Author's Note: This takes place immediately after the Angel episode "Sleep Tight," and somewhere near the end of Series 6 of New Who. This is the fifth in the Blood and Time series, but you don't need to read the previous stories to understand this one. For everyone's convenience, please assume that Angel and the Doctor know each other a little bit more than they do at the end of Get Your Own Monastery, since Angel has had one encounter with each 10 and 11 before this (thus, he is not surprised by the bow tie and floppy hair).

Part One

Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought.

- Kwame Nkrumah

The Doctor should know better. He really, really should. He was old, and could even by some be considered wise. But he had a soft spot that was really several soft spots,and several more soft spots that were really more like giant, gaping wounds that he'd really prefer if no one touched or talked about or stood just a little too close to or…

It was just the one soft spot that got him today.

He had been considering whether he wanted to explore the caves on Poosh (not the moon, the planet) or if he'd rather try his hand at climbing Mount Everest (because it was there) and was just deciding that he would set the coordinates for one while thinking about the other and let the TARDIS split the difference as she would when the phone rang.

It had a classical look to it; sort of greenish with a long, twirling cord that could loop twice around the console before whoever was holding it had to turn around and walk the other way. It hadn't always looked that way. It was (and was still in a way that he would never bother to explain to any human that traveled with him, if they asked – which they wouldn't) really Martha's old cell phone, but worked into the finish. The TARDIS, sexy thing that she was, had merely taken Martha's old cell phone from its spot nestled between two levers on the console and worked it into the remodeling project after she had crashed. But really, it was the same phone. It was ringing.

The Doctor liked to think that it was the sound of the ringing that he didn't like. The hollow clanging that issued from the console was loud and jarring in a way that was fitting for the current motif. But it was difficult to believe that that really was the reason when every time that phone rang the Doctor remembered why he had never had a phone before: it was never good news. He found bad news to be even worse when there was no one there to tell it to him or to hug or to put on a strong front for.

After several moments of twitching his fingers in the general direction of the phone without actually touching it, the Doctor snatched with a sharp motion like he was trying to grab a snake before it could bite him.

There was a vampire on the other end of the line, although the Doctor almost didn't recognize the voice. It sounded strained, like too many emotions were battling for dominance: Anger, fear, despair, and that twinge of planet-shattering hope. Four emotions…perhaps his voice was being drawn and quartered.

Angel (and really, wasn't that just a wonderful name for a vampire?) didn't say much, which was for the best given the state of his voice. He said that they had taken his son. He said the date and location slowly and precisely. He said "Please." And then he hung up.

The Doctor set his end of the telephone back in its cradle. He contemplated taking the phone out of the TARDIS without actually considering it. He knew he wouldn't, and suspected that the TARDIS would make it very difficult if he tried; the same way she had prevented the phone from flying off of the console where he had originally set it and getting lost.

The problem, although it really wasn't the only problem, with time travel was that it often let you know things before you should know them and knowing those things tied your hands. Only it wasn't like having your hands tied at all. It was more like someone had set the cure for the common cold across the room and then said, "Oh, by the way, if you step on the floor anywhere near that end of the room you'll set off several nuclear bombs. Have a nice day."

The Doctor should, if he were as wise as some people thought he was, not show up. He knew this as he adjusted a vortex stabilizer and then reached across to type the coordinates Angel had told him into the typewriter. He should not show up or show up late and walk out like he had simply missed the mark a bit. Given several trillion years, what's a few weeks here or there? Angel would never forgive him, but then, he'd done the same to others; it is surprisingly easy to pretend you're still friends with people if you run away before they can tell you how much they've come to hate you.

The TARDIS jolted and swerved through the vortex. The Doctor checked the screen and the reset the coordinates again. They had drifted several weeks forward from where he'd set them several moments before. He patted the console and whispered, "Thank you, but I think I might be learning how to not run away."

He supposed he'd have to learn now that his death was creeping toward him like a glacier: slow, unyielding, and very, very cold.

No, today he was not dead. Today, he would help as much as he could.

It was dark outside the TARDIS. He stepped through the doors, his boots crunching onto gravel.

"Ah," he said.

Apparently, someone had ripped, quite literally ripped, a hole in the fabric of the universe (which really wasn't like fabric at all; more like jello or bones or bones made of jello, except not like that at all either) and then stitched it back together, but only in the most rudimentary way. Because, he thought, you can't really stitch something that isn't really like fabric and it just looks silly when you try. Or ugly. It had the same horrible twisted look of a crushed car. Energy dripped like oil from the closed rift not twenty yards in front of him, giving him a feverish and sickly feeling. The air tasted slightly of sulfur and melted tar and expensive perfume.

