A/N: Hello, there! So this story is a direct sequel to Room in the Middle and is #2 in the Blood and Time series. You don't need to read Room in the Middle to understand this story's plot; however, we do recommend it for continuity's sake. Oh, go on, it's short. It's like, one scene.

If you insist, though, here is a synopsis of what you should know:

1. Angel was sent back in time by the Weeping Angels and rescued by the Ninth Doctor.

2. They didn't hit it off right away, but on their way back to Angel's time, they found some unexpected commonality.

3. The Doctor gave Angel his sonic screwdriver as part of a plan to divert the Weeping Angels away from their original victim.

4. We end with Angel holding the screwdriver in a churchyard. The Weeping Angels are gone, as is the Ninth Doctor, and around the corner barrels the Tenth Doctor.

5. Angel does not know about regenerations.

Final canon timelines notes: For the Doctor and Martha, this is sometime after Blink. For Angel & Co., this is sometime after Disharmony but before they go to Pylea.

Thanks for reading and we hope you enjoy it!

Chapter One

The Doctor took the turn sharply and at full tilt. Hitting a patch of gravel, his foot slid in spite of the rubber soles of his shoes (he had thought this pair was getting a bit old. Perhaps it was time to switch. Maybe to blue or green) and gravity, which had never been kind to him - even before he fell off of that tower - wrapped her arms around him and dragged him towards the pavement. The thousands of timelines that had stretched out in front of him a few seconds ago dropped down to three.

He could extend his right hand to catch himself. His right hand was holding his sonic screwdriver that had not been working quite properly after the explosion that he had been a bit too close to 21 minutes ago. The sonic screwdriver would not survive the crash into the pavement.

He could spare the sonic in his right hand and favor the left hand, which was holding the partially constructed short range particle transmission unit. The teleport was even less likely to survive the fall than the sonic. The alien technology had already been through one explosion and parts of it kept trying to fall off. It didn't help that most of the parts that were going to make it work had been scavenged from the dumpster behind a Radio Shack and didn't really fit properly.

He could land on his face. It wasn't a good option. He liked his face.

The Doctor made a decision and the swirling potential of time snapped into the unalterable present with a nasty crunch.

That was the third sonic screwdriver this month. He really needed to be more careful. Or carry spares.

Moments after he hit the ground, the Doctor was on his feet again and working his way back up to speed. Rounding another corner onto a busier street just as the streetlights were coming on, the Doctor gave the teleportation device a quick once over and decided that it had received minimal damage from his fall, but was going to remain a useless pile of junk without his sonic screwdriver. Perhaps he should have gone with the left hand; America did seem to be covered in electronic shops.

Things like this didn't happen when there was someone running next to him to carry things or tell him to slow down. For a moment he wondered where exactly Martha had got to, only to remember that she'd been teleported away. Thus the need to build his own transport to get up to the ship on the moon and collect her. The Doctor ducked around a crowd of teenagers and into a flower shop. He pulled the door shut behind him, tried (and failed) to lock it with his broken sonic screwdriver, and then dove behind a display a geraniums to watch for his pursuers. The Bloflosu probably wouldn't want to blow their cover by running down a street full of humans without some sort of costume. The sort of costume that they'd have to go back to their ship to get since the ones they had been using previously had been caught in an explosion. The Doctor grinned to himself. That alone would give him an extra twenty minutes, maybe more.

Twenty minutes of free time to think of how to get onto the spaceship currently parked on the far side of the moon. The Doctor took a brief mental inventory of his current assets: a half-assembled teleportation device, a broken screwdriver, a wind-up mouse, a stethoscope, psychic paper, a banana, geraniums (they definitely counted, as they were right in front of him) - the Doctor dug his free hand around in his pocket, searching as for ideas as much as supplies - paperclips, a yo-yo, bubbles, spare toaster pieces (oh dear, Sarah Jane was going to be mad about that), catnip...

