Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

  PART ONE

It was raining in the undercity.

It often was. Far above them, there were weather controls and climate engineering, but down below they were all left to their own devices. No one cared if it rained on the poor. Marjorie didn’t mind it so much as the others did—though her neighbours would say that she didn’t mind much of anything so much as the others did. The water swept away the grime and the dirt, made pretty sounds on the tin awning above her. She stayed open when it rained to let the noise in, aching elbows planted on the edges of her open hatch. Her sleeves always got wet. She still didn’t mind.

Years ago, she’d been a mother. She’d had a child and a brother and her hole in Pharmacytown’s finest wall had been very crowded indeed. Not anymore. She smiled dreamily as she leaned into the open air, sharp and chemical. She still had the rain, at least. And the rest was all easy to forget, for the right price.

Out of the rain pounding musically on her thin tin roof she heard a peculiar noise. Like a car failing on the motorway. A sad, wheezing moan. She waited with the patient curiosity of the very stoned or the very content. It didn’t do to have too many expectations down in the undercity, and she’d long given up trying to do anything to attract customers. They came to her. They all came, anyway.

Out of the dark and the rain, a lonely blue figure approached her. A slip of a woman, maybe, Marjorie thought. Underneath all that blue her features were sharp. Her feet were quiet. Her hood was up. None of the other hatches opened to brave the rain.

“Hello, love,” Marjorie said quietly, letting the rain fill up the rest of the sound. She didn’t like to disturb the night. She didn’t like to shout, like her neighbours. There was no need. “Happy for you, my dear?”

As if anyone ever came to her for anything else.

The thin, blue woman didn’t speak. She fished more credits than Marjorie had seen all week out of her pockets and set them on the metal edge. Marjorie blinked down at them, slowly. She reassessed. Most of it was credits. Some of it was money she’d never seen before, rusted and old. She counted three sewing buttons, all different shapes and sizes. A bottle cap.

Marjorie looked down at the thin, blue woman and reassessed.

“I sell Forget too, my dove,” she said softly, a hunch prickling the back of her neck.

The woman only looked back up at her, dark eyes gleaming in the sterile light from her hatch. The thin, unhappy line of her mouth pressed together.

“If I forget,” she said, after a long moment, “there won’t be anyone left to remember.” She pushed her credits closer, fingers trembling.

“Of course,” Marjorie said. She took the credits. She kept the buttons close to her, spirited them into her pocket like a secret. She sold Happy in single patches or in sheets of tickets. She tore five sheets from her roll in the back and passed them into those trembling hands. They disappeared into the woman’s pocket. On a slightly damp notepad, Marjorie made five neat ticks with a dull pencil and then tucked it behind her ear. “One at a time, mind, my dove.”

The woman smiled tightly, like the world was breaking.

“Just for emergencies,” she said.

Maybe, Marjorie thought, the world had already broken. Well. Happy could fix that. She leaned forward dreamily as the woman left, silent under the patter of the rain. Lonely again, but she didn’t mind.

Marjorie didn’t mind much of anything.

“Ow!”

She tripped away from the console, blinking hard against the arc of sparks that had just come dangerously close to her face.

“Alright there, Doc?”

“Fine,” she said, glaring up at the TARDIS ceiling. Her goggles slid precariously down the back of her head. She jammed the slightly singed fingers of her right hand into her mouth. “No thanks to you,” she mumbled around them. The TARDIS only moaned faintly in reply—and, she thought, catching a psychic whiff of it at the back of her head, mild disgruntlement. “Trying to put you back together,” she muttered, a little softer. She swept the goggles off her head before they could plunge to the floor. “You were very helpful earlier today, you could put a bit more welly into it.”

She caught a glimpse of Graham out of the corner of her eye, inching closer, coming up from the wardrobe. He’d changed out of his 20^th century clothes, but the hat was still dangling from one hand, like he planned to keep it. She almost smiled.

“You ain’t talking to me,” he said, “right?”

She shook her head, plunging her hand back into the mess of circuits she’d been trying to repair.

“I’m trying to get the wiring back to rights,” she told him, glancing over. “Extending the shields like that earlier blew a lot of circuits, not to mention all the wires I’m going to have to reroute, and the biscuit pedal broke, and then there’s a tilt to the zig-zag-plotter I’ve been meaning to fix—”

“So, I take it you don’t want to take a break for sandwiches,” he interrupted. He moved his hat to his other hand, almost nervously. Eyebrows raised hopefully. “Could do you up one of them fried egg ones you like.”

“No time,” she said, knuckles whitening around her wrench at the edge in his voice. It was like he knew what her answer was going to be, but was asking anyway, which wasn’t fair at all. She glanced away. “Not if we don’t want to spend the night parked in the vortex, and trust me, the last thing I need right now is a parking ticket. You lot go ahead without me.” She swallowed sharply and squinted through the dimness at the circuit she was trying to repair. The TARDIS had taken to the blue light with a sulky sort of gusto in the evenings in what she thought was probably a vindictive way of trying to get her to sleep. It wouldn’t work.

At this point, nothing would.

“You’ve been saying that for weeks, Doc.” There was something accusatory there, underneath that thin veneer of concern, and it set her teeth on edge. “Why don’t you ever take tea with us anymore? We did alright today, didn’t we?”

“I’m busy,” she snapped, lips closing regretfully over the words the second they left her mouth. She didn’t turn to see his face. You did brilliant, she didn’t say. You were amazing, just like always, all of you. I have the best taste in friends. I’d love to spend more time with you, she continued to not say, only every second I’m not hunting him down feels like failure. I’d love to spend more time with you, only everything tastes like sawdust. I’d love to spend more time with you, only I seem to have found myself—funny story, I promise—deeply implicated in the death of my entire planet. Again! Can you believe it?

“Right,” he said, after a moment. Pursue, retreat. This was the game, now. Press, press, press, until she scared them off. Until they worked up the courage to try again. “Uh, well, if you change your mind…”

He trailed off. Hurt, by the sounds of it, and something trying hard to be guilt churned in her stomach. She’d been doing so well, today. She’d nearly got it perfectly right.

“Sorry,” she said, but it came out too quiet and too late. When she turned around, finally, he’d already left. The sound of his footsteps echoed softly down the corridor. She breathed in harshly, nose wrinkling, lips whitening together. Almost without thinking, the edge of the wrench in her hand found the edge of the console. Discordant metal on metal rang in her ears. The impact rang up her wrist. The TARDIS wheezed in vague offense.

She took another shuddering breath.

“Oh, come on,” she whispered. “Not you, too.”

The sound of waves settled at the back of her head. An apology of sorts. Or possibly it was disapproval, because the lights dimmed even further, plunging everything blue. She strangled back a slew of bad words that even the TARDIS didn’t deserve, probably, and whirled herself back around, wrench still in hand.

“Fine,” she said, teeth clenched. “Hard way? Fine.”

She’d fetch a headlamp if she had to. Which she probably would. Almost immediately, she tore the wrong wire out by mistake and swallowed back a yelp at the ensuing spark, drawing aching eyes up to glare at the ceiling. Another wheeze of malcontent echoed in her ears.

“I am trying,” she gritted out around the embarrassing lump in her throat, “to fix—”

Something, anything. The TARDIS moaned in sympathy. The telepathic circuits flashed, half-repaired. The blue strengthened, darker, darker.

“Stop trying to help me,” she hissed, carefully setting down the wrench before she did anything else with it that she’d regret. “I don’t need it, I don’t need—”

She swallowed harshly.

“I don’t need anything,” she whispered, and it was more a reminder to herself than anything else. Emergencies only, she thought firmly, for which she’d classified upwards of fifteen thousand possible scenarios that hadn’t happened yet and certainly weren’t happening right now. They wouldn’t happen at all, as long as she was careful. In the meantime, there was just—insurance. Insurance burning a tempting hole in her coat pocket.

Try harder. Smile better.

When she was running, it was so easy. So, she’d kept them all running. Seventeen Spires of Spligg, bam, Poosh’s Second Moon, bam, a breeze through Raxicoricofallapatorius’ upper atmosphere, just so they could laugh at the name, bam. Breakfast at Tiffany’s and dinner at the Ritz and drinks at the end of the universe and no stopping, no breathing, no time left to think, no time to let home burn behind her eyelids. Excitement that left them too dazzled for questions and too tired for doubt. She could live with it all, like that. She could pretend. Or at least, she’d thought she could.

That stupid space squid, she thought, diving back into the console tiredly, but no more cautiously. And everything that had followed: the spa-gone-wrong and the Earth, abandoned and ruined. Her second home, ash beneath her feet and theirs. They were starting to notice. Grief kept sliding out through the cracks of her. It was as surprising to her as it was to them, sometimes, but she couldn’t seem to make it stop. Everything hurt and everything was irritating.

But she’d done better this time, she thought, swallowing harshly. She pulled another wire. It was the right one, probably, and so it only sparked a little bit. As soon as things went wrong, she could almost forget. She’d been delighted by the strange energy readings they’d picked up in New York, delighted by Nikola Tesla, delighted by the adrenaline and the joy of the adventure, the joy of saving the Earth with one of the universe’s greatest minds. A kindred spirit. Someone who could almost have understood. It had been like watching herself in the mirror—the person she was trying to be. The person she was meant to be. Slipping from her, leaving her to trip into darker things. Angrier things.

Her hand brushed her pocket.

“Emergencies,” she whispered to herself. In the dark, all of it was impossible to escape, but at least no one was looking. There was no need. No need to pretend, no need to ignore. She could stew in everything she pushed aside during the day until everyone woke up again. Search for the Master unimpeded. Fix what she could. All she needed was work to do, enough to keep her hands busy and her mind occupied.

She sucked in air through her teeth and plunged her hands back into the guts of the console, squinting into the dark.

Yaz approached her cautiously, shivering in the gloom. The TARDIS had been cold lately. Cold and blue, like it were in night-mode all the time, even when it should have been morning.

