t overly wounded, but they wanted to keep me under observation, for the trauma. I wasn’t well, but it wasn’t as bad as it would be, later,” she admitted. “They needed to make sure I wouldn’t hurt myself. But I was so disconnected from everything those first few days, I didn’t really know there was a myself to hurt.” She remembered those days, staring at the blank white wall, a relief after all the red. It felt like bleach for her eyes. “They thought I was coping alright, so they sent me to the first foster home. That’s where things went wrong. I was constantly screaming, shaking, crying. They didn’t know why. But the father and older brothers were woodworkers.”

“And a saw was constantly running.”

Molly nodded. “I didn’t know then, that it was a trigger. No one knew. That’s why I don’t blame them for sending me away. Sometimes in the flashbacks, I hurt them, though I didn’t mean to. They didn’t know what to do.” She may as well tell him everything, she decided. “That’s partially why I became so…” She may as well admit it. “Obsessed with the show, well, movie back then. Doctor Who. I had a room in the basement, and though the windows faced the driveway where they worked, I could turn the volume up and barely hear it. I didn’t know why it helped, but it helped.” And it had gone from the comfort of the sound to the comfort of the Doctor. “I was seeing a therapist at the time, but he wasn’t equipped to handle me, and the next home found someone else for me to see. She was the one who told me about the W. W. J. D. thing. And that’s when I realized exactly who I could think of when I was scared to do the right thing, or afraid in general.”

Another piece of the mystery clicked into place for the Doctor. “The names.”

“I swore to them, though I wasn’t sure I believed in an afterlife, that I wouldn’t die until I had put as much good into the world as they should have been able to, but had their lives cut short by my father. Seven lifetimes of good, in my one. Eight, really, including my own.”

Again, she saw his face light a little, when another question was answered. “You decided to save the world for them. That’s why you insist that the only reason you exist is to put good into the world.”

“I promised,” she said. “It kept me from committing suicide, later, when the shock had worn off, when I was a witness at my father’s trial and had to watch family members of every woman my father had tortured to death for me take the stand and talk about them and their last moments before Cillian found them. I wasn’t allowed to die until I completed my mission. And of course, it’s going to take a long, long time.”

He shifted, leaning closer to her. “Molly, what he did, that wasn’t your fault. He didn’t kill them because of you.”

“He did, though,” she insisted. “Partially. I know I’m not responsible for my father’s actions, objectively. But he wouldn’t have done any of it if I hadn’t told him I was a goddess. People like to pretend that part isn’t true, but it is. I have some responsibility for it.”

“You were a child,” the Doctor said, earnestly. “You had no idea what was happening in his head. That he wasn’t joking. You can’t possibly be at fault for that.”

Molly considered his words. She’d heard them before, of course. Everyone tried to make her feel better. But it was cold fact: if she hadn’t said she was a goddess, he wouldn’t have killed those women as a sacrifice for her. But they never admitted it. “I know,” she lied, instead. One of the few times she did it smoothly. “But there are so many things you aren’t at fault for, that you blame yourself for. This is mine.”

He wanted to argue, she could see. But she could also see the moment he realized that it would do no good. Because he knew it, too: that some of the things he took responsibility for were not things that were under his control. But his hesitation faded. “There was nothing you could have done, Molly. You had no way of knowing. You couldn’t have saved them.”

She took a breath, not knowing what she was going to say, her mind forming the words without her knowledge, but she knew it was cruel. “Then what’s the point of me?”

The flash in his eyes, followed by a distant haze, told her he was remembering exactly what she’d wanted him to remember. Amy accusing him with those words. Him accusing himself. Both were hollow accusations. She hoped he either had to admit that he didn’t carry the fault when those words were said to him, or admit that she was partially responsible.

Of course, he did neither.  “The book. It was a true crime book. About what happened to you.”

She was grateful for the change in subject. “I wrote it when I was sixteen. I thought, stupidly, that it would make people like me again. Well, they never liked me much, but make them at least see that I wasn’t a monster myself. That people didn’t have to be scared of me, or hate me. And it was a hit.” Another mistake. “A bestseller. All kinds of places wanted all kinds of interviews. Networks fought for rights to do a TV movie. My foster parents at the time were responsible people and wouldn’t let me do the interviews, and I didn’t want to sell the rights. But it didn’t work. People in town still hated me. And now I had international attention. I got death threat letters from some of the family members, though I totally understand why they thought I was profiting off their loved one’s deaths. So we decided it was best if I changed my name to my mother’s maiden name, which I wanted to do, anyway. To keep me at least a bit under the radar.”

“And eventually your aunt took you in?”

“After the drug dealers. They were out of local foster homes.”

“And she’d read the book?”

“Yes. Aiden, too. And she was my mother’s sister,” Molly explained. “She hated and blamed me, the way I did. But she felt familial duty, when my case worker reached out to her again and asked her to take me because otherwise I had nowhere to go.”

“No wonder the show portrayed them as such unpleasant people.”

Molly shrugged. She couldn’t really blame Aunt Loren, but at the same time, she didn’t like being around her much, either.

 “My father kept trying to contact me,” she said. One last horrible thing to tell him. “He said he’d gotten help, and he’d changed, and he wanted to apologize face-to-face. Every year, on the anniversary. When I was eighteen, I decided I’d give him a chance, even though I never wanted to see him again. I thought it might give me closure. I called the prison and told them I wanted to visit. They told me my father couldn’t have visitors. He’d told his cell mate what he planned – that he was going to find a way to kill me while I was there so he could finally release the Phoenix. His cell mate said he was going to tell the guards, and my father stabbed him with a shiv. Before he died, he told the guards all about it. Just another person who’d died because of me.” She realized, now, that she knew a little of how the Doctor felt when people died to save him. “I decided I wanted a new start. Changed my name again, took my savings from the book, and moved to New York City. And, well. There’s the whole story.” She sighed. “Not as much fun knowing, is it?”

The Doctor shook his head. “No. It’s not fun knowing at all.” He was disappointed, she could tell. She was sure the mystery had been fun on the show, trying to put the pieces together. Now the whole, terrible truth was all laid out. And it was real. And he didn’t like this mystery at all.

It was quiet again for a long time. Molly didn’t know what else to say. She felt she’d spent all of her words.

Finally, he said, “I don’t understand something. You told me there was something you did, something terrible. I don’t think it was your joke with your father. What was it?”

Molly blinked slowly. Surely he was joking? Mocking. Lying. He lied. “Are you kidding?” It was a genuine question. There’d been nothing in his character on the show that showed him being cruel like this, but their shows didn’t always match up to their real selves.

“No, of course not,” replied the Doctor. “What was it you did that you feel was so awful?”

She still wasn’t confident he wasn’t joking. She knew he’d been listening. “My mother begged me for help, Doctor. Don’t you remember that bit? Gurgle, help. Gurgle, help. Gurgle, help. I could have locked my father in the other room with the padlock, used one of the knives to cut her free, got her upstairs and to the house and called the police. Maybe she hadn’t lost too much blood, maybe she would have lived. But instead, I ran. My mom was dying, and begged for my help, and I ran away from her.”

The Doctor stared at her, his eyes annoyingly blank. Slowly, she saw understanding come into them. And then a gentle concern she didn’t understand. She’d ran from her dying mother. What understanding and concern could there be?

“Molly,” he said, his voice soft as it had been when he was trying to coax the Adipose from hiding. “That sound…that gurgling sound.”

“What about it?”

“It wasn’t just from the blood.”

She felt an eyebrow twitch upwards. “What do you think it was?”

“She was saying ‘get’. ‘Get help’.”

Molly felt like she was plunged into cold water, and then felt fire build in her chest. “How could you know that?” she spat. “How could you possibly know that? You weren’t there. I was. She begged me for help.”

The shaking of his head made her consider slapping him across the face. “No, Molly. She was telling you to get help. She was telling you to run. She wanted you to run.”

“How would you fucking know that?!”

He leaned in a little closer. She hated the pained kindness in his eyes. “Because, Molly. She sold her pearls to take you to see Giselle.”

“What does-”

“She put you first.” He paused significantly. “She’d have wanted you to save yourself first.”

Now she felt as though she’d fallen off a waterfall, with the cold rushing around her, drowning her, as she span and span. His face span, too. Her thoughts were a jumbled mess of words and images and feelings, too many of them all at once. She forced herself to focus on the image and sound she’d spent all these years running from.

Gurgle. ‘Help.’ Gurgle. ‘Help.’ Gurgle. ‘Help.’ It was always a gurgling sound to her. Not choked, not slurred. Not a squelch. Gurgle. G. ‘G-- help. G-- help. G-- help.’ Subconsciously, she’d registered the G. And then it was clear as though her mom hadn’t had blood in her mouth and throat at all. ‘Get help. Get help. Get help.’

She crashed into the raging river below the waterfall.

Molly was screaming before she realized it.  She screamed and screamed like she was back in that basement, her eyes shut tight. And then she didn’t know if she was screaming or sobbing. Was it possible to do both at the same time? She was screaming/sobbing and the pain that exploded inside her chest was so excruciating that her mind couldn’t even form words anymore, so all she could do was scream and sob and soak the Doctor’s shoulder with tears and saliva, and she only now vaguely realized he’d pulled her in and had his arms around her, less like a hug and more like a tight squeeze, like when they’d used pressure therapy on her in that first foster home in a desperate attempt to calm her before she hurt herself or anyone else.

Oxygen evaded her. She couldn’t breathe through the sobbing and screaming and the Doctor’s thin shirt. It didn’t matter. Oxygen wouldn’t have settled the spinning in her head, the explosive pressure. But she thought in the distance, a million miles away, the Doctor might have told her to breathe, might have put a hand on the back of her head to tilt her head up so she could inhale, but she still couldn’t do anything but make one long, awful wail, until her lungs demanded oxygen.

That breath brought her a millimeter back towards reality, but it wasn’t enough, and she choked on the spit and the snot and the salt of the tears every time she tried to take another breath. It didn’t feel worth the effort.

But the Doctor had snatched a tissue from the box still on her bedside table from when she’d been sick, and without releasing her, pressed it to her face, and then grabbed another when that first one was soaked through in a second. She dropped it beside them, then took the second. Then the third. With each one, she took a breath, and was slowly coming back to reality. It wasn’t much longer until she was able to ask herself why she’d reacted so violently.

Of course, she knew. Her mind couldn’t process the tidal of grief and relief and elation and pain. What it meant that all these years that she’d used hating herself for what she’d done were such a tragic waste. She had done exactly what her mom had wanted her to do. Molly hadn’t abandoned her as she begged for her life.

Molly grieved for her mother all over again, that awful tidal wave pulling her back in. She grieved all that time she’d used hating herself. Grieved the energy that could have been put toward something else. She grieved for who she could have been without carrying this. And, strangely, she grieved for the guilt itself. It had been her constant companion for so long – who was she without it? It felt like her identity had been yanked away from her.

But the relief swept through soon after, forcing the grief and pain to sit on the sidelines. And the elation came with the relief. It was sweet, and light, and she now heard herself giggling as she tried to stop the sobs. Was this what it felt like to not have her mother’s blood on her hands? Is this what everyone else felt? How did they get through their day, without being weighted down with so much guilt they could barely stand straight?

And now she was laughing at how ridiculous it all was. The Doctor had figured it out. She’d revisited those memories so many times, even relived them, but leave it to the Doctor to catch the one detail she’d missed, even though he hadn’t been there. And that reaction, that screaming and sobbing, and now her giggling, still clinging tight to him. She sounded stark raving mad. She felt the pricks of embarrassment on the back on her neck and across her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to really feel it. She was feeling so many other things, there wasn’t enough space for it.

Molly hadn’t been an accomplice in killing her mom. She hadn’t run away while someone begged for her help. She didn’t have some monstrous secret the Doctor would hate her for.

Again, she was struck by the wonder of being able to be wholly, completely herself in front of someone. No lies. No secrets. No other names. Just her. Just Molly Quinn.

“We’ve gone through the whole box,” she heard the Doctor say. “And my shirt.”

She breathed in the cool air, calming her fit of giggles. “I think I’m done.”

“Brilliant,” said the Doctor. She could almost see the discomfort on his face. “I’m not good with crying.”

She patted his back. “I think you did pretty good. Ten out of ten.” She finally forced herself to pull away, and was immediately disgusted by the pool of wetness she’d left on his shoulder. “Oh. Gross.” She lifted the pillow and tried to use the case to wipe the fluids off his shirt, but only managed to rub it more into his skin. “Sorry.”

“No matter,” he said, though he still made a small face looking down at it. “It’s just a shirt.”

She wiped at her eyes and cheeks with the back of her hands. There wasn’t even any mascara left to come off, and there always was after only washing her face once. “A bit…embarrassing.”

The Doctor waved a hand as if it were inconsequential. “No worries. Well, some worries,” he said, and his voice returned to its earlier gentleness. “Are you okay?”

Her eyes drifted behind him, though she didn’t really see the TV or the dresser there. Was she okay? “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I can’t believe I…” It was hard for her to say it out loud, but somehow, for once, looking him in the eyes made it easier. “I didn’t run away when she begged me to help. I didn’t abandon her to her death. I don’t know how to measure myself without having done that, if that makes any sense.”

He nodded, and a small, sad smile entered his eyes. “It makes perfect sense,” he replied, a tone of camaraderie in his voice.

Of course. His horrible act, the one he had defined himself with for so long, that was such a part of what had made him who he was now, that gave him such a drive to try to bring peace to the universe, that was, in a way, his whole identity – had turned out to be something completely different than what he’d believed for hundreds of years.

He hadn’t committed the genocide of his own people, partially in vain. He’d saved them. His home world still existed. Even now, if he decided he didn’t care about the consequences, he could try to find it and return. He hadn’t been their great destroyer, after all.

What a change that must have been. She wondered if the show really portrayed his whole reaction accurately. She knew he took things in stride, but it wasn’t until this moment she realized just how subtle his reaction had been, at least in comparison to hers. How much his own concept of himself must have shifted.

She smiled back, but she thought that instead of sadness, a warmth touched her eyes, a warmth like she hadn’t felt since…well, she didn’t know if she’d ever felt it before. She might not have been capable of this genuine lightness before, this true gratitude. “Thanks, Doctor.” She giggled again, like a damn schoolgirl, and she didn’t care. “Sounds silly. ‘Thanks’. You just changed everything in my life. Again.” She wanted to throw her arms around his shoulders, but maybe she’d hugged him enough. Instead, she kissed his cheek. “Thanks.”

He, in turn, seemed grateful for her gratitude. “Don’t mention it,” he said cheerily, and tapped his finger on the tip of her nose, making her laugh again. “I’m just glad someone put those pieces together for you. Honestly, don’t know why no one has before.” He slid off the bed, getting to his feet. “Do you want a minute?”

She inhaled slowly as she thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think I want to be alone right now. I can’t…process it all at once. This is heavy stuff. I need a break.”

“Absolutely agree,” the Doctor replied. “Give me a bit to change. I’ll meet you in the control room.”

Molly nodded her agreement. She took a minute to go wash her face, throw on her usual mascara, tinted moisturizer, and red lipstick, and changed into a clean, non-pajama outfit before running back to the console room.

The Doctor was already there. “So! What do you want to do? Hit a moon?” They’d already brought the Mayor the crystals. Well, the Doctor had. She’d been crying in the bathtub.

“I do, but…” She tried to think of what she wanted. “I want to shake this off, first. So I can really enjoy it.”

“Shake it how?”

She laughed again at how it was phrased, but realized he was right on target. Molly thought of another of her favorite shows, even though it hadn’t been made by the BBC, and smiled. “I need to dance it out.”

“Dance it out?” But he sounded intrigued by the idea.

“Exactly how it sounds. Put on music. Dance like an idiot. Or like you.”

“Dance like a master it is, then,” he said, briefly pointing at her, his tone a mite accusatory. “What are we dancing to? Pick any song, from any time, any place.”

Molly considered a moment, then smiled wickedly. “Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

She saw that she didn’t need to name the song in the Doctor’s returning grin. “Ha ha, yes! Time Warp it is!” He flipped a switch here, did a quick spin, flipped a few switches there, and then it was playing. The TARDIS, she decided, had the best surround sound in the universe.

Could they have done the moves listed in the song? Certainly. Did they? No. It was a sort of free-for-all, each of them doing their own moves, jumping and spinning and wiggling and laughing, lots and lots of laughing. Molly forgot to have any shame at all, and the Doctor likely had never had any to begin with. It was all just a long period of silliness, and then it was over.

The Doctor turned the music off as Molly gripped the side of the console, trying to catch her breath.

He looked over at her, a cheery twinkle in his eyes. “Well? Feel better?”

Molly took a moment to close her eyes, searching all her body and mind for the dark shadows that had always had her in their grasp. She couldn’t find them. Instead, a sort of yellow light was barely contained inside her. She felt feather-light. She felt giddy. She felt…

Was this what happiness was supposed to feel like?

Molly opened her eyes and smiled back at the Doctor. “Yes.”

For the moment, at least, she was completely and utterly…better.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Five

Rainstorm

She was better, but still, Molly yawned and stepped around the console. “I’m exhausted. It’s been…a long day. A long day and a half.”

“Technically, it’s been-”

“It’s a saying,” she cut in quickly. “Anyway, we went through a lot today. I’m drained. Give me an hour to take a quick nap?”

The Doctor nodded. “Fair enough. And we’ll think of where else we can go over tea.”

“Sounds good.”

With a wave, Molly turned and went back to her room.

While, yes, she was tired, very tired, more than that – she really needed more than a minute to process what had just happened.

She stretched out on the bed, then grabbed the pillow and held it over her face, with no disregard for her red lipstick. The extra layer of darkness – though without windows, it was often pitch black in her room – helped her think.

Molly had spent almost her whole life afraid of anyone learning her secret. She changed her name, moved away, avoided pictures, tried to fly at least a little under the radar, reinvented her whole identity, all to avoid anyone knowing what had happened to her. What she thought she had done.

She’d never been more afraid (in recent years, anyway) than when she’d realized she was actually on the TARDIS, actually with the Doctor. There was not a single person, in reality or in fiction, that she was more terrified of learning what she’d done. And he hadn’t judged her. Even about telling her father she was a goddess, he hadn’t judged her. And he had seen things in her story she hadn’t seen herself.

She should have known; she really should have. He wasn’t always forgiving, but he always gave chances. And he knew she hated herself for what she thought she’d done. And miraculously, he had picked out the details that proved her main reason for hating herself was invalid: her mother had told her to run.

Granted, she still had thought her mother begged for help, and still ran. It had still happened. But try as she might, she couldn’t get angry with herself over it. Maybe she’d punished herself enough. Maybe it was just the ecstatic relief of knowing she hadn’t just abandoned her mother to her death while she pleaded for help.

The relief was the sweetest thing she’d ever tasted. It was more than a weight lifted, more than the world taken off her shoulders. She couldn’t think of a metaphor that expressed the exact weightlessness she felt. It felt beautiful. It felt glorious.

Thinking on that, Molly fell asleep, feeling a deep peace she hadn’t known before.

She felt groggy when she woke up. Again, she cursed the inability to know how much time had passed. She checked her appearance in the bathroom and washed the smeared lipstick off her face and reapplied it before slipping on the necklace Clara had given her and going back to the console room.

“Was that like, a really long nap?” she asked the Doctor, as he looked up at her from his book.

He stood from the chair and dropped it in his seat. “Depends. For a Time Lord, yes. For a human, also yes.” He stuck his glasses in his pocket. “I’d say you slept about ten hours.”

“What? Ten hours?”

“Well, you’d been through a lot,” replied the Doctor. “Physically. Emotionally. Time Warp-y. Understandable you’d sleep a bit longer than you thought.”

Molly agreed, begrudgingly. It had been some of the deepest sleep she’d had in ages, so she must have needed it. Still, she hated making the Doctor wait so long for her. And to burn up so much of their time together. She wasn’t sure how much they’d have left. The clock was always ticking until the TARDIS found her way home. “Sorry you had to wait so long.”

The Doctor shrugged. “I kept busy; I always do. You ready to hop ahead a bit, try the moon again? Grab some breakfast?”

Molly yawned and stretched her arms over her head. “Absolutely.” It occurred to her that she felt no deep need to make up for not reciting the names before or after she’d slept.

They hopped ahead a few years, and landed back where they had the first time. They walked through the city, and stopped at the café they had the day before for breakfast.

The Doctor took a seat with the coffee Molly had purchased with a quick story of a prank war she’d engaged in at one of the foster homes. “So, what would you like to do today? Just the fairytale moon? Hop around the moons some? Check out some other planets? Whatever you like.”

Molly took a sip of her coffee as she considered. “Maybe hit a moon or two then check out something else. There’s so much to see, and I don’t know how much time we have to see it all.”

The Doctor frowned. “What do you mean, how much time we have to see it all? We have all the time in the universe. Literally.”

Molly started to pick apart her orange-and-some-weird-outer-space-vegetable muffin. “I mean, until the TARDIS figures out how to get me home.”

“Ah,” the Doctor said, and he cleared his throat before taking a sip of the coffee again. He kept his eyes on the pastry on his plate. “Right.”

“Neither of us really know when that’ll be, do we?”

“No, no. No idea at all. Could be ages,” replied the Doctor. “Could be tomorrow. You’re right. We should fit in as much as we can.”

“Any recommendations?”

She watched the Doctor think about it a moment as she ate. “We could do a space station. There’s one pretty close to a sun that goes supernova.”

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Totally safe. Nothing bad happens. Well, almost nothing bad. Okay, not the space station,” he dismissed. “There’s a planet that has a sort of recreation of the wild west, mixed up with a 1960s Earth Space Age feel. We could go horseback riding around the hills, take in a movie, hit a market.”

“I haven’t been horseback riding since I was little.” Molly remembered the last time, when she was around 12-and-a-half. She used to walk a couple miles down the road to the horse ranch and volunteer to help feed them in exchange for a ride now and then. “Sounds like fun.”

“Alright, that’s settled! We’ll head to D’Gups Alpha after a couple moon trips.”

“You know,” she started, “We seem to do a lot of markets.”

“Best place to get to know a society,” the Doctor said, grinning. “Well, second, first is libraries.” He paused. “Well, third. Second is museums. But third, definitely third. You see all the people, the things they value, what entertains them, what décor they prefer, what food they like. Excellent people-watching. Sometimes there’s music.”

Molly considered this. “Okay. You have a point. I’m sold. Horseback riding, movie, and market it is!”

“Right after the moons,” the Doctor agreed. “Shall we be off?”

Molly nodded, and quickly finished off her muffin before they headed out of the café.

Rather than taking the TARDIS, they decided to have the authentic experience of taking the space shuttle bus. Molly kept her eyes closed tight the whole time, even though the Doctor kept encouraging her to look out the window, even as they approached the moon. She may now be more-or-less used to the TARDIS, but she didn’t need the direct reminder they were in space. She also trusted the TARDIS a hell of a lot more than the shuttle.

Still, they arrived safely, and took some time to look around at the décor. There were castles and dragon animatronics that looked and behaved like they were real, interacting with people. Molly spotted an actual yellow brick road, which made her happy that the Oz series was well known. There were types of creatures she didn’t recognize that were also some sort of animatronic, like the dragon. She assumed they were from other worlds. One looked almost like a minotaur, but with six legs and two extra arms. The legs reminded her of the Lutumedes, so she quickly looked away.

They went into one of the castles and listened to one of the storytellers tell a fairytale from a world the Doctor described as housing a sentient species of mold slimes. It was a little strange to her, but a fairytale was a fairytale, and it ended in the princess-like character running off with the knight – except rather than kissing, they combined to form one blob. Molly decided she’d had enough of that particular line of storytelling, and together they went to explore the books.

The Doctor was excited to find a rare book full of fairytales from a planet that had been near Gallifrey, and purchased it with a story. It had been expensive and cost a detailed telling of Rings of Ahkatan. It’d had to be something very personal. Molly thought a story about stories and purchasing things with items of sentimental value had been appropriate.

Molly bought a cheaper book of Earth fairytales from the years 2500 – 3000 with the tale of her running away from the burly bodyguard. She felt pleased when the clerk laughed at the cake falling in his face.

After, they headed to the horror moon, but neither of them lasted long there. It was like going to Horrorland, from the Goosebumps book. Everything was terrifying. As much as Molly appreciated horror, they agreed to leave about fifteen minutes in.

They took the shuttle back again – Molly managing to peek once at the stars and then closing her eyes tightly again – and headed to the TARDIS.

“Alright, off to D’Gups Alpha!” the Doctor announced as he began on the controls.

Molly leaned against the console. “You know, that’s probably the weirdest name I’ve ever heard.”

“I know,” laughed the Doctor. “They couldn’t decide what to name it, when they moved in. They used the first letter of the founder’s initials and stuck Alpha on there since they planned to claim another planet. Never did.”

“Probably the potential future name kept the planets hiding from them.”

The Doctor pointed to her and nodded his head, agreeing. They took off. “What do you want to do first?”

“Movie, lunch, horseback riding, market?”

“Perfect,” the Doctor agreed. “I’ve timed it so Abyss of Venus will be showing. Over lunch I can make sure you enjoyed it properly.”

“What if I don’t like it?”

“Then I’m afraid we’ll have to part ways here.” But he gave her a little wink so she knew he was joking.

She had, actually, enjoyed the movie, despite her hesitance in watching new scifi (she was never sure if someone was going to get stuck out in space). He was right, in that it was funny with a dash of horror. The horror she normally would have enjoyed more, if they weren’t coming off the horror moon.

They sat in what looked to Molly to be a hole-in-the-wall, local hangout place. Locals always knew the best food, and this was no different. Molly ordered something that reminded her of Cajun cooking. She avoided a side that seemed to be fried worms.

The Doctor was right about the look of the planet. The planet itself was largely desert, though with bits that seemed sort of an oasis, with proper dirt and trees, even whole woods, and grass that was a Robin’s Egg blue. People wore a mix of cowboy and space age clothing, some even wearing astronaut helmets as hats. Molly thought that might remind the Doctor of River, maybe make him a bit sad, but he excitedly announced he was going to buy one at the market.

“So, what did you think?” the Doctor asked.

She took a sip of what tasted like a peach milkshake. “I liked it. It was fun. I really liked the parts when they didn’t show space at all. Those were my favorites.”

The Doctor almost snorted. “That was about ten minutes of it.”

“The best ten minutes,” Molly joked. “But really, it was a good movie. I liked the characters. The comedy was really witty. I liked the banter between the navigator and the captain, even after it was revealed the captain was the villain.”

“Best part,” the Doctor agreed. “Okay, I suppose you can stay.”

Molly chuckled. “Thanks.”

“So, what about you? What’s your favorite?”

“I don’t think I have one,” she said, and paused to think through every movie she’d seen. “There’s one I watched a lot at the hospital. Last Night in Soho. It’s like a psychological horror, with a girl sort of time traveling in her dreams, and then the dreams showing up in her regular life. Matt Smith was in it – you know, the actor who played you. In this played someone who seemed charming at first but ended up trapping one of the main characters in a prostitution ring.”

“I don’t think I like the idea of being a villain like that,” the Doctor said, discomfort on his face.

“Well, it wasn’t you. It was an actor,” Molly reminded him.

“And if I said Lydia Hart played a similar part?” the Doctor asked. “This Matt Smith is my counterpart, the way Lydia Hart is yours. Worse, if I’m real, and also a show in your universe, than somewhere there’s probably a universe where that film is real, and he’s wearing my face.”

Molly frowned. “What I find most interesting is that in each of our universes, our counterpart is an actor. I never thought about it before.”

The Doctor’s eyes looked distant again, like they had a few times when he considered something he wasn’t going to say out loud. “True. That is a bit…odd.”

Molly finished her drink. “Are you ever going to tell me what it is you’re thinking about when you get quiet like that?”

The Doctor looked a little startled, and then slowly smiled. “No. I mean, it’s nothing, really. But also, no.”

Molly sighed and rolled her eyes. “Okay, cowboy. Let’s get to the stables.”

They’d been riding for about half an hour. It felt good to be on a horse again; the visits to the horse ranch had been some of her happiest childhood memories. One of the few things she enjoyed outside ballet.

She was riding on what looked like an Arabian crossed with a Morgan, all cream save for some black around the hooves and nose. The Doctor rode what seemed to be this planet’s Appaloosa, dark brown with a white section on the back covered with black spots, sort of like a dalmatian. That had been the horse she’d had the most experience with, back home.

Their path took them through some sparse woods, which reminded Molly a little of the Pine Barrens.

They seemed to remind the Doctor of the Pine Barrens, too. “Hey, Molly.”

“Yeah?”

“It didn’t occur to me until now,” he began. “I never really…apologized, for the fire in the Pine Barrens.”

She looked over at him with a raised brow. “Did you start the fire?”

“Course not,” he said, defensively enough that she thought maybe he actually believed she was accusing him. “But I knew the wildfire was coming that night. I shouldn’t have slept. It was longer than I usually sleep, but I hadn’t slept more than once or twice since Clara left.”

Molly glanced over, surprised. “Wasn’t that a hundred years ago?”

“Something like that.”

“You didn’t sleep for a hundred years?”

“I sort of…forgot.” He paused. “Really, I didn’t feel safe. What I’d done…I didn’t want it to follow me into my dreams.”

A hundred years without sleep. Even for a Time Lord, that was a long time, at least according to the show. But she deeply understood the need to avoid nightmare. “It’s fine, really.”

“But I should have known. I don’t like to check places before I arrive, it’s not how I travel, but because I slept the fire surprised us, and because didn’t repair the HADs, we could have been trapped in a wildfire without the TARDIS.” He paused. “And I should have listened to you about the White Stag.”

Molly almost laughed. “It’s fine, Doctor. I know how you travel. It’s honestly more fun that way. Besides, I was questioning whether I actually saw something half the time, too. We’re cool.”

“Cool,” the Doctor repeated, smiling. “We’re very cool.”

“Hell yeah, we are.”

“We almost died,” the Doctor reminded her.

“We almost die a lot.” Molly had hoped it wouldn’t be as often as it was on the show, but it seemed to be. “I can hardly judge you for sleeping. And sure, if we’d done a quick Google search about the Pine Barrens that year, we would have seen there was a wildfire. But where’s the fun in that?”

“Where indeed,” he agreed. “Good. Good. I just wanted to make sure you were…”

“Were what?”

“Still having fun. Not too worried, or anxious to get home. Feeling safe.”

“Again, where’s the fun in feeling safe?” Molly smiled over at him. “Don’t worry about me. I’m having a great time.” So great that the thought of it inevitably ending hurt her heart in a way she didn’t want to examine too closely.

“Perfect,” he replied.

They continued their ride for a little while longer, before the curiosity in Molly’s brain made her feel as though it would explode. She’d watched him trying to fit seemingly random pieces of a puzzle together for too long. But this was the Doctor. She’d have to get a little tricky.

“So, how old are you now?”

He looked over at her, strangely suspicious. “Why?”

“Just wondering.”

He looked away and seemed to struggle to remember. “Somewhere around…2,112? Maybe? I honestly don’t know anymore. Haven’t since I turned 800-something, really. I’ve just been making it up.”

“Do they all blur together?”

“Yeah, a bit.”

“Do you ever celebrate your birthday?”

“Not really. Not for a long time,” he said. “I travel through time, it’s almost never my birthday when I land. Not that it would mean anything if it was.”

“Do you at least get yourself a cake at random so you can blow out the candles?”

“Oh, definitely. One of the best human traditions.”

“What kind of cake?”

“Usually chocolate. Sometimes strawberry.”

“Are Jammie Dodgers your favorite cookie?”

“Of course.”

“Fish fingers and custard is your favorite food, right?”

“Well, you already know that.”

“What mystery is it you’ve been trying to solve?”

“I’ve been thinking about – oh,” he stopped, and sent her a look that was a strange, proud but irritated glare. “Good try.”

“Damn,” she mumbled. “So close.”

The Doctor pulled ahead a little. Molly figured it was so she wouldn’t try to read his face for clues. “It’s really nothing.”

“If it was nothing, you’d tell me.” He didn’t answer. “At least let me know if it affects me.”

“Affects…” he paused. “No. Yes. Probably not.”

“Does it have to do with me?”

He sighed, and pulled the reins to stop his horse. Molly stopped hers beside him. “I’m still bothered by my show in your universe being called Doctor Who. There’s something about it that…tickles part of my brain. I don’t know why.”

Molly didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed, but she shrugged. “Sometimes a show name is just a show name. At the start of the show, the Doctor – you – that Doctor didn’t really know who he was, sort of. No one did. And people say ‘Doctor who?’ to you a lot. That’s probably it.”

“Maybe…” he started, his eyes distant again. Molly thought of all the other odd things that had made him seem distant. Nothing seemed to connect, especially not to the show. But before she could ask, the Doctor smiled again. “Maybe I can beat you to the ridge.”

So, no real answers. That was alright. She knew there probably wouldn’t be, not unless it was ever directly, urgently relevant to her. She could live with that. Possibly.

She grinned. “You’re on.”

The blue skies had faded to deep grey by the time they got to the market. Dark clouds hung over them, and it felt like there was electricity in the air. They had a little time to look at a few booths, despite most of them closing for the oncoming storm. When a roll of thunder even drowned out Molly’s bragging about winning their race, the few remaining shoppers rushed to take cover under an awning stretching across a few buildings. Molly and the Doctor joined them, standing outside a café closer to the trees than the market. The air coming from the café had the odd smell of coffee and pineapple.

The smell of the rain that came pouring down seconds later smelled just like the rain on Earth, though. The cool scent of the water, the petrichor smell as it met the rich dirt, the green smell of the trees, though the trees here were a variety of colors. Molly closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She remembered days as a child running down her dirt driveway in the rain.

She looked out towards the trees, and the rain was like a veil, slightly obscuring them. She looked over to the Doctor. “Is the rain normal here?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not, like, acid or anything, right?”

“Of course it’s not. Why?”

Molly smiled, then sat down and began taking off her boots. “Fantastic.”

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Once they were off, Molly stuffed her socks into the boots, then stood and let her hair out of its ponytail. The Doctor didn’t reply as Molly stuck her hand out in the rain, testing it. It was cool, but not cold. She stepped out from under the cover.

“Molly!” the Doctor objected.

Molly turned her face up to the rain, closing her eyes and letting it wash away her makeup. “Alien rain,” she smiled. She turned back to the Doctor. “It’s rain. On an alien planet.”

The Doctor looked uncertain. “It’s just like any other rain.”

“No, it’s not. It’s rain on a whole other planet!” she argued. “It’s amazing.”

She thought she caught a little smile on his lips, a little look of affection in his eyes, but the rain blurred him a little. “We’ve been to other planets. We’ve been to the past. We’ve been to the future. Space mermaids, giant robots, ghost deer in the Pine Barrens, Cybership. And you’re still amazed by rain.”

“Alien rain! Alien water!” she corrected. She felt the wet earth under her feet, the rain running down her skin, her hair weighted down with the water. It felt like her soul being cleansed. Some of the mud of her trauma being washed away.

Molly reached a hand out to the Doctor. “Well? Come on!”

The Doctor leaned forward a little to peek up at the dark grey sky and the downpour of water. “I don’t think so.”

Molly laughed as she began backing away from him. “Whatever you say, old man!”

She knew it would be enough. He stuck a hand out to feel the rain, then set his jaw and bent down to take off his own shoes and socks. He hesitated a moment, then ran out to meet her as she continued backing towards the trees.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, but with a grin.

“I know!” she shouted, the rain now falling hard enough to make a conversation difficult without raising her voice. She grabbed his hand. “Come on!”

“Come on where?”