The Doctor ran his hand through his hair in frustration and glanced around the room. He added "more flowers" and "grumpy looking shopkeeper" to the list of assets and then decided that the shopkeeper did not look particularly helpful and crossed her off the list again.

He was adding his own limbs to the list while being shooed out of the shop into the now dark street when he felt the change. Time shifted. Shifted just a little but with a foreboding nature, like watching the first tiny rock fall that starts an avalanche. There was a sense of being pushed away from and pulled toward something at the same time. The left side of his stomach felt just a tiny bit queasy.

The feeling was not altogether unfamiliar, it always felt a bit like this when he ran over his own time stream, but it still put him on edge. Lessons from long, long ago still echoed in the back of his mind: the recitation of the Laws of Time, their reasons, and the consequences of breaking them.

The First Law of Time forbid meeting oneself past or future. Just being too close caused time to weaken and flex. Paradoxes became easy very quickly. The penalty, long ago when there were people to enforce it, had been a forced regeneration.

He had always imagined that it was actually not the First Law of Time because it was more dangerous to break it than all of the other laws. Indeed, it was possible for nothing worse to come of it than getting to know yourself a bit better (not a pleasant experience usually, but survivable). No, it was because it was just so very tempting.

The Doctor took off running down the street again. He didn't actually have to talk to the other him, but it would be good to know if both of him were in the same time and space for a reason. It wouldn't hurt to have a look.

He did not wonder (not one bit) if the death of the Time Lords meant that he could or should stop rebelling against them.

Following time was like following a smell. Correct paths, more often than not, had to be found by process of elimination. The Doctor slowed to a walk near a park where time eddied lazily around the swing sets and monkey bars. Extra wibbly, he mused. That was it. Important things happened on playgrounds. Little, important things. Things that could change the entire flow of a life.

The Doctor picked his way towards the opposite end of the park. Los Angeles wasn't a typical stop for him. How many times had he been here? Perhaps he could guess who he was headed towards. Honestly, he didn't get along with himself about half of the time. How many times had he been here? Who had he been at the time? Or how likely was it that he would return later?

He had just reached the edge of the park when the answer hit him. Well, actually, a rippling wave of potential energy hit him and then abruptly cut off, leaving him stunned and blinking next to a "Do not walk on the grass" sign.

Oh. Right. The last time he had been here was his first encounter with the Weeping Angels.

There was something there, he thought; something important.

Something very important: He'd met a vampire. He'd given that vampire his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor whooped with glee, jumping with so much enthusiasm he nearly dropped his mess of a teleportation device. He could save Los Angeles. He could get his TARDIS back. He could save Martha.

Grinning from ear to ear, the Doctor snatched a few dislocated teleport pieces from the ground and took off at a sprint.

Angel mumbled an apology for nearly walking over the man behind him and stepped around him. Fingers digging into his pocket in search of keys, Angel headed down the sidewalk by the low stone wall that led to the church parking lot.

Four steps later, the smell registered in his brain and he spun around.

The man was tall, lanky, and - even standing still with that curious expression - brimmed with energy. He looked human. Angel suspected that he'd recently been near an explosion. His hair was standing on end, there were several telltale smudges on one side of his face that were probably linked to the faint smell of smoke, and dirt along one side of his long coat that probably came from a fall. He was also holding a pile of junk.

"If you're looking for your friend," Angel said, "you've just missed him."

The man glanced over his shoulder like he wasn't sure Angel was addressing him. "Looking for my friend? Well, it's a bit… What makes you say that?"

Angel rolled his eyes. He really was too tired to play games. "Because I've gone two hundred years without meeting a single alien and I don't like that chances of meeting two of the same kind by accident on the same day. So you're either with the Doctor and I can't help you or you're looking for him and I won't help you."

Angel expected the man to either look offended or angry (off of which he was going to base his decision of whether or not his clenched fist would ended up colliding with the man's face) but instead he look downright confused. He mouthed, "the Doctor," and looked down at his (in Angel's opinion rather ridiculous) shoes. He apparently found the answer on the end of his shoes though, because his face brightened just as he rocked forward to inspect the toes.