The Doctor had her arms jammed in the console’s innards, looking like she’d been up for hours already. Around her, naked wires sprung from detached panels, stripped circuits laying abandoned on the floor, sprawled beside a mess of tools. She was there in the middle of it, like she always was these days, goggles pushed up her forehead, half-submerged in the console, grease smeared across one cheek. Something sparked and she barely flinched, only scrunched her nose in faint irritation and went for the wrench.

Faint was the key word. Yaz cleared her throat, half-hoping. Meeting Tesla had sparked something familiar in her that Yaz hadn’t seen for what felt like weeks. A bit of warmth, a bit of excitement. All it took, she thought fondly, was a bit of trouble, sometimes.

The Doctor paused, wrench in the air, finally seeing her.

“Yaz!” she greeted brightly. Her nose wrinkled, but it was distracted. “Is something the matter? Thought you lot were going to bed.”

“Er,” she said, feeling what little faith she’d gathered on the walk from the kitchen to the console room leave in a trickle. “Doctor, it’s morning.”

The Doctor’s face froze in a rictus of cheerful panic.

“Ah,” she said, after a moment. “Well, that’s time for you. It flies, when you’re…” she trailed off, head tilting to glare absently up at the ceiling. She set the wrench down. It balanced briefly on the edge of the console before it tipped over the edge and landed on the floor with a discordant clatter. “…having fun.”

Yaz frowned, taking in the mess around them with greater unease. “Were you here all night?” she asked. “Again?”

“There’s lots to do,” she said, a rote phrase that grated on Yaz’s ears, because she’d heard it so many times lately that it was starting to lose all meaning. “Yearly—”

“—maintenance,” Yaz finished, defeated. “And all the repairs, after yesterday. I know.” She swallowed. Ryan was right. Maybe it was time to stop trying so hard. “Okay, well—”

The Doctor was still smiling at her. It looked flimsy. The slightest pressure and it would give. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Oh, right,” Yaz said. Her fingers tugged at the hem of her jumper hesitantly. “Doctor, actually, the three of us were wonderin’—”

“Wondering what?” She extracted her other hand from the console with difficulty, already distracted again. Another spark flew at her face during the process but she ignored it.

“It’s just—” Yaz’s hand flew to the back of her head, where she’d only just barely untangled the remains of her updo. “It’s all been a bit busy, lately.”

“Yeah, lots to see,” the Doctor agreed, hand wandering in search of the wrench she’d just put down. She pulled a wire from the console with intent, reeling back as it sparked loudly, momentarily illuminated by the flash. “Lots to do, “ she repeated, still feeling for the wrench, eyeing the wire she’d pulled away warily. “Fancy another era? We could do the Byzantine, haven’t been there in a while. I lost a shoe in the Battle of Yarmouk I always meant to go back for.”

“Right, it’s just—” Yaz tried again, a bit more forcefully, moving closer.

The Doctor paused, finally tearing her eyes away from the console. Still, for a moment.

“We’ve been talking, the three of us,” Yaz said.

The Doctor’s face fell slightly and Yaz felt her gut twist. “Oh?” she asked. “About what?”

Yaz leaned down to grab the wrench and hand it to her.

“We’re all a bit tired,” she said. “That’s all. Aren’t you?” Because you certainly look it, she didn’t say.

The Doctor’s face didn’t move. She took the wrench.

“Oh,” she said. “Yeah, of course. Silly me. Sorry, I forget about—human frailties,” she muttered quickly, like she’d realized it wasn’t necessarily polite but hadn’t been able to keep herself from saying it. “I could—”

Her breath caught.

“I could drop you at home,” she said. “For a bit. If you want.”

“We were thinking maybe we could try another holiday,” Yaz interrupted. “Actually. Somethin’ restful? Not a war zone or a battle? Not to knock the Byzantine.”

The Doctor blinked. Yaz caught a flash of deep relief before it was carefully shuttered away.

“A holiday?” she repeated, bright again, nearly convincing. She smiled. “Brilliant!”

Yaz felt her shoulders relax.

“Yeah?” she said, relieved. Full of righteous victory, too, all of a sudden. Ryan had bet ten quid that by noon they’d be running from some sort of space slug, instead. “Just for a few days. Then right back to the runnin’.”

“A few days,” the Doctor repeated, her smile growing just a hair tense. Just if you were looking. Yaz pretended not to see. “Of nothing. Restful nothing. Absolutely. Sounds like loads of fun.” She took in a breath and straightened her shoulders. “Where to?” she asked, spinning a dial invitingly. The console sparked and she cleared her throat, briefly glaring up at the ceiling again.

“Why don’t you choose?” Yaz offered, in an effort to bring her in on the decision. “You must have been to loads of spas before.”

The smile grew tenser. “Oh, one or two,” she said, strained. “Not big on repeat visits, me, but I’ve just had an idea. Why don’t you lot get sorted and I’ll plot in the coordinates?”

“Great!” Yaz felt a grin slide across her face, despite the oddness. She paused. “Er,” she said, a bit cautiously. It all still felt a bit like the night before a school trip, when you didn’t want to make your mum cross for any reason, just in case she decided to pull the plug on the whole thing. “Are you going to wipe the grease off your face first, maybe?”

An absent, grease-covered hand came up to swipe at her cheek, which only smeared it even further. The Doctor frowned.

“Right,” she said, staring down at her greasy hand, mystified. “Well, I suppose—”

“Great! Amazin’!” Yaz turned back to the stairs, beaming. She glanced over her shoulder. “You’re the best!”

“Right,” she heard the Doctor say as she left, her voice tinny in the empty gloom. “Yeah. Brilliant.” A strained whisper at her back.

As she slipped from the console room, already mentally packing, there was a pause and a great, heaving sigh.

She totally ignored it.

They landed at sunset.

“Brilliant,” Yaz breathed, taking in the view through a giant, brass-trimmed window. Snow-peaked mountains in the sun glinted just beyond, catching the failing light. Below them, she could see a turquoise lake, frozen in sheets, visitors as small as ants skating in the distance. It was so cold that ice crystals sparkled in the air and spread across the ground like glitter. “Doctor.” She pressed closer to the glass, smiling in anticipation. “It’s beautiful.”

“And on the first try, too.” Graham glanced through the glass beside her. Some of the tension that had been gathering in the corners of his eyes over the past few weeks was already fading. “Maybe the TARDIS also wanted a holiday.” His eyes flitted towards the Doctor, glued to the window, barely listening. “You’ve certainly been taking her out and about plenty, lately.”

Without us, he didn’t say, but the implication was clear. Yaz cleared her throat pointedly.

“It’s gorgeous,” Ryan agreed, helping her out without acknowledgement, fingers pressing up against the glass until Graham nudged them away. “And about time we had a do-over, I’ll be honest.” He scrubbed away his fingerprints with his shirt-sleeve, oblivious to the dirty looks he was receiving from some of the other guests milling around the lobby. Not everyone, Yaz noted, was quite as casually dressed as they were. As she watched, a server all buttoned up in black and white brought a tray with two champagne glasses to a couple waiting on a sofa, watching the sunset. A posh holiday, she thought, grinning. Get in.

“Where are we, then?” Ryan finally thought to ask.

It took a moment. The Doctor had barely glanced over the lobby when they’d arrived. She’d been drawn instantly to the view out the window instead, where the burning sky was catching orange on the snowy peaks. Yaz watched the way the sunset caught in her hair and the curves of her face, the way it glinted in her eyes. There was still something tight in the line of her mouth when she tore her gaze away from the view.

“Five-star resort,” she explained enthusiastically, lighting up like a switch had been flipped, gesturing to the lobby around them, “nestled at the feet of the New Rockies, with three hyper-waterslides, four restaurants, an anti-grav wing, a ski-hill, a full-service spa, and a natural hot spring.” She swung back on her heels, eyebrows raising, waiting to see if she’d gotten it right. “They call it the Liz,” she tried, swinging forward. “It’s one of New Earth’s greatest tourist attractions.”

“Earth, again?” Yaz asked, incredulous.

“It’ll be better this time,” the Doctor protested, gesturing out the window. “I thought—” She shifted, looking suddenly uncomfortable. “The Earth isn’t the end of humanity, that’s all. You keep going. You keep traveling. Billions of years from your time, humanity’s all spread out amongst the stars, but you keep trying to recreate home. ” She smiled tentatively. “That’s what all this is.”

“Oh,” Yaz said. She glanced back out the window, mollified. Touched, even.

“Wait,” Ryan said, turning to look at the Doctor, eyebrows raising. “Wait, anti-grav wing? Get in.”

“And we’re really just guests?” Graham pressed. “No trouble, no scorpions, no—nuclear fallout?”

“Just guests,” she said, holding up the psychic paper. Some of the tension in her shoulders was seeping out at their obvious delight. “See?”

Graham’s eyes were gleaming now.

“This is a bit of alright, Doc,” he said, breaking into a smile. “Can we see our rooms? Do they have fancy soaps?” He paused, the possibilities flooding in. “Is it all-inclusive? Are there free snacks? A mini-bar?” he demanded. “Doc, tell me this place has got a mini-bar.”

“Oh, good point, Graham, got to get your money’s worth with this sort of thing—”

“Is the spa included in the package?” Yaz wondered, craning her head away from the window. She turned, finally, the sun warm at her back. She grinned. “And can we go out in the snow?”

“Rooms?” The Doctor frowned, ignoring the rest of their questions. Her head tilted back in the direction they’d come from, confused. “The TARDIS is just parked in that linen cupboard over there.”

The Doctor, Yaz finally noticed, hadn’t bothered packing a bag. She hadn’t even changed her clothes, as far as Yaz could tell. The grease on her face, she noted sourly, had clearly been swiped away by the sleeve of her coat. In the elegant lobby, surrounded by guests with their fancy bags and hats and knitted jumpers, she stood out painfully. Loud and bright and—out of place.