“Doesn’t matter! Run!” She turned and took off towards the trees, dragging the Doctor along beside her. They ran almost to the edge of the trees, and turned left for a while, then back towards the café. Molly laughed the whole time, and the Doctor’s laughter followed behind her. She glanced back once to catch the silly grin on his face she loved watching on the screen when she locked herself in her room to watch Doctor Who. She’d rewound to watch him smile like this over and over again. And here it was, in person. It was, of course, even better.

She screamed as she suddenly slipped in mud, and fell straight onto her back, dragging the Doctor down with her. He managed to twist at the last minute to avoid landing on top of her, but slammed down beside her, harder than she’d fallen. She was worried he might be hurt, but he was still laughing.

“Sorry!” she said, apologizing for pulling him into the mud. “I’m a human disaster.”

He grinned. “Well, we’re a great pair. I’m a Time Lord disaster.”

Molly sat herself up, and saw the people under the awning staring. “Is it possible to die of embarrassment?”

“I’ve been reliably informed that it is not, no,” said the Doctor, getting to his feet and dragging her back up. He turned his face up to the rain and let it wash away the mud that had spread over his cheek. Molly reached up and helped wash it away, and noticed a softness in his eyes as she did it.

“I love the rain!” she declared, as if it wasn’t obvious. “It’s weird, because I hate the cold, and I hate being soaking wet usually, but the rain is different. It’s exhilarating. It makes me feel more alive than anything else does.”

The Doctor looked back down at her. “You know, I think you’re right about that. I do feel energized. Euphoric. Other E-words.”

“See? It’s the best.” Molly twirled around, but had to grab onto the Doctor again when she slipped. But the force pulled them both down again. She hit her head on his shoulder, as his elbow dug into her thigh. “Ow. Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he laughed. “Bruised shoulder or not, it’s still fun.”

“Fun, and painful.”

The Doctor put his hands around her waist and she gripped his shoulders as he lifted her up, a little too fast. She slammed into him, his face going into her wet hair, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders in a hug motion to keep them from falling back down from the force. “Citrus,” he mumbled as they got steady on their feet again and pulled apart.

“What was that?”

“Nothing,” he said quickly.

She decided to let it slide. “So, the rain is the best. The mud, less best.” She was starting to sound like him again.

“I think we’ve both had plenty of mud lately.”

Molly looked down at her feet. “Partially why I took my shoes off. I don’t want the TARDIS to be mad about us tracking in more mud.”

“We will be dripping water all over her, though.”

That was true. “Sorry to get you in trouble with your best friend.”

The Doctor smiled. “She’ll forgive us. You’re my other best mate, after all.”

His best friend. The Doctor had called her his best friend. Happiness exploded in her mind like a white light and it took her a moment of grinning stupidly before she managed words. “You’re my best friend, too.”

“I know,” he said, smugly. “Who else do you know in the universe?”

“…I meant the TARDIS. The TARDIS is my best friend.”

“Oi.” He playfully nudged her.

But Molly was still soaring. Best friends with the Doctor. How much better could life be? The Doctor was her best friend. And she was his.

There was that light gathering around him again. She felt lightheaded, and a ridiculous giggle escaped her.

“What?” the Doctor wanted to know.

She decided to just be open. What was the point in hiding her vulnerability now? He’d heard the worst of it. “I still get…you know…sometimes.”

“I don’t know. Still get what?”

“Dizzy,” she explained. “Star-struck.”

He looked incredulous. “It’s been…” he ran some sort of calculation in his head. “Almost three weeks!”

Not even three weeks. It felt like forever. It felt like not nearly long enough. “Yeah, well…you’re kind of a big deal.” She froze. “Oh, no.” Now his ego would be even more inflated than usual, and she wouldn’t hear the end of it.

She saw that light in his eyes again, and the small smirk coming across his face, and prepared herself for it. Instead – “Me, too.”

Now it was a full laugh that escaped her. “Are you kidding me?”

“Course not. Why would I be?”

Molly shook her head in disbelief, then had to push some of the soaked strands of hair out of her eyes. “Why would you be star-struck? I mean, I get the whole TV show thing, but seriously, it’s not the same.”

“Why not?”

She gestured towards him. “Time Lord.”

He mirrored her gesture. “Human.”

“Literal savior of worlds.”

“You just saved a world. And a few moons,” he added.

“That would’ve ended exactly the same if I hadn’t been there. Actually, it would have gone better if I wasn’t there,” she added.

“I disagree. For one, I wouldn’t have been there at all if it weren’t for you.” His voice was softer now; she could hardly hear it over the rain. But she detected that note in it, the one that meant he was thinking of the things he’d done those hundred years between companions. “For another, your being there still helped. Besides, there’s also the Mechanas-”

“Also better without me.”

“Except for the people you stayed behind to save. The Vannique-”

“Exactly the same without me.”

“I wouldn’t have narrowed it down to them so quickly if it weren’t for the paper airplane. Then there’s the Cybermen.”

Molly thought about that one. “All I did was fly the TARDIS a bit.”

“And came up with a way to get to us safely. Not to mention the number of people who would still think I was dead if not for you. Craig and Sophie. Brian still there, unable to talk about what happened to Rory with anyone. Clara wondering where I’d gone, if I’d died. Sarah Jane. And then there’s all the other people from your universe you saved, like in the show. How many poor and homeless would have died without that clinic?”

She turned his words around in her head. “Okay, fine. Savior of people, I’ll take.”

“Savior of worlds, savior of people…same thing.”

That felt nice, she had to admit, if only to herself. “Okay, but you’re a literal legend.”

“And you’re Molly Quinn.” He said it as though being Molly Quinn was a class of its own. “Gorgeous, clever, funny, brave Molly Quinn.”

That just made the feeling of being star-struck worse, and she almost reached out to grab his arm to keep from being so dizzy she fell again. “…gorgeous, huh?”

He winced. “Oh, shut up.” He grabbed her hand. The sudden storm was beginning to let up, and they began back towards the cover of the café.

Gorgeous, clever, funny, brave. She didn’t need to feed his ego even more by saying that those were all his qualities. It was best if she didn’t think about being star-struck too much. He’d become a real person for her, wholly now, and she didn’t want to lose that.

It had almost been three weeks together. How much time did she have left with him as a real person?

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Six

Echo-Star Lab

The next week went by in a blur. She was relieved as they went on adventures that didn’t end in almost dying again. A hike up a mountain full of fall-colored leaves, to look down on a planet where each season was visible from the top of the mountain took up most of a day, and they stayed in the cabin at the top before heading back down the next day to walk through the spring sections, and then the summer, and have a snowball fight in the winter (the Doctor had soundly won. Molly wasn’t used to snow you could throw).

The next day, they went back to ancient Egypt. Molly had fun with the costumes, and they learned how to play Senet. They stopped by a ceremony to Hapi, a god and personification of the Nile. Going into the past again had been a lot of fun, but Molly always had an odd feeling of being somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be.

Next came a rest day. Molly went through that sort of day as usual, doing her morning routine, reading from the book of Gallifrey, and dancing. She noticed a new lightness to her dancing now, and attributed it to being able to think about ballet without feeling the guilt of her mother’s death. She even started to recall parts of their conversation on the way home from Giselle. It ached, but it didn’t drag her under. It felt life-changing for her, to be able to remember her mother without being swallowed by guilt and flashbacks.

Afterwards, she watched a movie with the Doctor, and helped him with a few repairs to the TARDIS. When the Doctor headed to the engine room to make sure it was running optimally, Molly headed down to the storage, set on sorting it. They were a bit of a mess, and if they ever needed to grab flashlights quickly, or anything else, it could take a while.

But, as when she tried to organize, she got distracted by something new every few minutes. She found a pair of sunglasses that scanned things around her, and looking at her hand she saw they also worked like an Xray. Watching her bones move as she flexed and bent her fingers made her stomach squirm, so she set them on her head.

Another interesting thing she found was a thick, leather-bound book with a silken buckle around it, and etched in bronze across the cover, ‘the 2000-year diary’. Coming across this made her fangirl heart skip a beat. It was a piece of Doctor Who that had been around since the classic era, a diary counting every year of the Doctor, each book a different set of years. There hadn’t been a 2000-year diary on the show yet, of course. Holding it was exciting.

But Molly felt an odd sensation of judgement hanging over her. She looked around, but didn’t see the Doctor. So instead, she looked up. “Stop giving me that look. I’m not reading it.” To prove it, she ran her fingers over the cover once, and then set it back where she’d found it.

That was she heard the Doctor’s footsteps come down the stairs. “Not reading what?”

Molly looked over to him, a little sheepish. “Your diary. I was trying to organize, and came across it. The TARDIS gave me a dirty look over it.”

He blinked. “The TARDIS gave you a look?”

“You know what I mean,” she countered. “You can feel it when she’s displeased.”

“Yes. Yes, you can,” he said. He seemed oddly pleased over it.

Molly flipped the sunglasses over her eyes again with a shake of her head. “Wow.”

“What?”

“The two-heart thing. It looks weird.”

“Oi,” he walked over and snatched the glasses off her face. “That’s rude. And you’re the one who looks funny with just the one heart. It’s like you’re lopsided.”

Molly thought about it, and decided she didn’t like it. She grabbed the glasses back, and then put them away. “I was trying to organize this, but I think it’s hopeless.”

“It was perfectly organized.”

“You have clothes in random places, some flashlights in one, some in another. Tools in all of them. There’s got to be a better system.”

“And…you’re going to come up with it?” he asked uncertainly.

Molly looked around at the mess surrounding her. “No, I give up. I’m just going to throw them all back in.”

So, it ended up worse than when she’d started.

They spent the two next days at a theme park on another planet. The Doctor was very excited to take her on the longest rollercoaster in the universe. It took twenty minutes, and had a recovery room by the exit. If you didn’t throw up, they gave you a prize. Neither of them won it.

The park took up most of the planet, and they could have stayed for months and not seen it all. But after the twentieth rollercoaster, Molly called it quits. They went back to the TARDIS and Molly laid down until the room stopped spinning. That wasn’t until the next morning.

That day they headed back to Earth. They tried to teach each other to rollerskate, but more often than not just brought the other crashing down with them. It was a beautiful summer day, though, in a park. They got snowcones, and after Molly commented that she liked snowcones more than ice cream, the Doctor got excited and decided they should go around the universe trying every kind of snowcone to see which was the best. Molly’s favorite was on a sort of jungle planet, with ice like snow, and hers was flavored with a creamy milk that tasted like coconut, mixed with some tropical green fruit and what was most definitely rum. She felt a little tipsy when they headed back to the TARDIS, and he let her finish his favorite, one that tasted exactly like a sweet, almost overripe strawberry, left out in the sun a little too long. She felt like she had a brain freeze the entire day.

The next morning, Molly went through her drawers uncertainly. It was difficult, dressing for the day when she had no idea what weather was in store. She settled on a basic outfit of denim shorts, a black tank top with little blue flowers, and her trusty emerald jacket, along with the new pair of boots. They were the third pair she’d gone through already. She hoped these would survive.

After pulling her hair back and applying some makeup, she headed to the control room. The Doctor had a panel behind the circular console open, and was messing about with bits of wire. Molly walked up to the light in the center – a blueish green now – and tapped it reassuringly. “Aww, is the mean man tinkering with you again?”

The Doctor turned to her with a dirty look. “How come you talk to the TARDIS so much nicer than you talk to me?”

Molly leaned against the console. “The TARDIS is my best friend.”

“I’m your best friend.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Okay. You’re my best friend.” But when the Doctor turned back to his work, she turned to the light and mouthed ‘no, he’s not’.

Molly walked up to watch him work, and was immediately assigned to the duty of handing him tools again, which she thought was an awful idea, but at least she got to help contribute. Maybe by the time she went back to her universe, she’d have an idea of what the tools actually were.

Her universe. She’d stopped thinking of it as ‘home’ a while ago. It was just where she’d come from. But it sat there, lurking over her future. The longer she was with the Doctor, the more it felt like a threat.

Her heart sunk as she thought about it, and as she thought about the last month with him. Again, she couldn’t help but indulge in that awful thought: how much longer did she have?

She couldn’t live with the uncertainty anymore. It was time to ask the question. “Hey, Doctor.”

“Hey, Molly.”

She tried to think of a way to say this that didn’t hurt. “So, a while back, River said…” But her courage failed her.

“River’s always saying things,” the Doctor replied.

A flash of the old conversation flitted through her mind. ‘He’s going to fall in love with you, you know.’ She fought to keep from laughing at it now and having the Doctor ask what it was she was laughing at. “Tell me about it.”

“Well, you see, she-”

“I didn’t mean that literally.”

He looked up for a moment. “Oh.” And went back to work. “What did River say?”

“Well…” she cleared her throat, hoping it would make the knot in it disappear. It didn’t work. “She said something about the scan. The one to try to find the way back to my universe. How it was taking a long time.”

The Doctor stopped moving, but didn’t look up. After a moment he said, “What about it?”

Molly folded her arms and turned to lean back against the console the Doctor was working on. “She seemed to think it was...strange…that it was taking so long. That something might be wrong with it. And it had only been going a week by then. It’s been about a month now. Do you think something’s wrong?”

He thought for a moment, but still didn’t continue working. “Could be. I doubt it. Travel between universes is…complicated. All the TARDIS has to go on is whatever energy you may have had clinging to you immediately after you arrived.”

“Oh.” This wasn’t something that had occurred to her. “So…there’s a possibility I might not get back?” She didn’t know if her heart raced because she was anxious about that, or excited.

“No, no. She’ll figure it out eventually.” He finally looked up at her, and set the tools aside. “There is…” He hesitated. “There’s a lab we could go to. Star-Echo Lab, a space station in the Echo system. They study interdimensional travel. They could help you get back.” 

Now she realized it had definitely been excitement, because her heart sank at his words. “Oh,” she said again. “We should…go there, I guess.” The goal had been to send her back, hadn’t it? The adventures were just to fill the time until then.

The Doctor nodded. “We should. They’ll likely be able to get you back home. They have a machine like the one Rose used to cross universes. I’m not sure how they program it for a specific universe. I’d like to see how they do it.” His voice held a note of excitement on the last sentence.

Back ‘home’. It sounded like he had already stopped thinking of the TARDIS as her home. He was already starting to think of her as gone, in a way, wasn’t he?

Molly turned so he wouldn’t see her fighting a few tears back. She hadn’t meant to start this. She’d just wanted to know how much time she had left. And now it seemed she only had minutes, maybe an hour if she was lucky. It felt like her heart was breaking. She’d thought there was still so much they were going to see and do together. She’d have more chances to get to know the TARDIS. To get closer to the Doctor.

But he would know better than she would when it was time for her to go. He’d known about this lab the whole time, and now he wanted to go there, rather than wait for the TARDIS. Apparently, he’d decided it was time, and she had to trust that.

The tears were fought back when she took a breath and turned back to him, a familiar false smile on her face. “Okay, then. Let’s get me home.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, and he turned and began putting the console back in place. “Let’s get you home.”

-

The console was quickly put back together, too quickly for Molly’s taste. She went to the wardrobe and grabbed a bag, then went to her room and put the few other souvenirs she had into it – the Tamagotchi, the slap bracelets, a few odds and ends from the World Market. Then she set the bag on the bed, and went to the wall, placed her palms on it, and leaned her forehead against it.

“Well, this is it,” she whispered to the TARDIS. “I’ve had…just…the most wonderful time.” Her throat was too tight to pretend she wasn’t devastated to be leaving so soon. She was glad the Doctor couldn’t hear her. “Thank you for taking us to all those amazing places. And for the studio. It really meant so much to me. You’ve been wonderful. I’m sorry to go.” She took in a slow breath, which caught in her chest. “I’m glad I met you. It’s been an honor, really.” She stepped back, and put the bag over her shoulder. She looked around the room one last time. The room where she’d sat in bed and watched Sherlock with the Doctor. Where he’d burst in, excited because he’d made breakfast over the campfire. Where she’d learned the most important thing in all her life: she hadn’t made her mother watch her run while begging for help. And she said goodbye.

She stopped by the studio before leaving, to say goodbye to it, too. Where she’d rediscovered herself, her talent, her vulnerability through her passion, her dance. The sweet gift the TARDIS had given her. And there, on a hanger, was the gift the Doctor had given her. She thought, for a moment, that she should leave it behind. It was future technology that made it glisten, it could be potentially dangerous somehow to take it to her world. But she couldn’t bring herself to part with it. She folded the costume up as neatly as she was capable, and put it in the top of the bag before closing it. She wiped the tears off her face with the sleeve of her jacket, and left the room.

 By the time she got back to the control room, the Doctor was ready to go. “Got everything you need?”

Molly nodded. “Yep.” She’d managed to keep the emotion out of her voice. “It’s okay that I bring the Giselle costume with me, right?”

“Of course. It’s yours.”

“I just wanted to make sure, since it’s sort of…not like anything that could be made in my universe.”

“Should be fine,” the Doctor said, but he sounded distracted. “Time to go.”

“Right,” Molly almost whispered. She watched the Doctor input the controls, and held her breath, almost hoping the TARDIS would refuse to move.

Of course, she didn’t, and they were landed before Molly released the breath. She turned towards the doors.

He was right. It was time.

“Star-Echo Lab?” she confirmed, trying to buy a little more time on the TARDIS.

“Yep,” said the Doctor. He passed her as he went to open the doors, and she followed after him. “Should have a few researchers and assistants available. They might want to study you.” He turned back. “Tell them no. It might…be painful.”

Molly nodded. She tried to say ‘got it’, but couldn’t get the words past the lump in her throat.

The Doctor took a deep breath. “Here we go.” He swung open the doors and they both stepped outside – and froze.

They were met by three guns, and it took a moment for Molly to see the two men and one woman pointing them. Molly immediately raised her hands, quickly followed by the Doctor.

“You know, aiming a gun at someone is considered rude in some societies,” he said.

So, Molly needed to try to save them. “No need to shoot!” she shouted. “Please don’t shoot.”

“What are you doing here?” the man with greying hair demanded gruffly.

The Doctor nodded his head towards Molly. “My friend here’s from another universe. Just trying to see if you can get her home.”

The man’s gun wavered. The woman put hers away, then looked at her partners. “They’re here for help involving our research. Why are you still aiming guns?” She had an accent that sounded African to Molly, and she was ashamed to admit to herself that she couldn’t place it the way she’d be able to place a European accent.

“How did you get into the airlock?” asked the other man, who wore round glasses that made his eyes seem too big.

The Doctor used his thumb to point back at the TARDIS. “My ship.”

“We didn’t open the airlock.”

“Didn’t need to.” The Doctor experimented with lowering his hands by bringing them down to the level of his chest. “Really. We’re unarmed.” He opened his coat to show he was telling the truth, and hesitantly, Molly did that same.

“Please don’t shoot,” she added, her voice small, the sound of the gunshots echoing in her mind. “I’ve been shot enough times.”

“Who shot at you?” the older man asked, now sounding suspicious.

Oops. “A woman who had personal issues with me. I’m not a criminal or anything. She just didn’t like me.”

The woman looked to the man on her left, then right. “They don’t seem very threatening to me.”

“Not in the least bit,” replied the Doctor. “Least threatening people in the universe.”

Molly glanced over at the Doctor. “I mean, does he even look threatening?” Though she knew he absolutely could from experience, he got the hint and gave them his best puppy dog eyes.

The man with greying hair hesitated a moment, then lowered his gun. The other followed suit, and both Molly and the Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. “Fine,” the older one said. “But I’ll want Assistant Reid to search your ship.”

The Doctor reached back and closed the door. “Classified, I’m afraid. May I reach into my coat to show you my credentials?” After a sharp nod, he reached in and pulled out the psychic paper. “I’m with the Astro-Parallel Consortium.  They sent me to investigate the lab, as well as get Molly back where she belongs.”

Where she belongs. She’d never felt like she’d belonged there. She was just starting to feel like she belonged here. But she needed to let go of those feelings. He was right. She wasn’t supposed to be here. Here, she was an anomaly. She needed to go back.

“Fine,” the older man sighed. “This is Assistant Research Scientist Beckett Reid, Associate Research Scientist Lesedi Phiri, and I’m Senior Research Scientist Hendrix Ozols. The rest of the team is back at the base, getting more supplies and requesting better funding. We’re running the lab for now.”

The Doctor nodded as he tucked the psychic paper away. “Good, good. As it should be. The Astro-Parallel Consortium wanted me to check in, see how you were running the place with the three of you. I’ll want to tour your facilities first.”

Hendrix turned to Beckett. “That’ll be your job.”

“I’m not a tour guide!” objected Beckett. “I’m here to do serious work. If he’s from the Astro-Parallel Consortium he should be able to show himself around.”

“Reid!” Lesedi objected. “This isn’t how you treat someone who is part of our funding.” She turned to the Doctor and Molly. “I’d be happy to show you around. We have a few very exciting projects going on now.”

The Doctor pointed at Lesedi. “Excellent! I’m very excited to see what you’ve been doing with, ah, our money.”

“And what are your names?” asked Hendrix. “For our records.”

“I’m the Doctor, and this is Molly Quinn.”

“Doctor what?”

“No, Doctor who,” he corrected, and then he paused and frowned. “No, just the Doctor.” He looked Hendrix up and down with an annoyed expression. “Weren’t you listening?”

Hendrix looked like he was working up a good comeback when Lesedi took a few steps back towards the door. “Well then, the Doctor-”

“Ah, no, no no, sorry,” the Doctor interrupted, as he rubbed his hands together. “You can just…you can just call me Doctor.”

“No ‘the’ when you’re just talking to him,” Molly explained.

“O…kay,” responded Lesedi uncertainly. “My apologies. Doctor, Miss Quinn, if you’ll just follow me, I’ll take you through some of our experiments and our collection before we head to the main lab.”

“Brilliant,” the Doctor replied with a smile.

“Assistant Reid and I will meet you at the lab,” said Hendrix, his mood seemingly even worse than when he’d pointed a gun at them. “Associate Phiri, make sure you keep an eye on them until we get them registered.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Lesedi. She turned and the doors automatically opened. While Beckett and Hendrix went one way, Lesedi led them the other way. She turned back towards them. “We register everyone at the main lab, by name and fingerprint. After that we can keep track on the map where they are in the station. Usually it’s for emergency evacuations via transporter, but our in-station transporter has been down a while. I’ve been trying to repair it, but I’m not a mechanic.”

If the transporter wasn’t working, it seemed to Molly, that meant that Hendrix was suspicious of them and didn’t want them wandering around. She couldn’t really blame him, though being already emotional, she’d hoped for a bit warmer of a reception.

“I can take a look at that for you,” the Doctor was saying. “I’m fantastic with transporters.”

Lesedi smiled at him gratefully. “That would be wonderful. It’s a few more months before the others get back, and our mechanic went with them to get some replacement parts.”

“How long have they been gone?” Molly asked.

“Around eight months, Miss Quinn. The base is a long way away, and our ship isn’t very fast. They should be almost back by now.”

“By the way,” Molly said, “You can just call me Molly. ‘Miss Quinn’ is a little formal for me.”

Lesedi smiled at her. “You can call me Lesedi, then. Most people do.” They’d been walking down a pristine white and silver hallway that looked like any old building to Molly, save for a few silver double doors that looked a bit like elevator doors. They stopped in front of a set of them, and Lesedi scanned her badge by swiping it down what just looked like whiter wall. The doors slid open, revealing a room filled with strange odds and ends, under glass on tables. Molly followed her and the Doctor into the room, looking around. They seemed completely random. A large chunk of rock and crystal here, a Frisbee there. She saw candles, and a pink dress, and what looked like a faintly glowing blood red Bonsai tree.

Lesedi walked around the room, touching the top of the glass of a few items. “These are some things brought back from other universes that had strange signatures of some form or other. For example, this pen,” she said, lifting the glass from off of it. Molly moved closer to get a good look. “Its molecules vibrate at a higher frequency then any pens we have here. There appears to be no difference in its functionality, but it makes the user dizzy after a few moments.”

When the Doctor didn’t make a comment, Molly turned to look at him, but he wasn’t beside her as she expected. She took a few steps back the way they’d walked in, and saw him already messing around with something that had been under glass. “Seriously?”

The Doctor looked up from the plastic toy dinosaurs he’d already started playing with. “What?”

“Can you act your age for once?”

“No.” The Doctor looked back down and continued his pretend fight between the T-Rex and the Stegosaurus.

“Why not?”

He looked at her indignantly. “Because I don’t know how two-thousand-year-olds act, I’m the only one I’ve ever met!” He set the toys aside and stalked up to her. “Do you know how they act?”

Molly considered. “Okay, you make a fair point.”

Lesedi took a step forward. “Sorry – what? Are you two thousand years old?”

“And some change. Probably,” said the Doctor. He turned and pointed at the dinosaurs. “What’s interesting about those?”

Molly gave Lesedi credit for her quick recovery. “They have a small radioactive charge.”

The Doctor immediately made a face, and then wiped his hands off on Molly’s jacket. “Ew! No!” she objected. “Don’t make me radioactive!”

“It’s really not enough to do much harm,” Lesedi reassured her. She turned back to the Doctor. “So…you’re not human?”

“Not a bit.”

“You look human.”

“Actually, you look Time Lord. We were around first.”

Lesedi looked deep in thought for a moment. “So, it’s possible these Time Lords were a distant ancestor of humanity?”

“Not really. We originated in a completely different galaxy than humanity did,” said the Doctor. “But that was smart. That’s good. I like smart people.”

“Well, I have studied science for most of my life,” said Lesedi. Molly wondered how long she’d studied. She didn’t look much older than her. “Shall we move on?” She walked back to the dinosaurs and put the glass back over them.

“Yes!” said the Doctor, clapping his hands together. “Let’s see what else you’ve been doing.”

They left the room, and walked for a while before turning down another hall. Lesedi opened another door. Inside was completely dark until Lesedi touched the wall and a light turned on in the center. It shone over a platform, that was surrounded by three quickly spinning mirrors.

“We have a much smaller version of our machine that allows for passage between universes,” Lesedi explained. “It can’t let much in except air and light. We use the mirrors to study the way the light moves. We’ve realized light and air behave differently in some universes, but we can’t understand why. Some light bends around the mirrors, some you can almost see a reflection of the air.”

“Interesting,” the Doctor said, moving forward. “I’d like to see this in action.”

“It’s controlled at the main lab,” said Lesedi. “We couldn’t fit the wires needed for the controls in here along with everything needed to bring in the light and air.”

The Doctor nodded, but still moved around the circle of the platform and the mirrors, studying it for a moment. Molly thought it was interesting, too, but didn’t know about science enough to really be fascinated. She looked over as Lesedi. “How long have you been on this station?”

“Oh, about three years now. Haven’t left it yet,” she said. “I don’t know that I ever want to. I love the work, and I don’t have any family left. This work is my family.”

The Doctor turned to face her. “What got you interested in interdimensional travel?”

“My mom used to tell me stories when I was little, about people who claimed to have crossed universes. Everyone thought they were just mad, but I really wanted to believe them. My mom did, too.” Lesedi’s voice had a wistful nature to it. “I started in astrophysics, but then I heard that this lab was developing technology for travelling between universes, and I immediately switched specialties so I could come here.”

“That couldn’t have been easy,” the Doctor said as they walked out.

“No, but it was worth it. I love it here.”

“Even with…” Molly started and pointed back towards the airlock. “Uh. Them?”

Lesedi smiled. “Oh, Hendrix is alright, when you get past the rough exterior. He helped me through my initial homesickness. Beckett is always a right prick, though.” She rolled her eyes. “Never got over being assigned to an assistant position. Never got over a woman being in a position over him, either.”

Molly saw the Doctor make a face at the same time she did. By then they’d gotten to the end of the corridor, and Lesedi was getting ready to swipe them in.

“This is probably the most unique thing we’ve been looking into. I don’t know anyone else who has one,” she said. “Technically it’s a bit outside our field, but we’re wondering if it has capabilities people don’t know about.”

The Doctor looked excited. “Oh, that sounds like fun. What is it?”

Molly turned when she heard footsteps approaching, and saw Hendrix walking briskly towards them. “This one I had to help fund personally,” he said. “Our other investors refused to pay for more than acquiring it. I had to come up with transport.”

“You used your own money?” Molly asked. That was a level of dedication she was impressed with. Maybe he wasn’t so bad.

“I did,” he said. “Completely worth it. You’ll see why.”

The Doctor was rubbing his hands together again. “Well, let’s have a look, then!”

Lesedi swiped her badge, and the doors opened. They were faced with a wall of equipment, with switches and blinking lights and displays Molly didn’t understand, so she looked to the Doctor, to try to catch an explanation in his expression.

He seemed a little confused himself as they all stepped into the room. “What’s all this for? It’s monitoring something, but there doesn’t seem to be any signs of activity. No movement, no energy, no life signs.” He turned to Hendrix. “What is it?”

“Just around the corner,” Hendrix replied, pointing at the end of the bank of computers. Molly followed the Doctor and Lesedi around the corner, and faced the back of the machines, and there it was.

Her mouth went dry, and she could have sworn her heart stopped for a moment. Still, a dry laugh escaped her, an unusual reaction to the terror she couldn’t quite process.

This was what she’d dreaded most.

The Doctor stood looking in horror at the Weeping Angel. It was covered in chains, and had a spotlight on it. “Don’t blink!” he shouted. “Don’t look away!”

“It’s fine,” Hendrix assured them from behind. “It’s dormant, or dead. It’s sat in a warehouse for decades and never moved. It hasn’t moved since we brought it here, either.”

The Doctor didn’t look away from the Angel. “I learned a long time ago that there’s a difference between dormant, and patient.”

Lesedi tried to move towards the Angel, but the Doctor grabbed her arm. She turned back to him. “It’s really alright. My theory is that it died.”

“It can’t die,” the Doctor said.

“Everything can die,” replied Hendrix. “We brought it here for experiments, to see if it can send things to other universes as well as the past. We’ve also sent it to other universes that are slightly behind or ahead of us in time, and brought it back, and it still didn’t move.”

Molly felt her eyes going dry, but refused to blink. The Doctor looked at Lesedi for a moment. “Keep your eyes on it. Don’t turn away.”

“I really don’t think-”

“I said don’t turn away.” Molly hadn’t heard his voice this serious and demanding outside the show. He turned away from the Angel, and took a few sure steps towards Hendrix, until their faces weren’t far apart. “Of course. You brought it here, locked it up, performed experiments on it, scanned and poked and prodded it. You wanted to see what would happen. Only humanity could be this stupid!”

“Hey!” Molly objected.

He pointed to her. “You don’t count.”

“Hey!”

Hendrix was even more offended. “Doctor, if you’re going to make a fuss about our work, you can just kiss my-”

“We need to get out of here,” the Doctor said. She saw him scan the room with the screwdriver out of the corner of her eye, and finally couldn’t take it anymore and blinked. The Angel still stood as a statue. She chanced a look at the Doctor, who was pointing to various parts of the room where she saw blinking red lights. He looked at the results of his scan. “There are cameras. Where does the feed lead to?”

“The main lab,” said Lesedi.

The Doctor put the screwdriver away, and took Molly’s arm. “We need to get there. I want to keep an eye on it, but we need to get out of this room.” He began leading Molly backwards, and then turned and rushed out the door. He turned back when the scientists didn’t follow. “Come on, then! Now!” 

Hendrix and Lesedi left the room finally, and the door closed behind them. Lesedi looked from Molly to the Doctor. “You don’t understand, the Angel can’t move. It-”

“Has been absorbing the time energy you used in your experiments. Whatever kept it from moving before, it surely can now,” the Doctor said.

Lesedi looked uncertain, but Hendrix still looked stubborn. “You’ve only just got here. You have no idea what it’s capable of.”

The Doctor’s voice was low and dangerous. “I know exactly what it’s capable of.”

A thought occurred to Molly, and she turned to the Doctor, and looked at the hard set of his face, the anger of his eyes. But she’d studied that face for years. She saw the sadness, too. He was face to face with the Angels, the creatures that had taken Amy and Rory from him. He’d seen his family killed by them.

“Let’s get to the lab,” Molly suggested weakly. Hendrix, fuming, led the way, and Lesedi followed him, with Molly and the Doctor behind. She took his hand, an attempt to comfort him some, but he didn’t seem to notice. She’d hoped it would comfort her, too, but she still felt sick. “There’s nothing more terrifying than Weeping Angels,” she whispered.

“Oh, I’m sure there are a few things scarier,” said the Doctor, but though he attempted a light-hearted tone, he failed. “Can’t think of any right now. I’ll get back to you.”

The lab wasn’t far from the corridor with the Angel. It was large, mostly white, with a few various empty platforms, and computer consoles in the style Molly was starting to think was required for any kind of space ship or station. She let her bag slip off her shoulder.

“Where’s the feed lead to?” the Doctor demanded.

“Over here,” said Lesedi, as she went to a computer with a large, dark monitor. When the Doctor moved to follow, Molly tried to let go of his hand so he could move freely. But he held on tighter. She followed him to stand beside Lesedi.

The monitor flashed on, and there seemed to be a hundred boxes of different cameras around the lab. “Oh, Gods,” Lesedi gasped, and it took a long time before Molly found the right little box and saw what she saw.

Or didn’t see.

Molly felt a chill. “The Angel’s gone.”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Lights Out

 “I want those doors locked, right now!” the Doctor shouted, gesturing to the one they’d come through, and the one on the other side of the room.

“You’re hardly in charge here,” Hendrix said, clearly offended. “You shouldn’t be the one giving orders.”

The Doctor turned to him. “You brought the Angel here. You said it was helpless. You clearly don’t know what this Angel can do, as you fed it energy with your experiments. I don’t trust you with the lives of everyone on this station.” Molly saw his eyes narrow. “Yes, Senior Scientist Hendrix Ozols. I am in charge here.”

She saw Hendrix’s jaw set and was worried he would argue. But the fight drained out of him. “We’ll lock the doors. Once I’ve left the room.”

“No,” the Doctor insisted. “You and Lesedi have to stay together.”

“I have to find Reid. I won’t leave him out there, exposed.”

“Where is he?”

“I sent him to his office, to keep him out of the way during your visit,” Hendrix replied quickly.

“He’s not there,” Lesedi called from the cameras.

Hendrix began backing to the door. “He may be in his quarters, pouting. We don’t have cameras in there.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No, no, no. I need you to stay here to help Lesedi watch the Angel if it gets in here. We’ll find Reid.”

“We?” Molly asked.

“You and I. We have to get the TARDIS out of here, and it’ll be safer with two of us.”

“We have to get us out of here,” Molly insisted.

“The plan is to get everyone on the TARDIS and evacuate. We’ll report this. See if the Angel can be contained without having to abandon the lab completely.”

Molly watched the color drain out of Hendrix’s face, and saw Lesedi turn with a look of horror. “We can’t abandon the lab,” Lesedi said. “All our work…all these years. We can’t lose it.”

“Then you shouldn’t have brought the Weeping Angel here,” replied the Doctor, almost bitterly. “I told you, it can’t die. It may not be able to be contained. It’s too dangerous for anyone to stay here with it on the loose.”

“There’s more,” said Hendrix, but he didn’t elaborate.

“What else is going wrong?” asked the Doctor.

“No,” Hendrix said, shaking his head. “I mean, there’s more. There are more Angels in our storage.”

Molly felt choked. It was deadly silent for a few seconds before the Doctor sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “Of course. Of course. It can never be just one of them.”

Hendrix sighed, too. “Look. We all need to get off this station as fast as possible. It will take less time for me to go after Reid and you to go get your ship, and then meet back here.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Lesedi.

“Absolutely not,” the Doctor began, turning towards her. “I need someone in here to secure the room, so we have a safe place to land and evacuate.”

“I’ve got it,” said Hendrix. “I can do this. It shouldn’t take long. Reid’s quarters aren’t far.”

“Fine,” sighed the Doctor. “We’ll go at the same time. Lesedi, you’ll blockade the doors. Only open them when Ozols and Reid get back.”

“What about you?”