"Oh!" he said. "Right! Of course. I really should have thought of this." He waved his free hand, pointing between Angel and himself a few times. "I mean, I really should have. It's funny the things you don't think of, particularly when it's you involved." He gave Angel a brief embarrassed smile before he caught sight of Angel's expression and his face fell again. "This is going to be a lot harder than I originally thought."

Angel crossed his arms. Sometimes it was easier to get information out of people by not talking. Particularly when they seemed to be as willing to fill the silence as this man seemed to be. Also, the constantly changing emotions were making Angel a bit dizzy.

His guess seemed to be correct, as the man did not wait very long for Angel to respond. In fact, Angel wasn't sure if the pause was intended for him or for the man's thoughts to catch up with his tongue. Either way, he seemed to come to a conclusion in the few seconds of silence.

"You've got me," he admitted. "I'm an alien. But I'm not looking for the Doctor. I've just come to pick up that." He pointed at the sonic screwdriver Angel still had gripped in his hand.

"Why?"

"Well, it's advanced technology isn't it? My people have strict rules about leaving tech like that lying about on planets like this." He drifted over to a stone wall encircling the church and set his pile of junk carefully on top of it. A metal cylinder rolled off of the mess and dangled by a short wire, knocking against the brown stonework. Angel suspected he had put the junk down for the sole purpose of freeing both hands to better gesture at the whole planet.

Angel didn't move.

"He's a bit busy now, so he asked me to go pick it up for him." The man in the brown coat broke Angel's gaze for a moment to look over his shoulder.

"He's a time traveler. He could have got it himself."

The man sighed in exasperation. "I know! That just makes him a lazy sort of bloke doesn't it? I'll be sure to tell him that once he catches up with me." He took a step closer reaching out to grab the sonic screwdriver out of Angel's hand.

Angel punched him. The man went tumbling.

"What'd you do that for?" The man complained, crouching with one hand held up in surrender and the other rubbing his jaw.

"You're lying," Angel snarled. "Don't say you weren't. You're not nearly as good at it as you think."

The man stopped rubbing his jaw. A sudden seriousness enveloped him. He met Angel's eyes and Angel had the sudden impression that he could see more of Angel than Angel would like. His eyes had the depth of age that Angel typically only saw in other vampires, and the same sharp intelligence as the Doctor. Perhaps it was a trait that all of these aliens shared. Something in Angel really hoped not.

"You are sharp aren't you?" The man stood, shoving his hands into his pockets. Angel couldn't decide if it was a sign of compliance or confidence. "I always do find the clever ones."

Angel took few casual steps toward the wall in case the man had some sort of weapon in his coat pocket. If he needed to he could jump behind the thick stones for some protection. "So what do you want this for?" he asked, nodding to the sonic screwdriver as he shoved it into his own pocket.

"Good things! I promise. And I'd love to explain, really, I would. It's a pretty good story as far as stories go but there really isn't time for all of that. It's a sonic screwdriver and nobody ever hurt anyone with a screwdriver anyway."

"You'd be surprised the amount of damage you can do with a screwdriver." Angel murmured, taking the screwdriver out of his pocket to give it an experimental spin between his fingers.

The man watched it like it was the last glass of water in the Sahara desert. "Don't do that."

"What happened to the Doctor?" Angel asked, now that he clearly had the alien's attention.

The man blinked his attention away from the screwdriver. "What?"

"The Doctor," Angel repeated. "You've obviously spoken to him since you know I had this. The Weeping Angels were going to chase after him. Did he get away?"

"Right. The Weeping Angels." He ran his hand through his hair, considering. "Well, they did catch up to him eventually. They dragged him back to 1969. It's a good year to get stuck in actually...you've got the moon landing, Abby Road, Monty Python…"

"Jets beat the Colts." Angel added.

The man grinned. "Exactly! Although really, I prefer cricket myself." All of his previous signs of hurry seemed to drift away as he considered his preference in sports, only to come crashing back a few seconds later. "So!" he said a little too loudly. "The Doctor, with a little help from me and a few others, constructed a bit of a time loop that ended with him in the TARDIS and the Weeping Angels all looking at each other. They're nothing but stone now."