“But,” Yaz kept her voice bright, her face hopeful, even though she could feel her stomach sinking with the setting sun. “We are staying. You’re staying. Not just dropping us off and leaving. Right?”

The Doctor’s mouth twisted, like she’d been caught in a lie.

“I’ve got—errands,” she tried. “Just some quick things to do, I’ll be back in an hour, tops. You won’t even miss me.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, hurt leaking out. Anger, too, but it was more at herself, for bothering to take the Doctor at her word. “We came with you. You can’t just drop us off and carry on, we’re on holiday. We’re staying here,” she said firmly, taking a step forward. The Doctor backed up a step, lips flattening unhappily. “And so are you. No trips, no errands. Right?”

“Right,” she said, after a moment. The tightness in her jaw didn’t leave but she stretched another smile over it. “Yeah, of course. On holiday. The whole fam. As promised.” She blew out an irritated breath and held up the psychic paper again, looking a bit like Yaz’s dad at the mouth of the big Tesco whenever her mum left him to do the weekly shop. Dread and uncertainty creeping across, like the magnitude of the task before her was only just settling in. “I’ll check us in,” she offered tightly.

“Woah, woah, wait, for how long?” Ryan asked, suddenly—rightfully—suspicious.

“Er.” She wrinkled her nose. “Two days?”

His face fell.

“Four days?” Her eyebrows raised a bit desperately.

A beat.

“A whole week!” she said finally, spitting it out quickly like she couldn’t quite believe she was saying it. Her smile grew tighter around the edges. She swung back on her heels, arms swinging. “I’ll sort it, then. Find out where the rooms are. You’ll want VIP treatment, I assume?”

“And then dinner?” Graham piped up, tearing his gaze away from the view. “Cocktails?”

“Why don’t you save me a seat,” the Doctor suggested, breaths tight, arms swinging again. “Meet you there? Brilliant.”

She turned, a little too quickly, and sped off with the psychic paper white-knuckled in her hand.

“Right,” Yaz said in her wake, hating the squeeze in her voice. “Lovely.”

“Lovely?” Ryan repeated, skeptical.

She elbowed him, smiling tightly.

“Shut up,” she said. “We’re on holiday. It’s gonna be fine. It’s gonna be fun. Look at this place! No squid, no scorpions. Just snow and sun and rest. We all need this.”

“It’s alright,” Ryan conceded, eyes following Yaz’s, watching as the Doctor made her way brusquely through the crowd, shoulders tight. “But—”

“It’s fine,” Yaz said. “Everything’s fine. Come on, let’s find the poshest restaurant.” She glanced down at her jeans, teeth finding the edge of her lip. “Maybe not the poshest one tonight, actually. We can leave our bags with the Doctor on the way, right?” She took a breath. “What about—?”

“Relax, love,” Graham said, a gentle hand on her back. “Plenty of time for all of it. Let’s just find the nearest one for now, yeah? Don’t want the Doc to get lost trying to find us.”

“If she even shows up,” Ryan muttered, trailing behind them as they reluctantly split from the window. The warm orange light cast the burnished accents on the wall gold and shiny, tall shadows before them. “She ain’t hung around with us for weeks. Why would she now?”

“Because,” Yaz said firmly, striding ahead, “we’re on holiday. Everything's fine!”

She could practically feel his eyebrows raising, behind her.

“Well,” he said. “That’s me told.”

“You know, I did get the sense,” Graham pondered, “that maybe a spa vacation isn’t exactly the Doc’s cup of tea.” He took a sip of the elegant cocktail a waiter had set down before him a second earlier and brightened considerably. “But this is a bit of alright, ain’t it.”

“It’s just her mood,” Yaz said, perusing the menu.  “She’ll come ‘round. She needs a break, too, she just won’t admit it.” A glass of water cost ten credits and even the paper felt expensive. The cutlery was wrapped in proper cloth napkins, embroidered around the edges. She couldn’t help but grin. All of it was perfectly rubbish and perfectly perfect. “She didn’t say no to your coupons,” she pointed out. Even though she probably should have, in retrospect, but Yaz kept that particular thought to herself.

A chandelier glinted in the warm light, just above their curved booth. They’d arrived just around the dinner hour, and though the restaurant was crowded, there was something about the sound engineering that kept the noise of it ambient and soft.

“Well, she didn’t exactly get the chance to,” he replied, taking another sip.

“Yeah, and she’d say yes to anything if she thought it would make us happy,” Ryan said shrewdly from behind his own menu. “Or shut us up for a minute,” he tacked on, quietly.

Yaz set down her menu, frowning. “No, she wouldn’t,” she protested.

“Wouldn’t what?” Yaz caught the faintest hint of engine oil and ozone and the Doctor slid in beside her with a smile. She spread her hands on the table, four key cards spilling from her grip, and leaned in. “Penthouse suites,” she said, eyebrows raising. “Only we’ll have to bunk up, they only had two available. Don’t say I never give you anything and don’t let on that we’re not actually third cousins of the Queen of Luxembourg 2. What are we talking about, then?”

“Uh,” Graham fumbled, folding the thin plastic key into his shirt pocket.

“Water here costs ten credits,” Ryan saved him, still holding his menu so it concealed half his face. He ignored Yaz’s triumphant smile pointedly. “And I thought EuroDisney was mad.”

The Doctor’s smile deepened. “And it’s all included. We aren’t paying a cent. Credit. Whatever, I always get a bit mixed up with currencies, don’t know how you lot keep track—”

Which led on to a very long ramble that started with alien currencies and somehow ended with an anecdote about the time the Doctor and a friend had saved a planet and a little girl from being eaten by a sun-god with a memory and a magic leaf. It was quite the tale, Yaz mused, leaning in, eyes still half-caught on her menu. If it were true. It was always a little hard to tell. The Doctor told good stories, she thought, narrowing down salads. But they tended to be alarmingly sparse on the details.

“What are you having, then?” she asked, still squinting down at the elegant script. Half the things on the menu she barely recognized, and the other half had a lot of slightly alarming strings attached—what exactly, she wondered, was a Trixellian beetroot? And why did it come with three separate allergy warnings?—but it was sometimes a safe bet, when things were strange, to follow the Doctor’s lead.

Except when she was taste-testing the local dirt, of course, but that was a given.

“Er,” the Doctor hesitated. “Might pass on dinner, me. Been nibbling on biscuits.”

Ryan put down his menu, exasperated.

“You can’t survive on custard creams for weeks on end, mate. Believe me,” he muttered, going back to the options, clearly as lost as Yaz was. “I’ve tried.”

“Hold on, I thought the biscuit pedal broke,” Graham interjected. “That’s what you said, earlier.”

Her nose wrinkled into a scowl. “I—”

“We could share something,” Yaz offered, pushing her menu between them. “How are we meant to know what’s alright, otherwise?”

“Oh, as long as you avoid the beetroot,” she dodged, glancing away. She unravelled her cutlery from its napkin enclosure, swallowing. “This place is human, mostly. You’ll be fine.”

“Mostly,” Ryan repeated skeptically, stretching his neck. He looked tired, too, Yaz thought. They all did, even in the warm light of the restaurant. Worn thin and ragged, like they’d been running for ages. In a way, she supposed, they had. They needed this. All of them, whether they knew it or not. She took a deep, calming breath and forcibly relaxed her shoulders.

“Go on, then,” she said, glancing up as a waiter passed them by again, the buttons of his coat shiny in the dim light. “What do you recommend?”

He rolled through a list of specials that she barely understood, lip curling faintly. Probably at their jeans and their jackets and the way Graham stumbled over the word ‘consommé’, but she was too glad to be where they were to be bothered by it. This was proper posh, proper relaxing, there were lemon-scented moist towelettes—

And the Doctor wasn’t paying attention to any of it. As soon as they’d stopped talking to her, she’d drifted off to wherever it was she went, these days. Far away, empty-eyed. Yaz nudged her, when the waiter huffed impatiently, and she blinked her way back, leaning away from Yaz into the booth.

“Oh,” she said. “I really don’t—”

“Are you really not going to eat with us?” Yaz asked, wincing as she heard a bit of her mother in her voice. That wouldn’t do. Not while they were on holiday. “I mean, it’s fine, but—”

“No, no,” the Doctor said, glancing at Yaz out of the corner of her eye, shoulders slumping in what looked like defeat. “I’ll have—” She floundered. “That.” She pointed to Graham’s half-empty drink. “Whatever that is.”

Graham frowned. “You can’t have a space mai-tai for your tea, Doc.”

She frowned back, perplexed. “We’re on holiday, of course I can!”

“You don’t even like alcohol.”

“Me?” She leaned back against the booth in mock offense. “I’ll have you know I once invented the banana daiquiri in 18^th century France. And then,” she crossed her arms, eyebrows raising. “I fought a bunch of clockwork robots, rescued a horse, and snogged Madame DePompadour. Busy day, that one. Anyway,” she pointed again. “One of those. Please.”

“Yeah, but,” Graham set down his menu, frowning, as the waiter discreetly pulled away. “When was the last time you had a regular meal, Doc?”

“You never have tea with us anymore,” Ryan pointed out.

Her face was freezing into something that looked vaguely trapped. “I’ve,” she fumbled. “I’ve been busy.”

“Ain’t seen you in the kitchen for weeks, though,” Ryan went on, frowning now. “You really don’t—?”

“I didn’t realize dinner was gonna be an interrogation,” she interrupted frostily, throwing her napkin down on the table.

“It’s not,” Yaz intervened, half-prepared to grab the sleeve of the Doctor’s coat, she was strung so tightly. Vibrating tension at Yaz’s side, like she might bolt any second. Yaz glared across the booth. “Right? It’s fine,” she insisted.

But the Doctor was making to stand, face flattening into that expression Yaz hated, closed off and cold and alien.

“You know what,” she said, swallowing thickly. “I think I forgot to lock the linen cupboard the TARDIS is hiding in. Don’t wait up.”