Below the poorly-mended rip, Angel was trying to push himself to his feet. He was staring at a spot just a little to the left of the rift the same way a blind person would try to look at someone talking to them but miss just enough to make it noticeable. Of course, the Doctor realized, it was a good bit like that. Angel's senses were sharper than those of a human, but he was still missing the ones needed to actually experience the rift. The Doctor was reminded that he was an alien here (or anywhere, really). Or maybe it was that everywhere was alien to him? He liked the ring of that better and decided to think of it that way whenever the need came up.

He walked forward slowly and steadily, the way one approached frightened animals. As he walked, he took note of the military vehicles that were driving away and of the single jeep that had stopped and shifted into reverse. Better to move around Angel, then, he reasoned. Angel was, after all, inclined toward action, and at times like this when he was left alone and frightened, Angel might try to snap the first arm that touched his shoulder. So he moved into Angel's line of vision to avoid any arm-snapping that might have happened and to keep an eye on the jeep that had stopped again. He reached out a hand to help, but let Angel make the first move.

Angel blinked at him for a moment before grabbing the outstretched hand and hauling himself to his feet. The hand was noticeably cold, which the Doctor found more unsettling than he would have originally thought he would. Years spent with humans left him expecting everyone to have skin much hotter than his own.

"Connor," Angel said, before he had even caught his balance. "They took him. Opened a portal there. You can't see it now, but it was there." He pointed to the spot to the left of the rift.

The Doctor turned to look where Angel was pointing and nodded because no one appreciated being corrected on details when their lives where falling apart. "Come on," he said, pulling the cold hand towards the TARDIS.

The hand was shaking, just a little.

Angel pulled his hand free a moment later, obviously not used to or comfortable with physical contact. It was a small gesture, but it gave the Doctor enough time to position himself between Angel and the woman who had exited the jeep. He moved to walk around the woman, but she stepped with him and extended a hand.

"Hello, I'm Lilah Morgan, head of Special Projects with Wolfram and Hart," she said professionally. It matched her professional smile and her professional clothes and her professional posture. The Doctor didn't take her hand. She dropped it back to her side in a way that the Doctor thought was disgustingly professional. "Are you an associate of Angel's?" she inquired. "I make it a point to meet all of Angel's acquaintances." The Doctor suspected that the last bit was added to intimidate him. It was supposed to tell him that she was powerful.

He smiled a smile that went not a millimeter deeper than hers (although he suspected his looked far more roughish and handsome) and reached back a hand to as a sign that Angel should not attack the woman like he seemed to be tensing to do.

"I'm not an acquaintance; I'm a friend," he told her in mild tones. "And I don't really care what your position is because I know what you do." He stepped a little closer to her and she took a quick frightened step back. "You try to control. So much that you let a little child be ripped into hell. So much that you'd leave a man in pain just to prove that you can. So much that you'd come back just to try and threaten the person who tries to help." The Doctor suspected that she was trying to look indifferent and that was why she didn't look away from his eyes, even when she took another unsteady step back, her heels shifting oddly in the gravel. "You are not in control." He told her. "And if you continue to stand between us and that door, I will show you just how not in control you really are."

Part of him, the dark part that he usually told himself he wouldn't ever yield to again, told him that not only could he show her that she was not in control, but that he could do it very easily. It told him that he might not be considered entirely wrong for doing so.

Lilah got out of the way.

The Doctor continued to watch her as he snapped his fingers, opening the TARDIS doors. Then he dismissed her, letting his focus shift back to moving Angel back into motion while listening to her heels shift in the gravel for anything particularly back-stabby. He noted, as he followed Angel into the ship, that the doors had opened to just the right angle to prevent Lilah from seeing inside and that Lilah did not move her position to find out what she couldn't see. He wondered if she didn't look because of fear or because of a lack of curiosity. It didn't matter; he wasn't here for her.

He followed Angel into the green glow of the console room, noting that Angel had a limp to go with his shaking hand. The doors clicked closed behind them.

"Right!" he said. His voice sounded just a little too loud and far more nervous than he had intended it to sound. "Right," he said again, more quietly. He moved past Angel and up the stairs. He flipped a switch and pressed a button. The TARDIS, with a single shuddering groan, shifted.