Angel waited a few moments to be sure the man wasn't going to continue. He didn't. Instead he seemed to have decided that the quickest way to get what he wanted was to answer Angel's questions. "How do you know him?"

"The Doctor?" The man seemed to consider this for a moment. "We grew up together. Went to the same school. Had the same friends. That sort of thing." He furrowed his brow, fixing Angel with a curious look. "Why do you care? You knew him for, what? Half an hour?"

Angel had to admit it was a fair point. He shrugged. "He did me favor. After I'd punched him." The man touched his jaw again and grumbled something in a language Angel didn't recognize. "And he risked his life for someone he'd never met. Evil doesn't do that."

The man nodded and wandered over to the pile of junk he had set on the wall. His fingers sorted through the scraps until he found a few wires and started twisting them onto what looked to Angel like spare parts from a toaster oven. "So…" he asked as he settled the piece into the pile, "Do I get the sonic screwdriver back?"

Angel considered him for a moment and then held out the screwdriver. The man grinned like Christmas had come early and ran the short distance between them. His hand wrapped around the other end of the sonic screwdriver but Angel didn't let go. Instead he asked, "What's your name?"

The man hesitated. It was brief, only a moment, but long enough for Angel to know that it wouldn't be the truth.

But he didn't get the chance to lie because it was at that point that people started shooting lasers at them. A line of bright red light hit the stone wall just inches from their hands. "Out of time, then," the man said with a grin. Both he and Angel jumped over the short stone wall.

"Thought you could hide from us forever, Doctor?" came a rasping voice.

"Not really!" the man called back good-naturedly.

"Doctor?" Angel mouthed. He was sure he was getting a headache.

The man who was apparently the Doctor grinned at him. "I told you it was a long story."

Rock splinted off of the top of the wall, causing both men to duck their heads.

"So's that a title that gets passed on or are you a shapeshifter?" Angel asked, shifting down the stone wall away from the spot where he had jumped over.

The Doctor shifted in the opposite direction, tilting his head and trying to get a look at the pile of junk still sitting on top of the wall. "No," he said, inching along the ground. "I'm the same person, just-" He ducked his head again as a particularly large piece of rock cracked off of the wall several inches from the device. "Do you think that you could distract them for a tick?"

Angel leaned his head back and slowly pushed his way up to look over the wall. There were three of them. Two male. One female. Average height. Average build, nondescript brown hair...in fact, they were so average that he might have suspected them to be demons (or aliens, he corrected) wearing disguises anyway. Nothing looked that normal naturally. As it was, the unreasonably large laser guns sort of gave it away. He ducked back down as two of them spotted him and redirected their fire.

Well, that was two distracted at least. As for the last one… He dug around in his pocket and pulled out a stake. He paused, waiting for a gap in the laser fire and to nod to the Doctor to indicate that the distraction was close at hand. In one smooth motion he stood, threw the stake that the woman who had not redirected her fire and dived back down behind the cover of the wall. He heard a shout followed by an electronic squealing noise.

By the time Angel had rolled over and leaned against the wall again the Doctor had scrambled to his side, holding the pile of junk he must have collected from its perch on the wall. "Right," he said. "Have you got transport? I think you've made them angry."

Angel did not think that he had been the one to make them angry. He glared at the Doctor, hoping that it would convey how much this whole scenario was his fault.

The Doctor grinned back at him.

"My car's in the parking lot out back."

"Great! Off we go then." And without so much as counting to three, the Doctor sprinted from behind the wall.

"Wait!" Angel stood in protest to the sudden execution of the plan that he wasn't sure he liked or understood.

Of course that meant that he was no longer protected by the wall. Great.

For a brief moment he and the man with the ray gun stared at each other. He seemed just as shocked as Angel was about Angel's sudden decision that he didn't need cover anymore.