She slipped away, shoulders tense, before any of them could say anything. Yaz watched her nearly run down a waitress, dodging her tray of drinks by the barest hair as she stormed off.

Yaz groaned and leaned back against the booth, glare intensifying.

“Could you not,” she protested, “for ten minutes—?”

“Oh, come off it, Yaz,” Ryan said. He crossed his arms. “That weren’t our fault.”

Graham fiddled with his napkin, unease spread across his face. “We’re just worried,” he said quietly.

“She’s fine,” she insisted.

”You don’t really believe that.” Ryan leaned forward, elbows meeting the table, narrowly avoiding Graham’s half-finished drink. He looked her in the eye pointedly, not cowed in the slightest by the strength of her glare. “I know you don’t, you just want a nice holiday so you can tick it off your list and prove that everything’s okay.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, incredulous. “I just think if we could all try to get along for more than five minutes—”

“Well, we haven’t done that for weeks, either, have we?” he demanded, half-raising to his own feet, before Graham tugged him down by the hem of his jumper. He swallowed, jaw jumping. He lowered his voice. “Not unless there’s something going wrong. And that’s not right,” he said, pointing a finger into the table emphatically. “Adventure’s what we do, and I love it, but we used to have the odd slow bit, too. We used to all—do things together that weren’t runnin’ from giant scorpions. Karaoke and evening tea and—and sometimes she liked to read while I played Call of Duty in the library, we don’t do none of that anymore. She just drops us off places, or buries herself in that console, and she won’t say—”

He swallowed again, sagging back against the booth. Graham took a grim sip of his drink.

“I know,” Yaz said quietly, feeling the glare slip from her face. “I know, but maybe she just needs to remember,” she went on, a bit desperate. “Remember how much fun it can be, the four of us, just being together. Having fun. So stop—” she gestured, a bit uselessly, “—winding her up.”

“And since when was asking a question winding her up?” Ryan muttered, but it fell flat and uneasy, because the answer, Yaz knew in her gut, sounded awfully like ’since the very beginning’.

“Let’s all just relax,” she said instead, swallowing back the bite in her voice. “Let’s have a good time. Rest. That’s all we need,” she insisted quietly. “That’s all.”

Rest, and a good meal, and a good night’s sleep. She heard echoes of her mother again, prickling at the edges, and tried to swallow those back, too.

They had their meal in stilted, awkward silence, but that was okay, she convinced herself, as they trailed their way to the elegant lift in the middle of the lobby, dodging sneers and the occasional bellhop. The lobby never quite died down. Even hours after they’d arrived, it was still bustling. She scuffled briefly with Ryan over who got to press the lift button and won, which lifted her spirits slightly. Graham left them both with a faint smile and a clap on the back, and Ryan nudged her shoulder in goodnight, and there was always tomorrow, wasn’t there. And the day after, and the day after. A whole week. Plenty of time.

And in the meantime, they had the penthouse level practically to themselves.

She paused at the door to her room, remembering with a sigh that they were shared. She didn’t want to know whether the Doctor had stayed or not, she realized tiredly, letting herself in regardless.

Empty. Of course. Who knew where the Doctor had gone off to, then? Whether she was even still in the hotel, whether she’d taken off with the TARDIS, wherever she went these days. On her own. Without them.

The posh fixings of the room weren’t quite enough to kick her mood, but she tried anyway, slipping off her shoes and her jeans and settling into her pyjamas and the biggest bed she’d ever seen with a sigh. Outside, the moon shone cool and blue, frost coating the window like artwork, creeping across. It was very quiet on the top floor. The future had done better at taking care of ambient noises like furnaces and air flows and pipes running. A bird—an owl, maybe, she wondered, smiling faintly at the novelty, this far from home—or something like it let out a cry into the night.

It wasn’t lonely, she decided, sinking into the pillows, admiring the thread-count of the sheets. Or if it was, it was peaceful. Lonely could be peaceful.

She rolled over, away from the moon, towards the door. Towards the other bed, starched and tightly made and empty. Tomorrow, she thought, sinking into sleep.

It would be better tomorrow.

“Sorry,” she tried, banging her forehead gently into the TARDIS door, knuckles white around the frame, “it’s just, the last time I went on holiday, the one before we ended up on the nuclear wasteland that used to be your home, I got possessed by a voice-stealing alien and nearly thrown out an airlock—hmm. No.”

Try harder.

“Sorry,” she tested, lifting her head back, “holidays are for tortoises—mm, no.”

Try harder.

“Sorry,” she sighed, banging her forehead more forcefully into the TARDIS, an impact for every word, “sorry, sorry, sorry—”

Sorry, everything tastes like ash in my mouth, sorry, if I stop moving I’ll implode, sorry, I can’t tell you anything, because—

“Sorry for what?” she heard, the creak of the linen cupboard door finding her ears just a second too late. Warm light flooded the dimness for the briefest second before the door slammed shut again. “Oh, gods, what is that?”

The Doctor whirled, finding herself face to face with a scattered-looking human. Female—well, maybe, she was poor at that game, the skirt-trousers divide was misleading and also stupid—and young and so pale she was nearly grey. Her hair was green at the tips and her ears were full of metal and holes. Very cool, but there was no time—

“Er,” she said. “Hiya. I’m the Doctor. Don’t suppose you’d mind forgetting that you ever saw this? Don’t want to get a parking ticket.”

“Lydia,” the girl said, dragging a fish-netted arm under her nose, squinting up at the TARDIS through the dark. “Why’ve you got a box in the linen cupboard? Were you—” She sniffled. “Were you talking to it?”

“No,” she protested. “Well. Okay, maybe, but—sorry, I can’t help but notice that you’re not exactly housekeeping.”

Lydia raised her eyebrows in challenge. “Neither are you. Not dressed like that.” She sniffled again. “I was just—just trying to escape my family. Just for a second. ”

“Ah.” The Doctor cleared her throat. “Well, you’ve come to the right cupboard. Are you alright?” She narrowed her eyes. Lydia was thin and green and pale, which she supposed might have been part of the look, but there was an ashiness to her that didn’t seem quite right, even in the dimness. Sweat, gathered at her temple.

“Fine.” She took a thumb under her eyes and swiped at some of the darkness gathered there. It flaked away, reluctantly. “Just—it’s posh, here. I don’t—” She took a steadying breath and sniffed again. “My dad’s a Member of New Parliament, see.” She spread her arms, smiling bitterly, skin glistening in the dark, clothes artfully ripped. “So I’m a bit of an embarrassment. But if they don’t take me with them on holiday, everyone will talk, so.”

“Definitely the right cupboard,” the Doctor said. She raised a finger to her nose. “I won’t tell, if you don’t.”

“Yeah?” Lydia gave her a judgemental once-over, of the sort that only teenagers of a certain age were capable. The Doctor was reminded fleetingly, fondly, of Ace, for the first time in what felt like centuries. “Alright, then.” She cleared her throat again, wrinkled her nose. “Ugh.”

The Doctor winced and dived into her pockets, fingers searching, She was pretty sure—

A book of French verbs landed on the floor, followed by a banana, a taser, a yo-yo, her iPhone, and a tin of goldfish food. Her fingers brushed against plastic sheets that she furiously ignored and landed on a handkerchief. She proffered it gracefully.

“Sick on holiday,” she said sympathetically. “Been there. Well, I say been there, I suppose I mean that actually I was used as an experiment for this Tachyon Recreation Generator and forcibly aged several hundred years, but—”

“You,” Lydia said admiringly, taking the handkerchief and swiping it under her nose, “are breathtakingly weird. Has anyone ever told you that?”

“I’m serious,” she went on, frowning. “If anyone ever begs you to take them to Argolis for a vacation, just say no. No matter how badly you’ve damaged your robot dog by letting him wander into the ocean.” She leaned her head back against the TARDIS, swallowing back a groan. “This keeps happening to me,” she muttered, realizing. “Why do I always let people guilt me into taking them on holiday? It never ends well.”

“Like I said,” Lydia raised her eyebrows again, though her eyes still shone with a hint of delight. “Weird.” She frowned, one hand raising to twist at some of the metal bits in her earlobes contemplatively. She stuck the handkerchief into the pocket of her jeans. “You’re a grown-up, though. If you didn’t want to go on holiday, why didn’t you just stay home?”

The Doctor felt her lips twist.

“Home’s a bit complicated,” she said quietly. “And I promised everyone a break.”

“So you’re hiding in a linen cupboard, talking to a box.” Lydia crossed her arms and sniffled again. “Right. Checks out.”

“Oi, don’t get cheeky, I gave you my best handkerchief,” she protested. “You’re hiding in a linen cupboard, too.”

“Yeah, well, I’m, like, sixteen. You’re, what,” Lydia said incredulously. “Forty?”

“Forty?” The Doctor crossed her arms. “I’ll have you know, I’m not a day over two-thousand and seventeen. Probably. Possibly. I’ll be honest, I lost count quite a long time ago, plus there’s a few billion years you could probably tack on there, if you were really counting, but—” She swallowed, nose wrinkling. “What is it about your face, exactly, that invites so much argument?”

Lydia smiled, tightly. “Now you sound just like my parents.”

“Ugh.” Her nose wrinkled further. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Lydia dragged a hand through her exciting hair glumly. “I’d better get back out there. They’ll send out a search party if I’m not at dinner.”

“Sounds like maybe they care about you a bit more than you think,” the Doctor offered softly. Lydia met her gaze, eyes glassy in the dark. She swallowed.

“It’s not too bad,” she said eventually, glancing away. “I guess.” She smiled, tentatively. “Hot springs are nice, at least. Minerals and all that rubbish. Free drinks. Holographic golf.” She mimed a swing, smile fading, and sniffled. She paused for a moment, thinking. “Thanks for the handkerchief. I won’t tell anyone about your box.”

The Doctor smiled and raised two fingers to her forehead in a mock salute as Lydia slipped out of the cupboard. In the dark, again, she let the smile slip from her face. She picked her phone and her banana back off the ground and shoved them back into her pockets, sagging against the TARDIS. The back of her head knocked against the doors.