“Molly and I won’t need the doors. The TARDIS can disappear in one place and reappear in another.”

“Um, Doctor,” Molly interrupted. A thought had been slowly burning in her head, and she couldn’t hold it back anymore. “The Angels displace you in time.”

“Yes. I thought you’d know all about them,” he turned to her curiously.

“I do,” she said, but her voice shook. “We’re…not on a planet. This space station hasn’t always been here, in this exact spot. If the Angels displace us in time, and they send us back to before the station was here…” She swallowed. “And sometimes they move you. Kathy Nightingale ended up in Hull. The Angels could also send us to outside the station. So…if they get us…we’ll end up outside. In space.”

The Doctor stared at her a moment. “No. No. That wouldn’t happen.”

Molly felt cold. “You’re lying.”

“I do that sometimes,” he replied, then turned back to Hendrix. “Get moving. Don’t let them touch you.”

“I wasn’t planning on it,” said Hendrix, and he headed out the door, practically running.

The Doctor turned to Lesedi. “Do you have any spare communicators?”

Lesedi shook her head. “No, we don’t use them. We use an intercom system, but it’s broken, too. That’s some of the parts our mechanic went to pick up.”

“Okay. Okay, then.” He turned to Molly. “We’ll both keep a close eye out. It’ll be fine.”

“‘Fine’ is about the last word I’d use to describe any of this.” She was surprised she managed to get any words out of her mouth at all. She felt the speed of her breath increasing, warning of a panic attack. There wasn’t time. Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla. The old technique still worked. Not very well, but enough to keep her from screaming and hiding.

The Weeping Angels scared her more than almost anything.

“One of us is going to have to walk backwards,” the Doctor said to Molly, as he approached the door out. “So it doesn’t sneak up behind us.”

“I can do that,” she volunteered. “I have – I had – to dance backwards a lot. It won’t be a problem.”

The Doctor nodded. “I’ll hold on to your arm, so we stay together.”

“Got it.”

He turned to Lesedi. “Remember, barricade the doors as best you can as soon as we’re out.”

“I will,” she promised. “I’ll keep an eye on the cameras, too. See if any of the others start moving, though we didn’t experiment on them. It won’t do much good with you all out there, but at least when you get back, we’ll know the situation.”

“Good thinking,” he said. He hesitated a moment. “Sorry to leave you alone.”

Lesedi smiled, though it wavered some. “Don’t worry about me. You’re the ones going out there with the Angel.”

“Right,” said the Doctor. He faced the door and took a breath. “Let’s go.”

Molly turned, and felt the Doctor’s hand on her arm, and then heard the doors open. She felt sick, even more so than when she’d actually been sick. But what choice did they have?

Molly swept the halls with her eyes, and down every one they passed. She felt that any moment, any moment at all, they would just die. She would blink and suddenly she’d be surrounded by darkness and stars and her body would turn to ice.

She was thinking too much.

“Doctor,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Talk about something.”

“I’m a bit busy, if you haven’t noticed.”

She sighed. He was right, he had to focus. But staying alone in her mind was just going to make her panic. Maybe miss things. She tried to find something else to occupy her mind, but usually when she felt like this, she turned to Doctor Who. Living an episode wasn’t quite the same thing.

Then she thought of another episode where someone was scared. Cold War. Professor Grisenko had encouraged Clara to sing.

It was worth a try.

“I have no friends…no one to see…and I am never invited…”

“What are you doing?”

“What’s it sound like?” It came out harsher than Molly meant it, but she felt the terror flowing through her veins. “I’m singing to keep myself calm.” She paused. “Is it distracting?”

“No,” said the Doctor. “Actually, it’s helping me focus. Keep going.”

She glanced down another hall at they passed, and then cleared her throat. “Now I am here…talking to you…no wonder I get excited…” She heard the Doctor humming along a little, though she wasn’t sure he knew the song. “Your smile and the sound of your voice…and the way you see through me…got a feeling you give me no choice…but it means a lot to me. So I wanna know – what’s the name of the game?”

They made it through the second chorus when they arrived back at the airlock. “Ah,” the Doctor said. “Problem.”

Molly didn’t like the sound of that. “What problem?”

“The door.”

Of course. “So…we should have borrowed Lesedi’s ID before we came here.”

“That would have been good thinking.”

“We’ll have to go back for it.”

“Yep. Oh, wait!” She felt the Doctor reach into his coat, and she heard the sonic. “No!” he shouted suddenly. “No, no, no, no, no! Don’t do this!”

In a panic, Molly turned her head, but didn’t see anything. She turned back around. “It can’t get us in?”

“That’s not-” She heard him make a sound, almost like a growl in frustration. “The TARDIS extended its forcefield out.”

“What?”

“I…” he started, then sighed. His voice held a defeated note when he spoke again, and it made Molly’s heart clench with dread. “After my encounter with them, when I was with Martha, I set it up so that if the TARDIS was unlocked, and it sensed an Angel presence, it extended its forcefield out so the Angels couldn’t get to it.”

“No, no, no…” Molly’s voice dropped low. “Please don’t tell me we can’t get to it.”

“We can’t get to it.”

She turned her head again. “What was the original plan to get back in?”

“It’s on a timer,” he explained. Then his voice dropped, too. “Twenty-four hours until it drops.”

“A day?”

“I never leave her unlocked. I never expected to be outside it when this happened,” the Doctor explained. “I always thought I’d already be inside and able to move her and lower the shields. But the guns distracted me, and I…I forgot to lock her.”

Molly’s head was spinning. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We go back to the lab. Regroup.”

“Should we try to find Beckett and Hendrix?”

“We should see if they already made it back, and if not, we should find them on the cameras first.”

Molly nodded. “At least Lesedi can see that we couldn’t get in.”

“I’ll have to explain about the forcefield,” the Doctor sighed.

“Well, let’s head back, then,” Molly said.

They turned, so the Doctor was walking forward again, and began back for the main lab. Molly tried to calm her heart. They’d done this once before, already, and got away without spotting the Angel. Could they do it twice? It seemed impossible.

But she did feel a little less hyperaware, which was good. She’d always found that she missed things when she was focusing so much on not missing them. Leaving her mind open let her come up with solutions. Though what solution she could think of that the Doctor couldn’t, she wasn’t sure.

Feeling calmer without the tightness of her muscles when hyperaware, she realized she recognized the pattern of the hallways, if not the plain white and silver walls. This had been the direction they walked when Lesedi showed them the collection and experiments. Down a hall beside her was one of them.

The Doctor stopped so suddenly she bumped into him, and what little calmness she’d found disappeared. “Is the Angel ahead of us?”

“No,” the Doctor reassured her. “That hallway. The experiment in it.”

Molly took two seconds to glance down the hall, though she knew what he was referring to. “Yeah?”

“You see it, don’t you?”

Molly opened her mouth to explain that she saw it out of the corner of her eye, when she realized what he meant. “Yeah. Okay. I see it. But how?”

“I’ll probably have something figured out by the time we get there.”

Molly felt some relief when she realized she could finally see a few steps ahead of them. “Would the Angel know the forcefield is up?”

“I don’t think so.”

“And it would assume the TARDIS is locked?”

“Yes, but-” He stopped suddenly. “Oh! Yes.” She felt his head turn slightly. “Remind me to give you a compliment on your quick thinking when we’re out of this.”

She was surprised to find herself smiling. “I won’t forget.”

“We just need to get back and get the card,” said the Doctor.

They inched their way forward, quickly checking each hall, but the Angel never appeared. They got back to the lab, and Lesedi opened the door before they could knock.

“The Angel is on Level Five,” Lesedi said, her voice sounding exhausted. “Which is…”

“Which is?” the Doctor prompted her.

“Where we’re keeping the other Angels.”

The Doctor walked to the cameras and scanned them. “It may try to restore the others. I don’t know if it will be successful or not. I doubt it has enough spare energy to share. I don’t even know if they can share.” He looked over at Lesedi. “They’ve never been experimented on?”

“No, never.” Lesedi turned to Molly. “You couldn’t get in without an ID, right?”

“Yeah,” said Molly. “One of us probably should have thought of that.”

Lesedi slipped the chain lanyard holding her ID around her neck, and held it out. She nodded towards a computer behind her. “I want to get you both registered in the system. It will be easier to track you if you hit a camera’s blind spot. Won’t take more than a minute.”

“You can’t use that to see Reid?” Molly asked.

“No. I can’t see him. I think he must be in the private quarters level, where there are no cameras or trackers, for privacy.”

Molly nodded and Lesedi fingerprinted them into a machine as the Doctor explained the situation with the forcefield.

“What else can we do?” asked Lesedi. “Stay in here until the shields are down?”

“I don’t trust that the Angel can’t get through one of those doors,” said the Doctor. “Molly and I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“Do you think you could stop one of the spinning mirrors in an exact right place?”

Lesedi frowned as she thought. “No. Not me, anyway. Reid might be able to. He runs that experiment the most.”

Molly glanced at the cameras. “Has there been any sign of Reid at all?”

“Not yet,” said Lesedi. “Hendrix went straight for his quarters, but there aren’t cameras there, so I don’t know what happened.  Before you got here, I saw him pass by the airlock. He opened the door, but must have felt the forcefield. I guess he was looking for you.” She paused to look at the cameras again. “I think he’s headed back to double check Reid’s office. But he’s not there, either.”

The Doctor’s face looked a little paler. “You don’t see Reid at all?”

“No. I still think he might be in the private quarters somewhere,” said Lesedi. She turned to the Doctor and looked confused at the way he seemed frozen in fear, but then her eyes widened. “You think…you think the Angel already got him, don’t you?”

“I hope not,” breathed the Doctor. “Until we’re certain, there’s always hope.”

Lesedi swallowed hard, then nodded. “How are you going to get the Angel into the room?” Back to business.

The Doctor dug around in his pocket for a moment, and then pulled out a bronze key, slowly spinning on a string. “With this. Key to the TARDIS. It’ll want to feed on the energy the TARDIS puts out, and I don’t think it will realize there’s a forcefield. Even if it does, it may try to wait it out. It’s been patient for this long, after all. It’ll care more about the TARDIS than us.”

“So we think it’ll go after the key,” Molly added.

“Okay,” said Lesedi. “I’ll do my best to freeze it into place.”

“Only if it gets there before we get back,” the Doctor replied. “My reflexes are excellent; I should be able to do it.”

Molly tried not to laugh, and appreciated the brief levity in the horrific situation. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say ‘excellent’.”

“Enough out of you,” the Doctor said, and he patted her on the head as he turned to go back towards the door. “Let’s get this done.”

Molly nodded and followed, and Lesedi got the door open for them. They left the room the same as they had before, back-to-back. Molly kept her eyes wide open, trusting that they’d be safe this time around even less than she had been the first time. Her heart rate slowed; her breath came steady. The calm feeling settled into her bones.

That’s what scared her most.

“I might have to sing again,” she whispered to the Doctor.

“Talk to me instead,” the Doctor suggested.

“I thought you needed to focus?”

“I think the silence is more distracting just now.”

“Okay. What should we talk about?”

The Doctor thought about it for a moment. “How are you doing?”

Molly raised her brows. “How am I doing?”

“You know. With the potentially being ejected into deep space thing. Seeing as you’re already scared of space. I remember you said something about being terrified of not being able to fight and just floating away forever.”

His words made a chill run through her. “Well. I was doing okay.” 

“Don’t worry. The pressure would kill you within a few seconds. You wouldn’t float away for very long. Barely even enough time to freeze.”

“You’re not being reassuring,” she bit back, a little more venomous than she meant. But the fear was creeping up her chest again, to choke her. She needed that calm to stay alive.

“Sorry,” he said. “I just thought it’d help to know you wouldn’t be floating away-”

“Yeah. I got it. Thanks.” She scanned the area around them. “Let’s change the subject.”

He was quiet, but Molly didn’t have enough time to come up with a new subject before he spoke again. “So, excited to be getting home soon? You know, if we don’t die horrible deaths.”

Excited. No, she definitely wasn’t that. But she didn’t want him to feel guilty about deciding it was time for her to go home, either. She needed to find a balance – especially seeing as any attempt to lie would be blatantly obvious coming from her. “Right now, I’m more concerned about the ‘horrible deaths’ bit,” she said. Then she paused, trying to think of a way to answer his question. “Being home will be…interesting, after all this.” She winced for a moment, realizing how see-through that was. ‘Interesting’ was always code for ‘bad, but I don’t want to say it’.

“I’m sure,” the Doctor replied, not seeming to understand the code word. “After traveling through space and time, you see everything differently. Could be you’ll find your world all the more interesting now.”

The opposite was more likely to be true, she thought. Her world would be all the more bland, boring, plain. She could already feel the constant existential crisis coming on. How did she go back to job interviews and taxes and grocery shopping and paying rent after all of this? To being forever limited to one place, one time?

“Could be,” she agreed. That wasn’t an out and out lie; there was always the possibility that she’d see things differently, no matter how much she doubted it.

“And you can…you know, do human things. Work a job again, if you like. Make more friends than just me and the TARDIS.”

“Yeah. The best friend slot is already taken, but it might be nice to get to know more people.” She needed something to say that made her sound genuinely excited that wasn’t a lie. She was failing at avoiding making him feel guilty for sending her home. “I’ll get to actually spend some actual time in London. Maybe I’ll find a little theater that needs ballet dancers.”

“That would be good for you,” the Doctor said, though his voice lacked enthusiasm. “You could perform again.”

“Yeah. That would be nice.” It would be nice. Not a nice as traveling with the Doctor, but it would satisfy a dream.

“It’d be good for you,” he repeated.

She needed to talk about something else. She was running out of ways to sound grateful to go back, when she didn’t feel that way at all. “And what are you going to do without your best friend?”

“The TARDIS is my best friend,” he corrected her, his voice holding some dry, teasing humor. “I’ll do what I’ve always done. We’ve talked about this.”

“I know, but-”

“Yes, I know,” he cut her off. “Don’t travel alone. I’ll see what I can do.” He paused. “Maybe I’ll convince Lesedi to come with me.”

Sharp jealousy. It confused her, but she didn’t want to explore why it had come upon her so violently. “She seems nice,” she said, the same words she’d told a crush who told her they were dating someone else.

“Clever, too.”

“And adaptable, after changing her focus so quickly.”

“Exactly. That’s an important trait for traveling on the TARDIS,” he replied. “But she may prefer to continue her studies. Besides…she’s no Molly Quinn.”

Molly was glad he couldn’t see the grin that spread across her face, despite the peril they were in. “I know. Hard to live up to me.”

“That it is.”

“Still,” Molly said, returning to a more serious tone. “I’m glad you’re already thinking about the next Companion.”

She thought she felt the muscles in his back tense, and was worried a moment that he’d spotted the Angel. “Or maybe I’m just saying Lesedi so you’ll get off my back.”

She knew she should be upset by that, but she wasn’t sure if she felt worried, or felt relief. It was easier to deflect. “I’m kind of stuck on your back right now.”

“Right,” he laughed, with no real energy behind it.

By then, they’d made it to the room with the mirrors. The Doctor swiped the card along the wall, then rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll put it in place. Wait here.”

Molly waited, holding her breath, watching the hall where it opened on the other corridor. Behind her was a dead end, so at least she didn’t have to worry about one coming up behind her.

The Doctor only took a few moments before he was back. “Okay. Now we go back to the lab and wait.”

Something came around the corner then, and Molly jumped before realizing what it was. The Doctor spun around, clearly expecting to see a Weeping Angel already on its way, but both he and Molly breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it was Hendrix.

“Thank Mars you’re still alive,” he said. “I haven’t been able to find Reid. I checked his quarters, his office, even the airlock. There’s no sign of him.” He seemed to feel genuinely ill as he added, “I think he’s dead.”

“Is there anywhere else he might be? Anywhere at all?”

Hendrix shook his head, and then closed his eyes. “Doctor-”

And then Hendrix was gone, and instead Molly found herself face to face with a Weeping Angel.

“He’s dead,” Molly gasped, and she fought to keep her eyes open despite the tears gathering. “Oh, no. He’s dead.”

She felt the Doctor touch her arm. “Stay with me, Molly. You can feel this later. Now, we have to get out.”

“How? It’s headed straight for the key, and it’s blocking the only exit! I’m guessing it’ll try to eliminate us first. How do we get around-”

“Look at it. Don’t blink. I’m going to turn away for a moment to see if I can find another way out.”

She swallowed hard. “Wait. Keep looking.” She blinked a few times, to clear the tears from her eyes, and then shut them for a few seconds. She took a breath. “Okay,” and opened her eyes.

Molly felt him move away, and though he didn’t put out enough body heat for her to feel, she still felt colder as she heard him walk down the hall. She heard the buzz of the sonic, and quickly turned her focus back to the Angel. She found herself grateful that while rewatching Weeping Angel episodes, she’d sometimes test to see how long she could keep her eyes open for. 45 seconds. She counted the seconds in her head.

At 30, she shouted, “Doctor, I’m going to blink involuntarily in a few seconds. I need you to look back!”

“Okay,” she heard him say. “Okay…blink!”

Again, she blinked her eyes a few times, and kept them shut long enough to feel the dryness leave her eyes. “Opening,” she said, and did so. The heard the Doctor turn and get back to what he’d been doing, and started counting again.

One, two, three… She decided to examine the Angel, a way to stare while keeping her mind busy. The white-grey stone felt more threatening now that this monster was off a TV screen and here in front of her. Eleven, twelve, thirteen… There were porous parts of the stone, and it made Molly wonder if they were always like that, or if it came with age. If they were as old as the universe, why did they look like statues from Earth? Were they always angels? Blink seemed to imply they weren’t. Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four… The fingers outstretched. The narrowed eyes that were angry even when it didn’t move. Those sharp teeth were barely visible past the stone mouth. Thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two…

“I’ve found it!” the Doctor shouted behind her.

“I need to switch!” she shouted back.

“I’ve got it. Blink!”

She repeated her earlier gesture, and then said, “Eyes open. What did you find?”

“A ventilation system, wide enough for us to crawl through. It’s locked up pretty well, but I might be able to get it open.” His voice had sounded enthusiastic at first, but as he spoke it got softer in a way that made her chest hitch. She waited for the bad news, and it didn’t take long. “But I’ll need more power than the sonic has. I’ll have to drain it from this part of the station. And…”

“Turn out the lights,” Molly sighed. “Like in Flesh and Stone?”

“Flesh and Stone?”

“Byzantium.”

“Oh. Yes. Like Byzantium.” The only sound Molly could make in return was a frustrated groan. The Doctor replied, “Yeah. Not happy about it, either. You need to back up to the end of this hall. I’ll watch, too.”

Molly crossed her fingers, a gesture that was maybe immature for the situation. But the fear was acute. She remembered the nightmares. These were her two worst fears in one moment: The Weeping Angels, and the threat of being ejected into space.

She found the strength to move backwards, one careful step at a time. But it took her too long, and she blinked, and then suddenly there were five more Angels in front of her. “Doctor!” she shouted.

“Oh.” She felt his hands on her shoulders as he took a few steps and got her to the end of the hall. “I suppose they’re active, too, then.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blink, I don’t know how it happened,” she said, the words coming very quickly. “I won’t blink again.”

“It’s okay. I must have, too,” the Doctor reassured her. “We’ll just continue to switch off every thirty seconds.”

“What about when the lights are out?”

“I’m going to flicker them. Couple seconds off, a few more seconds on. I’ll do the work while they’re off. We’ll hold them back when they’re on.”

The Angels were thirty or so feet away. “Will that be enough time to keep them away from us?”

“No, it’s completely impossible,” the Doctor replied. “I need you to try to stay calm anyway. We don’t have the time.”

She felt chilled. “Are you kidding me?”

“No.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Good job staying calm,” the Doctor said dryly. “Molly, this is our best shot.”

She felt her whole body shaking, and bile in her throat. The only time she remembered being so afraid was in that basement. Even when she knew she was about to be shot, she hadn’t been this sick with fear. She could almost feel her lungs unable to draw in oxygen, the cold sharper than knives all over her skin, the weightless floating in the void.

The Doctor was right. They didn’t have a choice. “Are you looking?” she asked, her voice tight.

“Yes.”

She covered her face with her hands, and screamed, one long, loud wail of terror. She swallowed, and lowered her hands, her eyes still closed. “Okay. I’m opening my eyes.”

“Alright, then. Turning out the lights.”

Molly didn’t have a chance to process what those words truly meant, that the monsters ahead of them would move towards them and they didn’t know how much time they had, before the hall went dark.

She heard the sonic, and saw the green glow on the floor, but it wasn’t enough to light the Angels. There was a loud, metallic screeching sound, and at least the darkness meant it was okay that she’d shut her eyes when she jumped at it. The Doctor spoke as he worked, “One, two, three.” And the lights came back on.

One of the Angels, the first Angel, she thought, was halfway through the ripped-open door towards the key. The others had moved forward, but not far. Maybe only three feet. She relayed this to the Doctor.

“I’ll look. Close your eyes.” She did so, and then heard him say, “They’re definitely moving slower than they should be. They probably couldn’t get enough energy to be back at full strength.”

“So, we’ll be able to get the vent open in time?”

“Oh. Well, yes.”

“Is that true?”

“No. But believe it anyway. I’m going to turn back and prepare for the next step.”

“Eyes open,” she replied. She heard him doing something with the sonic again, and she kept her eyes locked on the Angels.

“Lights out,” he said, and the lights went out again. “One, two, three.” And back on.

The Angel in the doorway to the key had only moved a fraction of an inch. Afraid of the mirrors, she figured. The other Angels had only moved a couple of feet. A thought occurred to Molly, and she chuckled. From behind her, the Doctor asked, “What could possibly be funny right now?”

“It’s like the worst game of Red Light, Green Light ever.”

She heard him make a sound that was almost laughter, and then the sonic again. “Ready for another round?”

“Nope,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

Lights off. One, two, three. Lights on. The Angels were becoming uncomfortably close. While the Angel headed for the key still seemed hesitant to enter the room, the others had made it another five feet. A few had their eyes covered. Two of them already had their hands outstretched.

Molly’s stomach twisted. “Are you almost done?”

“Not quite.”

“We’re kind of on a literal deadline here.”

“I know. Switch.”

Molly closed her eyes, and tried to take a calming breath. It helped, some. Her mind seemed to have settled on mild panic, and let the usual emergency calm take the place of the nearly blinding terror. She wouldn’t die, or she would. She didn’t have much control over it. “Switch.”

“Lights off.” One, two, three. On.

The Angels were now well over halfway to them. Molly leaned back, as though it would do any good. The calm she’d thought she had was slowly leaving her already. “Doctor…” Her voice shook, and her vocal chords froze. There were more words she wanted to say, words of farewell. Last words. But she couldn’t settle on which ones to use.

She felt him take her hand a squeeze it. “I know.” Though she couldn’t put her own feelings into words, she felt that he really did understand them. “Switch.”

Eyes closed. Eyes open. Lights off. One, two, three. Lights on.

They all had their hands stretched out, now. She didn’t trust glancing back to see if the other Angel had gotten to the key yet.

And then the Angels were another foot forward. “Doctor!” she shouted.

“I’m going as fast as I can!”

“They moved! I was looking at them, and they moved!”

“You must have blinked without realizing. Switch.”

She closed her eyes. “I didn’t. I swear I didn’t.”

“You must have,” she heard him say.

She panicked when she heard the sonic and opened her eyes, but the Angels were still in place. “Are you still looking at them?”

“Yeah.”

Then the vent was behind him. “…were you scanning me?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Switch.”

She kept her eyes locked on the Angels, all her focus on keeping them open. “Why did you scan me?”

“No time,” the Doctor said. “Lights out.”

She groaned, sure this was the last time she’d see light at all. The hall went dark. One. Two. Three. The lights went on, and a stone finger was reaching towards her, only a foot away. “That’s it,” she breathed. “If the lights go out again, that’s it.”

Behind her came the shift of metal. “I got it!” the Doctor shouted. “The vent is open. We just-”

“…Doctor?” Why had he stopped speaking? Molly reached behind her, and almost fell to her knees.

The Doctor was gone.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Goodbye, TARDIS

“No! No!” Her voice hurt from the shrieking, a terrible familiar feeling. She took steps back, her hands spreading out behind her searching for something, something, a scrap of fabric, a hair. Her back hit the wall. Nothing. There was nothing. The Doctor was gone.

There was an Angel behind her, in the vent. There must be. It had taken the Doctor. He was dead. The Doctor was dead. He was dead, and she didn’t have time to mourn, because in a few seconds, she would be, too. A mad thought ran through her: if the Doctor was dead, did she even want to survive? But the horror of death by space still choked her.

“Oh, no,” she moaned. Her eyes were filling with tears. She would have to blink soon. It would be over in that instant. She hoped it really was as quick as the Doctor had said it would be, and her heart ached at the thought of him.

Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five…now it was longer than she’d ever kept her eyes open. Her sight was blurring. Seconds until she was dead. She longed for one last, meaningful thought, but none came to her. She supposed that was how most people died. She wondered what the Doctor’s last thought had been.

Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three…It was time, she decided. At sixty, she’d blink, and let it be over.

She found her last words. “Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla.” She’d failed them all, in the end.

Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight…Molly took her last breath.

Sixty. She closed her eyes, and felt the arms of the Angel wrap around her, pulling her back, making some strange sound.

She screamed, her eyes still closed, until the strange sound around her formed into an impossible voice.

The Doctor’s voice. “Molly!” he was shouting. “Molly! It’s me! I’ve got you! You’re okay, I’ve got you!”

Molly turned, and his face was like a miracle. She gripped the lapels of his coat like he might float away if she didn’t hold on. “Doctor!” She buried her face in his chest, gasping for breath. “I thought you were dead!”

She felt his arms go around her, holding her tight. “I know. I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s okay now. Well, there’s still the Weeping Angels, and we still can’t get to the TARDIS, but, you know. Okay for right now.”

Her voice couldn’t work anymore as she wrapped her arms around his neck, and breathed him in, the wool-like smell of his clothes, the smell of his skin underneath them that she just now noticed was almost like the mint her aunt had grown in pots on her porch, clean and cool and herbal.

He pulled back. “Sorry. No time.” He ran for the computer where the monitor still showed little boxes, and now she realized she was back in the lab.

“What happened?” Molly finally thought to ask.

She heard Lesedi behind her. “I got the transport working,” she explained. “I don’t have enough experience to have tried before, but I was desperate, and I didn’t have anything else to do while I waited. I couldn’t help you directly. But getting you both registered in the system meant I could transport you as soon as I got the machine functional. I still wasn’t sure it would work.” She looked apologetic. “I got the Doctor first because you were the one looking at the Angels.”

Molly looked over to her, and swore she saw lines around the woman’s dark eyes that hadn’t been there an hour ago. Instinctively, she threw her arms around Lesedi’s shoulders.

“Oh,” said Lesedi, surprised as Molly pulled her in. “You’re welcome?”

“No,” Molly said softly, and pulled away again to look into Lesedi’s face. “I’m really sorry. About Hendrix, about Beckett. Are you okay?”

She saw realization, and then a soft sort of sorrow fill those pretty, dark eyes. “I’m…” Lesedi began, and then she swallowed. “I’m okay, right now. Later, I’ll be heartbroken. Hendrix was hard on the outside, but was always kind to me. Reid…well, he didn’t deserve to die like that.”

Molly found herself hugging Lesedi again, but quicker this time, more an acknowledgment of Lesedi’s pain then any empty attempt to reassure her. Then she turned to the Doctor. “What are you doing?”

“The Angel is almost in place,” he said, his hand hovering over a button, his eyes locked on the cameras.

Lesedi moved to stand beside the Doctor and typed something into a keyboard, and then the little boxes turned into one, large screen, showing the Angel in the mirror room. Molly stepped up to look into the monitor, and at first, she thought there was a problem with the cameras, that the screen where the Angel stood was flickering, but then she realized that the Angel was moving whenever the mirror wasn’t on it.

“We’re seeing the Angel now. Shouldn’t it be frozen?” Molly asked.

“What we’re seeing is on a few milliseconds delay,” explained Lesedi. “All of our cameras are like that. The feed isn’t live.”

Molly looked closer. “So, we’re seeing the Angel in the past, technically. Even if just by a couple milliseconds.”

“That makes this trickier,” said the Doctor. Molly looked to where his hand was posed over the button.

“Let me do it,” she said.

“This has to be perfectly precise, Molly.”

She hovered her hand over his, waiting to take his place. “When I was a kid, I had to go to a lot of birthday parties. You know, those obligation invites. Everyone – except me, obviously – had their parties at an arcade the next city over.”

“Now’s not the time. I have to focus.”

“Shut up and listen.” She leaned in closer, though she knew his eyes wouldn’t move from the screen. “There was this game, sort of like those games where you spin a wheel and win a prize, but it was on its side, and instead of the wheel spinning, a light spun around the edges. There were four spots for players, each with their own button. The goal was for the player to hit their button so that the light stopped on the exact right place on their side that won them the jackpot. There were smaller prizes for other spots, but it was the jackpot you wanted. And it was rigged, of course. A few milliseconds behind, so even if you technically hit it to get the light in just the right place, it would land a little past it.” Finally, she leaned forward and turned to him to try to force him to look in her eyes. He glanced at her. “I won the jackpot. Every. Single. Time.”

He seemed frozen for a moment. She saw the indecision reach his eyes as he looked from the screen to her and back again. “How long has it been since you did that last?”

“As soon as I got out of physical rehab, I went to this bowling alley that had an arcade a few blocks from my apartment to play it every day. My occupational therapist said it would help me get my reflexes back.” Molly saw that he still seemed uncertain, and added, “When’s the last time you did something like this?”

He set and reset his jaw for some time before sighing, and stepping back. “Okay. Get ready. Any second now.”

Molly quickly took his place, and let the tips of her fingers rest on the button as she locked her eyes on the screen. She didn’t watch the Angel, and she didn’t watch the key - she chose a mirror, and watched it instead. She watched how much time it took for the mirror to make a full circle. Then she looked to the exact place she would need to freeze the mirror when the Angel got the key. Then, she shifted her eyes to the right of it. With her peripheral vision, she would see when the Angel was in the right place. Focusing on the Angel didn’t matter. She waited.

“As soon as it has the key,” the Doctor said, his voice anxious.

“Yep. Shut up.” She wished she could see his face. He wasn’t usually the one being told to shut up while someone else did something requiring focus.

The flickering of the Angel got closer and closer to the key. It moved half an inch, an inch, another – and in a handful of seconds, it would be in place.

She hoped she hadn’t oversold her skills.

Inch. Inch. Inch.

“Now!” the Doctor shouted, as the key was suddenly in the Angel’s grip, though its fingers were only a few inches from the floor where the key had been. Molly shook her head, and waited.  “Molly!”

The Angel was standing properly again, and Molly watched her chosen mirror spin the circle, past the spot it needed to be – and flexed her fingers to press the button down.

Molly froze. The mirror froze. And the Angel froze. Molly saw its eyes reflected in the mirror. The Angel was staring at itself.

She released the air she hadn’t realized she’d kept trapped in her lungs. “Jackpot.” She turned to the Doctor with what she’d meant to be a teasing grin, but really was a relieved smile. “See? I told you.” 

He was also breathing a sigh of relief, and she felt his hand squeeze her shoulder. “Good. Very good.” He kissed the top of her head, then turned and moved away, and she was grateful he couldn’t see the lightness in her eyes she thought she had every time he praised her. No wonder his Companions always tried to impress him. His praise was addictive.

She turned and saw that he’d gone back to the transporter. “What’s the next plan?”

“I don’t know,” he said, picking through various parts. “I’m working on it. I didn’t have one for if the other Angels were able to move.”

Lesedi stepped forward. “They’ll be headed for your ship?”

“More than likely,” said the Doctor. “They won’t be able to get in without the key, but that doesn’t do us much good, either.”

“Should I send out a distress signal? I can’t include a description of the problem, just a general alert, but at least someone might come help us.”

The Doctor shook his head. “No. They’d have to land in the airlock, and the TARDIS would be flushed out into space. And then we’d have no TARDIS, and possibly still have a horde of Angels wandering about, and a group of people walking into them without knowing what’s happening.”

Molly frowned, and tried to think of a solution. She was sure if the Doctor couldn’t, she wouldn’t be able to, either. But maybe there was some way her point of view could help. Something from the show.

But nothing came to her.

“What are you doing?” she asked finally, as the Doctor continued to pick at the leftover pieces from the transporter being repaired.

“Thinking, mostly,” he said. “I thought maybe I could try transporting the TARDIS here, but this isn’t strong enough.”

“And our system requires fingerprints to lock onto something,” Lesedi added.

Molly moved toward a hexagonal platform that reached halfway up her thigh, and turned and sat on it with a sigh. She thought through Blink, she thought through Flesh and Stone, she thought through The Time of Angels, she thought through the Angels Take Manhattan. Nothing in those episodes seemed to help.

“Where’s the crack in the universe when you need it?” she muttered, mostly to herself.

Lesedi’s head turned towards her. “What? The what?”

“Nothing,” the Doctor replied quickly, then looked at Molly. “That’s no-” And then he turned his head quickly back towards the screen. “Oh.”

As Molly slipped off the platform to find out what he saw, Lesedi rushed to the screen. “The feed is dead!”

The whole screen was black. The image of the Angel trapped by the mirror was gone. Molly’s blood ran cold. “How could it go out like that?”

The Doctor was beside Lesedi in a second, and Molly came up to stand on the other side of him. He pressed buttons on the keyboard, but the screen remained black. “The other Angels. They drained the power.” He hit a few more buttons, and a camera from the corridor outside the mirror room – the one they’d both almost died in minutes ago – showed them three Angels. One held the key.

“What?” Molly screamed. “How did they do that?!”

“The room was dark. The Angel couldn’t see itself in the mirror.” The Doctor sounded exhausted and disappointed. In himself, Molly assumed, for not realizing this would happen. She didn’t blame him at all, but still, Molly felt frustration that all they’d done to lock that one Angel in place had been completely pointless. Would Hendrix still be alive if he hadn’t been distracted by them?

Molly looked at the screen, and it began to flicker, and then went out. “They’re going to drain the power as they go.”

The Doctor stood and paced away, moving quickly. “They have the key. They’ll be headed for the airlock.” He ran his fingers through his hair as he continued pacing.

Lesedi pulled up the next camera, and then turned to look at him. “But no one can get to your ship for twenty-four hours, you said.”

“They just have to wait,” the Doctor replied. “And with how much power they’re draining from this station, it could…it could mean they have the strength to penetrate a forcefield even as powerful as the one the TARDIS has. They may not have to wait long at all.”

Molly felt sick as she watched the screen go dark again. “Looks like they’re getting as much power as they can on the way.” She glanced as Lesedi as she pulled up another camera. “I thought those Angels weren’t experimented on?”

“They weren’t.”

Molly turned to the Doctor. “That means…” she stopped, uncertain. “Does that mean they could always move?”

The Doctor paused in his pacing to look at her a moment, but continued moving as he spoke. “Yes. Probably. They may have sensed the amount of time energy available here, and have just been feeding on that background energy since they arrived. And then the TARDIS lands here, much more of a feast than anything else they’ve had, and they decide it’s time to start moving. They may even know that the others will return with the shuttle, and then they’ll be full of power and with a ship to go wreak whatever havoc on the universe they want. Or they’ll just take the TARDIS.”

After a moment of silence, Lesedi said, “That sounds bad.”

“It’s about as bad as ‘bad’ gets, when it comes to Angels.”

Molly watched another feed flicker, and then go out. “What do we do? How do we stop them?”

“I don’t know!” the Doctor screamed, more violently than it seemed he’d meant to, as he immediately sighed, and then buried his face in his hands. “Sorry,” he half-whispered, as he ran his fingers through his hair, then turned to start pacing again.

