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He never thought he’d end up at the far reaches of some ancient galaxy only to be brought to a fish pond. Especially when fish ponds could be found so easily in tacky shopping centers throughout most of planet and time period he'd escaped from. The fish in those places didn’t glow and were rarely blindingly neon like the ones here, but Turlough suspected that was not for lack of trying on the part of 1980‘s Earth.
The water here glowed just as much as the fish and was a comfortable temperature to sink his feet into. He hadn’t asked if it was okay to kick around in a cheesy intergalactic mall decoration, but considering the Doctor had rolled up his sleeves and plunged his hands into the water trying to catch one of the little neon bastards almost the moment he and Turlough had reached the pool, Turlough assumed there was little harm his feet could do. The fish swirled around Turlough’s ankles and over his feet often enough that he could have kicked them out of the water. Meanwhile, the same fish slipped mockingly through the Doctor’s fingers. While the fish teased him, the Doctor, member of a proud race of god-like power and outrageous outfits, gave a breathy explanation of how thrilled he was to have finally made it to a glorified koi pond.
The Doctor excitedly explained that each of the fish in the pond contained an entire galaxy, and the light of the stars inside each fish was responsible for the glow. Turlough raised an eyebrow in doubt, and perhaps in response to realizing they’d chosen their allegiances incorrectly, one fish succumbed to the Doctor’s flailing at the same moment that another attempted to take a chunk out of Turlough’s heel.
“You mean I’ve just been bitten by a galaxy?” Turlough asked, irritated and kicking the water in retaliation but not yet quite willing to give up on soaking his feet.
The Doctor was needlessly enthusiastic as he inspected the wriggling fish in his hands from several angles. “Yes! Think of the size of your toe compared to all the worlds in here…!”
“No thanks.” A pause. “And I'm not bleeding to death either, thanks for asking.”
The Doctor said nothing about Turlough bleeding to death, totally absorbed in the allure of his catch. Turlough sighed, stirring up a few ripples and keeping the fish at a fair distance. Splashing would be incredibly satisfying, but he imagined it would bring out the Doctor’s frown-y face again and Turlough hadn’t quite recovered from the last time. “Bit small for galaxies,” he said.
The Doctor grinned at the fish as though it had achieved something amazing by just existing. “Or a bit large for fish?”
“Is Earth’s galaxy in a fish?”
“I should hope not! The smell would be horrible!” He answered Turlough in theory, but his horrified expression was aimed squarely at the fish in his hands.
It was Turlough‘s opinion that Earth already smelled rather horrible in places, but he had to admit that it had lacked a overall musk of fish.
A moment or two later, he accidentally kicked a particularly slow fish and felt a bit guilty seeing it flail after the impact. The Doctor, luckily, seemed to have missed witnessing it. “Do they… die?” Turlough asked, watching his accidental victim twitch a bit and then retreat to deeper waters.
“Of course. Nothing lasts forever.” The Doctor finally replaced the fish he’d been admiring and watched it swim away. He settled against the wall, elbows propping him up and seemed content to watch the neon swirl below them.
“Then… what about all the people? There are people living there, aren‘t there?”
“I seem to recall things smaller than your toe being off-limits for consideration.”
Turlough sighed and felt frustration nagging at him. Or maybe it was eyestrain. “Why did we even come here?”
“If I’ve got the time right, a new galaxy will be born today.”
“Aaggh!” Turlough nearly fell over himself to pull his feet from the water, imagining egg-galaxies squishing and neon-ing between his toes.
“Don’t worry, it’s nothing like that.” The Doctor sounded as though he was trying to hide how amusing Turlough’s reaction had been, and then added, sincerely, “I hear it’s quite beautiful, actually.”
“I’m still keeping out of it, thanks very much.” Nasty galaxy reproduction water filled with other horrible bits of ex-galaxies and … “What do the people in there look like?”
“Oh, like you and me, I imagine,” The Doctor answered, shrugging.
“What, all of them?” Turlough teased, shoving the Doctor’s shoulder with his own. “Do Time Lords lay galactic fish eggs?”
