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“Peri!” Erimem cried, rushing to her side. “Oh, you’re alive! I saw you fall and—that terrible beast—and—oh, I’m so glad you’re alive. You are all right, aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Peri said, and grinned with all her teeth. They were bloody. “I bit my cheek as I fell, is all. Help me up?”
Erimem pulled her into a tight hug. “I really am glad you’re okay. I’m sorry I said all those horrible things,” Erimem said. “I didn’t mean them. I was just upset.”
“Oh, I know,” Peri said with a laugh, frowning when that splattered blood everywhere. “I don’t blame you, Erimem. Friends, yeah?”
“Friends,” she agreed readily. “Always, I promise. Even when I get angry and say foolish things. Are you sure you’re not hurt?”
“Me?” Peri asked. She poked at her cheek. “I’m feeling like a million bucks.”
“…Bucks?”
“Ah, it’s—never mind. Money. From America.”
“Sometimes I feel as if I will never understand all your references,” Erimem said, hooking her arm through Peri’s. “Let us go back to the TARDIS, and I will take care of your wounds.”
“You?” Peri laughed. “Don’t you mean the TARDIS?”
“No, I will do it,” she insisted. “How hard could it be to patch up a cheek wound?”
“You’ll have to put your fingers inside my mouth first.”
“Then I will do that,” Erimem said resolutely. “Come on.”
The sky grew dark behind them as she walked, her fingers closed tight around Peri’s arm.
“Erimem,” Peri said. “What is that?”
“Don’t worry. Just keep walking.”
“What do you mean, don’t worry? It looks like—”
“Don’t think about it,” Erimem said, urgently now. She hung on tighter. “Walk faster. The TARDIS will protect us.”
“You’re hurting me!”
Erimem let go. “Oh, Peri, I’m sorry—”
Peri faded into the dark mists.
“No!” Erimem cried. “I don’t—”
“How selfish, little girl,” that damnable voice purred. “Dead and come back to me and you can’t stop using all that power to dream up little scenarios for your friend to love you in. Why is she always injured in these?”
“I like to help her,” Erimem said, raising her chin. “And maybe you should leave me alone.”
“Why should I? If I do, your poor Peri will just keep getting injured over and over again at your behest. Because you like to help her.”
“It’s not as if she’s real! No one is actually getting hurt. I miss her.”
“It’s not as if she’s real?” the darkness said with a laugh. “My, my. Whyever wouldn’t she be? Why else would I try so hard to keep you from the TARDIS?”
Erimem’s heart skipped a beat, and then she said, with a tentative smile, “I can make whatever I like real?”
“Only,” the darkness said, “if you love it.”