Angel ran. Two steps on top of the wall and then a flying leap over the man who had just started firing at him again. He hit the ground at a run, dashed past the other man shooting at where the Doctor's coattails had just disappeared around the corner of the church, and bowled through what used to look like an average woman and now looked like a very large, very angry, very red fish with legs. A push of speed and he had caught up with the Doctor and then passed him.

Five steps from his car a beam of light shot past him on his right. He could see a second beam to his left reflected in the black shine of his car. "If they mess up the finish I'm going to be very upset," Angel grumbled and rolled under a shot of laser fire to his right. It was an intentionally messy roll. More of a slide, really. He dragged his one hand behind him, grabbing a fist full of gravel which he flung in the direction of the attackers as he stood on the other side of the beam. It wasn't much, mostly a distraction to give him time to gauge the situation.

It wasn't good. Although one had taken on the appearance of a fish, that didn't seem to be limiting its ability to breathe. It stood between the two men who continued to fire the lasers in a continuous stream, hemming the Doctor in where he stood with his back to Angel's car.

"Angel…" the Doctor said, his voice strained.

"A human is not going to help you," the fish said. "They're barely intelligent and they are certainly not faster than light." She hefted the laser gun to point at Angel, but did not fire. One wide, unblinking eye, yellow golden with a huge black pupil, fixed on him, while the other, a shocking sky blue, watched the Doctor. Angel noticed a peculiar triangular pattern in the way the light shimmered silvery off her otherwise-red scales. The size of the gun made a lot more sense in the webbed hand.

"You can stop this, Maz," the Doctor said. "Give Martha back and you can just go back to your ship and fly away."

Angel shifted his footing. He might not be faster than light, but he suspected he was much faster than the arm that was holding the gun. He was pretty sure he could remove the arm and a third of the problem. That still left two guns...lasers… This whole alien thing just wasn't fair, he was sure of it.

"Fly away?" the fish - whose name was apparently Maz - said. "I've spent my life working for this. Our people have spent lifetimes conducting this research and I am going to be the one to prove all of the theories correct."

"We," corrected the man to her left. Maz's golden eye swiveled around to point at the man. "It's a group project. Remember?"

The golden eye rolled up and redirected at the Doctor. "Then why am I doing all of the work?" Maz muttered under her breath. She lifted the gun higher, regaining focus. "Here's what we'll do: You give us the regulator and we will return your pet and your box. It's a simple exchange. I don't see what the fuss is about."

"I'm the one who remembered to bring weapons," the man to the left grumbled.

"Your experiment will kill half of the people on this planet!" the Doctor shouted at Maz over the complaints.

"You don't know that," the man to the right spoke up. He looked at the others. "Right? How could he?"

"Actually, I do!" the Doctor shouted, his voice full of exasperation, which made his switch to a conversational tone somewhat jarring. "Angel, this is a lovely car. How's the stereo?"

"Pretty good considering the year," Angel responded, keeping his voice calm. He hoped "stereo" wasn't supposed to be some form of code, because he sure didn't know that the Doctor meant by it. He tensed anyway, ready for any small distraction to jump into action. Maybe he could push the fish into the man closest to him, steal a gun and then...

"He's not a teacher's aid or something, is he?" the man on the right whispered.

"This is ridiculous!" Maz sputtered. "This is some backwoods planet. It's not like it's important!"

"Ahhhh come on. It's not that bad. I mean, have you heard their music?" The Doctor leaned into the car, turned the key that Angel had left in the ignition in his hurry to the church, and flipped on the radio.

"Don't move!" Maz shouted. Angel tensed in case she decided to fire at him, but the Doctor raised a placating hand.

"Wait, wait, wait. If you'll just consider for a moment…" the radio squealed as he adjusted the channel. "…the possibilities of earth music. It's wonderful." The station switched to a song that Angel thought sounded like two cats trying to kill each other. The Doctor shrugged one shoulder, his other hand still turning the radio dial. "Mostly," he hedged before plowing forward, "I mean, in a few thousand years, earth will produce the number one song in the galaxy. Can you imagine?"