Molly glanced at Lesedi, who seemed shaken. But Molly knew the Doctor. The pain he must be in to make him scream. She turned back to him. “It’s okay. Keep thinking.” She turned to Lesedi. “Where are they? How much time until they get there?”

Lesedi turned away from the Doctor, and typed on the keyboard. This brought up a small selection of boxes of feeds from various cameras. She thought she’d seen all those corridors, so Molly assumed they were all the ones leading to the airlock. Lesedi pointed at one where she could just make out the top of a wing, and then at the one that was the door into the airlock. “Looks like two to five minutes, depending on how long it takes them to go while draining the power.” But as she finished her sentence, the screen with the Angel’s wing went out.

Molly tried, desperately, to think of something. Anything. Some miracle solution. But what was in this situation that they could control? The Angels were draining the power. They were going to get inside the airlock. If they were powerful enough, they’d open a path to the TARDIS. If they weren’t, they’d simply wait them out. It was months before any backup would arrive. What was in their situation that they could change? What were they able to do to prevent the Angels from draining the TARDIS and coming back to kill them, or taking the TARDIS and killing hundreds or thousands of others? What could they do from the lab?

“Would opening a portal to another universe help us in any way, shape, or form?”

Lesedi shook her head. “Not that I can think of. I mean, it would save us, but we would be trapped there, and the Weeping Angels would still get loose here.”

Molly looked to the Doctor, but he was still pacing as though he hadn’t heard them at all, except he maybe looked a little more agitated. He’d already thought of that, of course. She wasn’t able to out-think him.

What else did they have? What else was this lab capable of? Other than opening portals to other universes and collecting weird things, the lab didn’t seem to do much else. And if it could help somehow, Lesedi would have thought of it by now. She lived and worked here, after all. She would know. Maybe if the mechanic were here, they’d have some other angle to look at things. But they’d taken the shuttle out of the airlock along with Lesedi’s other colleagues, and -

Molly had the sensation of ice water running through her brain, then down the back of her neck and into her spine. She turned towards the Doctor. She saw his hands clasped behind his back, twitching. The set of his jaw. His narrowed eyes. The despair in his voice when he’d shouted, when he’d claimed he didn’t know what to do next.

But he did know.

She tried to shout, but it felt like the air was punched out of her lungs. Instead, she heard a small, high-pitched beep, and Lesedi said, “That’s it. They’re in the airlock.”

The Doctor spun around and came up to the screen. Lesedi took a few steps to the side so that he could have access to the keyboard. His eyes were dark, distant, locked on the image of the Angels in the airlock with the TARDIS in the background. The camera flickered.

Molly found her voice. “No!”

His mouth was in a grim, determined line before he said, “They’re draining the power from the airlock. I think they’ll get the TARDIS shields down long enough to get the key in. Once the key is in, the forcefield will disappear.”

“Doctor, you can’t.”

He looked at her as though he were confused how she’d gotten there. “Can’t what?”

Molly couldn’t see his face clearly through the tears, and only a choked sound came out when she tried to speak. Instead, she shook her head, then looked at the screen in horror. It flickered again.

Lesedi leaned in to look closer at the screen. “What are you going to do?”

Molly saw the flash in the Doctor’s eyes when he realized that Molly knew. He leaned in a little closer. “Tell me. What choice do I have?” His voice said he was certain there was no other option, but some part of his eyes pleaded with her to have some other plan, another way to save them.

They both knew she didn’t. But still, all she could say was, “You can’t do this.”

“I have to.”

“But the TARDIS-”

“I have to keep the Angels from draining her, or taking just enough power to escape in her. They cannot be allowed to leave this station.”

“Doctor-”

“Please, Molly.”

She closed her mouth, then nodded. There was nothing she could say.

“What are you going to do?” Lesedi asked.

The Doctor’s expression began to turn towards misery, but he fixed it on determination. He began typing. “I’m going to open the airlock.”

“What about your ship?”

Molly watched his throat constrict for a second. “I’m going to have to sacrifice the TARDIS.”

Even Lesedi looked a little sick. “But it…it’s clearly very unique.”

“She is. The only one in the universe.”

She looked at the TARDIS on the screen. “Are you sure?”

“Only way to be rid of the Angels.”

Molly still couldn’t comprehend this. “There must be some way to get her back.”

“We’re too close to the star. By the time I can get to a ship and get out there, she’ll have been pulled in.”

Molly stared at the blue box on the screen. She remembered her goodbye to the TARDIS, not long ago. She’d thought it was goodbye because she was leaving. Not because the TARDIS was about to float away in space, then be sucked into a star (her own absolute terror of that swept through her). Not that the Doctor would be saying goodbye, too.

She thought of all the time the Doctor spent repairing her, tweaking her, upgrading her. The only thing in the universe he had left of Gallifrey. More than his ship, the TARDIS was his home. His family. The whole center of his life. And he had to sacrifice it. Who would he be without the TARDIS?

“Let me do it,” she found herself whispering.

“What?” The Doctor barely seemed to register that she’d spoken.

“You shouldn’t have to do this,” Molly said, her throat aching with tears. “But it should be someone who loves her.”

He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and then back to the screen.

She tried again. “Doctor. Please. Let me do it instead. Don’t make me watch you do this.”

He seemed to be ignoring her, and she opened her mouth to make another argument, but then he closed his eyes. He sighed. It almost sounded as though in relief.

He stepped back, and Molly took his place. She listened to his quick instructions on how to open the airlock. She looked over at him. “Are you ready?”

The Doctor shook her head, and took a slow breath. “Do it.”

She nodded, but it still took her a moment to force her fingers to move along the keys. She hesitated over the ‘enter’ key, and looked at the TARDIS again, memorizing her, the shape of her, the design of the doors, the placement of the words, the absolute bluest blue. This felt a little like she imagined executing a friend would feel like. She was killing the TARDIS.

Goodbye. She hit enter, and her heart broke.

They watched as the airlock door opened, and immediately everything was sucked out. The TARDIS and the Angels floated away together.

The Doctor reached over and switched off the camera. He waited a few seconds, and then switched it back on.

“The Angels were forced back into their natural form,” he explained. “They’ll be dead now. Or as close to it as they get. The sun will have them eventually.”

He turned away from the camera, and Molly saw him move to the platform and sit, burying his face in his hands. Molly watched the TARDIS a moment more, and placed a kiss on the screen as she floated further away. Then she went to join the Doctor.

She didn’t try to say anything. There were no words for this horrific loss. She leaned her head on his shoulder so he knew he wasn’t alone, and sat still. Lesedi seemed to know to give them some space, and she had her own losses to mourn. She turned to begin clearing the items she’d used to blockade the door.

It was several minutes before the Doctor moved, and still all he did was sit up and lower his hands to his lap. Molly decided it was most merciful to pretend she didn’t see the tears on his face, and instead took his hand. He covered her hand with his other, but they still sat quietly.

He’d just lost everything. How was she going to be able to leave him?

“Thanks,” he whispered, finally. “I couldn’t…”

“I know,” she whispered back. The moment felt like something solemn and sacred, and called for softness. “You shouldn’t have had to.” He shouldn’t have had to make the call to eject the TARDIS, either.

“It wasn’t fair for you to-”

“It was the right thing to do.”

“I’m sorry you-”

“Shhh.” She made the sound as gently as she could, and gave his hand a little squeeze. “Don’t worry about it.”

He nodded, and she felt him rest his head on hers. She didn’t like that she couldn’t try to read his expression anymore, but she knew there was no real reason to, anyway. The only expression he could have now was misery and helplessness.

She closed her eyes, and all she saw for a moment was the TARDIS floating away. She forcibly replaced those images with other ones, the ones the TARDIS deserved for her to remember. The dance studio. The look of judgement when she’d found the diary. Laughing at the Doctor while he pretended to be repairing the TARDIS. The endless laundry hampers. Being used as a messenger system. Running to the TARDIS for shelter while in the Pine Barrens, first because they were afraid of the ghostly screaming, and then when it was a symbol of hope during the wildfire.

All those beautiful moments on the show, too. There were countless images of the Doctor dancing on the TARDIS, sharing moments with River. And – oh, no. When the TARDIS had been in Idris’s body. When the TARDIS had been able to speak with words. To touch the Doctor. To cry. To say hello.

And now she was going to die.

Molly closed her eyes to fight the sobs, though she couldn’t keep the tears back anymore. The Doctor needed space to be the one grieving. Her sobs wouldn’t help support or comfort him. His everything was gone.

She couldn’t imagine the Doctor trapped in one time. Limited by the speed of a ship; confined to one part of one galaxy. Was he going to have to get a regular job, too? A house? That was the most alien thing she’d ever known.

“Hello?” A voice that sounded like it was coming over a broken microphone came out from a computer across from them.

Lesedi rushed to the computer, held down a button, and leaned into the microphone. “Reid?!”

She felt the Doctor’s head move from the top of hers as the voice answered, “Phiri?”

The excitement Lesedi felt almost vibrated around her. “Where are you? How are you communicating?”

“I’m on that Doctor bloke’s ship. Ozols wanted me to investigate it, and the Doctor left it unlocked. But I’m stuck, I can’t get out. I only just now figured out communications.” The voice paused. “Well, actually, I think somehow the ship started them for me. These controls are ridiculous.”

The Doctor was by Lesedi’s side in a second. “You’re on the TARDIS?”

“Uh – I guess. If that’s what you call it.” Reid was unapologetic about being on the ship. “The door’s stuck. Can you get me out of here? The ‘bigger on the inside’ thing is freaking me out, and every time I try to go down a corridor, I end up back here.”

Molly stood and approached, and was close enough to see Lesedi’s look of worry. “The ship was ejected. You’re out in space.”

“I’m what?” Reid sounded outraged. “What did you do that for?”

Lesedi opened her mouth to explain, but the Doctor was faster. “Long story. Listen. You can get the TARDIS back on the station.”

“How? How do you fly this thing?”

“I’m going to give you very detailed instruction,” said the Doctor. “Follow it to the letter. Even if it sounds silly. Otherwise, you could end up anywhere, and I do mean anywhere.”

“Sure. Whatever. Just get me out of here.”

The Doctor grinned over at Molly, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever felt her heart so full. “Okay. Listen closely…”

-

The TARDIS had landed almost perfectly in the lab. The Doctor had needed to explain how to turn her on a dime when the door landed up against the wall, but eventually Reid was able to get out. Molly hugged the TARDIS tight, and watched as the Doctor ran a hand over her door, then rested his forehead against it. The smile of relief on his face was almost enough to make her cry again.

Lesedi explained everything that had happened to Reid, including the death of Ozols. Reid at least had enough grace to look stricken. When the story was finished, he looked around at each of them. “Well. Thank Mars I was in that box.”

Molly half-expected the Doctor to be annoyed, but he just grinned back at Reid. “Thank you for invading my privacy,” he said, but the gratitude sounded genuine.

Lesedi put out a distress signal, and turned the Doctor down when he offered to give her and Reid a ride home.

“There’s a lot of repair work to be done here. And I just…” She looked around the lab with the same sort of adoration that the Doctor had looked at the TARDIS with. “This is my home. I need her now.”

Reid nodded. “I’m not leaving her alone.” But it wasn’t clear if he meant Lesedi, or the lab.

Molly felt like celebrating. Though the death of Ozols tugged at her heart, they were all alive. She’d survived her encounter with the Angels. The Doctor had, too. And he still had the TARDIS. It felt like a win, and one worth of a champagne toast (or something less disgusting than champagne), balloons, confetti.

But then she saw her bag, and the reminder of why they were there crashed over her head. Every thought of winning was chased from her mind.

The Doctor saw where her gaze had locked.

“Well,” he began, his hands rubbing together. “I suppose it’s time to get back to what we came here for.”

Lesedi glanced over from where she seemed to be checking the power levels of the station. “Oh! Right, of course. Molly still needs to get home.”

“How’d she get here in the first place?” asked Reid.

“No idea,” Molly answered. “I just sort of…woke up here.”

Lesedi frowned, and grabbed a scanner of some sort from where it hung on the wall. “You just appeared in another universe? No technology used at all?”

“Nope,” she said. “I went to sleep. I woke up on the TARDIS.”

“That’s fascinating,” said Lesedi, as she started to scan Molly. “I’ve never heard of that before. Could we convince you to maybe stay a bit? A few quick experiments, just a couple days-”

“She’s really quite anxious to get home,” the Doctor said quickly. Though it wasn’t the tiniest bit true, Molly was still grateful for him stepping in to keep her from becoming a lab experiment. She remembered when he’d suggested it might be painful.

“Well,” Lesedi sighed, disappointed, lowering the scanner. “I’ll just input this data and see if we can find your universe.”

The Doctor followed her to the computer. “How do you do it?”

“Our home universes leave marks on us, sort of like a fingerprint,” Lesedi explained. “Which is why our teleportation technology relies on fingerprints. It’s sort of like our interdimensional travel machine, but on a much, much smaller scale.”

Molly felt sick as Lesedi went into the more scientific explanations that Molly couldn’t quite follow, aided now and then by Reid. She was back down to minutes or hours, depending on how long inputting the data took. Minutes or hours until she had to leave what had really felt like home. The only place that had felt like home since her father had brought her down into that basement.

How many more minutes? She turned to Lesedi. “How long until you think it’ll be ready?”

Lesedi glanced up at her. “Oh, a few minutes. It doesn’t take long.”

A few minutes. Only a few minutes.

What would she be going back to? How much time would have passed? Was she just going to appear in some random person’s hotel room, with everyone thinking she’d been kidnapped or killed? Would she appear in the hotel room, or some random, other place? It was meant to send her back to her universe, but no one had specified where. What if she appeared in an ocean?

And why were all those worries so much less painful than the mere thought of leaving the Doctor?

But she had to ask, anyway. “And am I just going to go back to where and when I left?”

“You should. Items we take back and forth always do, and the few of us who have gone to other universes experience the same thing.” She looked up again. “We don’t know how you got here, so I can’t promise it’ll be exactly the same. But you should be close to where you were, anyway, both physically and temporally.”

Molly nodded, and then searched for the strength to turn her head and look at the Doctor. It was time to start saying goodbye, and she wanted to memorize every second of it, every bit of him. But once she turned her head to look at him, the end started.

She closed her eyes tight, took a breath, and turned her head to look.

He wasn’t there.

“Um. Doctor?” She looked around, but didn’t see him. An impossible fear seized her – had an Angel come here and taken him?! – before she saw the door to the TARDIS was open. He stepped out and shut the door a second later.

“Molly,” he said, and gestured for her to come closer. She walked up next to him, and leaned against the TARDIS. He looked excited, which broke her heart in an odd way she didn’t want to examine.

“Doctor,” she began, but she didn’t know how to start thanking him for everything he’d done for her, and given her.

“Sorry, I had to pop in and grab this,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

“What?”

He pulled his hand out and held it in front of her: a golden key on a string, slowly turning with the light shining on it. “I was going to give you the other one.”

She couldn’t cry. Not now. She didn’t want his last memory of her to be her crying. But she couldn’t stop the sharp intake of breath that gave away her body’s attempt to cry, anyway. She reached out, and he dropped it in the palm of her hand. “A key to the TARDIS,” she said, her voice almost reverent. She looked up at him with a small smile. “I’m leaving. Why give this to me now?”

“You never know when you might need it,” he said, and she thought she caught sadness under the excitement. He folded her hand over the key. “A keepsake, I suppose. A goodbye gift from me and the TARDIS.”

Molly put the key around her neck, and then placed a hand against the TARDIS, and tried to memorize the feel of the grain of the wood beneath her hand. “Thank you.” She turned back to the Doctor and wrapped her arms around his chest. “Thanks, Doctor.”

She felt his arms go around her shoulders. “Of course, Molly.”

She waited for him to pull away first, but he didn’t seem to have any intention to as he hugged her to him tighter. She returned the gesture. She was grateful that, despite his deciding it was time for her to go, he was still sad to say goodbye to his best friend. It was more painful than she’d thought it would be, and she’d thought it would hurt like hell. Even being shot didn’t compare to this.

Molly tried not to choke on the way her throat swelled as she fought the tears. When she felt oxygen flowing through it again, she said, “I’m going to miss you. So much.” What was the point in seeming cool and unbothered now?

“Me, too,” he replied. Then, “I mean, I’ll miss you. Not that I’ll miss me. I’ll be right here. But I’ll miss you loads.”

She smiled. That was her Doctor.

Finally, she felt steady enough to pull back, and only with that realization did she notice she was dizzy. She looked up at him, smiling. The Doctor. She was going to have to go back to only seeing him on the screen. What would it be like, to see her best friend, trapped in a show with lines and special effects and the same adventures on repeat, unable to interact with him at all? Maybe this had ruined her comfort show, after all.

She had one last look at the light gathering around him. She almost laughed. “You have no idea what it’s like to meet you.”

The Doctor returned her smile. “Same.”

“Oh, stop it,” she laughed, giving him a light shove. The last time.

“Never,” he said, still grinning. “It’s been an honor, Molly Quinn. Really. An honor.”

She tried to say it back, but again felt her throat close up. Instead, she stood on her toes and gave him one final kiss on the cheek.

“All ready!” Lesedi announced. “You can just hop on that platform there and we’ll get you home.”

Molly closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see her panic. This was too soon. There was so much more she wanted to say.

But when she looked back at his eyes, she thought maybe he already knew it all. Maybe too many words would clutter this goodbye.

But one worry still tugged at her sleeve. “You know what I’m going to say, right?”

She saw a v form between his almost nonexistent brows as he frowned. “No. What are you going to say?”

“Don’t-”

“-travel alone,” he sighed. “Yes, yes. Bossy.”

“I’m not bossy. I’m the boss.”

“You know, you remind me of Donna sometimes. And Clara.”

“Thanks!” But the thought of his old companions brought her even more pain, for so many reasons. Sometimes he didn’t decide when it was time. Sometimes, they chose. They left him. And then…

She looked at Lesedi. “One minute?” Lesedi nodded and turned away to work on something with Reid. Molly turned back to the Doctor. “So, I just…”

“Just what?”

Maybe it was selfish to say this. But maybe she’d earned a little selfishness. “People travel with you, and they see the universe and time differently.”

He smiled briefly. “Yeah. Great, isn’t it?”

Molly nodded, then shook her head. “Sarah Jane and Rose and Martha all went on to do things with that vision. They couldn’t just go back to ordinary life after everything. But…” She tried to organize the chaos of her emotions into coherent thoughts. “None of this exists in my universe. What if I can’t just go back? What do I do?”

She watched as his smile faded. He was also worried for what she would do after all this, like she was worried about him. She could even see some tears threatening to spill in his green eyes, and felt relieved that she was allowed to cry a little now, too. “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. “I don’t…”

It had been unfair to ask him. “I…meant it rhetorically.” She wasn’t sure she had, but it was better to say so. She faked a smile. “I’ll figure it out. I always do. I’ve learned a lot, and I think wanting more of this will help me find direction in my life. I didn’t want to be a journalist, really. Maybe I’ll find something I can do to travel and help people. The Peace Corps, or something.” This idea had come to her as she was speaking. It wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t what she wanted, either.

“You’re going to do amazing things, I know it.” He took her hands. “And I hope they somehow renew the show so I can see all the incredible things you do.”

She squeezed his hands. “Thanks for your faith in me.”

“I’ve never once doubted you.” She narrowed her eyes until he added, “Well, never doubted what you’re capable of.”

“Thanks so much for…everything.” Helping take care of her when she’d woken up stranded in the wrong universe. Taking her to see all of time and space, which really had made her a better person, she felt. Showing her that she hadn’t abandoned her mother to her death. Being her best friend. Her first best friend. Maybe the only one she’d ever have. It would be painful to lose him, for him, but also because she’d become almost adjusted to the cold of being alone, and being here had warmed her. Going back to that cold was going to be so much more painful than if she’d never been warm at all.

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “Thank you, too, Molly. I don’t know if you realize how much you’ve done for me.” He kissed the top of her head.

It felt like a completion. Not the ending she wanted – she didn’t want it to end – but something satisfying she could always remember. She moved forward and picked up her bag. “Well. I guess it’s time.”

“Right you are,” the Doctor agreed. He caught Lesedi’s attention with a wave, and she came back.

She turned to Molly. “Ready?”

No. “Ready.”

“Hop up on the platform, then,” Lesedi said, and gestured to it.

Molly gave the Doctor one more look, and he nodded encouragingly. She assumed he had mistaken the fear on her face for leaving him with fear of the transport itself.

She stepped up onto the platform, swinging the bag over her shoulder, and turned. She could see the Doctor through a large gap between the mirrors. She felt sick, but knew she had to hold it together. The TARDIS had been taking too long with the scan, and they’d come here to send her back. Clearly, the Doctor had decided it was time for her to go. She had to trust that.

Something in those thoughts made an odd, electric-like buzz fill her body. But what was it? What part of this situation had suddenly felt so very wrong? Not in that she wanted to stay, and leaving felt wrong, but in that some part of this was wholly wrong. 

The TARDIS had taken too long. And yet…

“Okay, we’re set,” said Lesedi.

Molly glanced at her, and then back at the Doctor, then back to Lesedi. “Wait.”

“What is it?”

Molly looked back at the Doctor. “The scan here only took a few minutes.” 

The Doctor frowned. “…Yes?”

Molly turned her head to look at the TARDIS for a moment, and then back at the Doctor. “The TARDIS…”

“What about her?”

“The scan was going for about a month, and she hadn’t found anything.”

“What about it?”

“But the lab found it in a few minutes,” said Molly, her words coming so quickly now that she didn’t have time to fully process what it was she’d just realized. “The TARDIS may not be built specifically for visiting other universes, to track a path through other universes – but she’s powerful. And after a month, there was nothing. Here, it was only a few minutes.”

The Doctor swallowed so hard she could see it. “Well – well, there are – uh – complications, you know, and the TARDIS isn’t – isn’t built for…” He cleared his throat. “Isn’t built for that sort of thing, as you said.”

“And you knew this lab was here the whole time.”

“Yes. Right. About that…” His hands were busying themselves by adjusting his coat, tangling his fingers, adjusting his bow tie. “It just…it just didn’t occur to me. Until you asked about it. Said something about River mentioning…the scan.”

She stared as his words and gestures settled into her mind. Then she folded her arms across her chest, and felt her brows twitch upward. “Okay, Doctor. What really happened?”

“It was – well, just as I said, and-”

“Doctor.”

He closed his eyes for a moment, and looked thoroughly like a child caught lying about how the lamp had broken with their ball beside it. Then he looked up at her, seemingly ready to confess. “So, that first night, when you first arrived, and I had all that information scanned in from when I thought you were – well, something else…”

“Yeah?”

“And I started the scan to get you home, and we went to the wardrobe, and then you said you’d travel with me until the scan was finished, and then you went to bed, and I…”

“And you what?”

His eyes shifted to the side. “…may have turned the scan off.”

He’d turned the scan off. That very first night. He’d turned it off. “So you lied to me?”

“Rule one.”

She nodded sagely. “Don’t wander off.”

He seemed relieved she was teasing him. “Yes. I did lie.”

She went through all the times she’d mentioned wondering how much time she had, what would happen when she got back, all the worry and fear and dread. “You lied to me a lot.”

“…well, we’ve been having fun, haven’t we?”

She couldn’t argue that. But her mind was swimming with confusion. She didn’t understand fully why he’d done it, why he hadn’t just asked her to stay for a while. But he had been coming out of a dark period. He’d admitted to trapping people during that period. This wasn’t unusual for him at the time. And probably, he was desperate for a new Companion, and she was his favorite character. He hadn’t wanted to risk her saying no.

Still, she felt a prick of betrayal, and she wasn’t sure if she should be more flattered, or more angry. “Were you ever going to turn it back on again?”

He seemed offended by the implication that he would trick her into staying forever. “Of course!”

“When?”

“When…when we’d had enough time together.”

“And what was ‘enough’ going to look like? Did you even think about it?”

“I did, actually.”

“And?”

“I said I’d thought about it, not that I had an answer,” he said. He spread his hands in one of his common gestures. “It would look like enough.”

“So you were just going to decide that on your own?”

“I couldn’t tell you I’d turned the scan off, now, could I?”

Angry, definitely angry. “So you were just going to hold me hostage until you were in the mood to send me back?”

“It wasn’t…supposed to be like…” He seemed to be running out of ways to defend himself. “I just wanted some time.”

“And you’ve had enough now?” Screw pretending she was okay with him deciding it was time.

He seemed confused. “What do you mean?”

“You’ve decided you’ve had enough time with me.”

He frowned, and took a few steps to be closer to the platform. “What are you talking about?”

Thoroughly giving in to her anger now, she put her hands on her hips, and made certain her voice was sharp enough to prove that she was angrier than she’d been since she’d arrived. “You decided you’re sick of me, and you’re sending me home!”

“I never said that!”

“You decided to bring me to this lab!”

“You kept bringing up going home! I thought you were anxious to leave.”

“I thought you wanted me to go!”

“Why would I want you to go?”

“Why would I want to go?”

They stared at each other in silence. Molly found she was struggling to fully process what had just happened.

The Doctor was faster at processing. “So…why are you going?”

Molly dropped her arms to her sides. “I don’t know. Why am I going?”

“You know…” he started. “We could always…come back. Later.”

“I mean…” Molly started. Was this really happening? Could she stay longer? Could they decide when she left, together? “How am I supposed to punish you for lying to me if I leave now?”

The corners of the Doctor’s mouth twitched upward. “Then…?”

Molly smiled. “Help me down.”

She set her hands on his shoulders while he wrapped his arms around her waist, lifted her up, then set her down on the floor. He glanced over his shoulder, and Molly followed his gaze to Lesedi and Reid, who both looked like they desperately wished they had some popcorn while watching her and the Doctor fight. “We can just…talk about the lying bit later, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “We’re definitely going to talk about this later.”

But even as she said it, she wasn’t sure she would bring it up. He’d tricked her, forced her to stay in this universe without her consent, lied to her, left her to be anxious about whether or not she would ever go back to her universe…

But she couldn’t help but feel grateful. There would be a later. She was going to stay.

It wasn’t time to say goodbye to the TARDIS, after all.

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Silent House

Sometimes, Molly thought, the little things were even better than the adventures. The small day-to-day activities, the little gestures, the teasing comments. The way he held two different bowties to his throat so she could help him decide which looked better. When they went to the cinema room to watch a movie, she noticed he’d removed the poster with the words ‘the Phoenix’ plastered across it.

And now, once again sitting on the floor as he worked on some part of the TARDIS under the center console, she noted that the show had never shown him humming and singing to himself, almost subconsciously, as he worked, at least not that she could recall. She recognized a song from the 60s, and one from the 90s, but others were from probably from other planets or the future.

It was nice, to get to see all these little details of him, of his life on the TARDIS. Since the threat of leaving it all behind, she’d been paying closer attention and noticing more. She was getting to know him more and more as a person instead of a character the last two or three weeks (she wasn’t sure), since the lab with the Weeping Angels. They’d spent more of that time in the TARDIS, since she hadn’t felt up to accidentally running into another big threat quite yet. She knew he went on his own adventures while she slept.

That was why the TARDIS repairs. He’d said something about an accident involving an asteroid field and how he was surprised it hadn’t woken her up. Molly reminded him that she slept even deeper than she’d used to these days.

She was back to her job that reminded her a bit of being a scrub nurse, holding a large pipe of some kind that seemed frayed at the end called a ‘Octospanner’, listening to him hum some unfamiliar song. In front of her was a game of solitaire she’d long since given up on, thanks to the Doctor continuously commenting on what she’d done wrong or missed every time she touched a card.

As nice as these little moments were, Molly was bored out of her mind. The time spent on the TARDIS had been lovely, but she was ready to get back to the adventures. She was mid-yawn when the Doctor suddenly gave a wordless exclamation, jumped up, and reached into his pocket.

Molly tossed the Octospanner aside and pulled herself back to her feet. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Aha!” he cried, as he pulled out the psychic paper. He opened it, frowned, and then looked at Molly. Slowly, the frown was replaced by an excited grin. “Coordinates.”

“Coordinates?” Molly asked. She moved around to look at the paper, though of course it was all nonsense to her. “How did someone send you coordinates on the psychic paper while we’re in the middle of space?” It did remind her of an episode, but that seemed to be unique circumstances.

“We’re actually more to the left, upper, back part of space,” he corrected her. “And I have no idea. Want to find out?”

She smiled up at him. “What do you think?”

“Ha!” He rushed to the controls. Molly watched as he worked, and stepped up to an odd control she’d never seen him use before, that looked like a sort of maze to pull a metal peg through. She examined to keep her mind busy until they landed.

The Doctor rubbed his hands together, practically vibrating with excitement. He headed for the door, and Molly followed quickly behind him. She tried to think of where they could be – an alien planet? A moon somewhere? A military base? Another kind of lab? Space station? The past? So far in the future she couldn’t comprehend it? Would there be giants, or land-walking squids, or living mountains made of gold?

“Could be anything out there,” she said as he put his hand on the door.

“That’s the best part,” he replied, still grinning. “Ready?”

“Let’s do it!”

He flung the doors open, to reveal –

“Oh. It’s Earth.” He said, frowning. He stuck a hand out and waved it around some. “2201.”

“A little…anticlimactic.”

She looked over to the Doctor to see him frowning. “I was hoping for something new. I’ve even been in this century a few times before.”

Molly looked around. Blue sky, white clouds, one sun, birds flying overhead, a field of dead grass and a few straggly trees. She could hear the wind through the grass, the birds singing as they flew over a house. The oddest part was the house in front of them. “That doesn’t seem right.”

The Doctor examined the house, too. “Seems very, very wrong.”

The house was definitely the strangest thing about this. It was the same style as the house she lived in with the abusive foster parents, but smaller, and white. She thought the style was called Edwardian Colonial, or Georgian Colonial, or something like that. It was all straight lines, evenly-spaced windows, dark blue shutters. A tall, round pillar stood on either side of the front door, with arches over them, creating some cover. The stone walkway was lined with neatly squared bushes, and the space around the house was filled with dark green grass and trees full of vibrantly green leaves. The front of the house was lined with rose bushes, all the white flowers in full bloom. There was a short white brick wall around the house, with an iron gate where the bars swirled, forming patterns that looked like ivy.

She looked around at the field full of sun-burnt grass and dead trees. “It’s like someone copy-and-pasted a house from a rich neighborhood into this field.”

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS, and Molly followed, closing and then locking the door behind them – the first time she got to use the key she kept around her neck.

He scanned the area with the sonic, but the results didn’t seem to satisfy him. “Something is making the sonic go a bit…haywire,” he muttered, and looked back at the house. Something in his expression reminded her of how he looked at an enemy. “The results are jumping all over the place.”

Molly frowned, and looked back at the house. It looked warm and inviting to her, but in an odd way. The house didn’t make sense, and that should put her on edge, but all she wanted to do was go inside. She stepped forward and opened the gate. “May as well find out what’s going on, then.”

“Right,” said the Doctor, tucking the sonic back into his pocket. “I’d very much like to know what’s going on.”

They began down the pathway together, and Molly breathed in the fresh air. It smelled of grass, and roses, and somehow also of wood polish. That part reminded her of the ballet studio she’d danced at as a child.

The door was painted the same blue as the shutters – a TARDIS blue – and had a golden knocker in the center. She looked over at the Doctor. “Do we knock?”

The Doctor reached out a hand and knocked firmly three times. After a minute, there was no answer. Molly spotted a lighted doorbell on the wall, and pressed it. A sound like church bells came from the inside, and a moment later, the door opened, revealing no one behind it.

Molly looked at the Doctor. “I should feel nervous about that.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Neither do I,” he replied, and stepped inside.

Molly followed, and closed the door behind them. She turned and saw a simple entryway, white wood stairs that went up, had a landing, then turned and went up another way. A few archways leading to other rooms. This floor looked like white stone, but she could see more painted white wood flooring in other rooms. Above them was a hanging light, covered in frosted white glass. “Looks pretty ordinary,” she said. “Smells like apple pie. Like they do for open houses.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed. “Ordinary. Except…”

“What?”

“Listen.”

Molly closed her eyes to listen closely for a moment, but she didn’t hear anything but the wind and the birds. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be hearing.”

“Creaks. Shifting. Echoes. Scratching on the windows, or glass shaking from the wind. The sounds ordinary houses make.” He turned slowly, looking at each wall. “But that’s not what we’re hearing. What we’re hearing is the outside.”

“Yeah,” Molly said, and then she finally caught up to him. “Oh. The wind and birds sound just as loud in here as they did outside.”

“Exactly.”

Molly took a few steps forward to peer upstairs. All she could see was white carpet, and the edges of another set of stairs. The white wood used for those stairs and the sharp angles made her think of teeth. “It reminds me of…”

“Of what?”

She looked back to the Doctor. “A Venus flytrap. It smells good. It draws us in. But then…”

“It snaps closed and eats us.” The Doctor almost sounded excited by the prospect. He took a couple steps forward and held up his hand for a high-five. “Top notch thinking.”

She gave him the high-five. “Thanks,” she laughed. It felt wrong. “We should be worried about the flytrap house.”

“We should be,” the Doctor agreed, and then he took a few more steps into the house. “We should want to leave.”

Molly followed him further in. “Do you want to?”

“Not even a bit.” He turned back towards the front door. “What I want to do move the TARDIS inside.”

“Why?”

“Um…” He seemed uncertain for a moment, wringing his hands as his gaze shifted back and forth. “So it’s closer to us. We can make a faster escape, if we need to.”

Molly looked back at the door. She didn’t want to leave the house, but she felt the TARDIS needed to be inside with them. “Okay. Let’s move the TARDIS.”

The Doctor led them back to the door, and headed outside. It surprised her. If this had been a movie, the door would have been locked behind them. They went down the path, and into the TARDIS. Molly watched as the Doctor stepped around the various tools and the cards on the floor to get to the controls.

“Short hops are difficult,” he warned her. She grabbed onto the railing, and the Doctor ran around the console, doing his best to make the short hop smooth. Still, the TARDIS shook more than usual, as if it didn’t want to go into the house. But finally, they materialized back inside, and Molly opened the door.

“Oh,” she said, now facing a kitchen with white tiling, countertops of white marble, and copper pans hanging over an island.

The Doctor peeked out from around her. “We should’ve been back in the entry.”

Molly stepped out. “Maybe the short hop made us miss it by a bit.”

“Maybe…” But he sounded uncertain as he followed her out and shut the door. She watched as he went around the kitchen, opening and closing drawers and looking into cupboards. “This could be dangerous, you know.” He turned back towards her. “Want to back out?”

“Are you kidding?” Molly laughed. “‘Danger’ is my middle name.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask her what her real middle name was.

“How funny, so’s mine,” he replied as he stuck his head into the cabinet under the sink. He stood up again. “Do me a favor and stick your head in there.”

“Um. No, thanks.”

“Why not?”

“I saw how ridiculous you looked doing it, and I’d rather keep some dignity.”

“Oh, ha ha,” he said dryly, rolling his eyes. “Just do it.”

She sighed and took his place, while he moved around to the end of another counter. She knelt down and stuck her head into the empty cabinet. “There aren’t any pipes.”

“That’s not all.”

“What else?”

“Take a deep breath.”

It was her turn to roll her eyes, but still, she did it. “Okay, now what?”

“Notice anything?”

“I’m guessing you’re about to tell me what I’m not noticing.”

“Come back out.”

She sighed and moved back, but felt the thin strap of her top get caught on a nail. She reached up to free herself, but that small movement alone was enough to create a tear. She heard the ripping sound and groaned, then stood to see the damage. The spaghetti strap of her pale pink, corset-like crop top was torn, and she reached out a hand to hold the top up in place. She looked to the Doctor. “I hope that was worth me destroying this top and almost having a wardrobe malfunction.”