When he turned around again, Angel had moved to the bottom of the stairs. His hand had stopped shaking; the Doctor suspected due to sheer force of will. Angel had clenched his hand into a fist. Actually, he had tensed his whole body like he was preparing to jump into hell. Because it was precisely like that, the Doctor thought.

"The dimension's called Quor'toth." Angel said through clenched teeth. The Doctor nodded. "We'll need to land a little away from where Connor and Holtz jumped through. If Holtz sees me coming he might hurt Connor."

"Come on," the Doctor said too cheerfully, mostly to cover the sound of his hearts breaking. Walking down two steps from the console platform before jumping the rest, he headed for one of the staircases leading farther into the TARDIS.

As he descended the stairs, he listened to the pause as he suspected Angel tried to understand why he was not running around driving the TARDIS through the "portal" at this very moment. Quick, uneven footsteps followed after him just as he reached the bottom of the stairs and disappeared from view. He slowed just a bit to give Angel time to catch up; he didn't want to lose the vampire in the TARDIS halls.

"Where are we going?" Angel asked impatiently.

"Not far," the Doctor told him, confident that the TARDIS understood that this was not the sort of time to show off. She did. Two lefts, a right, and a short ramp later, the Doctor opened the door and waved Angel into the kitchen.

The Doctor paused briefly next to Angel, who looked like he was either very confused or very, very angry and admired that the TARDIS had changed the walls from lime green to deep red and had switched half of the country style cabinets with sleek, industrial-looking cabinets and left the other half as they were. She had not, however, moved the teapot. She was sure to never move the teapot.

"Sit," he said in the same tone he used to tell invading forces to turn around and go home.

Angel sat, although the Doctor suspected that he acquiesced because he was exhausted more than because of the tone of voice used to give the command. Really, he didn't sit as much as he fell into the chair.

The Doctor gave him a small smile that Angel probably didn't see because he was stretching out his hurt leg. And then the Doctor set to work. He started the water because that always took the longest. He spun around twice before he located the refrigerator (it was a lovely avocado color and hiding next to the stove). He opened the door, surveyed the contents, and closed the door again with a dissatisfied click of his tongue. Moving down a row of cabinets, he wondered if the TARDIS might cross reference the infirmary storage with the kitchen cabinets. He picked a cabinet more or less at random and pulled open the door. Inside he found several syringes, a package of biscuits, the scanner that he had been looking for, bandages, and a lump of cheese that seemed to be growing fur. He took the biscuits and the scanner and left the rest.

"Doctor," he heard Angel say in a warning voice behind him. It had been a little over a minute since Angel had sat down, which was rather worrying given the circumstances. Angel was more worn out or injured than the Doctor had originally assessed.

The Doctor set the biscuits on the table, relocated the refrigerator, opened the door, considered, reconsidered, closed the door again, and moved off to fix the tea with the now-boiling water.

Angel was just pushing his way out of the chair again when the Doctor set a cup of tea on the table in front of him and another cup a little farther down the table. He knelt in front of Angel and pulled the scanner out of his pocket.

"Sit. What happened?" the Doctor asked, already scanning the leg.

"They took Connor, that's what happened!" Angel screamed loud enough to make the Doctor wince.

"I'm sorry," the Doctor said quietly.

"I don't care if you're sorry. I care if you're going to help. I don't have time for this." He waved a hand at the tea, or the kitchen, or maybe the Doctor. It wasn't a particularly well aimed gesture, and the Doctor wasn't sure. "You can follow them," Angel said the way people say things when they need them to be true. "Connor's special. He'll leave some sort of trail that you can follow."

"I'm very, very sorry."

"Then why did you even come?"

He came because he cared. He came because he knew how much this hurt and how much it was going to hurt. "I came to help. It's not going to be what you want; there are things…" The Doctor stopped and changed course. "This ship can do nearly anything. Time and space, the beginnings and ends and all of the middle moments, but she can't travel between the dimensions, Angel. I'm sorry, but the TARDIS wasn't built for it." It was not the biggest lie the Doctor had ever told.

Angel sank back into the chair. The desperate need to act that had been pushing him to his feet was cut out from under him and replaced with the realization that his last-ditch plan was not going to pan out. "This isn't helping. Tea is not going to bring Connor back."

The Doctor nodded, his fingers making small adjustments to the scanner. "No, it won't," he said, "although it is very good. You should try it. But when I said I was helping, I wasn't talking about the tea…" He paused, waiting for Angel to look up. When he was sure Angel was paying attention, he continued, "I'm giving you a Moment."