“Sorry,” she breathed. “I was gonna get it right this time.” She groaned and dug her hands through her hair, down her face, scraping. “Okay. Tomorrow’s another day. Right?” She craned her neck, peering up at the TARDIS mournfully. “I mean, I could leave and come back,” she pondered. “They’d never know. I could be really fast. Really quick. Really spot on with the piloting, which I always am.”

The TARDIS judged her silently.

“Right, well,” she muttered, sliding a hand through her hair again. She tucked a stray piece behind her ear. “No need to be rude about it.”

She pressed her hand against the doors, worn and familiar and cragged wood under her fingertips, but they didn’t open. More pressure, but they still wouldn’t budge. She curled her fingers into a fist and banged, once, nose wrinkling into a scowl, but all she got for her trouble was indignation that settled at the base of her neck, cool and blue and affronted.

“Really?” she hissed. “Oh, come on. I need to—” She swallowed, phantom heat baking her face. Some horrible want in her gut that she didn’t quite understand, but couldn’t help indulge. “I need—”

Cool and blue and silent at the back of her head. And the door was still stuck. She leaned forward one last time, slowly, forehead scraping against the grain.

“What am I meant to do all night?” she demanded, close. “While everyone’s asleep?”

As it turned out, the TARDIS had some choice words regarding that particular matter. She reeled back, arms pinwheeling.

“Rude,” she said, incredulous. “That’s—that’s just rude. You know what?” She steamed in a breath. “Enjoy your cupboard. By yourself. For seven days.”

She flounced out, forgetting momentarily that she was trying to be discreet, and sonicked the door locked behind her, fuming. Her head ached at the base of her neck. It had for weeks, but it got worse whenever she was still. Buried anger thudded behind her ears. She swallowed thickly. She took in a deep breath and tried to uncurl her lip.

“Okay,” she breathed into the empty corridor. Talking to herself, again, and wasn’t that how it always ended up, eventually? “Okay. It’s fine. It’s fine, right?” She glanced behind her at the sealed linen cupboard queasily. “It’s, what, ten? So, ten more hours until everyone wakes up without complaining. Ten hours. That’s not long.”

She groaned.

“Except for it is,” she breathed out through clenched teeth, making her way reluctantly to the lift. Everything here was made to look stodgy and expensive and stuck up and all it really meant was that the carpet was disgusting and the wallpaper didn’t match. They’d used seven different kinds of marble in the tiles along the floor and never bothered to wonder if they should.

It reminded her of home and that only made the pulsing behind her ears worse. The tip of her finger whitened as she jabbed it into the lift button. This would never do, she thought, jaw aching. A week of her friends trapped with her like this and they’d be taking off in the TARDIS before the week was even up. Without her.

She thought of what was in her pocket, hearts thumping, and then skated over the thought quickly, scalded. Scandalised. There were better options. Better ways. Fifteen thousand possible scenarios, and none of them involved being forcibly stranded by her own TARDIS in a grand hotel on a beautiful, frozen lake with three people that she—

She came to a halt in front of the door to her and Yaz’s room, nose nearly touching.

“Emergencies,” she breathed, eyelids aching. And she pressed her way inside with one quick motion, as quietly as possible. The moon shone through the frost-covered window, coating the rest of the room in gloom. Yaz, curled towards the door, dead to the world, her bags abandoned at the foot of the furthest bed. The minibar and kitchen in the corner and the ugly carpet and the gold accents glinting hideously.

The Doctor shuddered, head pounding. Moving slowly, she took her boots off and sat down in the shadows, perching on the edge of the unoccupied bed.

She let out a careful breath. Ten hours. Then morning. Ten hours was nothing! Ten hours was a blink! Ten hours, and then it would be tomorrow, and she could try it all again.

She could try it all again, she thought, and get it perfectly right.

Yaz woke to warm sunlight on her cheek and an ominous—and yet, oddly reassuring—noise that she couldn’t place. She rose up on her elbows blearily and frowned. In the corner of the room’s kitchenette the Doctor was methodically dismantling the coffee machine. With her bare hands, Yaz noted, fuzzily impressed, and some complimentary dental floss.

“Morning,” she yawned. She smiled faintly as the Doctor jumped at the sound of her voice.

“Hiya, Yaz.”

“You stayed,” she said. Deep in the pit of her stomach, something warmed. “I thought—”

“You dream,” the Doctor interrupted, neck craning to look at her. Oddly solemn. Distressed, in that restrained way of hers, all uncertain and close to her chest. “I didn’t realize.”

“I—” Yaz frowned slightly, not quite awake enough for all of it yet. “Yeah, I do. We all do.”

“Bad dreams,” the Doctor said.

Yaz’s frown deepened. She didn’t remember. “Well,” she said, thinking of the Kasaavin with a shudder. That forest of coils and light. Nothing, stretching out forever, lonely. Midland hills. Alone in the dark. “Sometimes.”

“I didn’t notice.” The Doctor was looking at her strangely, though her hands were still busy with the coffee machine. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Yaz said, uneasy. She shifted and rubbed at an eye, sheets rustling. “Why would you have done? Anyway,” she carried on, relief drowning out the rest of it, “I thought you were—”

“What, and miss all this?” The Doctor smiled back at her. It was a strained and tired attempt, and it wasn’t especially convincing, but she appreciated the thought. Though, now that her eyesight had cleared—

“Doctor,” she ventured, trying not to sound overly critical. “…Did you take apart everything?” The room’s futuristic holo-television had been divested of its wires, the mini-fridge had been dissected, and the coffee machine—or what she assumed was a coffee machine, at least—was in the midst of being taken apart in the Doctor’s lap. It was carnage of the sort that Yaz was very glad they wouldn’t be having to pay for. She made a mental note to leave the do-not-disturb sign on the knob before they left.

The Doctor’s lips flattened, a bit guiltily. “I got bored,” she said. “Humans sleep for ages.”

“You could always sleep, too,” Yaz suggested, propelling herself out of bed with another yawn, arms reaching above her head contentedly. Alleged bad dreams aside, she hadn’t slept as well as that for what felt like weeks. Posh holiday, she thought, smiling. She’d been right, after all. A bit of rest was going to do them all good. They’d just needed the reminder. One night to sort themselves to rights. “You must need to sometimes, the boys’ve caught you napping!”

“Sleep’s for tortoises,” the Doctor protested. She reconsidered, at Yaz’s pointed look. “Well, you know what I mean. Breakfast?” She raised her eyebrows hopefully. Tight around the mouth and eyes. Trying, Yaz thought wistfully, the same way she always did—by completely overcompensating.  But she took the apology in those dark, earnest eyes and smiled.

“Yeah. I bet the boys are already down there, Graham likes his regular meals. Give me five minutes to get ready.”

The Doctor exhaled, exasperated—“You’ve already waited ten hours,” Yaz pointed out, half-laughing as she made her way to the bathroom—and collected her coat from the other bed, swallowing back a yawn that Yaz didn’t miss. That would be her other mission this week, she decided as she quickly brushed her teeth and pulled her hair back into a plait. Even Time Lords—whatever they were— needed to sleep, she was sure of it. The Doctor might have been terrible at relaxing, but with this many days at her disposal, Yaz was sure she could sort it. She could sort all of it.

She breathed in deeply and smiled at herself in the mirror, reassured. Everything was fine. Everything would be fine. All it took, she thought, straightening her shoulders, was a big smile and some confidence—just like the Doctor always said.

“Matthieu,” Reserve Constable Boucher said as they walked, a frown flattening her impressive brow. “It’s been weeks.”

“I know, I know,” he reassured, placing a delicate hand on her shoulder, which she shrugged off immediately. Dull, blue light pulsed above his head, reflected in his thinning hair. She kept her gaze on him and not on the corridor ahead. The basement played tricks on her eyes, if she let her mind wander. The hallways narrowed, the lights flickered. “Cathy—”

“Only my wife calls me Cathy,” she interrupted.

“Miss Boucher—”

“Constable.”

“Constable Boucher,” Matthieu breathed, his smile flickering. Irritation that he was too much of a coward to let seep through settled in his shoulders, and he removed his hand. His eyes flicked towards one of the workers as they passed, clad in a heavy protective suit, and he switched to French in a furtive whisper. “I know you’re upset. I understand. But I—”

“How am I meant to do my job,” she hissed, “when no one will tell me what’s going on? I’ve been here for weeks and it’s all still redacted.”

“You’re providing security for a project that’s very close to the heart of the government,” he said. “You’re doing important work.”

“Right,” she drawled. “And they dragged me out of retirement specifically. I’ve heard it all before, Matthieu. I don’t believe a word of it.”

“It’s true.” 

She shook her head, stun rifle banging against her thigh as they continued. “I was going to take Sophie down to the south, you know. Find a place with a beach and a decent bar and relax there until my liver gives out five years from now. Paradise. And instead,” she glowered down at him, “they’ve dragged me out west to guard a project that no one will say anything about, to work for a man half my size who thinks the world runs on bottles of Chateau Nouveau Margaux.” She pinned him down with a glare. “What’s going on here, Matthieu? Underneath this hotel?”

He stuttered to a halt, taken aback. His thin, wispy eyebrows pulled into a frown that was too pathetic to be sinister.

“The world does run on bottles of Chateau Nouveau Margaux,” he said lowly, finally meeting her gaze. “And on the backs of people like you that insist it doesn’t. Whether you admit it or not, Boucher, you don’t have a right to demand anything of me, or of your government. They sent you here, so you’re here. When they tell you to leave, you’ll leave. And until then—” He jabbed a spindly finger into her shoulder. “You work for me,” he spat, turning on his heel. “Get back upstairs.”

Boucher’s lip curled.

“Fine,” she spat at his back. “But if one more tourist asks to try on my hat again, I’m on the next shuttle out of here, and I don’t care about what you or the government have to say about it!”