He dropped the blank white papers he’d been holding back into the trash can and moved over to her. He observed the damage to her shirt, then reached into his pocket and dug around for a moment. “Ah!” he called out when he seemed to have finally gotten a grip on whatever it was he’d been looking for. He pulled his hand out and produced a safety-pin. “Hold still.”

Molly followed his direction, holding her top in place though she knew it was tight enough to stay put even if she didn’t. He reached for the broken strap, and his fingers felt like they’d just been out in cold winter air against her skin; though she thought she was getting used to his temperature, she still felt every small, accidental brush of his skin against her like the tingle of a cool breeze on a sunny day, or like the tingle of menthol. She watched as he carefully pushed the fabric of one side of the strap onto the needle, and noticed again his scent of herbal mint and clean wool, and now noticed a note of sweet honey. Something about that made her cheeks warm.

By then he’d threaded the other bit of fabric onto the needle, too, and he closed the pin. He stepped away, observing his work with a proud smile. “There! All better,” he announced. He looked back to her face, a bit of confusion entering his eyes when Molly forgot to respond.

“Oh, uh…thanks,” she said, looking down at her salvaged top. “I didn’t want to have to go all the way back to my room to change.” She didn’t want to leave the house, even for a minute.

“Should be fine,” the Doctor said. “Are you alright?”

Molly nodded. “Yeah. Just noticed that the jacket smells good.”

“Does it?” the Doctor asked. He lifted an arm to smell his shoulder and turned to meet it, but continued turning in place for a moment as he tried to smell his jacket. Molly resisted laughing as he looked like a dog chasing his tail. “Smells like dust to me.”

Dust. “Oh!” Molly turned back to the space under the sink. “It doesn’t smell of anything. No dust, no mildew, nothing, not even the wood or sawdust. Like it’s never been used, but wasn’t recently built.”

“Right!” the Doctor said, snapping his fingers, then pointing behind him towards the trash can. “And there’s no real rubbish in there. Just plain white pieces of paper.”

Molly frowned. “So, it’s like…like a set on a stage. A house that’s made to look like people live in it, but…they don’t.”

“Could be, could be, yes,” the Doctor agreed as he frowned. He spun around another moment, and then he was off and out the archway that led to the kitchen. Molly sighed and jogged after him.

“Do you have a plan?” she asked as she followed him into a hallway, simple and white with pictures on the wall of families and couples and pets, but no two photos had the same people or animals.

“No. Should I?” he asked, looking left, then right, then left again. He settled on heading towards the left.

“Weird, flytrap, dollhouse thing in the middle of nowhere whose address was sent to you via psychic paper in the middle of space-”

“I told you, it’s more back, left-”

“-and you have no plan?”

“What plan could I have? What could I-” he stopped and frowned. Molly almost asked why, but then she heard it, too.

The ticking of a clock. The first real house sound the house had made. Molly looked around for the source of the sound. “I think it’s coming from upstairs.”

The Doctor nodded in agreement, and turned a few times before settling on heading back down the hall the other way. They came back to the foyer, and the Doctor started up the stairs, with Molly following behind him. The next floor turned out to be another landing, with the second staircase that had reminded Molly of teeth. They took that set of stairs, which led to another landing with another set. They went up again, to find yet another landing with a set of stairs, and still the clock was ticking on.

“This seems…wrong,” Molly said.

“Very wrong,” the Doctor agreed, but he continued up the stairs anyway.

Another two flights. Molly stopped and looked behind them. “How many floors did this house have?”

“Three, at most.”

“How many floors have we gone past?”

“Five.”

“That’s not possible.”

“No. It’s not.” The Doctor took the sonic out of his pocket again and scanned the area. He looked at the results, and frowned. “The results still aren’t coming out clear.”

“Any ideas as to why?”

“Yes.”

“…and?”

“I’ll get back to you.”

Molly resisted rolling her eyes again. “I’m going to try to go back down,” she said, and turned. The Doctor followed her.

When they reached the previous floor, instead of a plain landing, they found themselves in a library. The walls were lined with shelves, the shelves full of antique-looking books, most leather-bound with golden writing. There was a small area set aside for a loveseat and two chairs, and a hall stretched out behind the sitting area.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said, looking around. “‘Danger’ is no longer my middle name. I’m ready to leave.” That longing to stay was now slowly being replaced with a cold unease creeping up the back of her neck.

“I think my middle name’s ‘confused’ now,” said the Doctor, his voice soft with a sort of wonder at the sudden appearance of a room. “I don’t like it. Actually, I do like it, too much, and that worries me. I’d like to go back to the TARDIS and run a proper scan.”

“…can we get back to the TARDIS?”

The Doctor glanced around the room, and sighed. “Another thing that confuses me.”

Molly approached a shelf to skim the books, and found that the titles were all mixed up letters, not words.

She picked one up the held it out as she turned back to the Doctor, who was looking beneath the white loveseat by a white marble fireplace. “These books are all titled nonsense,” she said, and then flipped through the book. “The inside, too. It’s all gibberish.”

The Doctor frowned up at her. “Like a prop.”

Molly nodded, and turned and put the book back on the shelf. As she turned back, she spotted the tall white grandfather clock at the entrance to the hallway. “Over here,” she said to the Doctor as she approached it.

The Doctor followed her, and then frowned at the face of the clock. He pulled out the golden pocket watch he had on by the chain, then looked at the face of his clock, then tucked the pocket watch back when he looked at the grandfather clock again. “The time is wrong.”

“Not unusual,” said Molly. Then the minute hand on the grandfather clock moved…backwards. “That is, though.”

“Grandfather clocks don’t tick, either,” the Doctor added.

“It’s all so very…white,” Molly commented, turning her head to look around. “Like someone forgot to color it all in.”

The Doctor glanced around, and then nodded. “There is definitely something fishy going on here…”

“Any chance I can convince you to share your theory with me?”

He glanced over at her. “Give me a few more minutes to finish formulating it.”

Molly wanted to sigh, but instead she nodded. She knew he would share in his own time, and that there was probably a reason he was holding off explaining it to her. Instead of continuing to pester him about it, as she was tempted to, Molly headed down the nearby hallway, also completely white, this time with art on the wall – or what was meant to be art, she supposed. She could see the paint on the canvas, but it was white on white.

She passed by a mirror, and saw herself walking a little behind in the reflection. She took a step back to look into it, and she saw the side of her head before her reflection turned to face her. She frowned, and she watched as her face went from confusion to a deep frown. She shifted left, and a millisecond later, her image shifted left. The same to the right. She raised her hand and waved, and again, the image moved a little behind her.

This was becoming genuinely frightening. “This mirror is lagging,” she said, and then turned to drag the Doctor over so he could see for himself. She found herself facing a wall, where the hall had been a second ago.

“Okay…” she whispered. “Horror movie scary now.” She knocked on the wall. “Doctor?!” Nothing. She tried again, and still nothing.

She turned back towards the hall, and found another staircase facing her instead. “What would a horror movie character do right now?” She asked herself. “Whatever it is, I need to do the opposite.”

A horror movie character would go up the stairs. Molly stepped forward and looked around the staircase, but there were no doors, and it was up against a wall. Where there’d been a hall, there was now only a wall. There was no other direction she could go. She could stay where she was and wait for the Doctor to find her, but in a house like this there didn’t seem to be much chance of that. Her best bet was exploring and investigating and seeing if she could find a way out, or preferably, back to the TARDIS.

“Great. Now I get to be the stupid girl running up the staircase.” At least there wasn’t a slasher chasing her.

Hopefully.

Molly began up the stairs, and came face to face with another white painting. Something there seemed off to her, but she wasn’t sure what it was yet. There was so much about this that wasn’t right, she wasn’t sure why this moment in particular felt wrong.

There was one hall going to her right – a short hall that seemed to lead to a sitting room at the end – and another to her left. This one was long. Too long. It seemed to extend out for miles.

Against her better judgement, Molly began down the hall that was too long. Her footsteps echoed on the walls as she stepped up to the first door in the hall. It was locked. She tried the one straight across from it, and it was also locked. A few steps later, she tried the next set. Then the next. None of them opened.

After a few minutes, she realized why the hall seemed so long. As she walked, the lamps hanging above and the doors became smaller and smaller. This seemed familiar, like something she’d seen in a scary movie once, or maybe read about online. She reached the end of the hall, and found herself facing a set of small double doors. These actually opened for her, and behind

Molly began back the way she came, deciding to try the other hall. The sitting room at the end had been replaced by a wall. She turned around, and hoped one of the doors in the falsely long hall would actually open somehow, and that it actually led somewhere, and she wasn’t trapped in this relatively small space.

She tried the first door she found, and was relieved when it opened, only to be disappointed by a white brick wall. The next door was the same. But the next opened up to what looked like a ballroom. The ceiling was a mirror, and she noticed her image was lagging in it, too. The white wood floor below her feet gleamed as though it had just been shined. A fireplace held a roaring fire, but as she approached, it put out no heat.

“This is so stupid,” she whispered to herself, and then did it anyway, sticking a finger in the flames. She felt the flames lick her finger, like she did when she’d run a finger through the flame of a candle so fast it couldn’t burn her, but still, no heat.

She stood and wandered to another part of the ballroom, which held what seemed to be a large cabinet but actually was a vinyl record player. A black record spun circles, but there was no sound. She found a knob for the volume, and turned it up, and was almost surprised when it played music as it normally should. The song was familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand. You don’t have to stay forever, I will understand. Believe me, believe me, I can’t help but love you…” The singer’s voice echoed in the room.

There was another set of double doors behind her, these in some sort of design made of stained glass, but again they were all stained white. She set a hand on the handle, and then frowned.

Double doors. What had been behind the other set? She couldn’t remember. But when she turned to go back and check, the door she had come in was replaced by a wall that didn’t match the painted wall around it. It was more beige than pure white.

Molly walked through the double doors, and now found herself in an empty room. Or, she thought it was an empty room with nothing but some recessed lighting in the floor, until she looked up.

There was a long dining table with a white tablecloth, a white rose centerpiece, silver and china place settings, even tall white candles in silver holders. Tall-backed chairs with plush cushions surrounded it. On the wall was a china cabinet filled with porcelain teapots and cups. But the beige carpet under the table ran along the wall, and standing there, horizontally, was a white statue. She thought it might have been the statue of Venus that was in some French museum.

The perfect image of an elegant dining room – just on the ceiling, as though the room was reversed like she could do to an image on her phone, or like a misprinted page.

“I hate this Dr. Seuss, Stephen King, House of Leaves, bullshit place,” Molly muttered to herself. She turned to head out the next door when something gleaming on the floor met her eye. She bent to pick it up. An open safety pin.

She looked down at her top, and sure enough, the safety pin was missing. It must have come off without her noticing. She repined the strap together, and then moved on.

More stairs in an empty hall. She started up and

The office was large, like a CEO at some Fortune 500 company. A desk, yes, chairs, yes, but also a sitting area with a fireplace, a little library, a bar, a spiral staircase – wait.

She’d started up the stairs. And now she was in an office. She turned and saw the stairs behind her, and stepped back out into the hall. Left, a table with a vase up against the wall. Right,

She ran up the spiral staircase, and found another little library. She ran through the door, then down the hall, and was met by another set of stairs, going down this time. She paused to catch her breath.

Why was she running? And her arm was stinging.

Molly looked at the inside of her left arm, and found three scratches on it. What could have caused that? How hadn’t she noticed? They weren’t deep, just barely abrasions. Her skin turned red from marks easily, though. Her mom had blamed it on being a redhead, somehow.

She reached for her arm to pull at the skin and see if there was any blood at all, and she saw it – the safety pin, open again, in her hand. She looked at her top again, and the safety pin there was gone.

“What the actual…” she muttered to herself. She pinned the strap again, and took a step towards the stairs,

When she walked into the room, she was out of breath. But finally, there were colors around her. All around the –

“Shut the fuck up!” she screamed. She turned away from the art studio and ran out of the room. She found herself at the stairs again. She counted them. Eight in front of her, then a large landing with a window that didn’t let in any sunlight, then they turned again and she couldn’t see, but there was probably another eight, or around there.

“Okay.” Molly set a foot on the lower stair. “One.” Another step. “Two.” She was at the top of the stairs. She turned to

She was back in the art studio, again out of breath, leaning against the door with her arms as though trying to hold it closed. She gave a scream of frustration, and a bit of fear, if she was being honest with herself. What was happening? She was appearing places and doing things she couldn’t remember. She kept running and holding doors closed and she didn’t know why. Sighing, she leaned her head against the wall of the door. Her heart was thundering. She needed to calm down. She closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. She opened them, and saw red out of the corner of her eye.

There were another three marks on her arm. Four lines, one across them, another line beside it.

||||  |

A deep, black pit began to form in her stomach.

She pinned her strap back together, and began searching the art studio, tossing aside canvases with lines and dots of color as though they were modern art but gave the feeling of being generated by an AI. She threw aside paints and water clouded with paint, brushes, colored pencils, crayons – and then found it. A black marker. She opened the lid and tested it on her arm, tracing the previous marks. It worked.

There was no other door in the room, but there were windows, windows that again let in no light. She threw open the thin blue curtains. One had a white brick wall. The other led to some sort of gaming room, with a pool table and a circular table covered in green felt with cards dealt out. Perfect.

Molly climbed through the window, and looked around. Another fireplace with no heat. Green velvet chairs. It was like someone had finally remembered that most houses had color in them. She turned around slowly, and saw nothing. She looked to the ceiling

She was on her knees on the floor. With a gasp, she looked at her arm, and then fought back the urge to vomit. Her vision blurred, and she felt as though the room had gone from vaguely cool to below freezing.

||||  ||||  ||||  ||||  ||||  ||||  ||||  |||| ||

Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. Thirty-five. Forty. Two. Forty-two. She’d run out of space. She turned her arm over, and felt sick all over again. There, on her skin, in her messy handwriting: LOOK UP.

She closed her eyes, took a steadying breath, and tilted her head up.

And then she was looking down at her arm again. The disorientation made her sway a moment before she could really look at the writing. She’d added a word, that person she was whenever she could see them: DON’T.

DON’T

LOOK UP

Some wild part of her mind told her that maybe, maybe, if she was determined enough, she would be able to remember seeing them. She focused her eyes, focused her mind, took in as many details of the room as she could to make her mind used to absorbing information, then looked up again.

Her arm now read:

DON’T

LOOK UP

YOU DUMB BITCH

Well, the message was definitely from her, and she would definitely listen. She would also get out of this room as fast as she could. She spotted another door, this one a glass revolving one. It was far too late to question the odd additions to the house, and she got to her feet and launched herself at the door, half-expecting to be electrocuted on the way. But she slammed against the handle, and spun it around. She found herself in a large, empty space, with a high ceiling with painted clouds. She heard an odd screeching sound, and looked across the room to find the source. Another revolving door was moving. She held her breath and took a step back. No weapons. She had nothing. All she could do was run backwards, towards the horde. Maybe she could stab one in it’s not-eye with the safety pin, though the needle was way too small for that.

But out came the Doctor. “Molly!” he shouted as soon as she saw her.

“Doctor!” She shouted in relief, and ran for him. He met her in the middle of the room and wrapped his arms around her just as she reached out to do the same to him.

“You’re alright!” the Doctor exclaimed. “I thought maybe the house had eaten you.”

“It’s probably worse than that,” she breathed.

“Worse? Are you alright?” He pulled away suddenly and checked her face for injuries. “You look alright.”

“I am, but-”

He spun around and pointed at the door he’d come from. “I think we should go back that way. There are stairs that seem to lead to a basement of some kind, and it’s the first time the sonic has had any real readings. Oh! Right. I should mention. The house isn’t really here.”

Molly glanced around at the walls, and stamped a foot on the floor. “Feels real, even if it doesn’t look real.”

“It’s not. It’s all a projected image, sort of like a massive hologram. I think it’s likely a perception filter.”

Molly looked back at the revolving door behind her, towards all the other strange rooms she’d seen. “A perception filter can do all this?”

“I’ve never seen it before, but a perception filter can do almost anything,” he commented. He pulled the sonic out to show it to her. “The sonic was getting strange readings because there was nothing here to find – nothing above ground anyway – and I kept trying to force it to read the house. But the house isn’t real, it doesn’t exist, so it couldn’t get a reading. After we were separated, I found stairs leading down, and the further down I got the more of an electrical buzz I could hear. Eventually the sonic detected some sort of massive energy wave, and I think it’s the perception filter putting out an enormous amount of power in order to produce the house. Why it’s here at all I don’t know, or why we were invited, or rather, I was invited, I’m not sure how many people know you’re with me and have the ability to do this, River maybe, or Captain Jack, but neither of them would do this. I guess there’s also Martha and Mickey, with UNIT, but nothing on Earth has this amount of power, so actually, leave Jack out of it, too. And have you noticed that the rooms seem put together by someone who hasn’t ever seen a real house before? Like a child’s drawing, too. Or like, uh-”

“Silence!” Molly finally interjected as the Doctor took a breath.

The Doctor seemed stunned for a moment, but then he nodded, putting the sonic away. “Right. Rambling. Sorry.”

“No,” said Molly firmly. “I mean, it’s the Silence.” She held up her arm as evidence.

She watched the Doctor’s eyes widen. He reached for her arm to look at it, as though he thought he might be seeing it incorrectly, or that he hoped he was seeing it incorrectly. As he turned her arm back and forth, showing the marks and the writing, she thought she felt a tremor in his hands.

“That’s impossible,” he whispered. All the chaotic energy and excitement from the mystery drained out of him, like the color was draining from his face. “They should be…”

“The crack in the universe,” Molly whispered back. “It’s back. So the Silence are back. And…and maybe set a trap for you.”

He looked at her, a vague sort of panic in his eyes. A fear clung to the edges of his mouth, too, the fear she saw when she’d first arrived and told him the name of his show. The oldest question in the universe. The question people had tried to kill him to keep him from answering. To silence him.

The only way he’d escaped was by dying. Twice, though the first time he’d faked it. But he’d really died the second time. And now they were back. To kill him again.

His fingers were still trembling as he continued to hold on to her arm. There was nothing she could say to make this better, nothing she could do to make this go away. But she set a hand over one of his, and she hoped her eyes expressed the pain and fear she felt on his behalf. The comfort she wished there was a way to give him. But all she saw in his was desperation and his own pain and tears, though he was trying to bury it with his own concern for her.

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Okay.” But his voice cracked as he said the words, and she heard a tone in his voice similar to when he’d asked Clara if he really had to go to Trenzalore. And he still hadn’t let go of her arm yet. “We’ll just…leave. We’ll leave, and we won’t come back, and we’ll…we’ll run so far they won’t find us again.”

Her first thought was that running wasn’t like the Doctor – except, of course, it was. He’d started running a long time ago, and he hadn’t stopped yet. He’d avoided Lake Silencio for as long as he could. The only reason he’d gone to Trenzalore was to save his friends.

Of course he wanted to run. She did, too. And it would be the smart thing to do.

But she knew him too well, and felt a sad patience settle into her eyes as she waited.

He stared into her eyes like he was trying to look into her soul, and his jaw set and reset and reset, until finally he sighed. “Alright. Fine. You’re right. I need to know what’s happening. I need to know if they know why the crack has reappeared.”

“Besides,” she said, “We don’t know how to get out of the house. We have to find the TARDIS. And maybe if we let them monologue for a little while, they’ll give something away.”

The smile on his lips was so faint it was like feeling one raindrop on a clear day – knowing it was there, but unable to be completely certain. “Smart. Always liked that about you.”

She didn’t like that he said it like he was preparing to say goodbye. Or eulogizing her. “We’ll get out of this. You always do.”

“Always…” he said distantly. “I wish that were true.”

“You’re here now, aren’t you?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to respond, and then his eyes shifted slight to the right. “The door’s spinning behind you.”

Molly swallowed. “So…might be about forty or so Silence on their way in here.”

“Yep,” said the Doctor, slowly stepping backwards. He whispered, “I want to investigate before we start asking questions. I think the stairs down are probably our best option.”

“Good thing they can’t get through a revolving door in large numbers,” she muttered.

“True. But it only takes…one…” He glanced behind her. “And there are about six already through.”

“Look at me,” she said. When his eyes shifted back to her, she added, “There are six Silent behind us. They’re coming in. We should get down to the basement.”

“Okay. Let’s not waste time, then,” he said, and turned. He didn’t let go of her arm as he dragged her behind them, racing to the revolving door he’d come through. They sped through it as fast as it would allow, turned right, then veered left and began down a staircase that led into darkness.

A few steps in, Molly decided that the Doctor was right: it was definitely a basement. Cinder block walls, dim lamps hanging over them, and a few unfinished walls. But it was huge, as though it was a bomb shelter underneath a 50-million-dollar mansion rather than the little house they’d seen. They dodged around walls and a few times Molly stumbled over the cracked concrete floor. They spun around another wall, and then Molly crashed straight into the Doctor.

Her heart in her throat, she looked around to see what had made him stop so suddenly, raising her free hand to prepare to make more marks on her arm to count what must be another horde.

She saw past the Doctor, and felt the marker slip from her fingers.

Seated in front of them was the Doctor.

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Thirty

Eleven

“Oh! Hello, there,” the other Doctor greeted, seated in a green velvet chair, wearing his beige tweed jacket and red bowtie. “Mind untying me? I’m a bit uncomfortable.” Molly then noticed the ropes around his wrists and ankles, tying him to the chair. The ropes looked like they were made of silver.

Molly looked from the other Doctor to – well, her Doctor. There was the slightest difference in age between them. The other Doctor looked younger. More like Matt Smith in Season 5 or 6 than at the end of Season 7. Her Doctor seemed fascinated, yet hesitant.

“Go on,” said the other Doctor. “Sonic me. You’ll see who I am in a mo.” He paused. “Well, I’m you. Obviously. How I am, I should say. How I exist, I mean, not how I’m feeling. As I said, I’m feeling uncomfortable.”

Molly watched the Doctor – her Doctor – quickly take the sonic out and begin scanning him. He looked at the results, and the look of confusion melted away, replaced by a look of pure joy that confused Molly, given their circumstances.

He put the sonic back in his pocket, and rubbed his hands together. “Well. Well. Hello again, Doctor.”

“Hello again, Doctor,” said the other Doctor, a similar smile on his face.

Her Doctor pointed at him, then pointed at Molly, then back at him. “Brilliant! Oh, this is brilliant! I told you your molecular memory could survive.”

“I’m glad we were right about that,” replied the other Doctor. He tried to lift his arms, but the ropes held him tight. “Could I have a hand?”

“Right,” the Doctor said, charging forward to have a look at the silver ropes.

Molly looked from her Doctor, to the other Doctor. Your molecular memory can survive this, you know. She remembered it now.

She looked the other Doctor up and down. “Wait. This is the Ganger Doctor?”

“I’d prefer John Smith, if it’s all the same,” replied the other Doctor. “I mean, I prefer ‘the Doctor’, since I am the Doctor, but if it’s a choice between ‘Ganger Doctor’ and…and…” The sentence drifted as he returned the gesture of looking her up and down, and his eyes went wide. He turned his head towards her Doctor, who was on the ground examining how the ropes around his ankles were tied. “When did we become friends with Lydia Hart?”

Oh. Right. They were going to have to do this again. “Guess again,” she said, a small smirk on her face.

“…not friends?” He attempted a guess.

“Not Lydia Hart,” her Doctor corrected. She couldn’t see his face, but knew he had a similar expression from his voice.

The other Doctor’s eyes narrowed as he looked at her face. “Looks like Lydia Hart.”

“Looks exactly like Lydia Hart,” replied her Doctor.

Molly scowled. “He means Lydia Hart looks exactly like me.”

She saw the ‘aha’ moment in the other Doctor’s eyes, just before they instead filled with denial. He shook his head. “No. No. You’re not…”

“Not what?”

“You’re not Molly Quinn.”

She shrugged. “First time I’ve been informed of that.” Then she paused, and looked at her Doctor as he pulled at the ropes, freeing one of the other Doctor’s ankles. “Actually, nevermind. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Her Doctor glanced up at her. “Technically, we’re both the tree.”

“We are collectively the tree.” He looked her up and down again. “You’re really Molly Quinn?”

Molly waved. “Live and in person.”

“Molly Quinn from the Phoenix?”

She tried her best to hide her revulsion. “Regrettably.”

His doubt quickly turned to delight. “Molly Quinn! You are my favorite character, ever,” he said, gesturing to her with his hands as best he could while tied up, and then he glanced at her Doctor. “You probably already know that.”

“Theoretically.”

“And I – he – we travel together?”

“Yep.”

He looked back at her Doctor. “How did we do that?”

Her Doctor finished getting the other Doctor free. “No idea,” he said, standing up. “She just appeared on the TARDIS one day, a year or so after she was shot in her universe.”

“Relieved to see you’re alright,” the other Doctor said, carefully getting to his feet. “They said you were dead.”

“Not quite dead,” Molly replied.

The other Doctor stumbled, and she rushed forward a few steps to grab his arms as her Doctor held onto his shoulders and gently pulled him back onto his feet. “Sorry,” the other Doctor said. “Bit wobbly. Been there for a while.”

“What happened?” her Doctor asked.

“The Silence brought me back,” he explained. “They told me about River. …do you know about River?”

“Oh, yes,” replied her Doctor. “I know about River.”

“They said she’d failed, but I must know you better than anyone.”

“Any idea how they found out about you?”

“Cleaves talked about how I sacrificed myself along with her Ganger to save you.”

Her Doctor sighed. “Of course.”

“Anyway,” started the other Doctor, “They thought they’d make me a weapon, too. One that could predict everything you did. They tried everything they could to brainwash me into killing you, but of course it didn’t work. I – we – would never do that.”

Her Doctor almost looked proud. “You must have withstood quite a lot in order to resist them.” 

“Oh, what’s ‘quite a lot’, really?” The other Doctor said with a lightness in his voice. But Molly saw a flash of horror in his eyes. A flash she knew well. A flash anyone who had been tortured or near torture would know. “It’s only been…about a hundred years. I made them think it worked, though, and finally they were ready to set the trap.”

“Of course,” her Doctor said. “The message on the psychic paper. You used our link to send it.”

The other Doctor looked at Molly. “I helped them build a machine that would send the message to someone with the exact same DNA sequence, right down to the correct regeneration, and then amplified my rather mild psychic ability to transfer information to send the coordinates on the psychic paper.”

Molly was grateful he’d taken the time to explain to her, because of course her Doctor already knew what it was he’d done. “But why help them set the trap?”

“Because they didn’t expect him to betray them,” her Doctor said, his voice low. “He’ll be able to get us all to the TARDIS, and we can get him out of here. It’s a double-rescue.”

“And then we can all work together to defeat the Silence,” said the other Doctor. “I have all sorts of information on them now.”

Her Doctor glanced at the chair. “Why tie you up, though?”

“Once I heard you in the false house I tried running to you, instead of hiding in wait like I was supposed to,” he explained. “I think when they realized they weren’t able to turn me, they decided to use me as bait.”

Molly looked around them. “I don’t see any down here.”

“There’s only one way out of the house,” said the other Doctor. “Back the way you came. They’ll be coming soon.”

“Then how are we getting out?”

“Sorry, should have specified,” said the other Doctor. “There’s only one way out that they know of. I helped make this place. I know how to get around in it. I know how to walk through it, rather.”

“What do you mean?” Molly asked quickly. The dread of the approaching Silence and the fear of the time they were wasting echoed in her head.

“The house isn’t real,” the other Doctor explained. “If you stop thinking of this as a house, and more as a hologram, you can pass through the walls. It’s tricky. Your mind keeps telling you it’s real. And you can’t focus too much on it being a hologram – it can’t be like you’re convincing yourself. You just have to naturally believe it.” He began moving around the basement, knocking on the walls. “We’ll still have to navigate the house itself, but we won’t rely on the right doors or stairs appearing, or worry about ending up in a room with no doors.”

A room with no doors sounded terrifying. “Doctor-”

“Yes?” they both replied at the same time.

She sighed. “Okay, we’re going to need a system here.” She looked from her Doctor to the other Doctor, considering for a moment. “In my universe, you’re commonly referred to as Eleven by the fandom, so-”

“Fandom?” the other Doctor asked.

“You’re a TV show in my universe, you’re my favorite character,” she explained.

Her Doctor clapped his hands. “I knew it!”

“I mean, the TARDIS is my favorite character,” she quickly corrected herself. “Time for all that later. For now, I’m calling the Doctor I know ‘the Doctor’, and you ‘Eleven’. Less confusion, and I’m more likely to remember it than John Smith, strangely enough.” She paused. “I mean, I guess technically you’d be the twelfth or thirteenth Doctor, depending on which regenerations you’re counting, but Eleven is also easier to remember since you look exactly the same.” 

“Deal,” agreed Eleven. “You were saying?”

“Also strangely enough, that we should stop wasting time.”

Eleven turned and pressed against a wall. It bent under his hand like it was painted fabric used as a backdrop in a play. “We could walk through here,” he said, then he turned back to Molly and the Doctor. “But maybe now isn’t the time to test if you’re able to walk through the walls without trouble. We should wait until we have some distance on them.”

The Doctor nodded. “So, which way?”

Eleven gestured to the left with his chin. “Door over there. Not sure where it leads. The house keeps rearranging itself. There wasn’t time to stabilize it.”

“Or make it look right,” Molly breathed, realizing now why the house was so strange.

Eleven nodded. “Well, shall we run?”

Molly turned back. Then she was running down a hall, the Doctor and Eleven both holding her hands. She felt like her legs were dragging behind her, and her body tingled in a painful way. “What happened?”

“A Silent came up behind you and shocked you,” Eleven explained. “Just mildly, you’ll be fine.”

She wanted to disagree, but instead hissed in pain. “Does being electrocuted always make your teeth feel like this?”

“Yes,” the Doctor replied, as they pulled her up a short flight of stairs. He flung the door open, and they ran straight into a large room with white marble floors and a giant pool that caused pretty, shifting reflections of blue on the walls. There was a wood door at the end, a glass door to the right that led to what looked like a garden except for the bit of ceiling Molly could see, and another glass door to the left that looked to lead to a pool table. “Which way?”

Eleven pulled on Molly’s hand, dragging both her and the Doctor towards the garden. “This way. Any outdoor space will lead us closer to the outside.”

“We left the TARDIS in a kitchen,” Molly said.

Eleven paused. “Okay. That’s a problem.” He looked to the other glass door, then to the wood one. “Nevermind. We’ll take what’s behind door number two.” He pulled them towards the wood door instead, his hand still in Molly’s, Molly’s hand still in the Doctor’s.

They stepped through to find themselves in another misprinted room, this one seeming to be a large, rich person closet. Shelving bent up the wall, a marble island sat directly above them, and a chandelier was on the floor in front of them, the crystals defying gravity to still hang over the island.

“Is a closet going to have another door?” Molly asked.

“Well, let’s have a look,” said Eleven. They all finally let go of each other’s hands and began searching the room. There were no clothes, just rows of empty shelves between empty racks for hanging clothing. She looked under shelves to try to spot even a trapdoor, but there seemed to be nothing else.

“Aha!” she heard…one of the Doctors…exclaim. She turned to see her Doctor gesturing to a shelf that he’d swung open to reveal a dark hallway.

Molly walked up to him and looked down the hallway, all dark save for the flickering of an oil lamp on a table at the end, and some shifting golden light streaming through a door with windows across the top. “A secret passageway in a closet? Really? Not a library? Or an office?”

She felt the Doctor’s gaze on her as she continued to peer through the door. “Really? In this whole house, that’s what you find odd?”

“Quick reminder,” said Eleven. “We should be running.”

“I make a good point,” replied the Doctor, and he darted down the hall. Eleven pushed Molly in front of him, and she followed the Doctor, grateful she didn’t have to be the first to charge into the darkness.

They made it to the other end, and the Doctor swung the door open. Once again, Molly found herself crashing into him, with the added discomfort of Eleven then crashing into her.

“Doctor?” she asked.

“Oh,” was all he said in response. Molly put her hands on his shoulders and forced him to take a few steps forward so she could get around him and see what had stopped him this time.

The room was empty, and mostly dark. Plain wood floor. Dark teal wallpaper decorated with brown swirls, reminding Molly of something in a historical romance movie. And in the wall, a crack.

A familiar crack, leaking golden light.

“Oh,” said Molly.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Eleven push the Doctor to the side so he could get through the door and close it behind him. Then he saw it, too. “Oh.”

“They tell you what the crack is?” the Doctor asked Eleven.

“They did, yes,” he said. He slowly began approaching it. “Even more complicated than a scary crack in Amelia’s room, or a crack in the universe. The Time Lords, reaching out from Gallifrey.”

“So you know we didn’t…?”

Eleven turned to the Doctor with a small smile. “I know.”

“How do they know?” Molly asked.

“After Trenzalore, they must have known what was behind the crack, who was asking the question.” As the Doctor said it, the words sounded like something gone rotten. The thought that anyone else knew Gallifrey was still out there was poisonous.

Eleven leaned in to try to get a look inside the crack. “Didn’t it seal after that?”

“It did,” said the Doctor. “And then it came back.”

Molly looked to the Doctor. “It came back after I got here,” she added. Something about this felt like it was her fault. A crack in the universe, and her falling through universes. It came back just after she arrived. There must be some sort of connection.

Eleven looked at her, and then to the Doctor. Maybe his other Companions wouldn’t have noticed – except River – but she’d studied his every expression on the screen for so long, she saw the slightest, fleetest change in the expression in the Doctor’s eyes. Don’t tell her, it seemed to say.

“Well,” said Eleven, almost cheerily, “I’m certain that’s a coincidence. You have nothing to do with Gallifrey, after all. You’re not even from the same universe.”

Molly sighed, knowing they were keeping something from her. Probably the same secret the Doctor had been keeping to himself for a while now. She could try to badger them into telling her, but there wasn’t time.

She glanced towards the door they came through, then swallowed. “Okay. The door is gone. Any other way out before the crack sucks us in and erases our existence? Anyone see another way out?”

“Door in the corner to the left,” said Eleven. Molly looked to it – it was literally in the corner, set up in a way that if the door could open, it would just lead to where the walls met.

“How are we supposed to-”

“Shhh,” said the Doctor, holding a finger up as he leaned in towards the crack. “I can hear something.”

Molly shut her mouth, closed her eyes, and even tried to slow her breathing so that she could hear whatever sound it was the Doctor was hearing, coming through the crack. She heard Eleven move closer to the crack, as well. It took a few seconds to make the jumbled sounds form words, but finally she recognized one. ‘Question’.

It was like an electric bolt through the room, and Molly now knew how that actually felt. The word ‘question’ through the crack. That could mean nothing good.

But it got worse. “Doctor who?” The volume of the words sounded like a whisper, though they were clearly spoken firmly and loudly. Perhaps it was more like the echo of something far away. “Doctor who? Doc…tor…who?”

A clatter of strange sounds came through next, disjointed, wordless. Still, Molly felt a chill. The oldest question in the universe. They were still asking. No wonder the Silence had returned.

The Doctor looked to Eleven, then they both looked back at her, clearly having come to some conclusion at the same time.

“What?” she asked as they stared.

“We need to talk to it,” whispered Eleven. “To try to get more information.”

“But it’ll recognize our voice,” the Doctor added, his voice also soft. “We don’t want them to know we’re here.”

Molly looked from their identical faces to the crack in the universe. “You want me to talk to them? It? Whatever.”

“You’re the diplomat,” the Doctor said, smiling. “You’re perfect.” Molly stared at him a moment, feeling the chill finally leaving her face. After a moment, she raised a brow. “…for this, I mean. For this.”

She sighed. This felt like a terrible idea. But that might be the fear at the thought of addressing a crack in the universe. “What do you want me to say?”

“Ask who it is.”

“Isn’t it Gallifrey?”

Eleven shook his head. “Sometimes it’s something else.”

