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Tegan found the Doctor in a garden. It was a room on the TARDIS she hadn’t known existed, but it looked—well, it looked a lot like Hyde Park. He was sitting on the edge of a fountain, looking out over the far horizon. She wasn’t sure how far it actually went and how much was a projection of some sort.
“Doctor,” she said, for lack of anything else to say.
He barely looked up. “Tegan.”
“Feeling bad?” she said, then realised the Doctor would never admit to that. “I can tell you are, you know. But you shouldn’t be.”
“And why is that?”
“Because it was my fault, not yours.”
“No, no, nothing of the sort.” The Doctor was still looking down at his shoes, which seemed to restore themselves to being white whenever they re-entered the TARDIS, no matter what they’d run through. “The Mara set a trap for me, and I followed it. Stupid of me, really.”
“You were trying to help me,” she said, fiercer now. “I won’t let you blame yourself. It’s not as if I was at fault letting the Mara in either.” The Doctor didn’t look up, or move, or say anything. Her voice came out small. “Right?”
He exhaled. “Right, right.” He opened his mouth to continue, then closed it. Tegan came to perch on the ledge of the fountain beside him. “Tegan,” he said, slow, like he was testing and measuring the words. “When the Mara had you, you didn’t remember it at all, did you?”
“It certainly wasn’t pleasant,” she snapped. But she knew what he meant.
“I don’t mean—” The Doctor broke off, sighed. “I don’t mean to ignore the nightmares you told me about, but—did you remember what your body was doing?”
“Not the first time, no.” Now Tegan was the one averting her eyes. “But on Manussa, I was there. I could hear myself speak, feel my body move, but no one could hear me. I could feel… joy.” The words came faster now. “Joy for doing terrible things. Alongside all that pain and terror and crushing guilt, and that pervasive hatred, I could feel joy.” When she looked up, the Doctor was looking at her. Her eyes searched his face, but it was as unreadable as always. “Is that what you were going to tell me you felt?”
The Doctor’s hands twitched in his lap. “I—yes, rather. I forget, you see, that you’re rather an expert at this.”
He hadn’t forgotten, of course. But he didn’t like to admit these things. “I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own mind.”
“I suppose you do.”
He offered nothing else up, and Tegan sat listening to the fountain burble away behind them. That was the problem with this place, she decided. It was perfectly recreated, except there was nobody else there. It was too quiet. “What happened?” she asked, because she had to ask, even if there was no chance the Doctor would ever answer. “I mean, you know what happened when it had me. But you disappeared.”
“Merry mischief, at first. Well, that and recruiting. Nothing you need to worry about.”
“What about that poor driver of ours?” she pressed. “We found him, later. He was a nervous wreck.”
The Doctor looked away, shame flushing his cheeks pink. “The Mara, as it turns out, wasn’t a huge fan of parting with the necessary money.”
At least he was talking. “And what about with Turlough?”
“Most of that was a trip to the funfair and a temper tantrum when it didn’t win at everything.” He frowned. “I won a rather large cuddly toy, now I think of it. I wonder what Turlough did with that.”
“Well, you didn’t give Turlough the mark, so I assume you did away with him before the snake announcement.”
“Oh, no,” the Doctor said with a shake of his head. “Turlough was present for that. The Mara only tried to mark him afterwards, when he stopped finding things funny—when he was less compliant, I suppose. Then the cage, when he was too clever for that.”
“Wh—” What cage? Tegan wanted to ask, but then her brain caught up. The Doctor had shifted from saying I to saying the Mara, and this cage—
Joy, she thought. Whatever this was, the Doctor had liked it. And he couldn’t bear that.
“Well,” she said, aiming for levity. “At least I always knew Nyssa was your favourite.”
It had been meant as a tease, but the Doctor jerked to his feet as if stung. “The Mara said that,” he said, short and sharp and wary. “Not me.”
“Of course,” she said hurriedly. “It was only a joke.”
“Ah. Right.” The Doctor still seemed uneasy, about to bolt, and Tegan thought, rather wryly, that that was on her for thinking that the Doctor was capable of anything even close to talking about his feelings.
“Do you think it will come back?” she asked instead. Practical questions.
“I would like to say no,” the Doctor said. “But—” He stopped.
“After the last time you don’t feel you know.”
“Hm.” The Doctor rocked on his heels. “In any case, I doubt you have to worry about it coming back through you.”
It took a moment for her to realise what he meant, but a moment was long enough for him to slip away from the garden, and leave her standing there alone.