She blew a breath out through her mouth, hands curling into fists at her side. But for all her sins, she was a professional—and the payout from this job, however stupid, would be enough for her and Sophie to live the high life for as many years as they both had left, somewhere warm and sunny and far from here. She’d spent her whole career failing to keep her mouth shut and her pension ached with it. For her family, she could do this. For Sophie, she could do anything.

In recompense, she let herself mutter a few choice words under her breath as she stalked back towards the lift. Alone, because the workers didn’t talk to anyone, and everyone else was either painfully annoying or annoyingly intimidated. Alone, because she liked it better that way.

Mostly.

A flicker in the corner of her eye caught her attention. She almost ignored it—this stupid basement again, playing tricks. But the flicker became a shadow became a figure became a girl, stumbling out from the darkness like a spectre.

Unconsciously, Boucher’s hand went to her stun rifle. She breathed the instinct away, frowning at herself. It might have been regulation, but she hated the damn thing. In her experience there were very few situations that couldn’t be de-escalated by a glare and maybe a little twisting of someone’s arm. The rifle was a last resort. Always.

“Hello?” She frowned. “Little girl?” Only she wasn’t all that little, was she. Nearly grown, makeup smudged underneath her eyes, hair catching green at the ends in the cold, dim light. “This section is off-limits to guests. Can I help you?”

The girl stumbled forward a step, oddly stiff.

“I—” she said, rasping. Her dark, glassy eyes blinked furiously. “Sorry. I—I don’t know how I got here.”

Boucher’s frown deepened. As she watched, the girl’s eyes seemed to clear. Her breathing steadied. Her lips twisted, confused.

“Where am I?” she asked, glancing up at the flickering lights, sniffling once. “I—I don’t—”

“Come with me,” Boucher said briskly, settling on kindness. She extended a hand. Most kids who looked like trouble were really kids who just needed some help. She knew—she’d been one of them, once. And real confusion was hard to fake, anyway. “Quickly, before anyone sees. I’ll take you back upstairs. You got family with you?”

“Yes,” the girl said, settling back into herself, brittle. Her hand was clammy in Boucher’s own. Up close, her hair was plastered to her forehead. “Yes, we were—”

She swallowed.

“I don’t remember,” she whispered. “I don’t—”

“Maybe the clinic instead,” Boucher said cautiously, taking in the girl’s ashy skin, the redness of her nose. But the girl tore her hand out of Boucher’s, stumbling back.

“No,” she said vehemently. “No, I just—”

“Okay.” Boucher raised her hands, calm, like she’d been trained. “Okay. We can go where you like, just not here, okay? What’s your name?”

The girl ground to a halt, tentative.

“Lydia,” she said. “Sutherland.”

Boucher offered a hand again. Lydia took it carefully and she walked them both quickly towards the lift.

“I’m Constable Boucher. You really don’t remember how you got here?” Sympathy or not, if there were other ways of accessing the plant from the hotel—

“No,” Lydia whispered, fingers tightening in her grasp. Her gait was stumbling. Her eyes were watering. “No, I don’t remember.” She swallowed. “Oh,” she moaned, “I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“No, you won’t.” Boucher quickened her pace, wincing as Lydia nearly tripped. Voices trailed behind them, growing closer. “As long as we both hurry. Quickly,” she urged, pressing them both into the lift, her thumbprint—and that was the trick, wasn’t it, because without proper authorization, how the hell had the kid gotten down there in the first place?—glowing briefly green as she pressed it to the access panel. The service lift hummed as it rose. Brief seconds between the hotel above and everything that lay beneath, and that was the irony, wasn’t it.

The doors opened to the back of the lobby, far from the grand, glass-encased lift in the centre. It caught the light as they exited, morning sunshine glistening on the gold plating, the marble tiles on the ground, the throng of people milling in between.

“Where are your parents?” she prodded, peering into the crowd.

Lydia’s mouth opened, but she stalled, unsure. “At breakfast,” she said eventually. She blinked, harshly. “I—we were going golfing, after. My fathers and I.”

“I can take you there,” Boucher offered, but Lydia shook her head.

“No,” she began, “I—”

“Lydia!”

Boucher glanced up, frowning.

“And you’re by a secret lift,” a sharp-looking blonde was saying as she approached, a darker-haired woman dragged behind her, seemingly unimpressed. “I love secret lifts, I can’t believe I didn’t notice it last night.”

“Doctor,” the other woman said, brows knitting together. “Really?”

“Where does it go, then?” the blonde asked, gazing up at Boucher, her eyes flicking briefly to Lydia. She smiled warmly. “Leave it to Lydia to find the interesting bits, I knew you were impressive.”

“It’s a service elevator,” Boucher said flatly. “Off-limits to guests and members of the public. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

“I should go,” Lydia said, though she glanced up at the blonde. Something unreadable passed through her gaze. “I—”

The blonde woman sharpened, imperceptibly. 

“Everything alright?” she asked.

Lydia nodded. “Yes,” she insisted. One hand felt for a handkerchief half-spilling from the pocket of her jeans. “Yes, I’m fine. I have to go. Thank you,” she turned to Boucher, not meeting her eyes. “I’m sorry for wandering.”

“Wandering where, exactly?” the blonde jutted in again, still sharp, still odd. Boucher bristled.

“Doctor,” the other woman said, sounding irritated. “Breakfast, remember?” She frowned. “Do you know these people?”

The blonde woman’s face fell incrementally.

“No,” she said quietly, straightening. “Not really. Right, well—hope you feel better, Lydia.”

Lydia nodded stiffly, and gave a weak wave as the woman turned reluctantly and left with her companion. Boucher watched their retreating backs, still frowning. Unease settled in her gut, though she couldn’t have said why.

“Do you know her?” she asked.

Lydia nodded faintly. “Sort of,” she said. “We met in a cupboard.” Her lips tightened over the words, regret splashing briefly across her face. When Boucher didn’t press, some of the tension melted from her mouth. “I have to go,” she said again.

There was a strange distance to her eyes again. A stiffness.

If she’d been doing her job the way she was meant to, Boucher should have taken her down to her office, at least. Written down her name and room number, informed management, informed her parents. Informed Matthieu that his security systems were so lax that even children could bypass them, apparently.

But there was resentment still simmering away in her gut, and sympathy fighting up her throat, and Matthieu’s warning lingering in her ears. She could investigate this quietly. On her own. It wouldn’t be the first time, or the last.

“Okay,” she said, clapping a hand on the kid’s shoulder. She watched the sun glint out over the lake, through the window. “But don’t do it again.”

Ryan watched grimly from across the table as the Doctor absently tore a croissant to shreds. It was a thoughtless motion, repetitive and exacting. It reminded him a bit of how she looked when she worked at the console, these days. Hands kept busy while her eyes went far away.

Yaz sat beside her, unhappy and pretending desperately not to be. There’d been a flicker of hope in her eyes, when the two of them had arrived, but it had slunk out of her slowly as the hour passed and the silence grew.

The breakfast room hummed with the muted din of other people. Across from them, a businessman hacked into his porridge while his wife looked on disapprovingly. There was a little girl demanding a holo-pad at the table behind them, a group of wealthy students on holiday in front of them. Chatting, talking, having fun.  Ryan sighed, bored out of his mind. Well-rested, maybe, but at what cost? At least when they were all running from giant scorpion ladies, they were getting along. 

“What did that croissant ever do to you?” he threw across, gentle, when the silence grew too thick. Waited for the volley, but the Doctor missed the catch, just like always, lately. She blinked herself back to the table, frowning. Glanced down at the mess of torn-up pastry on her plate, lips flattening.

“You know,” she muttered, “billions of years to get it right, and croissants are still the most boring pastry ever invented? Not even French,” she pointed out. “Invented in Austria in the 13^th century. I was there. Might have helped a bit, actually, only I told Frederick the Second—”

She trailed off, swallowing, when the diversion didn’t take. She pushed the small plate away with a scrape.

“—that he’d be far better off chucking in some nuts and raisins,” she finished quietly. “Is something wrong?”

A challenge, if you were listening for it, but all tangled up in genuine concern, frustration that caught in the curl of her lip. Ryan took another sip of his coffee, half-rolling his eyes. Yaz kicked him, under the table. Graham took a fumbling sip of tea, uneasy.

“Come on,” Yaz said, standing abruptly across from him. Tense and tight in her patterned jumper, hair as loose as it ever got in a braid down her back. “We’re all done eating. The sun’s out. Let’s go do something.”

The Doctor swallowed again. “Right, only—” she started.

“No,” Yaz grabbed her sleeve, preemptively. “I saw your secret lift earlier, remember? No going off on your own this time. We’re here to relax, let’s—let’s all spend some time together, yeah?”

Graham frowned a bit at that, and Ryan’s nose wrinkled. Yaz glared at them pointedly.

Even the Doctor seemed to realize the option wasn’t especially popular.

“Are you sure?” she asked, half-grimacing.

“Yes,” Yaz insisted. “Hot springs, yeah? Don’t you think?”

The Doctor’s nose wrinkled a bit miserably. “Er,” she said. A hand tugged absently at the sleeve of her coat, a nervous gesture. Yaz saw it too.

“Fine, then.” Too quick, too sharp. He’d never seen Yasmin Khan lose it before, but there was something desperate clawing behind her eyes. Cool as a cucumber when they were running for their lives, he mused, and all it took was a slightly tense holiday to pull the rug out from under her.

God, he was tired. Even well-rested, he was tired.

“Let’s—” Her panic-tinged gaze caught the giant window just behind them, the sun glinting off the mountains, the frozen lake just beyond the hotel. “Let’s go skating, then,” she said firmly.

Ryan swallowed back a groan.

“Yaz, there’s no way—” he said, knees aching already.

She cut him off, smiling tightly. “I’ll hold your hand.”

“Right, but—”

He frowned, a bit stung, but she was already leaving, shoulders tight.