The fish people apparently could not. One of the men shifted his gun from Angel to the Doctor's head instead.

The radio settled onto some sort of rap song, which Angel didn't think was going to help the argument for saving the planet. In fact, he thought playing music had to be one of the worst plans he'd ever seen. Seeming to give up on the plan, the Doctor raised his other hand and slid back down from where he had been perched on the car door.

"All right, all right," he said, showing both sides of his hands before dropping them back to his sides. "You could shoot me, and I can see how you think that's an option. If it's in my pocket, then you could just take it. But what if I hid it somewhere? Then where would you be?"

One of the men cast a nervous glance at Maz before focusing his attention back on the Doctor, and the other shifted uncomfortably. Maz's expression remained unreadable, although Angel suspected that this wasn't really true. He had limited experience trying to determine how a fish felt about anything.

A fierce smile flashed across the Doctor's face. "Care to roll the dice?" he challenged, with a shake of his head.

The spines on top of Maz's head bristled. She opened her mouth and started to speak, but the Doctor cut her off: "But this is your warning. This is your only warning. Pack your equipment and start thinking long and hard about what are considered 'universally safe experiment conditions,' because if you don't, I will stop you."

As far as threats went, Angel thought, that one was tastefully nonspecific.

That sort of threat, however, wasn't particularly effective against people who lacked the imagination or intelligence to fill in the blank. The man on the left adjusted the grip on the gun. "You can't stop us," he said. "Who do you think you are? You can't threaten us." They really did sound like kids.

"I'm the Doctor." The statement hung in the air. It seemed to carry a weight to it in spite of the new song that started beating its way out of the car speakers. "And that," the Doctor gestured at the car, sonic screwdriver in hand "…is Usher. And it just so happens that if I do this…" There was a familiar shriek for a brief moment before the volume of the song multiplied itself to sharply uncomfortable levels. "…You'll briefly lose control of most motor functions," the Doctor concluded as if his audience was still listening to him instead of clutching the sides of their heads.

Wincing and with the palms of his hands shoved against his ears, Angel ran for the car. The noise had reached a level where Angel could feel it almost as much as he could hear it. He clambered into the driver's seat and ignited the engine, catching a brief glance of the Doctor smiling away in the shotgun seat, pile of junk settled in his lap and his fingers poking into his ears like one of those hear-no-evil monkeys. Angel threw the car into gear and peeled out of the parking lot.

They drove three blocks before the Doctor casually reached over and switched off the radio. The sudden silence left Angel's ears ringing. "I knew it," Angel grumbled, rubbing at one of his ears.

"What's that?"

"Rap music really is an alien weapon."

The Doctor laughed. It was a surprisingly open laugh; particularly when compared to the man Angel had met 600 years ago…or was it an hour ago?

"No, not a weapon," the Doctor interrupted Angel's thoughts before he could work up to another time travel headache. "Just a weakness. Bloflosuians are particularly sensitive to a lot of sounds. They originally evolved for a far more aquatic existence. It's only in the past couple thousand years they had to deal with sound waves traveling through air."

"But Usher? Couldn't they be allergic to Beethoven?" Angel rubbed at his ear.

"Every time!" the Doctor complained, waving a hand in frustration. "I just managed immobilizing three people who wanted to blow our heads off with an outdated car radio–"

"Hey!" Angel protested.

"…and you're complaining that you didn't like the song!" the Doctor continued, pointing an accusing finger at Angel. Any annoyance the Doctor felt, however, seemed short lived. They had only driven another block before he started chatting away again like nothing had happened.

"There are other songs that contain the right frequencies and rhythms of course, but that song is the only one that happens to be in the top 10 songs for this year. There's not much of a chance of finding Phyllis Nelson playing on the radio every five minutes and most of the others aren't even from this century."