“Right,” said Molly, remembering. “Like the Eleventh Hour.”

“Like…what, sorry?”

“When you first met Amy.”

Eleven nodded, and then looked to the Doctor. “That’s an incredibly odd feeling.”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said dismissively. He’d already experienced it a few times before, of course. “Go on, Molly. Please.”

Please. Well, then, she had to.

She cleared her throat, and took a tentative step closer to the crack, afraid to get too close. She leaned forward a little. “Hi. Um, hello, there. This is…” She thought that, maybe, she shouldn’t give her name, and chose not to finish that particular sentence. “Molly.” Oops. “Who is this?” Like she was answering a spam call on her phone.

There was the softest sound that she thought might be a word, but she couldn’t quite catch it. “Sorry, could you repeat that?” There was another sound, but the bits of syllables she caught sounded like a different word. “I’m not hearing you well. I’d like to help you, if you need help. Could you try telling me who you are, again? Or where you are?” There was another sound, and this time she caught the word ‘wash’. “Is your name Wash? Or…maybe you’re from…um, Washington?” The next sounds seemed to say ‘never again’.

She turned back to the Doctor and Eleven. “That almost sounds like a Welsh accent.”

“Maybe they’re saying they’re Welsh?”

“Could be. Try again,” encouraged Eleven.

She turned back to the crack. “Are you Welsh?” There was no reply. “Okay, I’m going to try calling you Wash for now. Wash, what do you mean ‘never again’? Is someone hurting you? Did something happen? Are you afraid?”

She listened for a while, letting the sounds continue until there was a dip. She’d caught ‘bright’, ‘rain’, ‘sky’. She couldn’t connect those words together. “Was there a storm?” she asked, but couldn’t make out an answer. “Some sort of…lit rain?”

‘Doctor’, it said, though its voice sounded deeper this time, and then there was another jumble, followed by ‘continues’. Molly turned back to the Doctor and Eleven again and whispered, “Sounds like whoever it is, they know you’re alive.”

“Could be,” agreed the Doctor.

“Don’t reply to that,” insisted Eleven. “We don’t know what’s on the other side.”

The Doctor reached into his coat and took the sonic out. Molly stood back, but Eleven grabbed his arm. “No. The Silence will sense it.” He looked back at the wall where the door had once been. “We’ve been here too long.”

The Doctor seemed hesitant to leave. Molly stepped back to the crack. “Wash, I have to go. Can you tell me where to find you?” After what sounded like static, the voice – now sounding more feminine - replied: ‘Space’.

“Well, good, that really narrows it down,” Eleven said dryly.

Molly agreed. “Any specifics?” But after listening for almost a minute, she couldn’t hear an answer.

“We need to leave,” Eleven reminded them. “They’ll be on us soon.”

“I really would like to…” began the Doctor, but then he looked over to Molly. He stared a moment, but this time Molly couldn’t read his eyes. “Of course. Yes. We should go.”

Eleven darted for the door. When he opened it, it went through the wall, like it was clipping in a video game. Behind was another room. The impossible physics made Molly dizzy, though she thought she should be used to it.

Through the door they found a small bar, with counters and a sink and a liquor cabinet behind it. Through the glass, she could see all the bottles were empty. She turned to see the rest of the room, which was

Molly was holding onto the bar. She looked over to the Doctor and Eleven, who were staring behind her. She turned and

She was facing the bar again, with her arm in front of her.

Don’t

Look Up

You Dumb Bitch

“There are Silence right behind us,” said Molly, keeping her eyes on the counter.

“Yeah,” said one of them, though she didn’t risk looking back to see which. “We can see them.”

“We need to get away,” she said. “Turn around and I’ll tell you about them again.”

“I’ve been trying to talk to them,” said one of the Doctors. “I need them to understand that I wouldn’t answer the question. That I won’t take that chance.” So, probably her Doctor.

“Any answers?”

“Not yet.”

“Why did I turn around?”

“Because one of us needs to remember this,” said one of the Doctors. “Actually…two of us should.” And she heard small steps as one of them turned around.

“Don’t turn around,” she told him.

“They’re behind us?”

“Yeah.”

“Brilliant.”

“Listen to me,” said the other. “Just – listen! It is too dangerous to bring Gallifrey back. There are thousands – hundreds of thousands – of Daleks on the surface. The Last Time War would just begin again. I know that better than anyone. It’s time you stopped – wait – what are you – don’t – Molly, MOVE!”

Molly dove to her left, and felt a cold sensation across her leg before turning her head and seeing

She was screaming. She didn’t know why yet, but she was screaming, and moving, though she wasn’t on her feet. It was ten eternally long seconds before she realized why she was screaming: the pain was unreal. It was like nothing she’d felt since the bullets tore holes in her body. An intense, searing, screaming pain shot through her body from her leg. A few seconds later, she narrowed it down to a length along the side of her left calf. Another second, and she felt the wetness leaking out, felt the top of her sock soaked with it.

Her mind couldn’t process words, though she heard them. It couldn’t even form words. All there was in her mind was agony. Nothing but the pain felt real. Nothing in the universe could matter in face of it.

She buried her head in the shoulder of someone, she wasn’t sure who, and tried to stop screaming. An instinctual part of her knew that if she kept screaming, she’d end up choking. If she kept screaming, she’d bring on whatever had hurt her and it would hurt her more.

Molly didn’t know how much time had passed before she was able to stop screaming and start absorbing other things. She was carried in someone’s arms, almost like a bride. Above her was a white ceiling. Ahead of her was someone else. Her ears were ringing.

She forced her mind to focus. The blazer of the person that held her was beige tweed. She tried to remember who that was, and what he was called. Her mind finally let her remember: Eleven. She turned her head, and saw purple running ahead of her. The Doctor.

The white ceiling disappeared and they were in darkness. Molly looked around. They were in another closet. Eleven set her down beside what looked to be a trap door.

Now she could see it. A large gash down her leg, wide and deep. Eleven and the Doctor were kneeling in front of her, and the Doctor took out a white handkerchief to wipe away some of the blood. In two wipes, it was completely red. The wound began gushing more blood, but for a moment, Molly swore she saw a white glimpse of bone.

She closed her eyes to spend a moment fighting back the urge to vomit. She clenched her hands into fists that quickly turned white as she involuntary made a long, deep sound, like holding a low note. She forcibly pulled oxygen into her lungs. The ringing was finally subsiding, and she was starting to understand words. But rather than listen, she formed them, forcing them through her throat and out her mouth.

“What…happened?” Her voice was nearly all air. Making her voice box vibrate took too much effort.

“I’ve never seen this before,” Eleven explained, quickly. “A Silent had a weapon on him.”

“I didn’t see it,” the Doctor gasped. Molly looked at his face and was only just able to register that he was crying.

“The armed Silent came at you,” Eleven continued. “The Doctor told me before he looked away. I don’t know why. There was no reason for it. They said – they told me they wouldn’t go after the Doctor’s companions, when they thought I was working with them to lay the trap, when I had the eye drive. They shouldn’t have…” By then, he’d pulled off the tweed and was pressing it against her leg. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

The I’m so sorry made her feel sick all over again. A chill came over her. Was this it? Was the injury so bad that she was going to die here? She looked back at it. There was so much blood, it covered all of her exposed skin on that leg, and some of the other. A pool was quickly forming around her leg. The blood was still thick and dark red as it gushed from the cut. But she thought it wasn’t much more than the bullet wounds had formed before the ambulance arrived, and she’d survived that.

The difference was, of course, that they were trapped in a shifting maze with creatures they couldn’t remember seeing coming after them. And with her hurt like this and unable to walk, they would be slowed down. Easier to catch.

“You should…leave me,” she said, before she even decided it.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” admonished the Doctor. He glanced behind them, making sure the Silence weren’t too close, she assumed, and then moved closer. “I would never leave you behind.” He looked over to Eleven. “That counts for both of us.”

Eleven looked up from his work pressing the tweed tight against the wound. “We won’t leave you here alone.”

“You’ll be…caught.”

Eleven nodded. “Yes. We will.”

He was certain of that. Molly shuddered. “You…can’t. You’re too…important.”

“You’re important,” they both insisted.

“Stop…being stupid. There’s…a difference. The universe…needs…you. I’m not…even meant…to be here.”

“Of course you’re meant to be here,” said Eleven. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be.”

Her Doctor moved a little closer, his gaze so intense that Molly couldn’t look away, or speak. The emotion in his eyes she couldn’t name, though she ran through every adjective she knew. This felt more than someone gazing into her soul, somehow deeper than that.

He spoke finally. “You are important. And I would never leave you. And I won’t let them hurt you again. I promise.”

She wanted to argue, but something in his words felt infinite and inevitable. She watched as he leaned back again, and uncovered her leg. He gave her one more glance, and then held his palms just above the gaping wound. She looked to Eleven to see if something in his expression told her what the Doctor was doing, but only saw an odd look of admiration and surprise on his face as he watched. She looked back to the Doctor, and opened her mouth to ask him instead.

And then came the golden light.

“No!” she shouted, now finding enough strength to use her voice. “Stop it!” He ignored her. “You stop it right now!” When he still didn’t respond, she pleaded with Eleven. “Stop him!”

Eleven shook his head. “It’s his regeneration energy. He can do what he likes with it. And I happen to agree with this use.”

Strange, that she hadn’t cried from the horrific injury, hadn’t cried when she insisted on being left to die so they could get away, but the tears were coming now. She’d learned, from the show, from the other fans, that there were consequences for burning up regeneration energy. The consequences could be catastrophic. “Doctor, please, stop,” she said. She placed a hand on the Doctor’s shoulder and tried to push him away, but knew she was too weak. All she could do was watch the golden light, and feel the warmth, and the odd sensation of a cut in reverse.

And then it was too late. The wound was closed.

Still crying, Molly made a fist and brought it down on the Doctor’s shoulder. “I told you to stop!”

“Why am I always getting hit for healing somebody?” the Doctor grumbled. But part of that enigma of an emotion was still in his eyes. “I wasn’t going to let you keep going with that injury. You’d be in enormous pain.”

Molly took a deep breath and tried to calm herself and make sense of this. “And it would slow us down.”

“Yes,” the Doctor agreed, but there was a note of frustration in his voice as he gestured to her leg and added, “And…you’d be in pain.”

Pain. Now the agony was gone, her mind began to bring up those memories she did her best to keep sealed. It wasn’t a flashback, but she remembered the red, she remembered the cuts, she remembered the smell of the blood. And she remembered the decaying corpses of the other women. The pain she’d just experienced was nothing compared to what they’d suffered. She understood better what it really was her father had done to them.

“Phoebe, Heather, Olivia, Eleanor, Nina, Ivy, Xyla,” she whispered, renewing her promise. She had to live. There was more good to be done out there.

“You need to keep moving,” Eleven insisted. He took her under her arms to help her get to her feet, and waited until she stopped swaying before letting go of her. Then he turned and opened the trap door. “Down you both go. I’ll be staying here.”

Molly stared. “Wait…what?”

“You don’t need to do this,” the Doctor said. Of course, he already knew what Eleven was thinking.

“Yes, I do,” Eleven replied. “They’re too close behind us. We risk them turning us against each other every time we see them. I’ll hold them off as long as I can, and hopefully you two will make it back to the TARDIS.”

“No,” insisted the Doctor. “Not again. You’re not doing this again.”

“We should all go together,” Molly insisted. She took his arm and tried to move him towards the ladder down. “Come on. The longer we stay here and argue the more likely it is they’ll find us.”

Eleven smiled at her. She didn’t like the hint of sad farewell in it. “You might be stubborn, but I’m stubborner…er.” He paused a moment to reflect on the new word he’d accidentally invented. “And you’re right. There’s no time.”

“Because I slowed us down,” said Molly. “You’re not staying behind because I slowed us down.”

“Hey,” he said, placing a hand on either side of her face. “You didn’t slow us. They did. You did nothing wrong.”

She took his hands from her face and held them tight, and again tried to direct him to the ladder. “Neither did you. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice yourself.”

“I set a trap for you. For both of you,” Eleven said, glancing towards the Doctor. “Even though I always intended to betray them, I still made it. I still lured you here. I should have just let them keep…” He couldn’t finish the sentence.

Molly could see the word ‘torture’ in his eyes. “That doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t,” the Doctor agreed, approaching Eleven. “You can’t ask me to leave you behind again.”

Eleven smiled grimly. “Good thing I’m not asking.” He gripped the Doctor’s shoulder. “Now get going, before I throw you both down.”

“No,” insisted Molly, wrapping her arms around his shoulders and pulling him close. He may not be the Doctor she’d been traveling with, may not be the Doctor she knew from the show after the episode where he was born, but he was still the Doctor. And she couldn’t stand her heart being broken watching someone she cared about die again. “You’re coming with us.”

She felt him pat the back of her head. “No. I’m not.” He took her shoulders and pushed her away. “It’s been an honor meeting you, Molly Quinn. And seeing you again, Doctor,” he added, looking back to the Doctor. “And it’s an honor to save your lives. Because you both are not so cruel as to make me watch you die because I lured you here.”

Molly placed a hand on either side of his face. “You didn’t lure us. They did. You did nothing wrong.” She hoped he’d understand that better if she used his own words.

He smiled again, a little less grimly. “Thanks for that,” he said. He kissed the top of her head, and pushed her towards the ladder. His next words were firmer. “Go. I mean it. Go.”

The Doctor stepped forward. “You might survive,” he said, and Molly saw him recognize the familiarity of those words.

“If I do, I’ll know how to find you,” Eleven said. “Now go do what we do best. Grab your companion and run.”

There was no convincing him, and that hurt deeply. Molly grabbed Eleven’s hand. “Get out of this alive,” she commanded. “You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, using his other hand to salute her.

She stepped forward and kissed his cheek, then winked at him when she caught him blush. “See you later.”

“I’ll see you later,” he replied, a fondness in his voice.

Molly began down the ladder, but heard the Doctor speak above her. “Take the sonic. I used it to hold back the Silent with the weapon coming for me next, using a high pitch to disorient him. At least, that’s what you told me I said. You could try the same thing. I’ll make another one.”

“I will,” said Eleven. “Thanks, Doctor.”

“You better obey Molly. She’s pretty pushy about that sort of thing. If you die she might summon you and give you a talking to.”

“I’ll do my best.”

And then the Doctor was following her down the ladder.

She watched as the Doctor descended, and looked back up. There she saw Eleven. He gave her a wave with the hand that held the sonic. She waved back, and then he disappeared.

The Doctor took her arm. “We have to go. We have to move. We have to…to go.” His voice dropped with every insistence. He sounded as ready to run as she did: not at all.

Molly looked back up at the trapdoor, which Eleven had closed. In her mind swirled images: her mother, covered in blood, just like she was now, like there had been on Eleven’s hands as he tried to keep her from bleeding out. Her mother spitting the blood out, and, she knew now, telling her to run. And then herself, running up the basement steps.  Dalek Sec, pulling her from the corridor into the relative safety of the secondary control room. Eleven carrying her away from the Silence. Dalek Sec’s two shadows. His insistence on them leaving him behind. Eleven insisting they leave him behind. The fire that consumed Dalek Sec. The closed trap door. The basement door swinging closed behind her.

“We can’t leave him,” Molly said, pulling from the Doctor and grabbing the ladder. “We have to get him to come with us.”

“We can’t,” said the Doctor. He fought with her to force her to release her grip on the ladder. “It’s too late. We have to run.”

“No, we can’t leave him behind,” she said, trying to get a foot on the ladder. “We can’t just abandon him to his death. We can’t do that. We don’t do that.”

“Molly,” the Doctor said firmly, yanking her away from the ladder. “It’s too late.”

“It’s not,” she insisted, the calm in her voice sounding strange, even to herself. She tried to use her other leg to launch herself up the ladder and away from the Doctor’s grip, but he just pushed her back down with a hand on her shoulder. “Stop it. We have to get him. We can’t leave him to die.”

“Molly. It’s too late. We have to go.” He wrapped his arms around her middle and started to lift her off the ladder.

She shrieked, and clung to it with all her might. “No!” The desperation was finally showing in her voice. “No! No! We can’t leave him behind! We can’t run and leave him to die! I won’t leave him to die alone! I won’t leave her to die alone! I won’t leave her!”

He finally yanked so hard that her fingers slipped from the metal. “Molly, I know. I know. This is harder for you than for almost anyone,” he muttered softly in her ear. “He isn’t your mother. He is choosing this. He is trying to save our lives. Let him save us.”

“We have to save her!” she screamed, though she knew she was supposed to be saying ‘him’. “We have to save her!”

“We can’t let him die in vain.”

“We can’t let her die!” Molly knew something was wrong. She was drowning. It wasn’t like when a flashback combined with her reality, not like being in that basement again, but the emotions of both were combining in her head and confusing her. She took a gasp and heard the tears in the sound. “You have to force to me to leave, Doctor. I can’t stop. I can’t stop myself.” But still she continued to fight him to reach the ladder.

It was cruelty, she knew, to take this moment of regret and sadness from him. It was the Doctor who had already had to leave Eleven behind once. This should have been his moment of misery, and she was stealing it. But she couldn’t stop it.

“Okay, Molly. Come on,” he said, and she felt him taking steps back, with his arms still tight around her. “He might survive still. He survived before, he could again. We have to find the TARDIS or none of us will get out alive.”

“I know,” she said. “I know. I know. I just…can’t do this again.”

“I understand. I really do.” Still her pulled her back. “We have to. It’s his best chance, too.”

“Alright. Okay. I can do this. I can do this.” She took a deep breath, and closed her eyes to block the image of the ladder. “You can let go now.”

She felt his arms slip from around her waist, and she turned to face him. She imagined the tears in his eyes matched hers. She looked behind him, and saw a door that looked like the door to an apartment.

The door to her apartment in New York.

“Okay, that’s weird, don’t like that,” she muttered, and indicated to the door with a nod of her head.

The Doctor turned and looked. “Oh. Well. Makes sense. He built this place with images. He must have slipped this one in. I would’ve.”

She stared at the door. “I don’t want to touch it. You understand why.” She still remembered how her blood had stained the floor beneath it. The landlord hadn’t been happy with her.

The Doctor nodded and moved forward, and opened the door. Thankfully, the other side wasn’t her old living room, with the beige dumpster chair and the wobbly coffee table and blue couch with holes covered in duct tape. Instead, it was a dining room, with a circular table and yellow chairs around it, a white rug underneath.

Molly followed the Doctor in. A door to the left, a door to the right. “Which one?”

“Uh,” the Doctor started. He looked right, then left. “I’ll try that one, you try the other.”

Molly ran for the door on the right and swung it open. A sauna. “Dead end.”

“Here, too,” said the Doctor. Molly turned. A pantry.

“Okay, I guess we go in and look for a fake door?”

“Both in the same room. Just in case,” said the Doctor. “I don’t want to get separated again.”

Molly nodded and joined him in the pantry, but they found nothing. They had the same issue in the sauna.

“This is now a problem,” she said.

The Doctor turned to the dining table. “Maybe another trap door under the rug?”

They shifted the table together and then pulled the chairs aside, then threw aside the rug. Nothing but solid wood.

Molly felt panic creeping in. “What do we do?”

The Doctor was rubbing his hands together, spinning around the room. “No doors. No sonic. No TARDIS. I’m…at a bit of a loss, here,” he admitted. He turned and stared at the wall behind the table. “Alright. Time to test the theory.”

“What theory?”

“That if we believe we can, we can walk through walls.”

She looked at the wall. “I don’t like that plan.”

“Well, what’s yours? I’d love to hear it.” The words felt sarcastic, but the tone was genuine.

Of course, she didn’t have one. “After you, I guess.”

The Doctor nodded. “Right. Okay. Well. Geronimo.” He walked firmly towards the wall, and banged his head into it.

“Any other ideas?”

“Hold on. Shut up. Give me a minute.” Molly watched as he stepped back, and did a few stretches as though preparing for a workout. “Alright, going again.” He turned and walked, and went straight through. The wall rippled around him like water.

Molly ran up to the wall and knocked. “Doctor? Are you there?” There was no response. “Great,” she sighed. Now she had to do it herself.

She thought she remembered something in a Harry Potter movie like this. She hadn’t really been paying attention. James had it on during a Halloween party, and she’d been busy fighting with him. Still, she distinctly had the image of a kid running through a brick wall.

“Confidently,” she reminded herself as anxiety built in her stomach. “The house isn’t real. The wall isn’t real.” She closed her eyes. “The house isn’t real. The wall isn’t real. It’s just a simple fact. Nothing to be surprised about.”

She pressed a hand to the wall, and it was solid. The anxiety grew. What if she couldn’t make it to the Doctor? What if he waited for her for too long, and got caught? What if the Silence were right behind her?

She turned quickly, and saw and empty room, then turned back to the wall, relieved to feel no gaps in her memory.

The house wasn’t real. The walls weren’t really around her. She closed her eyes again, and listened. She could hear the breeze, the shifting of leaves, the birds. She was in that field. So she walked forward through it.

She opened her eyes and gasped with relief when the Doctor was there. “Wow, I hated that,” she commented.

“Me, too,” he said, then pointed behind himself. “I looked ahead a bit. The kitchen is just behind us. Let’s run for it.”

Molly nodded, and he grabbed her hand. They ran down the corridor, and Molly recognized the stock images on the wall. A sharp left turn, and they were in the white kitchen again. She felt disoriented as she realized that they should have been standing in the entry, but in a house like this, that didn’t really matter.

“The TARDIS has never looked so beautiful,” she said, running up to it and pressing a kiss against the wood.

“Agreed. She’s absolutely gorgeous right now,” said the Doctor behind her. “You unlock her. I’ll keep a look out.”

Molly nodded and pulled the key out. She was shaking with both fear and joy and fumbled the attempt a few times, but finally got the key into the lock, and turned it. She swung the door open. “Okay! Let’s get out of this unfun fun house!”

She ran inside, and felt the Doctor follow behind her. He shut the door behind them as Molly ran up to the console. “Can you do a search for life signs? Can we see if he’s still alive?”

“Already on it!” shouted the Doctor, reaching the console a half second later. He moved so fast his hands were a blur, and Molly’s heart raced as she watched him work. She found herself doing what she’d done as a child when she really, really wanted something, and crossed all her fingers, crossed her arms, and crossed her ankles. Please, she begged whatever power it was that had sent her to this universe. Please.

The Doctor’s face fell, and her heart broke. “Nothing. No life signs left.”

Molly stepped forward. “What if…maybe the parameters just need to be extended a bit? You don’t see the Silence either, and they’re there.” She hoped she didn’t sound like an idiot.

He shook and then hung his head. “No. I’m sorry, Molly. We’re too late. He’s gone.”

Molly felt her lip tremble as she fought tears. “If I…” she cleared her throat. “If I hadn’t wasted so much time trying to get back up the ladder…maybe we would have-”

He looked up at her, his eyes soft. “Don’t do that. It’s not your fault. He made his choice. All we can do is honor it, and move forward.” He moved again, flipping a few switches.

Molly moved around the center console to stand beside him. “What are you doing?”

“Getting us out of here,” he responded. “No need to stick around and see what the Silence do to try to get inside.”

Molly nodded, and gripped the edge of the console as the TARDIS moved. “Are you…okay?” It felt ridiculous to say. Of course he wasn’t okay.

The Doctor sighed. “No. Yes. I don’t know,” he replied. “We got away, you and I. And…he died for me. Again.”

“And me,” she added.

“And you,” the Doctor added, then he smiled over at her. “Knowing him like I do, I know he was happy to risk it to save Molly Quinn.”

Molly felt the urge to roll her eyes every time the Doctor suggested she’d been so important to him before she got here – even though he’d been important to her – came and passed quickly. She wouldn’t dismiss Eleven’s sacrifice like that. “It still…feels…” ‘Bad’ wasn’t quite a strong enough word.

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed. He reached out for the controls, but didn’t quite touch them. He held his hands over them, waiting, and his eyes held a strange, sad sort of awe. Molly thought about all the times recently he’d almost lost the TARDIS. “So. What’s our next adventure?”

Molly felt hesitant. “Are you sure you’re ready for that? Already?”

“I…I need to think about something else, for a little while. I can’t…” he let the sentence drift.

“Yeah, I get that,” responded Molly. “But you just saw yourself die…again. Are you sure…?”

He nodded. “Very sure.”

She didn’t want to do this yet, but knew that she owed him. He needed to react to this the way he needed to react to this. “Well,” she began. “I’m still concerned, but…you know yourself best.”

“Oh, I’ll be fine,” he said.

“Yeah?” 

“Trust me,” he said, and looked over at her with a wink. “I’m the Doctor.”

Chapter Text

What Dreams May Come

Chapter Thirty-One

Doctor 2.0

Trust me. I’m the Doctor.

The Doctor. Molly knew he wasn’t ready for any serious conversation, but before they moved on to the next adventure, there was something that she needed to say.

“Doctor,” she began, and then hesitated, uncertain how to continue.

“Yes?” He stopped in his work, and turned toward her. “Molly Quinn?”

She smiled a little at her full name. “I just needed to say…” There was so much that needed saying. So many feelings mixed up in her head, multiple reasons her heart was thudding in her chest. But there was the truest sentiment above it all that summed the rest into two, neat words: “Thank you.”

 “For what?”

“‘For what’?” she repeated, incredulously. “For saving my life. You sacrificed your regeneration energy for me.”

“Oh. Well. It’s nothing.” He turned and began walking around the console, but she grabbed his wrist to stop him from walking away.

“It’s not nothing. It’s…” She was at a loss for words. Once upon a time, that never happened to her. Around him, it seemed to happen all the time. “It’s not just that you saved my life. You’ve saved my life a lot, lately. But…what you did…burning off your regeneration energy to save me…that’s something. That’s a lot of something.” She moved around him so she could look him in the eye. “I remember you did that for River, on the show. And she got angry, and I never fully understood why until you did it for me. It feels so much bigger now, so much more important, that use of regeneration energy. According to the show, it’s going to cost you in some way, and I didn’t want that. But I’m sorry I got angry, I am. I just understand River getting angry a little better.” She sighed. “I know, back at the beginning, after our fight, you said you’d protect me, and now that you know what happened you know how important that was to me. And then you did this, sacrificing something important to help me, and I just needed you to know how much that means to me, separate from just saving my life. We’re already best friends and all, but this really feels like our friendship is deeper for me, somehow. I don’t know how to explain it.” It was like he should be a permanent fixture in her life now, but that wasn’t possible. She ran her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know. I’m making a disaster of this. I just wanted to say thank you, in a deep, meaningful way, but deep isn’t really my thing.”

His smile was fond. “I think you’re doing just fine,” he replied. “And I’m very, very glad we’re best friends.”

It wasn’t much of a reply compared to her waterfall of words, but maybe it was better that it was so simple. She’d learned that the slightest praise or appreciation from him could be overwhelming, for one. For another, that he was willing to do that for her was such a simple thing to him made it mean even more to her. That in itself was overwhelming.

Time to shrink him down again. “I mean, the TARDIS is still my best best friend, but you’re definitely in permanent second place.”

“Oi,” he objected. “That’s not fair. It’s not like the TARDIS chats with you.” He paused, and looked confused for a moment. He leaned in to whisper, “Does the TARDIS chat with you?”

Molly laughed, shaking her head. “No. No, she doesn’t. But she still makes what she thinks pretty clear.” Of course, thus far, what the TARDIS seemed to think was that she was a slob who made a decent messenger service and someone in need of judgmental looks to keep her from invading the Doctor’s privacy, but so long as Molly kept complimenting her, she felt sure she’d win the TARDIS over. After all, she’d also given her a dance studio. Maybe the rest was just how the TARDIS teased her, the way Molly teased the Doctor.

“Right,” said the Doctor with a smile. “Well. Where do you want to go?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know. Somewhere space-y.” She paused. “I mean, not literal space, given, you know…” She paused, assuming the pause would tell him enough.

“Given…?”

 “You know, the terrified of space thing.”

“Terrified of space thing. Right. Spaceship, but you’re terrified of space. I know.” He spun around the console, taking a close look at the controls. “Then what did you mean by ‘space-y’?”

“Like a planet or something. I don’t know about any of them, so you’ll have to pick. Again.” Someday, she’d figure out a good place to ask to visit. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d requested a place since the 90s. Was the roller-skating her idea?

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m good at picking,” he said, rubbing his hands together. The excitement in his eyes seemed even more intense than it had been lately. “Anything particular you want to see?”

“Hmmm.” She turned and leaned against one of the railings, stepping around the cards still left on the floor to get there, and looked up at the spinning Gallifreyan and the light of the TARDIS. “Maybe another place where we can interact with the animals? I know I was a bit freaked out at first, but I think I’m more ready for them now.” She liked animals, but the safari on Hatch had been a little concerning at the start. She remembered all the stories of people on safaris at home who got attacked by something or other for doing something stupid, and she was well renowned for doing something stupid.

The Doctor snapped his fingers and pointed at her with a grin. “I have the perfect place,” he said, turning to begin inputting the coordinates into the TARDIS.

“Where to?”

“Hatch!” He exclaimed. “You can go on a little safari, filled with wild animals who really enjoy being pet.”

Molly felt a crease form between her brows. “We already did Hatch. That’s what I was talking about.”

The Doctor froze for the briefest second, then smiled back at her. “Well, of course we did. Silly me.” He ran a hand down his face. “I’m getting old. Mind’s starting to go. How about Everywhere? It has a little bit of various places on Earth throughout time, and bits of other planets, too. They have a petting zoo with over fifty kinds of goats.”

Hatch. Everywhere. Something was wrong. Trust me, I’m the Doctor.

Molly’s stomach dropped, and she felt a sharp pain in her chest as her heart literally skipped a beat. Trust me, I’m the Doctor. The words kept bouncing around in her head. I’m the Doctor. I’m the Doctor. I’m the Doctor.

She smiled, and crossed her fingers behind her back. This lie had to go well. It had to. She had to know. “You know what, actually? You promised me a rainstorm on D’Gups Alpha, remember? You said it was really pretty, and I want a storm to run through. I love the feel of rain.” She got away with it, likely because most of it was truth.

“Right you are! Rainstorm on D’Gups Alpha,” he began inputting the new coordinates. “Funny name. Did I ever tell you about it?”

She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t scream. She couldn’t scream. “No, no. No, you didn-” Her voice was shaking so hard it failed. She cleared her throat and tried again. “You didn’t tell me. You should tell me. Now.”

He looked up at her, and she imagined he could see the scream in her body language, the way she was tense but her hands trembled, the way she leaned into the rail to get as much space between them as possible, the way her eyes were wide, the way she bit at the skin on her bottom lip.

He sighed heavily. “We already did D’Gups Alpha, didn’t we?”

“Yeah.” She barely heard the word herself.

“And Everywhere?”

“Yeah.”

“Course we did,” he said, sounding disappointed. “We’re the same person. We’d have the same ideas for places to take you.”

Trust me, I’m the Doctor. But he wasn’t the Doctor.

“Where’s the Doctor?” Molly had wanted it to sound like a demand, but it came out as a pleading whisper.

“I’m the Doctor.”

 “You know what I mean. The real Doctor.”

“I’m the real Doctor,” he insisted, now walking around the console to stand across from her. He had the decency to keep a few feet between them, but she still inched a few steps to the side, further from him. “The moment I set foot on the TARDIS, I stopped being Flesh. I’m a real, proper flesh and blood Time Lord now. The real Doctor.”

“You’re not the real Doctor,” Molly insisted. She felt sick with fear, but her mind was providing her with anger to help her through it. “You know who I mean.”

“I am the Doctor,” he insisted, but he didn’t sound hurt or angry. He was happy.  “I am just as much the Doctor as he was! In fact, I’m better. New and improved!” He shouted as he spun around. “Doctor 2.0.”

“‘Was’? Is he dead?” There was the demanding tone she’d been looking for. The trembling was even starting to fade. “Did you kill him?”

His enthusiasm faded instantly, and she swore his skin went a shade paler. “I didn’t kill him.”

“Is he dead?”

“…I didn’t kill him.”

“Is he dead?” And there it was, finally. The rage, there to protect her from the agonizing pain that hung over her head. A rage that commanded he answer.

But he didn’t. He stared, he swallowed, his mouth opened, but no sound came out. That was enough for her. The fury exploded in her head, and her vision went red.

It only took two strides to reach him. She didn’t even register her arm going back until her fist connected with the side of his face with all the force she had in her.

Her shout of pain matched his. Sharp, burning pain extended down her knuckles and through her wrist, even travelling up her arm to her shoulder. It throbbed as she turned and walked away, gasping. She really should learn how to throw a proper punch.

“That’s okay,” she heard him gasp. She glanced back to see him bracing against one of the side consoles, holding his face. The very sight of him disgusted her, and she turned away, though he continued to speak. “It’s okay. Knew you’d be mad if you figured it out. Feel better?”

“Do I feel better?!” she screamed, and the harshness of it against her throat reminded her of the screams in the basement. Screams this pretender didn’t know about.

“I’m guessing not.”

Molly spun around to face him, clutching her hurt hand in the other, though the pressure made it ache all the more. “Are you fucking kidding me?!”

“Now, Molly-”

“Shut the absolute, ever-loving fuck up!”

His expression shifted to something angrier. This wasn’t quite as frightening as the Doctor had been when she’d first arrived, but he was clearly losing patience. “That’s enough, Molly.”

“It’s nowhere near enough!” She should have been afraid, but she clung to the anger like a life raft. A single crack, and the despair would come through like a broken dam, and she couldn’t afford that now. “You’re a murderer!”

“I’m not a murderer. I didn’t kill him.”

“You left him to die. That’s the same thing,” she said. A flash of memory in her head, sitting on the bed while the Doctor explained to her that she’d done exactly what her mother had wanted. “You arranged for him to die.”

“That was them,” he insisted. He took a step closer, and she took two steps back. “That wasn’t me! I didn’t choose that! I know you think I’m a monster now, but I’m still the Doctor. I wouldn’t have done it if there was any other choice.”

“There was,” she said firmly. “You could have refused.”

“I couldn’t,” he said, his voice softer now, the anger fading a little to a quiet despair. “It had to stop. It had to end. I couldn’t let it continue. If I could have died instead, I would have, but they wouldn’t let me die. They just kept bringing me back and starting the torture all over again.”

More flashes. Cut off fingers and ears, skin peeled away, finger nails missing, needles stuck underneath eyelids. A waterfall of red.

She felt sick at the thought. He’d been there for so long, and at the mercy of the torture devices at the disposal of the Church of the Silence. It must have been so much more advanced, so much worse. How could she blame him for needing to make it end? Molly would have done anything to make it end, and she hadn’t even been the one being tortured.

Anything, except maybe killing an innocent person. As sorry as she was for Eleven, she couldn’t forget that. “What did they offer you?”

She saw his jaw work side to side for a moment, and then he gestured around them. “This. The TARDIS. A companion. Being the Doctor again. Though my memories feel as real to me as his did, I was only able to actively be the Doctor for such a short while.” He paused, looking at the blue-green light in the center of the console. “I thought that, at least this way, the universe still has a Doctor. It’s better than the alternative – the Silence killing both of us, and there being no Doctor at all. Because if they killed him somewhere else, without my help, I would have been next.” He looked back to her. “It was the best option I had. I had to take it. I had no choice.”

“There’s always a choice,” she muttered, but she had to admit to herself that if it weren’t for the murdering the Doctor part, she might have seen his logic. Murdering. “Tell me straight. Is the Doctor dead?” His gaze shifted away from her, and she stepped back into his line of sight. “Look me in the eyes and tell me if the Doctor is dead.”

He swallowed, and tangled his fingers together before closing his eyes and taking a breath. When he released it, he pressed his hands flat together and opened his eyes. “Yes. He’ll be dead by now.”