“I’m going to assume you’re joking.”
“Seriously, does everything look like a Time Lord to you?”
“The fish don’t.”
“Oh, very funny.”
“Do I look Trion to you?” The Doctor asked.
Turlough shrugged. “I suppose, but why does everything look like a Trion? Or a Human?”
“Or a Time Lord.”
“Alright, ‘or a Time Lord.’”
The Doctor straightened his posture for a moment of mock pride. “Well, I think it looks rather nice, don’t you?”
Turlough smiled. “If you’re into Humans.”
“You’ve heard of camouflage, haven’t you? Of course you have.”
“So the whole universe is trying to camouflage themselves as Humans? What a stupid thing to do.”
“As Time Lords, Turlough, pay attention.”
“You really think I’m going to believe that?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, I don’t. The Time Lords might think that, but, from what I’ve seen, your people are so obsessed with themselves they’d all be confident enough to say these fish want to be them and just haven‘t quite got the hang of stupid hats yet.”
“Probably something of the other way around, actually,” The Doctor said, trailing his fingers through the water.
“You all want to be fish?”
“Not all fish, but these fish? Controlling the contents of an entire galaxy with your very existence, taking everyone with you when you die, time begins and ends for billions of species because of you-”
“You vomit and several species go extinct…”
The Doctor sighed gruffly. “I can‘t take you anywhere.”
“You’re making it up.”
“No, I really can’t. You’re really kind of difficult all the time, and-”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Oh, well,” the Doctor shrugged, “perhaps I am making it up.”
Turlough sighed again, still frustrated, but enjoying the game of prying little bits of information out of the Doctor. “You haven’t answered my question then,” he said, dropping a pebble into the water.
“I absolutely did.”
“You said you made it up!”
“I said no such thing! And it was an answer, wasn’t it?” He reached into his pocket, pulled something out and held a fist out to Turlough. “Here, some for you too.”
“What is it?” If it had been anyone but the Doctor, Turlough might have actually waited for an answer before holding out his hand. The Doctor poured a small handful of crumbled bread into Turlough’s palm and began feeding the fish with the bit he’d kept for himself.
Turlough frowned in disgust. “How long have you had these in there?”
“Just a little while,” the Doctor answered cheerfully. “Don’t worry, the fish won’t mind.”
“Your pockets must be absolutely disgusting, I -…they need to eat?”
“I have no idea.” He was completely absorbed in holding out a bit of the bread to the fish, apparently hoping they’d eat out of his hand like birds.
“So we’re throwing ancient bread at galaxies,” Turlough said, practically to himself. Against something like better judgment, personal pride, and all the sense contained in the universe, Turlough threw pinches of the crumbled bread into the water and waited for the fish to do something other than attempt to eat or blind him.
Several of the fish did eat the chunks of bread, to Turlough’s surprise, though immediately after, he wondered about the consequences of sending a bit of dough the relative size of a giant cluster of planets into the guts of galaxy.
“Doctor, where will this bread go?”
“Sorry?”
“In the fish, Doctor. You said they’re galaxies, unless you’re making that up too.”
“Yes…?”
“We’re feeding gigantic hunks of material to them.”
The Doctor inspected the bits of bread in his hands and craned his neck to compare them to the ones Turlough was holding. “Are yours bigger than mine?”
“Relative to the people in the fish, Doctor. I just want to know if this delightful snack from your pocket is going to crash into someone’s planet.”
“Oh! No, of course not! They have stomachs, they’ll be just fine.”
Turlough blinked. “Where do they keep the galaxy?”
“I suspect there’s an organ for that,” The Doctor answered. He was holding up a bit of bread and appeared to be trying to coax one fish to do a trick.
“Oh.” Just then, frustration and annoyed resignation gave way to clarity. “Doctor?”
“Yes?”
“Are the fish… bigger on the inside?”
There was a splash and a few drops of glittering water hit Turlough’s face. The bit of bread was gone from the Doctor’s fingers and he beamed first at the fish that had performed for him, and then at Turlough.