As he spoke, the Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver again and started dismantling something that looked like it might have once been a hot plate. Angel glared at the screwdriver while he waiting for a light to turn green and tried to remember when the Doctor had grabbed it from him. He thought he had been holding it when they jumped over the wall. Maybe the Doctor had weaseled it out of his pocket shortly after that. Not that it mattered much now, but Angel was typically very good at noticing pickpockets and the skill was yet another item on an increasingly long list of things the Doctor was very good at.

"So who's Martha?" If Angel was going to get roped into whatever was going on, he would probably need to get up to speed on what exactly was going on.

"My friend. We were going to nick the regulator out of their machine. It can't function without one, and the components are difficult to make. It'll put them out of business. And, well," the Doctor rubbed at a smudge of soot on his cheek, "it doesn't regulate without it."

"It exploded," Angel said.

"Yes! So we were making a hasty getaway and I went right and Martha went left. Now they have Martha and I have the regulator." He pulled a small red cube from his pocket. Fluorescent red light glowed from the edges that made it look like energy was contained within and was about to split the cube apart at any moment.

"Not exactly a fair trade," Angel commented. "So this is a rescue mission and a save the world mission."

The Doctor tucked the cube back into his pocket. "Sounds about right." He plucked a yellow wire from the pile on his lap and started to twist it around onto an exposed red wire.

"And that is?" Angel nodded his head at the pile in the Doctor's lap.

"A short range particle transmission unit." A moment later the Doctor looked up, just, Angel suspected, to see his confused expression. "A teleport," he clarified.

Not willing to give the Doctor the satisfaction of explaining that, and honestly it was the sort of day where a teleport just seemed like a natural progression to the weirdness, Angel instead asked, "Can we go back to the bit where you're a completely different person?"

The Doctor let out a long frustrated sigh, sinking back into the car seat. "Everyone makes such a fuss... We've just been shot at by a lot of fish with heat lasers who are going to blow up half the planet if we don't stop them from completing their senior thesis experiment, and you want to know why my face looks different?"

"Pretty much. You said you weren't a shapeshifter. Just so you know, if you had to steal that body, we're going to have a problem."

"I really hate Jack Finney," the Doctor grumbled, running a hand through his hair. "I'm not a body snatcher. It's just a thing my people – I – can do. If I get mortally injured or die or happen to get really, really bored, my body regenerates. It replaces every single cell with new cells. Brand new me." He returned his attention to the teleport.

"You turn into a completely different person." Some part of Angel felt a twinge of jealousy. He tried to stomp out the feeling, but, as is the way of feelings, it only grew with the attention.

Angel wondered how much of his fascination crept into his voice because the Doctor looked at him curiously for several long moments before he answered with a question. "How old are you?"

Angel raised an eyebrow. "Two hundred and forty. And some change."

"Do you remember what you were like fifty years ago? Or a hundred years ago?"

"Sure."

"If I were to take you from fifty years ago and stick him in this car with me would he be asking the same questions?"

"I probably would have shoved you out of the car by now." Angel said, pondering the wisdom of his younger self.

The Doctor nodded. "It's like that but all at once and with new hair."

Angel nodded and turned back to watch the road. Mulling over the new information, he wove through the Los Angeles streets. Driving has always helped him think. It was repetitive enough that it wouldn't distract him and required enough concentration that his thoughts couldn't bog him down.

Next to him, the Doctor seemed happy enough to continue tinkering in relative silence. He would often start humming snippets of songs or take up a brief commentary on what he was doing to no one in particular ("Now, I need a way to prevent the feeds from crossing during initiation…maybe if I…"). They had just run into some of the famed Los Angeles traffic when Angel asked, "So you're immortal?"

"No." There was a tone of relief in his voice that Angel respected. "Are you?"

"Technically."

The Doctor paused his work to look at Angel, curiosity shining through every feature. There was a moment of sharp clarity as Angel realized that this was the same man that had shown so much fascination at Angel's demonstration of a threshold. "Technically?" the Doctor prodded.

"Sure," Angel said. "My body won't get old and die naturally. But most vampires don't even live as long as the average human."

"A lot of vampires trip and fall onto fence posts?"