The room was colder than when she’d first arrived and it pricked at her skin. She reached for a life raft again, now hope instead of anger. “Did you see him die?”

“No, but that doesn’t matter,” he said, his voice soft. He took a step closer and she chose to stand her ground. As he spoke, there was an apologetic note. “You were trapped in that room with no doors. I knew – because of course I did – that the Doctor would go through the wall first, to be certain it was safe. As soon as he stepped through, I injected him with a strong sedative, and switched clothes. The Silence took him after that. They don’t need him alive. They only need him dead.”

She turned and stalked around the console, the way the Doctor used to, her hands behind her back, her mind racing for another possibility. “Okay. Okay. Or maybe, they wanted to see what information he has on the crack, on why it’s back. Or where River is. He could be alive right now. He could…” But she wasn’t sure what else there was. He didn’t have the TARDIS. He didn’t have the sonic. He didn’t have her.

“If that’s true, then he’s worse than dead. Believe me, I know better than anyone what they’re capable of. They didn’t even do to River what they did to me, they couldn’t, she would have run out of regenerations and died.” He stepped around the console so she had to look at him again. “I know how hard it is. I know. But it’s better to hope he’s dead.”

“You don’t know!” She was back to anger now. “You don’t! You don’t know anything!” She wished she had something to throw; if she’d been on the other side of the console, she might’ve grabbed the Octospanner. “You don’t know who I really am, or what I’ve been through, or what he means to me. He’s all I have in the whole universe, all I have in this universe and in mine.” She felt herself shaking from head to toe, and knew her legs would collapse only a second before it happened. She grabbed the console to hold herself up. Somehow the switches and buttons and controls she couldn’t begin to describe felt lonely. “I’m really alone now. Really and completely alone.”

“No, you’re not,” Eleven said, stepping closer. He could reach out and touch her now, and she almost wished he would so she’d have an opportunity to break a finger or two. “I’m here.”

She hoped he saw the hatred in her glare. Or at least how shattered she felt, the sharp pieces of her heart and soul piercing her skin from the inside. The safety and protection she’d finally found ripped away like a scab, leaving her bleeding. The Doctor, dead. “You made me an accomplice in stealing the TARDIS and now you’re kidnapping me. That’s not exactly the same as not being alone.”

“Molly…” His fingers went to his temples for a moment and he squeezed his eyes tight. Molly had learned this gesture by watching the Doctor in person. It was one of the little things she’d learned about him, that sometimes when frustrated he looked as though he had a migraine. It was a very human gesture, too. “I wish you’d try to understand. I didn’t have a choice. The torture wouldn’t end until I agreed. You don’t know what it’s like, to experience that, knowing that there is no end until you agree to kill the only person in the universe who knows you just as well as you know yourself.” He reached a hand towards her, but rested it on the console. “I know who he is. I know letting them kill him was failing to save an innocent person, again. Failing to save a heroic person, again. If you’ve seen my life the way I’ve seen yours, you know that if there had been another way to make it stop, any other way, I would have. But the universe needs the Doctor, and I am the only Doctor left.”

Molly turned away from him, walking to the railing she’d sat on while the Doctor started to teach her to say good morning in his own language. A memory Eleven would never share. “You could have done something else. You could have sent a warning along with the coordinates.”

“They would have known. They would have left, taking me with them, and tried again. The torture would have continued. This was inevitable, from the moment they brought me back.”

“There had to be something.” The broken parts of her were starting to show in her voice. She felt that awful void closing in on her the way it had when she’d thought the Angels had taken him. “You could have warned him when we met.”

“And they would have killed us both. There would have been no Doctor for the universe,” he said. She heard him just behind her. “There would have been no Doctor for you.”

“There is no Doctor for me.” She lowered her head and rested it against the top of the railing as she fought back the sobs. She couldn’t do that yet. She had to face Eleven. She had to find a new path in life. Completely alone.

“I could be,” Eleven insisted. “I’m here. I’m the Doctor, too. You may not know me personally like you did him, but you will. We can still travel together. It’ll be grand,” he added with thin enthusiasm, like an afterthought he knew would never convince her.

She made a decision about her path. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to him. It took her some time to see his earnest yet concerned expression through the veil of tears in her eyes. Ever the crybaby. “I want to go home.”

His face fell. “I…I can’t get you home.”

“You can,” she repeated, her voice firmer. “The Star-Echo lab. They found a way to get me home. We decided I should stay a little longer. I have no reason to now.”

She saw the anxiety in the way his hands moved together. “You could stay. You could give me a chance to prove I’m still the Doctor,” he pleaded, but there was a resignation behind it. “We could be as close as you were with him. Closer. I could know you as a real person.”

Molly shook her head. “No.” She forced a step closer. “I know you feel you had no choice. And I know better than you think how hard it is to withstand torture. If I were a better person, maybe I’d be able to forgive you. But I can’t. It’s best for both of us if I go home, and you find someone else to travel with. Because you, especially this you, should never travel alone.”

His eyes closed again, but she heard the sigh of disappointment. “Yes. Alright. That’s understandable.” He turned back to the controls. “We’ll get you home.” She watched as he stepped around the playing cards and began his work on the console.

Summoning every ounce of grace and quick, gliding, silent movement she had ever learned in all her years in ballet, Molly moved forward, bent down, and picked up the Octospanner. She raised it over her head as she took another half step closer. Every muscle in her body was tense, and she felt like the string of a bow pulled back and ready to be released.

Then hesitation filled her. Could she really do this? She knew it wouldn’t kill him. And all she needed was a few moments. She wasn’t a particularly violent person, but she’d already hit him once. This wasn’t much more than that, not for him.

She remembered the Doctor, and that was enough to bring back her rage. She brought the Octospanner down on his head as hard as she could, then dropped it, turned, and ran.

She heard him shout in pain, and then slip on the playing cards and hit the ground. She thanked whatever lucky stars might exist that the Doctor – her Doctor, anyway – was always clumsy.

As she ran down the hall at full speed, past her room and the studio, she tried to review her plan in her head. Step one: Hit Eleven over the head and buy enough time to run away. Step two: Run away. Step three: …there hadn’t really been a ‘step three’. She just knew she had to get away from him. Had to buy some time to think. Had to hold on to the idea that maybe, somehow, despite the horde of Silence around him, despite the flytrap house and the lack of even a screwdriver, her Doctor was still alive.

Maybe she could circle around somehow. Get back to the controls. Convince the TARDIS that this wasn’t really the Doctor, and they needed to go back for him. Let the TARDIS help her fly it again. But she had no idea how to get back except straight the way she came, and she knew Eleven would be coming up behind her at any moment.

Seeing a familiar doorway, she dodged left and into the library. Maybe she could hide in here long enough for him to go by. It felt a little too Game of Thrones for her, but it was something, at least. And if he’d seen her, she could hide among the shelves.

She turned left again, running down the rows of shelves, further in than she’d ever gone. Thankfully, the library was expansive, with rows upon rows of shelves, multiple sitting areas, tables, levels, even balconies. There were plenty of places to hide.

Which was perfect, because she heard Eleven’s footsteps behind her. He must have followed after her faster than she’d expected, and spotted her ahead going into the room. She’d been quite far ahead, at least, so she didn’t think he saw her making her way through the library. Still, she slowed her steps, being as silent as she could again so he couldn’t follow the sound.

Turning left again – so she could circle her way out if she needed to – she found a little space between shelves she could squeeze into and crouch down. She didn’t love the idea of making it harder for her to run if he found her, but it was better than standing and letting him see her clearly if he walked by. She cursed the red hair that made her easy to spot.

When she heard his footsteps approaching, she held her breath and tried to pull herself further into the shadows. She wasn’t sure what he would do if he found her. He was the Doctor, so maybe nothing. But he’d also been tortured for ages, tricked her Doctor to his death, and possibly was a little insane, and she’d attacked him. She didn’t want to find out what he would do.

The footsteps moved away, and she breathed again. She hoped she could stay there until she heard his footsteps leaving, but since he knew she’d hidden in there, he might not leave until he searched every inch, unless he heard her leaving. Was there a way to make it sound like she was leaving, but stay behind, without being spotted? She supposed she could throw a book, but it would land too close to her, and wouldn’t sound enough like a footstep. She could throw a shoe far enough, but what if he found it? He’d know she was still in there, and she’d only have one shoe.

No, she seemed to be trapped. She’d have to wait until she heard him far enough away to make a break for it.

It didn’t take long. She heard his footsteps going up stairs some ways across from her, and leaned forward and out of her hiding spot to try to get a peek at how far away the door out was. She could see the light coming from it, but she wanted a way there through the shadows of the shelves, rather than out in the open.

She heard his steps stop, and immediately pulled herself back into the spot. She glanced upwards, and could just see one of his arms and shoulders above and across from her, on a balcony. Smart. Of course he was smart. He went up to get a better look. She hoped the shelves obscured her enough.

“Molly?” she heard his voice echo. “I know you’re scared. I know you’re hurting. Please, come out. Let me help you.” He paused, and she saw his arm shift some. He must have been leaning to look at the left side of the room. “You wanted to go home. I can do that. I can get you home.” His arm shifted again, so now he must have been looking to the right, towards the door. “What’s the point of this, Molly? Why are you running? You can’t believe I’m going to hurt you. You know he wouldn’t; you must know I wouldn’t, either.”  She saw his grip adjust on the railing. He was leaning forward now. She retreated as far back as she could. “It’s really me, Molly. I’m really the Doctor. Not the one you’ve travelled with so far, but still the same man. You have to believe me. Please.”

The pleading in his voice told her what she hoped was valuable information: he needed her to believe he was the Doctor, because he needed to believe he was still the Doctor, himself. He doubted it, now that he’d done what the Doctor would never do. He needed someone who knew what he’d done to assure him that he was still the Doctor. Maybe she could use that.

She didn’t have time to think about how. A second later, his head turned, and she saw one of his eyes. He leaned to the side and she saw his face, and they locked eyes for a moment.

Heart thudding in her throat, she launched herself to her feet and took the most direct path to the door, ignoring the shouts of her name behind her. The running and the fear and the grief all worked together to steal the air from her lungs, but she made it out the door before he’d made it down the stairs. She looked right, but knew that if he heard her running that way, he’d know she was headed back to the main control room. She had to lose him first.

She turned left and ran as fast as she could, taking every turn she could find. She couldn’t hear him behind her anymore, and she thought that maybe he’d already turned back and would be waiting for her by the circular console. But maybe she’d just lost him in the turns. She was lost, for sure, and hoped the TARDIS would help her find her way back somehow. She just had to convince the TARDIS that this wasn’t the real Doctor.

After watching his episodes, she hated thinking of him as ‘not the real Doctor’. But it was true. The real Doctor wouldn’t have tricked himself into dying.

Dying. Dying. Dying. She held tight to her disbelief. Even if it was just denial of reality, it kept her from collapsing in despair. She couldn’t do that, not yet. He could still be alive.

Ahead she saw an orange, shifting light, and it took her a moment to see the door with the light shifting inside the window. She peeked inside and saw it: the Eye of Harmony. The engineered star that powered the TARDIS.

A few minutes inside would burn her up. So he would never expect her to run that way.

She took off her shoe and sock and stuffed her sock inside and launched it down the hall, so he would run that way after her. Or, she hoped he would. Then she pulled the door open, grateful it was unlocked, and stepped inside. She closed the door behind her as quietly as she could, hoping Eleven wouldn’t hear, even if he was somehow still just behind her. Then she turned around.

The heat was almost unbearable. It hit her like a tidal wave, with extreme force that almost made it feel solid, but wrapping around her, sucking the oxygen from her lungs, almost drowning her. She’d lived in south Texas, she’d played outside on days when it was 112 degrees, but it was nothing compared to this.

The view was beautiful, though. The air itself was orange, like she imagined the sky in Gallifrey. The shining orb was difficult to look at with its brightness, and what seemed to be solar flares reached out for her.

Molly shook her head, reminding herself that she only had a minute or two before her atoms disintegrated. Not to mention that her foot was burning. She ran forward, careful not to grip the bars in case they burned her hands. She made it to the other door, turned the handle, pushed forward – and nearly dropped to the ground in fear.

The door wouldn’t budge, no matter which way she pulled or pushed, no matter how much strength she used, no matter how hard she tried. It was sealed.

“Why the hell would you leave one door to this room unlocked, and the other locked?!” she screamed, banging on the door. “Come on!” But still, it wouldn’t open. Maybe it was stuck? She would have to go back and risk Eleven finding her. She took as deep a breath as she could, and turned and ran back to the other door.

It wouldn’t open. She was trapped. Trapped in a room that would burn her up in seconds. 

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Thirty-Two

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“No, no, no…” she whispered, fighting with the handle. She pressed her palms against the door and tried to ignore the heat radiating off of it. “TARDIS. Please. Open the door. I really don’t want to burn.” Again she tried, and again the door didn’t move. “I’ll die in here! Please!” Still there was no movement.

Molly thought she’d be crying, though the heat was so intense the tears may have evaporated before she could feel them. She looked at her skin, already easily marked and turned pink, and saw it turning red and blistering in some places. The pain made her gasp. This was worse than the wildfire. Worse by far.

How long had she been in there? A few seconds? A minute? Two? How many more seconds before she burned to nothing?

Then she heard it: footsteps. Quick, heavy. Eleven.

She didn’t really have a choice.

Molly looked through the window, and began to bang on the door, first with her fists, and then with her uncovered foot, knowing her kicks would be louder. “I’m in here! Get me out! I’m trapped!” she screamed. “Eleven! I’m in here! Please!” She still didn’t see him, but heard him getting closer. “I’m trapped in here, get me out!”

She finally saw a flash of him, the purple suit, the hair – but only for a second before he ran right by her. No, no, no! “Come back! Come back! I’m trapped in here! ELEVEN!” That was it. That was her last hope. He’d come, he’d gone, and now she would die, painfully.

She wanted to rest her head on the window and cry, but it would only burn her more, and she wasn’t able to cry. It was too hot. So very, very hot.

But then she saw movement outside the window again. The bowtie, his hair, then his green eyes. A look of panic came over his features as he reached into his pocket. She saw him pull out the sonic, and stepped back so he could get the door open. As soon as it swung open, he reached in and grabbed her wrists, and pulled her out of the room.

The cool air was like a bath of aloe vera, and the instant relief made her knees go weak. He wrapped his arms around her before she could fall. “Molly!” he exclaimed. “Molly, what were you thinking? You must have felt the heat the moment you got the door open!”

She inhaled sharply, again and again, to fill her burned lungs with the cold oxygen. Though there was no smoke in the room, it felt like her throat was filled with it. She tried to speak, but could only cough. She pressed her head against his shoulder. Cotton. Mint. Earth. Honey. He smelled the same as her Doctor.

When she was steady on her feet, he pulled back some, still holding her shoulders. “You could have died in there! Would it have been worth it? What was the point of this?” He tried to meet her eyes, but she refused to look in his. They were so exactly like her Doctor’s. “Are you okay? The burns don’t look too bad, but they must hurt.”

Molly still felt vaguely like she was burning. She took another deep breath of air, and pressed her hands against his chest, pushing him away gently so he would release her shoulders. “I’m okay,” she said, though her voice sounded harsh with the ache in her throat. “Thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Of course I got you out. I wouldn’t leave you to burn. I promise, I’m just like him. I am him,” he insisted.

She looked at his face for a moment, how earnest his expression was. She nodded. “Well,” she said. “Anyway.” And she turned and ran.

She barely made it a few steps before she felt his arms go under hers, then pull back and up. Her arms were painfully wrenched above her head, and trapped there. “Would you stop running?” His voice was a perfect example of the word ‘exasperated’.

The scrape of the fabric of his coat against her skin was like sandpaper, and the pulling in her shoulders was excruciating. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” She shouted, fighting to pull out of his grasp. When that proved useless, she leaned back to push against him, and tried to reach to tap his wrist. “Okay, okay! Uncle! Uncle! You win!”

“No more of this ridiculous running?”

“No more running!” She wriggled, still trying to get loose. “I know I can’t get away now. Let go!”

He released her, and she breathed a sigh of relief, rolling her shoulders back. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” he apologized. “Didn’t mean to hurt you. I just needed to make you stand still.”

“Whatever,” she muttered, looking down at the bits of red in her skin, and the few lighter parts that were beginning to form blisters, then down to her feet. She lifted her bare foot to see the same redness underneath. That pain would start registering when the adrenalin started to wear off. Still, she carefully hopped down the corridor to grab her boot and slip it on. She realized finally that throwing her boot down the hall hadn’t been the best plan, and maybe what caused him to pause and go back. Who loses both a boot and a sock while running like Cinderella lost a heel?

“Molly-” he began, but she didn’t want to hear a word from him.

“Let’s go back to the main control room,” she said. “There’s burn cream in there. I keep getting burned.” And losing shoes.

She hid her relief when Eleven nodded, and turned back down the corridor. At least she’d still found a way back into the room. How she was going to do anything else, she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t even sure what it was she could do with Eleven watching her.

Molly limped after him, grateful that he seemed to know the way. Maybe the layout of the TARDIS hadn’t changed much since before it had changed in season 7. Or maybe he remembered the way they took. That was more likely, she thought.

“Molly,” he started again, and she made certain her heavy sigh of an objection was heard. “What was all that about, really?”

“You got the Doctor killed and stole the TARDIS and kidnapped me. That’s what it was about.”

“You know why that happened,” he said, his tone hurt. “You know I had no choice. I would have hoped you’d be able to understand.”

She shouldn’t have felt shame, but she did a little. She was his favorite character, like she was her Doctors favorite character, like the Doctor had been hers. She remembered the fear that he’d find out she’d left her mother to her death, the sick feeling of dread at his judgement.

Eleven had been tortured. She shouldn’t blame him for what he said and did because of it. But that didn’t change the fact that the Doctor was – that he could be – that he was probably dead, and that she’d lost the only person she had. And Eleven had planned on pretending it never happened, on impersonating her Doctor, and traveling with her while letting her believe he was her best friend, when she didn’t know this Doctor at all. 

She decided to call him out on it. “You chose to lie about it. You chose to try to trick me. You chose to hope I just didn’t notice while you took me around the universe, thinking you were my friend instead of a stranger I don’t actually know.” She turned to look at him, but he wouldn’t meet her gaze. “You still made choices that were hurtful, that you weren’t under duress to make. You could have told me the truth as soon as we were away from them.”

Guilt flickered across his features. “You’re right,” he confessed. “I shouldn’t have pretended. I should have told you the truth once it was safe. I wanted…”

“You wanted to pretend it never happened,” she supplied when he couldn’t finish the sentence. “You wanted to go on as though you were really the exact same Doctor without facing the consequences of what happened. Believe it or not, I get that.” She had to admit that to herself. “There’s a lot I’ve been running away from, too. But my choices didn’t deceive anyone else, not in a way that hurt them.”

He didn’t respond at first, and she’d nearly given up on any reply at all when finally, “I’m sorry. I am sorry. For what I did to him, for what I did to you, for lying to you.” He looked at her, and she knew he wasn’t lying about this, at least. “And I didn’t know they’d attack you. They promised me they wouldn’t hurt the Doctor’s companions, that there was no reason to. I’d expected Amy and Rory.”

They walked into the main control room, sooner than she thought they should have. She took a seat on the stairs as soon as she could, to relieve her burns rubbing against each other. She watched him walk down past her, and then he came back up with the burn cream. She took it from him and began applying it, as she thought about what he’d said.

Amy and Rory. Should she tell him? She looked up at him, and something in his face told her that he was waiting for an answer. Maybe he was owed one. This him hadn’t married River, but they were still his family.

“Amy and Rory aren’t here,” she finally said.

“Yes, I noticed that,” he replied dryly. “I suppose I’m…he’s…he was moving on from them. Or that they left. I’d started to think that would never happen, that we’d always…but never say never, I suppose.” Though it technically hadn’t been him they’d left, he still sounded disappointed, sad. All that time being tortured, he’d probably thought that at the end he’d get to see them again.

“Well…” she started, and then sighed. He deserved the truth, at least. “If it helps, they’re happy.”

She saw the ghost of a smile on his lips. “They are?”

“Yeah,” she said, closing the lid on the burn cream. “Well, they were. Technically, for the Doctor, at least, it didn’t end well. Rory was taken by a Weeping Angel, and Amy decided to let it take her, too, just in case it sent her to the same place and time and they could still be together.”

“Sounds like Amy all over,” he said, almost wistfully. “Rory would have done the same thing.”

“It worked,” said Molly. “They found each other. Amy became a writer and publisher in the 40s. After Demon’s Run – where Amy was being kept after they switched her out – she couldn’t get pregnant, but they adopted. Rory sent a message to his dad about how happy they were. Sent the message with his son. It all worked out, in the end.”

“Happily ever after.” He leaned against the center console, hands in his pockets. “The girl who waited, the girl with the fairytale name, and the Last Centurion who kept her safe for her two thousand years. They always deserved a happy ever after.”

Molly nodded. It had taken her a little while to warm up to Amy, but she’d always supposed that was because they were too much alike. She didn’t really think they were so alike now that she was in Amy’s old position, as the Doctor’s companion and best friend, but –

This was a painful train of thought, so she hopped off of it. “He traveled a bit with someone else, but they ended up leaving, too,” she explained. He didn’t deserve to know all the details of his life, so she left most of it out, but if he was really the only Doctor the universe had left, he needed to know a few things. “After that he spent a hundred years alone, went a bit...you know, how you usually get when you travel alone. And then I showed up on the TARDIS.”

Now he looked at her with somewhat of a calculated expression. “And you have no idea how that happened?”

“None whatsoever,” she said. She wouldn’t tell him about the wish on the crack in the ceiling. That was between her and her Doctor, the real Doctor. She’d been brought to him, not Eleven.

The thought of him, of the reality that he was most likely dead and there was nothing she could do about it, made her heart ache fiercely. She looked down at the floor, then closed her eyes, trying to hold the hopelessness off. He must still be alive. He had to be.

“What was the end of your plan?”

Molly looked up in confusion. “What plan?”

“Hit me over the head, run off, and then…?”

She shrugged. “I didn’t really have a plan.”

“You always do.”

“On TV maybe, not in real life,” she said. “That’s one of the things he learned about me, I guess. I don’t usually have a plan. I’m always making things up as I go.”

“Me, too,” he said, smiling. “But you had a plan.”

“First I’m hearing about it.”

“Lose me in the TARDIS, come back around, ask the TARDIS to help you get back and find the Doctor.”

Molly wasn’t able to keep herself from looking up at him with surprise. But of course he’d know. He was the Doctor. There wasn’t much chance she’d be able to stay any steps ahead of him whatsoever. “It was worth a try.”

The mirth left him. “Why do you think the TARDIS would have taken you back at all?”

“To get the Doctor?” That seemed obvious to her.

“I’m the Doctor,” he insisted again. “The moment I stepped onto the TARDIS, I told you. The TARDIS recognizes me as the real Doctor, because I am the real Doctor.”

“Maybe,” was the best she could give him. “But not the only one.”

He stared back at her. “We can’t go back. It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s dangerous no matter what,” she insisted. “Do you really think they’ll just…let you go?”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Her anger was flaring back up again, now that this thought had finally come to the surface. “You don’t think they’ll come for you next?” She wanted to stand, to look him as directly in the eye as she could, but her skin still burned and she didn’t want to move. “You know your name, too. They’ll come for you, too. They have to. There’s no point in killing the Doctor if they just let you go.”

Eleven turned and began looking at the controls, an avoidance tactic Molly was now well familiar with. He brushed his hands over the top of them. He didn’t turn back as he spoke. “I don’t, actually.”

“…don’t what?”

“Know my name,” he confessed. He turned toward her now, and something in his eyes made her heart ache again. “They took it from me.”

Rather than using the anger as she’d hoped, she found her voice soft. “What do you mean?”

“All the torture and hypnotizing and brainwashing and breaking and remaking me, all those years,” he began, turning back to the controls. He walked around the center console, looking up at its light with an almost worshipful expression. “They took it from me. I don’t remember my own name anymore. No matter how I reach for it…” He paused, and she saw him close his eyes for a moment as though he were reaching for it now. He sighed with frustration a moment later, and opened his eyes again. “It’s gone.”

He couldn’t remember his own name. The Silence had taken his own name from him.

Finally, all the anger and hurt and disgust with him that she’d used as a wall to keep them separate, to keep what he’d done at a distance, crumbled. Just the simple pain from the gash in her leg had given her a better understanding of torture. She knew she couldn’t blame him entirely, no matter how much she wanted to. What he’d endured was heartbreaking, and now knowing just how much they’d taken from him, she couldn’t hate him. She couldn’t.

“You know…” she started, then hesitated. Maybe it was better if it wasn’t brought up. But he deserved the choice. “There’s that book. With your name in it. I haven’t read it, but I know it’s there.”

She saw him nod. “I thought about it, from the moment I got back onto the TARDIS. I could go and have a look, I could. I could know my own name again. But then I’d be a danger, and they’d come for me, and I can’t…” His voice cracked, and it hurt her all over again. “I can’t risk that happening. I can’t go back. Not after what I did to make it end.”

She finally set the burn cream down on the step beside her. “Would they do that to him? Brainwash him so he doesn’t remember his name?” She couldn’t help but hope.

Those hopes were immediately dashed. “No. There’s no reason to. They don’t need him to draw another Doctor in like they needed me. And I’m not a threat anymore, so there’s no reason to try to bring me back in, either.”

Again, her heart ached as she fought to remain in denial. It hurt so much her vision went black for a moment, and she didn’t notice Eleven move until he was right in front of her. She looked up at him, and found his eyes full of confusion and concern. “What?” She wouldn’t let him tell her she wasn’t allowed to grieve.

“Did the Doctor tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Flickering.”

She frowned, and opened her mouth to ask what he meant, when –

“Molly! That’s not me!”

His voice came from the other side of the console. She leapt to her feet as fast as her heart leapt to her throat. “Doctor?!” She moved to the right to look around the console, only to find he’d moved to the left. She darted that way and saw him standing there, in what had been Eleven’s clothes, still soaked in her blood. “You’re alive?!” The were no words for the bright white light of joy and relief that went off in her head.

“Of course he is,” she thought she heard Eleven mutter.

“Course I am!” the Doctor insisted with a smile. “I wouldn’t let a few – a lot of few – Silence kill me. I’ve outwitted them enough times.”

“How?” She wanted to run to him and hug him, but the shock frozen her in place.

“Soon as the TARDIS disappeared with you two in it, the house disappeared, but the basement remained. All the technology that was used to create the house was right there, begging to be stolen,” he said, excitedly rubbing his hands together. “I dodged the Silence a few times, grabbed what I needed, stitched together a transmat, used my DNA to lock onto Eleven since his arrival on the TARDIS made him fully a Time Lord and not made of Flesh anymore, bing bang boom, Bob’s your uncle, here I am.”

Molly giggled, the relief making her giddy. “Thank goodness you’re wearing different clothing so we don’t have to do the stupid ‘I’m the real Doctor’, ‘no, I’m the real Doctor’ trope, I hate that stupid thing,” she said, knowing she was practically spouting nonsense. But it didn’t matter. The Doctor was alive. Her Doctor was still alive, and here.

She took a step towards him, intending to rush to him and fling her arms around his shoulders, but Eleven took a step, too, standing between her and the Doctor, facing him.

Her Doctor shifted, as he did so often in the show. She’d loved it on the screen. In person, seeing his friendly face, relieved at being back at the TARDIS, shift to the Dark Doctor, darker than she’d seen him even when she first arrived, was unnerving.

“Get away from her,” he demanded.

“I should have known you’d find a way out,” said Eleven bitterly. “I would have, and you’re me, with an extra hundred or so years’ experience on me.”

“Thousand, actually,” the Doctor corrected. “I lived our whole lifetime again, fighting every enemy we ever had, in order to keep the Silence from hurting anyone. I fought to protect innocent people from them. I died for them.”

“You…” Molly heard the confusion in Eleven’s voice. “We don’t have any regenerations left. You couldn’t have. How?”

The Doctor shrugged that off with a wave of his hands. “Doesn’t matter how. The point is, I was willing to do whatever it took to keep innocent people from being hurt by the Silence, including growing old and dying for them. And look at you. Look at what you’ve done.”

“It had to end,” Eleven insisted. “Even if it cost you your life. The universe would still have a Doctor.”

“I don’t mean me,” the Doctor said, his eyes narrowing as he took a step closer. “You tricked Molly. You kidnapped her and stole the TARDIS away. And look at her!” He pointed past Eleven to Molly. “Why is she covered in burns? What did you do to her?”

“I did nothing! That was her,” Eleven insisted. “She ran and hid in the room with the Eye of Harmony and couldn’t get the door open. I got her out!”

“That’s true,” said Molly, though uncertainly. Something was very wrong. Why was Eleven standing between them? Why was he clearly upset the Doctor had survived?

“And why was she running?”

“I didn’t touch her.”

“You tricked her, you kidnapped her, you stole the TARDIS. You tried to kill me, the only person she has to protect her in this universe.”

“She has me, now,” said Eleven, and she heard his voice shift to the same dark tone the Doctor had. “She doesn’t need you. You’re a threat to the whole universe. You have to die, Doctor, and you know it.”

Molly quietly shifted to her right, hoping she could get far enough away that she could dart around Eleven and get to the Doctor. She took one small, experimental step, and Eleven didn’t seem to see or hear her.

The Doctor kept his eyes on Eleven, though he must have noticed her movement. “If I was ever a threat, it was on Trenzalore, when the crack opened and all I had to do to stop the constant attacks of every enemy we’ve ever had was to speak my name. Or when the Great Intelligence took our friends and was going to kill them if I didn’t speak my name. I never did. I never gave in.” He paused. “Remember that? ‘Never give up. Never give in.’ You gave in. You broke the promise.”

She watched Eleven shift his weight as she took another step. “I’m still the Doctor. More than you, even.”

The Doctor’s voice was chilling. “You aren’t the Doctor at all.”

“If sacrificing myself had been an option, I would have taken it.” The bitterness in Eleven’s voice was starting to burn, as the Doctor’s tone began to contain ice. “If I had to die to save the universe, I would. You should have died, Doctor! You shouldn’t be willing to risk the safety of the whole universe.”

“And what about the risk you pose?”

“What risk? I don’t remember my name. They took it from my mind,” said Eleven. “I’m not a risk at all. You’re the only threat here.”

“Am I? Let’s find out,” said the Doctor, and he glanced at Molly.

She knew her cue. She ran right, to dart around the center console away from Eleven and towards the Doctor, but only made it a couple steps before she felt Eleven’s arm go around her, pulling her back. She fought against him until she felt his hand wrap around her throat and squeeze. She could still breathe, but only just.

He jerked her around to face the Doctor again. “NO!” he screamed, the sound making her eardrum throb. “No! This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”

“How is it supposed to be?” the Doctor asked, his voice low. She saw the darkness building in his eyes. “How did you imagine this would go? You’d tell Molly you killed me and still get to run around the universe with her? That she’d just let someone like you take the TARDIS?”

“The TARDIS belongs to me!”

“No, she doesn’t,” said the Doctor, taking another step closer. She felt Eleven’s grip around her pin her arms to her sides even tighter.

“She does. I’m the Doctor. I’m the Doctor,” he insisted. “I’m real now. She knows it’s me. You’re supposed to be dead. You should be dead. They promised me I’d get to be the Doctor, the real Doctor, the only Doctor! There can be only one Doctor!”

“Why is that? We’re scattered all across time, all across space. We’ve run into ourselves more than once. There’s already more than one Doctor.”

“There’s only one TARDIS. Who is the Doctor without the TARDIS? And she’s mine, now.”

“I told you,” said the Doctor, as he gestured to the console. “She’s not.”

A thought occurred to her, and Molly made an attempt at speaking. “Doctor.” It was choked, but the word was clear.

“Not now,” he dismissed her.

Even in this life-or-death situation, she managed to roll her eyes, then tried a different angle. “Eleven,” she choked out. “Pineapple.”

“What?” he snapped.

“My safeword,” she said. “It’s a little tight.”

“Let her go,” the Doctor said, holding a hand out towards her as he took a step closer. “We don’t have to involve her in this.”

Eleven dragged her back a few steps. “Don’t come closer.”

“You don’t have any weapons, there’s no-”

“I’ll snap her neck,” Eleven said, and the wild note in his voice made her blood go cold. “I have the strength to do it. You know I do.” Hearing those words in the Doctor’s voice was a nightmare.

The darkness left the Doctor, leaving the expression in his eyes to settle on solemn.  “The same way I know that you won’t.”

Eleven’s grip tightened, and now she could only get the barest bit of oxygen in her lungs. “I will. I’ll do it, if it’s the only way.”

“Only way to what?”

“To show you you’re a threat to everyone. Most of all to those you care about. We always have been,” said Eleven, and the hurt in the Doctor’s eyes hurt Molly almost as much as the hand wrapped around her throat did. “You have to go back. You have to let them keep you from hurting the entire universe. You have to die. Set the TARDIS to go back, let the Silence kill you, and I’ll take Molly to the Star-Echo lab and she can go home. I swear.”

The Doctor stood still a moment, then shook his head. “No.”

“I’ll do it. I’ll kill her.” Molly believed him, as darkness was creeping into her vision.

“You won’t.”

“I’ll do whatever has to be done to keep the universe safe. I’ll be a better Doctor than you.”

“Who is the Doctor without the TARDIS?”

“I have the TARDIS!”

“No, you don’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said the Doctor.

“You said it yourself. I’m a real Time Lord now. The real Doctor. She’ll listen to me.”

“Not now that I’m here.”

“That doesn’t matter. There have been two of us on a TARDIS before. She’ll still listen to me.”

The Doctor shook his head, and Molly saw a measure of pity in his eyes. “She knows you’re not the Doctor.”

“I AM THE DOCTOR! I am as much the Doctor as you are!”

Her oxygen was completely cut off now, and she started to struggle instinctively against him, which only made him hold to her tighter.

The Doctor’s eyes flickered from her face to Eleven’s. “You could have been. Not anymore.” Now he looked pointedly at Molly. “If there’s only one thing the TARDIS knows about me, it’s that the Doctor would never hurt his friends like this. Never.”

She felt every muscle in Eleven’s body go tense. Her vision was blurred by tears, building in her eyes and spilling over as she choked, a horrible, consuming, imploding pain forming in her head. He had to let go. He had to, or he really would kill her.

Molly fought for a few more horrible seconds, and then felt his grip around her throat loosen. He still held her tight, but she could breathe again. She took deep gulps of air to fight the oxygen deprivation headache off and tried not to sob from the pain.

“I…” Eleven began, but his voice broke. “It’s all I’ve ever wanted to be. The Doctor. I…I’m the Doctor. I have to be.”

“You’re not,” Molly said, her voice rough. “Think about it.”

“Molly,” the Doctor said as a warning.

“No. Listen to me,” she insisted, trying to force some strength into her voice. “You’re the twelfth Doctor to claim the title. The War Doctor relinquished it, more or less.”

“And?”

“At the same time, because of the existence of the War Doctor, you’re still technically the thirteenth.”

“So what?”

“And, also technically, he was supposed to be the last one.” She indicated to her Doctor with her head, the best she could.

“What’s your point, Molly?”

She took a deep breath. “Don’t you remember? Between the twelfth and thirteenth regeneration. Or the final regeneration in the cycle. An amalgamation of the Doctor’s darkest parts.”

The Doctor froze at the same time Eleven did.

Eleven trembled a moment. “No. Please. No.”

“You’re not the Doctor,” said Molly. “You’re the Valeyard.”

She felt the hand around her throat begin to shake. “No. No. No.” His voice began to shake as much as his hands did. His grip around her middle relaxed, and she thought about trying to fight her way out of his grasp when both of his hands fell to his sides. She felt his forehead press against her shoulder. She heard him gasp through tears. “Please, no…I can’t. I can’t be the Valeyard. I just…I just want to be the Doctor. That’s all I want. To be the Doctor. To help people. To have friends. To not be in pain and alone anymore. That’s all.”