“Come on!”

Across the table, he met the Doctor’s gaze helplessly. Maybe a tad accusingly, but he figured he’d earned it. She gave one of her flat-lipped smiles, dripping in chagrin, and shrugged.

He sighed.

Lydia wandered.

She didn’t know where she was going, exactly. She’d been—well, she’d been somewhere else, before. Hadn’t she? Somewhere cold and dark. Underneath. But she’d been looking for something, there. Or—or someone, maybe. But everything was fuzzy and she was so cold she thought she might die and she couldn’t quite remember.

She paused by a window and shuddered. She was so angry. She was always so angry, these days, and she never quite knew why. She didn’t mean to be that way. But then someone would say something, or do something, and she’d boil over completely. Say things she didn’t really mean, do things she didn’t really want to do. It was like there was something alien inside of her, always simmering, always ready to take her over at any moment and cause a scene.

She was angry even now, and she didn’t know why, but it was hot behind her eyes. She needed something. She wanted something. She was furious about something, but the reason kept sliding from her grasp. If she just kept wandering, she thought, hand trailing past the window, along the wall, along doorknobs, door frames, then she’d remember. Maybe. If she wandered…

But it would be easier, she thought faintly, if she could just turn it all off. Lower the heat, take the pot off simmer. If she could just flip a switch and be perfectly content. People would like her better. She’d be in less trouble, then, probably.

Her hand trailed against another cold, frost-covered window. She watched, transfixed, as her trembling knuckles steamed against the glass. Listened to the hiss, as hot met cold.

She was in trouble now, probably.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Yaz was saying, wedged between her and Graham happily where the four of them had settled exhausted on an outdoor bench. Hot chocolate in styrofoam cups steamed in their mittened hands. The Doctor had fished out a holographic credit card from her pocket so they could buy the right outdoor wear from one of the gift shops. “Right?”

The words took a few moments to reach her ears. Too many moments.

“Doctor?” Yaz nudged, and, right, a reply—

“Oh, yeah,” she said, tearing her eyes from the mountains looming in front of them. Mid-day sun glittered just behind. “Love a bit of skating, me.”

It had been fun, probably, she had to admit. This body was all arms and legs and didn’t quite know what to do with any of them, and so her balance wasn’t spectacular, even on solid ground. She’d clung to Ryan, and he’d clung to her, and they hadn’t really managed anything beyond an occasionally terrifying shuffle and at least one truly magnificent fall. But the distraction, the movement of it all, she’d appreciated. If it could all be like that, she pondered briefly, fast and quick and fun, then it wouldn’t be so bad. It was the moments after, the moments like this, where everything ground to a halt and left her mind room to wander, where it all fell apart.

As if on queue, Yaz’s face fell. The Doctor froze, trying to figure out what she’d done wrong. Right words, right tone, but—oh, right. She smiled, eyebrows raising. Yaz didn’t look especially convinced. She never did, lately.

“You’re a million miles away, cockle,” Graham remarked. Tentative. She wondered, uncharitably, exactly how long he’d been working up the courage to spit that one out. The smile strained.

“I’m right here,” she protested, and if it came across a bit tetchy, well, it wasn’t her fault. She remembered, now, why she’d preferred fewer companions for years and years. Distracting one person was easy. Distracting three, especially when they were all dead set on a single goal that they had clearly been discussing in the kitchen without her for weeks, was much more difficult.

“Gramps has got a point, though,” Ryan chimed in, on her other side. Yaz’s neck twisted to glare at him warningly. “You’ve been a bit…”

She ground her teeth together, willing the smile to hold. “A bit what?”

He raised his eyebrows, settling back against the bench, as if she’d proven his point for him. His breath condensed in a cloud before his face.

“Bit weird,” he said gently.

The smile slipped from her face. Gentle or not, it still stung. “Is this gonna happen every time we sit down together for five minutes?” she demanded. “I thought I brought you all here to have fun.”

“You aren’t really having fun here, though,” Yaz said, sounding oddly defeated. It wasn’t a question. “Why would you bring us?” she asked. “If you didn’t really want to go. If you didn’t really want to spend any time with us.”

“Of course I want to spend time with you,” she protested, standing abruptly, stomach sinking. She was struck by the faint sense that all of this was slipping from her fingers rather quickly. They were coming to conclusions that were out of her control. Maybe they had been for weeks, and she hadn’t been listening, hadn’t been paying attention— “You’re my fam.” She took a noisy sip of hot chocolate, knuckles white around the styrofoam. “And I am having fun. Loads of fun. In fact, let’s—let’s do something else. Something new. Holographic golf? I’ve heard it’s good, holographic golf. I’m more of a cricket fan, personally, but—”

Graham was looking at her sympathetically. Yaz’s eyes were in her lap.

“It’s fine,” she said quietly. “You don’t have to pretend. You should go back to the TARDIS. Do—whatever it is you do, without us.”

“That’s not—” she tried.

Yaz stood. “I’m going to the spa,” she said evenly.

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Right, okay. I could—”

But Yaz only shook her head, making to leave. “You don’t want to go,” she said stiffly. “And that’s okay.”

She blinked. Yaz slipped past her carefully, feet crunching on the snow, braid swinging behind her.

“Graham?” she tried, in the silence that followed. “Holographic golf?”

He shook his head, still looking far too sorry for her. “Sounds like a right lark, Doc, but I’ve got plans to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the afternoon, and I intend to keep ‘em.”

She didn’t care if she sounded desperate now. “Ryan?”

“Waterslides,” he said, shrugging apologetically.  But the apology slid from his face as her nose wrinkled. “Oh no, don’t do that. I went skating for you, I held your hand. For an hour.”

“I held your hand,” she protested. “And I’m very proud of you,” she backtracked immediately when his face soured. “For trying something very difficult, and making the best of it, and not giving up.”

“Why don’t we all meet up again around dinnertime?” Graham interrupted diplomatically, standing slowly. “Eh?” His eyes skated over her uneasily. “Er, if you’re feeling like it, Doc.”

If you’re still here, he didn’t say. Ryan stood. He wouldn’t meet her gaze, either.

“Right,” she said, swallowing. “Sure. I’ll just…”

She watched as they disappeared into the crowd.

“…Have a look ‘round. By myself. Again,” she said.

Their feet crunched against the snow. Sun glinted off the frost-covered windows of the hotel, just a few steps behind the bench.

“Right. Brilliant,” she whispered. “Well done, Doctor. Nicely handled.”

She sighed, head tilting backwards, breath condensing upwards. Her eyes swept past the mountains, the gleaming, frozen lake. It was terribly pretty here. And extremely nice. And amazingly normal.

And incredibly boring. Especially on her own.

Secret lift, the annoying voice at the back of her head that never really shut up reminded her.

She sighed again.

“Secret lift,” she muttered, resigned.

Deadlock sealed.

It was typical, really, the Doctor thought sourly, glaring at the lift, feeling surprisingly disheartened. Probably, she thought, even more sourly, there wasn’t even anything very interesting in the basement. Cleaning supplies and the hotel’s wine cellar, sealed away from prying eyes and grasping hands.

Her haggard reflection caught dully in the lift doors. This vacation was conspiring against her. At least when there were nefarious goings-on and/or deadly conspiracies and/or fake-cations built on nuclear wastelands, she knew what to do.

Here, she could admit to herself reluctantly, she was out of her depth. Fumbling the catch. She couldn’t be what her friends needed her to be. That was the worst part. That was the only part of it that mattered, really. If she could only hide it better, smile around it, flip some sort of switch and be—

Oh, she thought.

“No,” she said out loud, ignoring the odd looks she was gathering from the other people in the lobby. “Bad idea. Very bad idea.”

Only now she’d thought it, she was finding it very hard to unthink it.

Emergencies only, she reminded herself, only wasn’t the possibility of scaring her best mates off forever and leaving her to fend for herself in a cold and lonely universe where she was once more the last of her species and also really not a people-person technically an emergency?

“On the other hand,” she muttered breathlessly, stomach churning. She reeled away from the lift and down into an emptier corridor, fingers scrabbling into her pockets. “Needs must.”

It had been a bit silly to save them for a real emergency anyway, she reasoned to herself, plastic sheets crinkling. You needed your wits about you when the world was falling to pieces, and when the world was falling to pieces, she knew how to be herself.

It was only when everything was perfectly fine that she couldn’t seem to keep a grip. Every second she stayed still, the past crept closer. The last few days were proof of it. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be normal on her own. She was going to lose them like this. Maybe she already had. Emergencies only—and this was the only one that would ever really matter.

The patches glinted innocuously in the grand hall light. Hesitation gripped her for only a second, before desperation peeled the plastic off. She slapped a patch onto the side of her neck, underneath her hair.

And breathed a sigh of relief.

“I don’t think she’s coming,” Ryan predicted glumly, breaking the plastic umbrella that had come with his drink in half. It snapped with a thin cracking noise.

“Well, it don’t mean we can’t still have a nice evening, son,” Graham reassured, though his eyes were troubled over the rim of his own glass. He’d left the fancy umbrella in his drink, and it crinkled when he lifted the glass to his lips. “Give her some time.”

“Been giving her time for weeks,” Ryan pointed out, though he couldn’t muster any heat behind it. He wasn’t cross with her. That was the thing, really. He was never cross with her, even when—well, even when she was acting proper strange. Even when she didn’t treat them quite right.

Mostly, he felt sorry for her. He wished, sometimes, that he knew what he was feeling sorry for. That was the other thing, he thought dryly, taking a sip of his drink. Whatever was bothering her, she was too tight-lipped about it to let any of them help, and there was only so much you could do for people, when they got like that. He remembered his nan saying with a hand on his shoulder (and she’d been talking about his dad, but he wasn’t about to start to unpack all of that, and certainly not on holiday) that sometimes you had to wait for people to help themselves first.

He wasn’t sure, with this. There was an odd feeling in his stomach, sometimes. A suspicion that with the Doctor they might end up waiting forever.