Angel laughed. "No, but I did see that once. No, most vampires get stupid or get killed in clan in-fighting or run into someone who knows how to fight back. That last one's pretty new. You wouldn't believe how many vampires Bram Stoker has killed."

"Personally?" the Doctor seemed perfectly serious.

"No, but the book's practically an instruction manual."

"Ah." The Doctor seemed disappointed. "So Dracula…?"

"Owes me money," Angel sighed.

The Doctor looked pleased.

"And then, of course, there's the bit about being evil."

"Ah, yes. You did say that. But the universe does not always reward the good and punish the bad," the Doctor said wearily, tugging a red wire out of the pile of junk.

Angel knew that quite well. "No, I could probably kill a human a day and so long as I was discreet enough about it no one would stop me." The Doctor stopped moving, the wire he held half twisted around a screw. "But most vampires, we…can't do that. Not forever. It's not enough somehow. So you stop just killing people and start hurting them."

Angel paused, regretting that small confession. He didn't normally talk to people about what it was like before he got a soul. Or, a small voice reminded him, after. There was nothing to be gained by explaining that vampires didn't just kill because they needed to eat, but that they killed because that was what they were made to do. The same way an artist would only be truly happy doing art or a car mechanic was only satisfied when covered in engine grease. He suspected it had something to do with their conversation back on the TARDIS. He still wanted to shake the Doctor and tell him that yes, vampires were evil all of the time. Or was it that he wanted the Doctor to tell him again that there was still room in the space between good and evil for men like them?

His hand tightened on the wheel as he finally managed to turn out of the line of cars and start making his way through the darker, less crowded streets.

To his surprise, the Doctor prodded him on. "What happens when hurting people isn't enough either?" he asked.

Angel shrugged. "You find new things to destroy, but eventually you decide to destroy the world."

"And when worlds aren't enough, you destroy the universe," the Doctor whispered so softly that Angel suspected he wasn't supposed to hear.

Long ago, Angel had found that the best way to deal with hearing things that people did not intend for him was to pretend like he'd never heard it, so he continued. "Which is what happens to most of the older vampires. Sometimes it takes longer than it does for others. But every ancient vampire I have ever met has tried at some point. And it's gotten them all killed. Kikistos, The Master…"

The Doctor twitched so hard he knocked his knee against the door with an audible thud. "Who?" he choked.

"I know, I know, it's a stupid name. I told him as much. He was really into it, too. He had the whole mouth-dripping-with-the-blood-of-his-victims thing. All poor Elizabethan English and living in the sewers. He apparently had a plan to bring about the apocalypse, but to be honest I was never really clear on the details."

"Ah," The Doctor said, rubbing at his knee.

"But like I said, it gets you killed. Kikistos apparently got a phone pole shoved through his chest for his trouble and the Slayer took time out of her day to crush the Master's bones into dust."

The Doctor winced. "Ouch."

"Can't say he didn't deserve it."

There was a brief pause while Angel took a left turn and the Doctor leaned his head back to look up at the buildings around them.

"How about you?" the Doctor asked casually, twisting in his seat to continue watching something that had caught his interest. "Ever feel an apocalypse coming on?"

Angel chuckled humorlessly at the phrasing. "Just the once. I came very close to sucking the world into hell."

The Doctor turned back around to look at him. It wasn't the expression Angel had expected. His brow crinkled like he was trying to figure something out more than having trouble believing what Angel had said. "What happened?" he asked.

"I died."

The Doctor didn't push for more, which made Angel admit to himself that maybe the alien wasn't that bad, and changed the subject, which made Angel think that maybe he shouldn't have punched him…twice.

"So!" the Doctor announced far too cheerfully. "Not that I mind that much, seeing as away is as good a direction as any right now, but where are we going?"

"Home. It should be pretty safe."

"Wonderful! Pop by your place, pick a few things up, finish this," the Doctor whacked his hand against the junk that had nearly reached a level of order that would make it more of a contraption than a pile of junk. "…And then how do you feel about quick trip up to the moon?"