Molly’s gaze met the Doctor’s. He seemed to feel the same confusion she did, to have the same, muddled feelings. But of course, in the end, the Doctor was the Doctor, and she was still Molly Quinn. So when Eleven’s tears turned to cries, she saw the tension leave the Doctor, and a look of helplessness cross his features. And she turned and wrapped an arm around Eleven, gentle as his grip had been rough, and put a hand at the back of his head, letting him cry into her shoulder.

After a moment, she heard Eleven say, “You really shouldn’t comfort me.”

“Tough cookies.” Her voice was still rough from the crushed vocal chords.

“I almost killed you.”

“I know, I was there.”

“I’m the Valeyard. Everything horrible.”

“Right now, you’re still Eleven.”

“I’m-”

“Would you shut up? Stars, you’re so much work, the both of you.”

She felt some relief when she felt the vibration of a chuckle. She watched the Doctor take something from his pocket, and pass it between his hands.

Eleven took a deep, tearful breath, then pulled away and looked to the Doctor. “I can’t. I won’t be him. I promise I won’t.”

“You have to,” the Doctor said, his voice almost infinitely sad.

“I don’t have to,” Eleven insisted eagerly. “I don’t have to be the Valeyard, or even the Doctor. I could just be Eleven.” When the Doctor’s expression didn’t change, Eleven pleaded, “Just let me be Eleven. Please. Put me on Earth. I won’t be any trouble. Maybe Jack will let me join Torchwood, or I could go back to UNIT. Work with Martha. I can still help people. I can be good.”

The Doctor slowly shook his head. “You know that you can’t do that. You know that there must be a Valeyard. The trial must take place. You can’t change our timeline.”

“We change our own timeline all the time!” said Eleven, now stepped away from Molly and moving towards the Doctor. “The trial doesn’t have to happen. I don’t have to be…that.”

“The trial has to happen. And everything else we experienced with the Valeyard,” said the Doctor. “It’s not just our timeline that will change.”

“You can’t make me be evil, Doctor. We both know you can’t.”

“No. No one can make you be evil,” the Doctor said, stepping up to Eleven. “Now we both know that’s not what the Valeyard ever was.”

“All the terrible things the Valeyard did, to us, to others…how can you say he wasn’t evil?”

The Doctor took Eleven by the shoulder. “We know now that the Valeyard was doing what he had to do. That he hated it, but he had no choice. The things he did helped shaped us, helped mold us, helped to make us who we are. He changed our life; he changed the lives of those around us.”

“By hurting them,” said Eleven, frowning, his voice almost a whisper.

“Yes. He hurt people. He hurt us. But it wasn’t out of evil, it was out of obligation. Out of a dreadful duty.” She saw the Doctor squeeze Eleven’s shoulder. “I know the Valeyard isn’t evil now, because you’re the Valeyard. And you aren’t evil. You are about to make a sacrifice that’s deeper than any we have ever had to make before - to give up your identity and your values and everything you want to be, everything you are, to do things that you hate because you have to in order to do the most good.” He paused, tilting his head forward as he looked Eleven in the eyes. “What could possibly be more like the Doctor than to sacrifice himself for the good of the universe? What truer self-sacrifice is there than the sacrifice of self?”

Eleven stared back at the Doctor for a long moment. She saw the torment in his eyes and it made her ache. He’d already endured so much torture, so much pain, and now he had to become one of his own oldest, darkest enemies.

But Eleven seemed to accept his fate. As the Doctor released his shoulder, Eleven nodded to him, and smiled weakly. “One final reckless act of Doctor-esque heroics.” He made an attempt at a laugh, but it was too weak to make much sound. “I guess this means I’ll be seeing you again later.”

“And maybe I’ll get to see you again. As you. As Eleven.”

“That would be nice,” said Eleven. “We could have tea. And jammy dodgers.”

“Ah!” the Doctor stepped up to Eleven and reached into the purple coat’s pocket. He pulled out a package of jammy dodgers. “Along with Molly, the sonic, and the TARDIS, you also nicked these.” But he held them out to Eleven.

Eleven smiled and took them. “Told you I would.” He opened the package and took out a cookie, and took a bite, closing his eyes to enjoy it. Then he offered one to Molly, who took it, and one to the Doctor. “At least after a thousand years we still have good taste in biscuits.”

“We always do,” said the Doctor, before eating his.

Eleven put the package back in his pocket, then pulled out the sonic screwdriver and held it out to the Doctor. “You’ll be needing this back.”

“Yes, thank you,” said the Doctor, taking it and holding some mechanical device Molly couldn’t recognize out to Eleven. “And you’ll be needing this.”

Eleven took it. “And your clothes?”

“Keep them,” said the Doctor. “Purple’s our color.”

Eleven turned towards Molly. “What do you think? Purple?”

“I always liked it better than the other one.”

Eleven looked offended. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”

“Nothing,” she said, and shrugged. “They both look good. Purple’s a bit more suave.”

“Suave,” repeated Eleven with a smile. “Well, then. I’ll keep them.”

“You’ll need to go somewhere we normally wouldn’t think of,” said the Doctor, his tone more serious now. “And you can’t tell me where. The next time we run into each other should probably be the first time. Well, first time for me, that is. Or…old me. Old us. Younger us. You know what I mean.”

Eleven nodded in agreement as he strapped the device to his wrist. “Looking back on it now, it turns out I’m an excellent actor. We really should try it as a career someday. Again.”

“I’ll think about it,” the Doctor smiled. “I’m glad you’re alive. It was good to see you again.”

Eleven looked at him incredulously. “It was?”

“I mean, minus the trying to kill me and steal the TARDIS and kidnap Molly bit.”

“And the freaky as fuck house,” Molly added.

The Doctor pointed at her. “That, too.”

Eleven looked from him, to her, then back to the Doctor. “I’m pretty glad I’m alive, too. Even if it means I have to play the bad guy for a while.” He stepped forward and offered the Doctor his hand. “And I’m very glad you survived, Doctor.”

“Thanks, Doctor,” said the Doctor, taking Eleven’s hand. “I’ll be seeing you. Or…you’ll be seeing me. Maybe both.”

“Hopefully both,” said Eleven, then he turned to Molly. “The Doctor was right. I really wouldn’t have killed you, I swear. And I’m really, very sorry about hurting you, Molly.”

She shrugged and smiled. “No worries. I’m pretty sure I hurt myself worse getting stuck in the same room as the Eye of Harmony.”

“Did you know what it was?”

“Yep,” said Molly. “It was all in the show. I’m just an idiot.”

“Well then, you’re the smartest idiot I’ve ever met,” said Eleven, clearly meaning it as a compliment. “You knew who I was even when I didn’t.”

“Not completely. You kept trying to tell me you were still the Doctor. And though you’ll be going by another name now, you were definitely right.” She stepped up and hugged him. “You’ll always be the Doctor. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” Eleven promised, hugging her tight. He pulled back after a moment, resting a hand on each shoulder, grinning. “Molly Quinn. The actual, real Molly Quinn. I can’t believe how good my luck is, to actually meet you.”

“Hey, I got to meet you. I’m the lucky one,” she said. She took his hands off her shoulders and gave them a small squeeze. “Take care of yourself. That’s an order.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, squeezing her hands back. He sighed, then took a step back. “Well. Off I go, then.”

The Doctor folded his arms. “Keep safe. No dying - you’re out of regenerations, remember.”

“Am I?” asked Eleven. “I don’t have this face at the trial, or any other time we meet. Technically, I just became a Time Lord.” He gestured to himself. “This might be my first.”

The Doctor thought about it a moment. “You have a point. But no dying to try to find out.”

“You’re no fun at all.” Eleven gave a small wave. “Goodbye, Molly. And I’ll see you later, Doctor.”

“Goodbye, Eleven,” said Molly, as the Doctor waved. Eleven pressed a few buttons on the makeshift transmat, and after an odd shimmer around him, he disappeared. 

She heard the Doctor release a slow breath, then felt his hands on her shoulders as he turned her. Then he took a step back and looks her up and down. “How do you always manage to get covered in burns?”

“Hey, according to you, the wildfire was not my fault,” she said. “Getting trapped in a room with the Eye of Harmony, maybe, tiny bit my fault.”

“Where’s that burn cream?” he wondered, moving towards the stairs down to get it.

“On the step,” she said. “I already had him get it for me.”

The Doctor turned back around. “Okay, then. Open up.”

“Sorry, what?”

“Let me check your throat,” he said, and pulled out what looked like a pen light. 

“What are you, my doctor?”

The edges of his mouth turned up. “Yeah. I am your doctor. And your Doctor. Now, open up.”

She rolled her eyes, but opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue, even said ‘ahhhh’. She closed her mouth when he put the pen away. “So, am I going to be fine, or should we start planning my funeral?”

“You’re good,” he said. “You’re very good. I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, I really worked hard on keeping my throat looking healthy.”

“No, no, I mean with Eleven. You knew who he was before he did. Before I did, even.”

“Outside perspective,” Molly replied, moving to sit back down on the stairs. “It helps to have watched or read all the background information from a distance.”

“I’m sure it does,” the Doctor said, sounding a bit distant for a moment. He moved to sit next to her. “I always thought it was going to be me. That something would happen, and someday I would…” He ran a hand down his face. “Is it horrible that I’m grateful? That he has to be the Valeyard, and not me?”

Molly shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s okay to be glad to find out that you aren’t going to be evil, after all. No form of you, even, because Eleven isn’t evil, either, he never was. He was just confused and scared and alone.”

Alone. Maybe that was the main difference between the Valeyard and the Doctor – the Doctor, usually, wasn’t alone.

As Molly looked over at the Doctor, she thought about how he’d been alone those hundred years. His stories of how he’d been becoming darker, more ruthless. How, in a detached way since she’d believed it all a dream, she’d been afraid of him when she’d first arrived. And how different all that was to now. He’d faced one of his oldest enemies with compassion. And while that was just like the Doctor she knew, the Doctor she knew always had a Companion. If he’d still been alone, would that have changed the ending of this story?

It finally settled into her, all his claims that he’d been as excited to see her as she’d been to see him. How like magic, his favorite character had appeared on the TARDIS when he’d needed her most. How he must have hated being alone, but didn’t know how to end it, and then he didn’t have to. How she must be as important to him as he was to her.

What a strange moment to finally be able to accept that.

She hooked her arm in his, and rested her head on his shoulder, and felt him rest his head on top of hers. “It must be good,” she said, finally finishing her thought, “To know that it isn’t in you.”

“You know it’s not in you, either,” replied the Doctor.

She closed her eyes a moment, not wanting to correct him, but knowing she needed to. “It is, though,” she said. “In me.”

“I don’t believe that for a second.”

She sat up then, and leaned forward to catch his gaze. “When I was thirteen, during my father’s trial, the press would crowd in around me whenever I walked into the courthouse. Sometimes they hung around outside my foster home. No one would let me talk to them, but of course they always asked me the same questions, and when I was alone I’d think about how I’d answer them. Often, they asked me if I wanted Cillian to get the death penalty. I thought about it, and figured out that my answer was no, even though that wasn’t exactly the popular opinion in Texas, despite the fact that he was clearly…mentally unwell.”

“See?” said the Doctor, a proud look in his eyes that was painful.

“No, you don’t understand,” she said. “It’s not that I didn’t want him to die, I did. But it was too clean, too quick, too merciful. I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him stuffed into the smallest cell with the biggest, strongest, meanest cell mate who beat him within an inch of his life every single day for the rest of his life, and I wanted him to live a long, long life. I wanted him to seek alliances, friends, anyone sympathetic, and be mocked and shunned instead. I wanted him to be so alone and in so much pain that…” And she thought of Eleven, alone and in pain and not quite sane. Now she could see what that kind of pain would do. Yet, still. “Even now. I don’t know if he was dead or alive when I left, but even after seeing what Eleven went through, in pain and alone, and knowing Cillian was mentally ill…I still want that for him. There’s been no growth or change in character for me in this. No forgiveness. I still want him to suffer for as long as he possibly can. I don’t believe in hell, so this is all the punishment he’ll ever get. And I’m not ashamed, either.” It was strange that it was the tiniest bit of a lie. She’d never been ashamed of it before. But now, with the Doctor’s eyes on her, she felt pinpricks of it on the back of her neck. But only pinpricks. “It’s in me, alright.”

He was silent for a long, awful moment. “I don’t think so,” he said, finally, slowly. “Your father…he might be ill, but he still hurt people, tortured and killed innocent people, killed your mother, and scarred you deep and permanent. Wanting that justice – even if it isn’t justice I’d agree with, or even if it is – isn’t the same as evil. It isn’t the same as finding joy in hurting innocent people. That’s not in you. Not even a drop of it.”

Molly wasn’t sure she agreed. Wanting that much pain for someone – surely that made her a little evil. But she appreciated his reassurance all the same. “Thanks,” she said, and in his eyes she saw that he knew she didn’t fully believe him. She also knew he saw that this wasn’t an argument he’d win.

He sighed, and stood again. “I suppose this means I’ll have to keep a lookout for the Silence again.”

“Which sounds like a load of fun,” Molly muttered. She picked the burn cream back up, and began reapplying. These burns were stinging more than the ones in the wildfire or on Everywhere had. But she’d piled the burn cream on the bottom of her foot the thickest and it was feeling significantly better. “Anything that can be done, you know, more preventably than reactionary?”

“I don’t think so,” she heard the Doctor say from the controls. “Except maybe figuring out why the crack is back, and what those voices coming from it were.”

“Gallifrey?” Molly suggested.

“Could be. Most likely,” said the Doctor. “But some of the things we heard don’t seem to match up to what I’d expect Gallifrey to be saying. I’d thought they would just repeatedly ask for my name, but they said other things that appear…concerning.”

“So,” sighed Molly, closing the jar and wiping her hands on her shorts. The sting was already gone, and the blisters were disappearing, too. “The Silence, the crack, and me appearing on the TARDIS. Any other mysteries to solve?”

She caught an odd look in his eye when he glanced at her. “None that I know of yet.”

“Any ideas where to start looking for clues?”

“None at all.”

“So-”

She was interrupted by a ringing sound. The Doctor spun around a few times, then ran for the door. “I’ve really got to fix this so it patches through,” he noted to himself. Molly tried not to look when he opened the door to space, leaned out, and grabbed the phone. “Yes, hello? Ah, yes, hello again, Most High and Gracious Emperor. What’s that?” He paused, and Molly stood to try to get a look at him, though she clung tight to the bar to fight off the feeling she was going to float right out the door and into space. “Oh, really? Well, of course. Be glad to. I’ll be bringing a friend of mine, I hope that’s – yes. Yes, the more the merrier, I say. Certainly. Be seeing you soon.” He hung up the phone and came back into the TARDIS, closing the door behind him.

“What was that?” asked Molly, bewildered.

The Doctor grinned. “Fancy a birthday party?”

Chapter Text

Emerald Green

Chapter Thirty-Three

Dream Come True

“Um,” started Molly, staring. “Who’s birthday party?”

“The Most High and Gracious Emperor,” said the Doctor. “Or, as I like to call him, Bill.”

“…Bill?”

“Short for Billiam.”

“Not William?”

“No, I’m fairly certain it’s Billiam,” replied the Doctor. “Anyway, it’s the Emperor’s birthday party.”

Molly finally remembered to release the bar. “You got invited to an Emperor’s birthday party? And – which Emperor, exactly?”

“Of the Atrocious Galaxy,” said the Doctor as he headed towards her. “Unfortunate name. It’s actually quite lovely. A popular tourist destination. Remind me to take you to Prisma Beach sometime.”

“How’d you score an invite to-”

“His palace had an invasion of psychic mites at one point in time. I helped him out with it.” He stepped up the first stair. “Well? Birthday party?”

Birthdays were maybe her least favorite thing in the world, and they’d just gone through the physical and emotional trials of the flytrap house, the Silence, and Eleven being the Valeyard.

“Why not?” she shrugged. Something had to come after all that. Might as well be a royal birthday party.

“Perfect! You’ll need a formal dress. I’ll need…” he looked down at himself. “Non-bloody clothes. Meet up in fifteen?”

“Make it thirty,” said Molly. “I’ll need to do something with my hair, and that takes forever in and of itself.”

He stared at her a moment. “Maybe try a bun. Some flowers, too, you might find them in the wardrobe somewhere. Height of fashion in the Atrocious Galaxy right now.”

Molly raised a brow. “O…kay. Try to look presentable yourself.”

“I’m always presentable,” replied the Doctor, going up the stairs past her. “See you in a mo!”

He went out into the corridor. Then he came back. “Right,” he mumbled as he went past her, headed down to where he actually kept his clothes. Molly snorted, and headed towards the wardrobe.

She went through the clothes in the wardrobe for five minutes before feeling like she was ready to give up. She had no idea what formalwear was in the Atrocious Galaxy, or how to dress for an Emperor’s birthday party. She was woefully unprepared for a fashion emergency like this. But she also didn’t relish the idea of going back to the Doctor for help. Having him dress her like a doll felt…weird.

But there was someone else who could help. Molly decided to give it a go, and headed back to her room. She stood in front of her personal wardrobe, and placed her hands on the surface. “Okay, TARDIS.” She hoped she wouldn’t be overly offensive. “I know, deep down, in my soul, you’re as bossy as I am. And with all the clothes you have, you also definitely have fashion sense. You also exist all across time at once, so you must know what formalwear looks like in the galaxy and time period I’m going to. So how about you boss me around a bit and tell me what to wear, huh?” She paused. Maybe not the best way to plead her case. “Please. I’m totally lost and I don’t want to embarrass the Doctor.”

She closed her eyes and said a little wish, and then opened the door. “Oh, thank you,” she said, taking the dress and various accessories out of the wardrobe. “I had no idea what I was doing.”

Molly went into the bathroom to continue the ongoing war with her hair, and managed to pin it up decently, thanks to her years of experience pulling her hair into a bun for ballet. She was even able to pin the pale blue flowers the TARDIS had given her across the top of the bun, despite it being in the back of her head. Then she threw on some quick makeup.

She went through the pile of clothes the TARDIS had picked out for her. Blue dress, matching heels, and nude tights. Well, she’d skip the tights, given the burns on her legs. They were already largely healed, but it would still irritate her skin to have fabric that tightly wrapped around, so she set them aside.

Immediately, she felt a shock in her feet. “Ow!”  She cried out, looking down, but all she saw was the floor. Confused, she looked up. “Did you just shock me?” Bzzt. This time the shock was strong enough that she could hear it, and she jumped up onto the bed to avoid getting hit again. “What the hell? Why…” She looked over at the tights. “Okay, right. I agreed to let you dress me. Fair’s fair.”

So on went the tights, the dress, and the shoes. She took a moment to admire herself in the mirror, like a main character in a YA book:

The dress was TARDIS blue, with a slight shimmer to the fabric, and the fabric went down to her ankles, but it was hardly modest. While the top went around her neck like a halter top, despite the otherwise sweetheart neckline, the back was, well, completely bare. The fabric hung open a bit around the sides, but otherwise was completely open in the back, all the way down until it was almost scandalous. Just before that happened, there was a silk bow. Along one of the legs, there was a slit that went to her thigh. The tights looked a little odd with the dark blue strappy heels, but it did make the dress a bit more modest. And though they did irritate the burns a little, it wasn’t as bad as she thought it would be.

She went to the bathroom to pin back one last escaped strand of hair, and then headed back to the console room.

“Well, hello there, handsome,” she greeted the Doctor, and realized it was maybe the first time she’d ever playfully flirted with him. That was odd. She usually play-flirted with all her friends – well, friendly acquaintances.

That wasn’t something she wanted to examine, so she instead examined the Doctor, who did, indeed, look handsome in his new clothes. He’d exchanged the purple for a deep emerald green velvet waistcoat, opting to keep the vest underneath a silvery grey, and the same colored pants he’d worn with the purple. But the waistcoat and dark green bowtie with swirls of gold made the green of his eyes shockingly obvious in a very attractive way.

Attractive. Yikes. She needed to keep away from words like ‘handsome’ and ‘attractive’. Sure, she knew him better as a person now, but that didn’t mean there was any room for any sort of attraction whatsoever. She was in the wrong universe. She was still an anomaly. He was still the Doctor. And their friendship didn’t need any complicating.

His smile still did weird things to her stomach. “Back at you, gorgeous,” he replied. He shifted a white bag on his shoulder, a sort of cross between a tote bag and a messenger bag. “Ready for a party?”

Molly took a moment to steel herself. She used to be a party girl, but she’d left that behind years ago. And after everything they’d just gone through, she wasn’t sure she was quite ready for a party, especially one that promised to be formal and full of anxiety, dealing with royalty.

But she’d probably have fun once she’d adjusted, and the Doctor was clearly looking forward to it, so she smiled. “I’m always ready for a party,” she said, and joined him by the controls. “What’s with the bag?”

“It’s a birthday party,” replied the Doctor, with his tone that said he was tired of companions who never quite caught on to the obvious. “You have to bring a gift.”

“You’re giving him a bag?”

“No, I’m giving him what’s inside the bag.” The same tone. “Shall we be off?”

“Let’s do it,” she replied.

They landed and headed for the door. “Hold on, hold on,” she said, reaching out and grabbing him by the shoulder to make him wait. “I’m American. The whole concept of royalty is foreign to me, and I definitely have never been around it before. What do I do? Does he expect bows? Is there a certain title I should refer to him with? Also, do I really have to be there to meet him?”

“It’s his birthday. Not saying hi would be rude.” The Doctor sounded almost scandalized. “And it’ll be fine. Quick bow, call him Most High and Gracious Emperor-”

“I’m not going to remember that.”

“-and just stick by me. I know what I’m doing.”

Part of her doubted that, but then, he was more familiar with all this than she was. And he’d met him before. She’d have to trust that following his lead would keep her from humiliating herself.

Molly followed him off the TARDIS, onto a street that looked remarkably like Earth, save for the street being made of something dark red instead of black. There were a few people headed towards a high metal gate, with tall, smooth white walls on either side. Molly remembered the house and decided that she never wanted to see the color white again.

They approached the gate, that had guards dressed all in gold, even with a shine to their coats like the fabric was really made of gold. They had high hats with a silver buckle around the bottom. There was an extra hand growing from their wrists.

The Doctor gave a salute, then said, “The Doctor, plus one.”

One of the guards opened his hand – well, one of them - with his palm facing him. Molly saw lights scroll across his face, and had a sick feeling when she realized there must be some sort of screen inside his hand the displayed the list of guests. “The Doctor and guest,” said the guard, and he nodded at the other, who opened the gate. Molly gave a nod to the guards as they walked through.

The garden was massive, reminding Molly of pictures she’d seen of Versailles. Winding paths led through beds of trees and flowers, and despite the slight chill in the air, they were all blooming beautifully, in vivid colors she swore were never so intense on Earth. There were lights floating above them, in little spheres, glowing gold and silver, lighting the garden up in pools of light that shifted like the water had above her when she sat on the floor of a pool and looked up.

And then, of course, there was the palace. It wasn’t as tall as she’d thought it would be, but it was beautiful, of grey stone with golden statues placed here and there, of gargoyles and something that looked like angels, but with inhuman faces and sometimes too many wings. Many of the windows were stained glass depicting scenes that weren’t quite human, but felt like they were. Some that almost looked like a knight defeating a dragon, or some sort of saint coming down from a cloud.

The Doctor led her inside, where everything was all the more beautiful. The lights in here shifted in the same way as the ones outside, and she thought it should make her feel ill, but didn’t. The floors seemed made of marble, the grey walls full of golden designs of swirls or flowers or crowns set with rubies.

They soon stood at the entrance of a ballroom that seemed impossibly big. She swore it was almost the size of a football field, and it was filled with people. Aliens, to her view. Some she recognized: a few Ood, a couple Hath, a Judoon. Most she didn’t. One she could have sworn was one of the giant multi-face creatures from the Neverending Story. But there was not one human among them – except for her.

Still, she was relieved to see that the TARDIS had chosen well. Most other dresses were also floor-length, with different sorts of cut-outs, from other slits and backless dresses to more intricate ones that looked almost like lace. The Doctor had chosen well, too, as velvet seemed the most popular fabric all around.

Against the opposite wall was a large, gilded platform, with an even more gilded throne. On it sat a man who looked almost human, save for the stalk eyes at the top of his head, and what looked to be gills on either side of his throat.

A man with a horn coming out of his forehead like a unicorn stood by the doorway, and the Doctor whispered something to him. The man turned to the ballroom. “THE DOCTOR AND MOLLY QUINN,” his voice boomed. The Doctor took her arm and they entered the ballroom.

Though normally thrilled at being the center of attention, the gaze of the whole of the crowd made her uneasy. She was about to have to improv meeting royalty, and she really wanted to limit the number of eyes on her when she inevitably screwed it up.

“Follow my lead,” the Doctor reminded her in a whisper in her ear as they approached the throne. She tried to arrange her face in a way that didn’t look terrified.

They stopped in front of the platform. The Doctor released her arm and made a sweeping bow, but Molly opted for a subtler bend at the waist.

“Oh, Most High and Gracious Emperor,” the Doctor greeted in an almost comically formal voice. “It is a great honor to have been invited to such a prestigious and – and prominent and…esteemed event.” Three words that meant the same thing. They were off to an awkward start. “It’s magnificent you’ve gotten older, Billiam.”

Molly couldn’t rescue them from the ‘old’ comment, but when she saw a guard nearby mouth ‘Billiam’ with a confused but delighted expression, she decided she probably should jump in, despite her nerves. “He meant William, your…um…Graciousness. Sometimes he stutters a bit.” She ignored the Doctor’s glare.

“Welcome, Doctor, Miss Quinn,” the Emperor greeted. Molly was grateful to find that his tone was friendly. “It is an honor to host you both. I’ll speak with you more later, Doctor. Enjoy the party.”

The Doctor gave another overdramatic bow, and Molly nodded her head, and they moved to mingle among the crowd.

“See?” said the Doctor, “Completely fine.”

“Mmm…hm.” She decided to limit her disagreement to that. “So…what now?”

“We mingle!” He exclaimed, gesturing to the people around them. “Get to know some people. Oh, and avoid that Geramynn in the corner. I’m fairly certain I owe him a lime, and I don’t have one on me.”

“A lime?”

“They don’t grow on his planet,” the Doctor explained. A server with an anteater-like nose stepped up to them with some sort of tiny food. “Ah! Snacks. Excellent, thank you.” The Doctor took one, then another, and then a few more. Molly chose to leave the rest for everyone else.

“So, when’s gift time? And what did you bring him?”

“We! We brought him. It’s something pretty I’m sure he’ll like,” said the Doctor. “Don’t worry about it. Oh! There’s Ava-Lore the Eighteenth. I played croquet with her once. Let’s go say hi.”

The Doctor emptied one hand by tossing the tiny food into his mouth, then took her hand and dragged her over to a woman that looked to have little crystals added to her hairline. After a quick introduction, the woman and the Doctor started talking about old times on her home planet. The conversation fascinated Molly. She thought that maybe she’d always feel like it was her first time hearing about an alien planet.

And an Emperor’s birthday party on another planet. These experiences would never feel completely everyday, even as she was getting used to them. And she was glad for it.

Eventually, the party was led outside, to the back gardens, which were even more expansive than the front. There were a few tents set up, some containing games, others comfortable seating to talk in, and another with ten whole buffets and tables. In the center of all the revelry was a stage, complete with curtains that hung from the spherical lights, hanging all around the stage save for the very front of it. There was no one on it.

“Is there going to be music later?” Molly asked the Doctor.

“Ah. Yes. Yes, there will most definitely be music later,” said the Doctor. Something in his tone made it feel like a lie.

“What’s the catch?”

“Catch? What catch? There’s no catch.”

“I know you-”

She was interrupted as the lights flashed purple, then blue, then green, and the booming voice of the announcer exclaimed, “TWENTY MINUTES TO THE PERFORMANCE OF GIFTS!”

Molly looked to the Doctor, who was still holding on to the bag, but now had a guilty expression on his face. “…okay, what’s going on?”

“Hmm? Nothing. Nothing. Just…” He turned to her with a sheepish smile. “There may have been one tiny, little detail I forgot to mention. Or…possibly intentionally left out.”

“And what’s that?”

The Doctor turned fully towards her. “There’s a traditional gift given to the Most High and etcetera Emperor on his birthday and high holidays. Really, it’s a traditional gift for most of the planet, but it’s much more formal when royalty is involved.”

Molly felt her brows raise. “And what is that traditional gift? What do you have in the bag?” She hoped it wasn’t something alive.

“It’s a sort of offering. The traditional gift, I mean,” he said. “The presentation of a dance.”

“…a dance?”

“Yep,” he responded. “Each formally invited guest – that’s me – or their guest – that’s you - goes onto the stage and gives the gift of a dance. A performance, usually something unique to their culture.”

She found she couldn’t keep the incredulous look off her face. “And…what? We’re breakdancing or something?” She paused, then groaned. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me you’re going to do the Drunk Giraffe.”

“Firstly, my dancing is impeccable,” he said. “Secondly, I had another idea.”

“What idea?” When he didn’t respond immediately, she prompted, “What’s in the bag?”

He finally took it off his shoulder, opened it, and held it out for her to look inside. All she could see for a moment were sparkles, and then she made out the white tulle-like fabric, the pink flowers, the blue ribbon.

She looked back up to the Doctor. “I changed my mind. The Drunk Giraffe is a masterpiece.”

“Yes, it is,” the Doctor agreed, but he took her hand, opened it, and then hooked the shoulder strap of the bag around her fingers. “This is better.”

“Doctor…” She held the bag away from her like a venomous snake. “I really don’t think it’s such a good idea.”

“I think it’s perfect,” the Doctor countered. “You’re a dancer. The gift we need to give is a dance.”

She shook her head. “I was out of commission for over a year. It’s only the last…month?...I’ve started practicing again. And sure, I practice almost daily, but that doesn’t mean I’m ready for a performance. I mean, what variation am I even supposed to perform?”

He looked confused, but she also saw a strange sort of softness behind it. “Giselle’s first act variation, of course,” he stated, again in that voice that declared he didn’t understand why his Companions could never keep up with the obvious. “You said you always wanted to perform Giselle. Here’s your chance.”

She felt she couldn’t move for a moment. Giselle. Her dream role. The one that got away. The one she still thought about, still regretted in a way that hurt if she thought about it for too long. Even just to be able to perform that one variation, that one dance she felt that worshipped dance, the dance she’d worshipped…

She looked into the bag at the costume. The Giselle costume. “It’s been too long,” she said, feeling an ache in her throat. “I can’t do it justice. I’ll screw it up.”

“I know you won’t,” said the Doctor. “I have absolute faith in you.”

Molly looked up to him, a warm feeling filling her chest instead of the ache. “It’s touching you believe in me that much. Really, it is. I just…” She looked over to the stage, and tried to picture herself on it. “I don’t want to embarrass us.”

“You can’t embarrass me,” replied the Doctor. “And again, I know you won’t embarrass yourself. Even if there are a few imperfections, it doesn’t matter. No one here has seen ballet before, they don’t know what it’s meant to look like. And I’m sure you know how to cover a mistake.”

She looked back at him, at the confidence in his eyes, and tried to turn his confidence into her own. “You’re sure no one has seen it before?”

“Positive,” replied the Doctor. He set his hand on top of hers and pushed the bag closer. “It’s up to you to show them. To go up there and show them how important an art form it is.”

Of course, he knew the perfect words to say. Ballet was so important to her, had always been important to her, even after it was clear she would never have a career in it. It still felt like a cornerstone of her being. And to have this audience that had never seen ballet, that had never experienced that feeling like she had when she’d sat in the theatre and watched them dance and glide and almost float through a glorious story…well, she couldn’t deny them that. And it felt like a dishonor to ballet to not share it with as much of the universe as possible.

But there was still one problem. “I’m not even a little bit warmed up.”

The Doctor pointed to a tent a ways behind her. “There’s a space all set up for dancers to warm up and practice and get changed. We were near the last to arrive, so you’ll be performing near the end. They’ll have a list up. Should give you an extra hour.”

One hour until she would be on a stage again. The butterflies didn’t stay in her stomach – they floated around her chest until she couldn’t help but laugh at the tickling sensation. “Okay. Giselle. On stage, in front of a crowd, for an Emperor’s birthday.” She took a breath. “I can do that.”

“I know. I have complete confidence in you,” he said with an easy smile. “That’s why I brought the dress and shoes, and those toe pads you mentioned once. Is there anything else you need? I can go back.”

She thought through everything she might need. Costume. Shoes. Her hair was already in a bun with the flowers, a traditional look for Giselle. She thought of another thing, and couldn’t help but laugh again. “The TARDIS had it covered,” she said. “Tights. She provided me with tights, and shocked me when I tried to skip them.”

“That’s my girl,” he said proudly. “Always a step ahead of me.”

Molly turned back to the warm up tent. “I guess I should go get ready,” she said. She turned back to the Doctor. “Did you grab new shoes, or the pair I wore to practice this morning?”

“Looked like the pair you’ve worn before. New ones take some time to be broken in, I recall.”

“And sewn,” she said, relieved. She’d already made all the adjustments she needed to that pair. “Will I see you before?”

“I’ll stop by before you go on,” he promised.

“Alright, then,” she said, and took a breath to steel herself. “I guess I better go get ready.”

“It’ll be grand,” he assured her. “You’ll have fun, too.”

He wasn’t wrong. Before she’d come here and befriended the Doctor and went on so many adventures in the TARDIS, ballet had been the most fun thing in her life. Well, other than getting chased down by probable mobsters and ruining wedding receptions.

She turned and headed for the tent, unusually large, like one that would host a wedding reception. There were several stations with tables and mirrors for makeup, and she saw a few people painting what must have been the traditional makeup of their people onto their faces. There were a few wooden screens to change behind. The other side had mirrors, where another couple people were warming up. One set seemed to be ballroom dancing, and though she wasn’t as familiar with ballroom, she’d say it was a cross between a tango and swing.

Molly headed for one of the screens, and ducked behind to slip out of the gown and into the costume. She wished she’d asked the doctor for one of her practice outfits. She was terrified of getting her Giselle costume messy before going on. But it was what she had, and with only an hour to practice, she didn’t want to waste any more time changing than she had to.

After getting her shoes on properly, she stepped out, and found a space near the mirrors to stretch. She took a long time, hoping to get her muscles warmed properly after everything that had happened in the flytrap house. Fifteen minutes later, she borrowed a chair to use as a barre, and did a few warm ups.

Molly realized she’d earned a few stares when she began to practice en pointe. Those nearest her stared down at her feet with wide eyes, and then looked at her in surprise. Maybe they figured that was just how human feet worked naturally. She didn’t really feel the need to correct them.

As time ticked down, Molly began running through the variation, paying close attention to the parts she struggled with, particularly a part near the end. She was pleased to find that she had built up enough strength in her legs to handle it. She was even more grateful when she remembered what the Doctor had given her so she could keep that strength. Well, and live.

Finally, it was just her and four others in the tent, and she spied the Doctor slip through while she sat on the ground, doing a few more quick stretches.

“One more until you’re up,” he told her, though she’d seen the list by the door. “Are you ready?”

Molly leaned back on her hands and looked up at him. “I think so? I’m warmed up, anyway,” she said. She decided not to mention the stage fright. It was an unfamiliar feeling to her. She’d never been afraid of being the center of attention back when she’d thought this would be her life.

“You’ve got this,” he assured her again. He held out a hand to help her up from the floor, which she gratefully accepted. “It’ll be brilliant.”

She nodded, and didn’t let him pull his hand away immediately. The touch felt reassuring, grounding, even. “You’re sure?”