Across from him, Yaz sighed, glaring half-heartedly into her expensive fizzy lemon water.

“It’s alright,” she said quietly, as their gazes settled on her. “Graham’s right. She just needs time. Away from us.”

“Well, now, I don’t know if—” Graham interjected, frowning, but he trailed off at the look in her eyes. “I don’t think it’s anything to do with us, cockle.”

Privately, Ryan agreed, but Yaz could be a hard sell, sometimes. She reminded him of the Doctor, that way. She didn’t always show what she really felt. She weren’t always as confident as she looked. And she was tangled up in the Doctor in a way he didn’t quite understand—and didn’t always want to understand. There was a sort of gulf between them, these days, growing. He felt sometimes like he was being pulled back down to Earth and she was being pulled away, higher, further.

He reached across the table and tapped the glass of her drink, lightly. She smiled at him. He took the win.

“Never tell Graham he’s right to his face,” he told her solemnly. “It’ll go to his head.”

Her grin broadened as Graham sputtered.

“Right pair of doughnuts,” he muttered. “The both of you. I tell you, if the Doc was here—”

“—you could save your hypotheticals,” the Doctor interrupted cheerfully, sliding into the booth beside Yaz. Her hair glinted in the warm restaurant lights. The shine of her teeth caught white. “Ooh, look at you lot with your fancy drink umbrellas. I think I might have half-invented them. I’ve invented a surprising amount of drinks and drink accessories over the years, did I ever tell you about Madame de Pompadour and the horse?” She didn’t wait for them to ask. “Only forget them both, the relevant part of that story is the bit where I invented the banana daiquiri in 18^th century France. Bit early, mind,” her nose scrunched. “But I think history survived.”

“Doctor,” Ryan said, frowning. She raised her eyebrows at him guilelessly. The back of his neck prickled, though he couldn’t have said why. She’d already told the banana daiquiri story before. Well, maybe she’d just forgot. “I thought—well, I sort of thought—”

“Er, Doc,” Graham said, breaking into a smile. “We were just talking about you. Wasn’t sure this was your scene.”

“Well, it is a bit boring, all this,” she agreed. “Don’t want to overstate, but I think,” she said, grinning, “that I might have something better.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said, eyeing her skeptically. “I thought—”

“I know,” she said, barrelling over the rest of the sentence. “And I’m sorry. You’re right, I’m not very good at the whole going-on-holidays thing, but I had no right to let that ruin your fun. Let me make it up to you?” Her smile, Ryan marvelled quietly, actually reached her eyes for once. She turned them on Yaz beseechingly. “I promise it’s good.”

And the problem with Yaz, Ryan thought fondly, was that she was essentially no match for the Doctor on a good day, and especially not when she brought out the eyes.

“I believe you,” Yaz said, mollified. She smiled tentatively, always curious. “What have you got planned, then?”

Just like that, the afternoon forgotten. But that was life with the Doctor, wasn’t it? You couldn’t linger.

The Doctor’s grin never faltered. “It’s a surprise. I think you’re gonna like it,” she said, clearly already impressed with herself. She slid out of the booth, elbows up. “Come on, then!”

Ryan caught Graham’s eye as they stood to follow her. He shrugged.

“It’s a different tune, but I’ll take it,” he said in a poorly hushed whisper.

“Right, yeah,” Ryan said, plastic umbrella still sharp and broken in his hand. He frowned down at it as he maneuvered his way out of the booth. “Banana daiquiri,” he muttered in quiet disgust.

Then, he dropped it into his unfinished drink and followed.

“You know,” Graham was wheezing behind her, “when you said you had something better, Doc, I sort of made the assumption that it wouldn’t be,” he paused to catch his breath, “traipsing up the backside of a mountain in the cold and the dark.”

“Nearly there,” the Doctor said cheerfully, always two steps ahead of them all. But she glanced over her shoulder reassuringly. Personally, Yaz would have felt more reassured if she hadn’t been saying ’nearly there’ for the past twenty minutes, but she’d decided not to press the issue. The Doctor was here. And she wasn’t looking for trouble, or looking like she’d rather be anywhere else, or looking for an escape. For the first time in weeks she was acting like she actually wanted to be around them.

If hiking up a mountain in the cold was the price, Yaz would pay it.

“You still haven’t said why we’re doing this,” she said, breath fogging in front of her. It was well after dark, but the Doctor had given them all torches, which at least had prevented any major scrapes so far. The terrain was rough but not unnavigable. Clearly, they were treading a well worn path. The only question was, to where?

“That would ruin the surprise,” the Doctor insisted over the crunch of her boots. “Don’t you trust me?”

“Well—” Graham said.

“Yeah, right,” Ryan shot back fondly.

“Sometimes,” Yaz admitted.

Her silhouette in front of them stilled. She looked back over her shoulder again, still smiling. “I told you we were nearly there.”

The trees broke just before her, casting lingering shadows on the snow as their torches caught up. Wind caught her cheeks, left the tops of them tingling. It was so cold she could smell it, she marvelled. Metallic, harsh up her nose. Ice crystals caught in the torchlight.

The Doctor grabbed her elbow gently and dragged her through the trees to a clearing.

“Come on,” she said, clutching for Ryan’s sleeve as well, who grabbed Graham reflexively. “Torches off.”

“What?” Graham protested.

“Trust me,” she beseeched.

Yaz clicked hers off and waited for her friends to do the same. Far, far below them, the resort glinted like the inside of a snow globe. Up here, at what felt like the top of the world, there was only the sound of the trees rustling, her friends breathing. And a strange, hissing, crackling noise.

She frowned.

“Look up,” the Doctor urged quietly. Yaz looked.

“Oh,” she breathed, as the sky above them caught green and shimmering. “…Oh.”

The lights writhed, gleaming across the black, stars like pinpricks behind them. Green turned to blue turned to purple. Shadows shifted across.

“Oh my days,” Ryan said quietly.

The strange noise didn’t stop.

“What is that?” Yaz asked quietly. “The sound.”

“Electric discharges through a temperature inversion layer,” the Doctor explained, clearly delighted to have been asked. “On a relatively warm day like today, the air in the evening rises as the ground cools off. As it rises, it accumulates electrical charges that get released by the magnetic storm causing the lights.” Her fingers clamped around Yaz’s elbow excitedly. “So you get little sizzling sounds. Crackling, hissing. Nature at work. Brilliant!”

Yaz tore her eyes away from the sky to look at her, barely a shadow in the evening gloom. But the lights caught eerily, dreamily on her skin. Faint green in the whites of her eyes. Her expression was perfectly content.

“Beautiful,” she breathed, captivated.

Her grip on Yaz’s elbow was the longest she’d touched any of them in weeks.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “Beautiful.”

Green caught dreamily against the empty sky. Aurora borealis, she thought, head tilted up, captivated. Only this wasn’t Earth, not quite, but the name wasn’t important. The magnetic phenomena were the same, and they were beautiful, so what did it matter? Greens and blues, purples and reds, flooding together in a symphony. Nature at work. Snap, crackle, pop. Bliss, burning a hole in her hearts.

The smell was a bit odd.

Her nose twitched. Acrid, bitter. She’d left the stove on. She’d left the brakes on. No, she’d—

She’d left it all to burn. The green turned to smoke, turned to ash, turned to marmalade. Snap, crackle, pop.

The Doctor woke up.

“No,” she muttered quietly, plunged back into herself like a cold bath, “oh, no—”

She stumbled out of bed, where she’d been laying on top of the quilt with her boots still on, mindful of Yaz snoring gently across from her, nearly tripping on her own laces. The bed quilt was slippery under her fingers. The past few hours were a hazy, honey-soaked dream. Her tongue felt too big in her mouth. Grief tugged at her like an undertow and she wasn’t strong enough to stand her ground. She muddled through the obstacle course of their suite to the bathroom, fist pressed to her mouth. Her trembling fingers couldn’t find the light switch so she left it off, fumbled her way down in the dark until the cool side of the bathtub was pressed against her forehead. She clutched at the edge desperately, reeling.

You’re better than this, she wanted to say, but her lips wouldn’t move. Nothing would. She was being pressed into the tile. Slowly crushed. They’d find her in the morning, a pile of finely ground bone and fibers. They would sweep her away—sweep her away—

Slowly, surely, sand trickling through an hourglass, she wrapped it all away. The grief, the shock, the anger. Took it apart like the console of her ship. Minutes crept into what might have been hours, sitting in the dark, wringing herself out like a wet towel. When she was done, for a few moments she stayed where she was, hands cramped into the side of the bathtub, spine aching.

The world wouldn’t stop spinning. She let go of the edge and shifted so her back was to the wall and was very valiantly not sick all over the floor.

“Bad idea. Told you so,” she whispered to herself, but it was hard to feel smug about it. Not when it had all been working so well, not when this was proof—proof that the answer to her problems had been in her pocket the whole time. And all it would cost her was a few nights like this, eyes squeezed shut on the bathroom floor, grief sneaking up behind her with a knife. Pathetic. Sleeping had clearly been a mistake. That was the problem with being in a good mood. Your judgement spoiled.

And that was all it was, really. A good mood. A few hours of not minding anything, and then a few hours of it all catching up with you. And all that was only because she’d been too slow. Metabolizing this sort of rubbish was child’s play, usually. She’d slept her way into it, the same way you could sleep your way into a headache, but she knew better now. She could mitigate this. Control it. Be the person they needed for a few days.

And when it was all over, she reasoned to herself, quite reasonably, she could find something a little more engaging for them all to do—maybe, she imagined hopefully, with a few more explosions than this—and it wouldn’t be necessary anymore. It wasn’t essential. It was only—it was only—

She pressed the back of her head into the cool wall, nauseous. It was only convenient. It was only a stopgap. It was only temporary.

And if they liked her better like this, well. She closed her eyes, searching blindly for herself in the dark.

Well, she couldn’t blame them.