"What?"

"I stopped time for you. Actually, I shifted us halfway into the vortex so that we can sit repeating the exact same moment for, well, nearly as long as you want. Although the exact same moment gets a tad boring after awhile. It's a bit like –"

Angel cut him off, "I don't care what it's like."

The Doctor deflated. "I suppose you wouldn't," he agreed soberly.

"That's not much help," Angel said.

"Actually, it is." The Doctor paused, trying to come up with the words to explain. In the end, he gave up trying to think about it and just started talking.

"I am a Time Lord," he started. "I don't think I ever told you, but that's what I'm called. That's what I am." The scanner in his hand told him that Angel was suffering nerve damage similar to that caused by electrocution with a friendly ding. The Doctor adjusted several settings and set to waving the scanner over Angel's leg as he spoke. "My people were not the only ones to discover time travel, you know. There are other species and races that figured it out. Even humans manage to sort out a rudimentary form of time-jumping eventually."

The scanner clicked off automatically before it had time to do any good. The Doctor glanced at the screen. It told him that the patient was dead. Why did everything have to be so automated? He pressed around for an override switch. "But all of those other races called themselves time travelers. It's like they knew - although sometimes I think they were told - that they were merely tourists in our kingdom." He gave up on getting the scanner to cooperate on its own and pulled out his screwdriver and sonic-ed it into submission. It sparked in his hand as the automatic settings shorted out.

Angel twitched when the Doctor redirected the scanner at his leg, which was actually a good sign. Fixing nerves usually hurt.

"Does this story have a point?" Angel asked impatiently.

"Maybe. Or it might just be the ramblings of an old man." The Doctor gave Angel a small smile. He always admired how honest Angel tended to be about things like this. And the indifferent attitude towards his past was probably good for him. He talked so little about his past that on the rare occasions that he did talk about it his companions almost always listened with rapt attention. He wondered if it were possible for a Time Lord to learn humility. He'd certainly never seen it before and probably never would. "I'm almost done," he told Angel, purposefully unclear about whether he was talking about the leg or his story.

"Some say that the reason that Time Lords mastered time like no other group is because the first thing we mastered was not hopping to the past or the future. The first thing that we learned was how to step out of time and stand still."

The scanner, having done all it could, beeped again. The Doctor climbed to his feet settled into the chair with his cup of tea. "The thing is, Angel, once you jump into a time you become a part of it. And then you can't think about it because it's all reacting and doing and fighting and running away from giant three-eyed centipedes. What people don't do is think. Because they don't have time or they're scared or they're angry or it looks like you don't have any choices. Those choices, Angel, the little ones and the rushed ones and the ones you don't think you really have. They matter."

Angel was watching him closely now, impatience gone from his face. "You're giving me time to think."

"I'm sorry that I can't make this easy for you," the Doctor said. "I can't give you your son back. You are going to have to make a lot of choices very soon and most of them would be better made if you weren't tired and hurt."

Angel considered this, bending his leg slightly as if testing it for pain before he moved it more. The Doctor waited for him. Angel has always been about action and movement, and so this was going to be a difficult lesson for him. If he learned it, the Doctor mused, Angel would be one up on him.

Angel reached slowly out and took the cup of tea, pulling it into his hands with slow careful movements. "Just a second will pass?" he asked, all of the grief and despair and exhaustion finding its way into his voice because, the Doctor suspected, he just realized that it could. For a moment, he didn't have to be strong.

"If you stay for more than a few hours I'll have to expand the loop to more like six seconds." The Doctor admitted. "But I'll give you a ride home to make up for the lost time. I didn't see your car there."

"I stole a jeep."

"Ah. I think they stole it back, which wasn't very thoughtful of them."

Angel shook his head, although it looked less like a response to the Doctor and more like a response to some internal dialogue.

The Doctor waited patiently as Angel stared at his tea. And then he waited slightly less patiently because he had never really been good at sitting and waiting. He wondered how it was that Angel managed to be so still and then figured that it was the fact that he didn't breathe, which really made the whole stillness thing really work for Angel. He did blink, but at a rate slightly less often than human. More like a cat, really. He pondered reclassifying all of the animal kingdom on earth by blinks per minute and then, because he was still waiting, went ahead and did. It wasn't a very good system, but most of the fish ended up separated from everything else.

He retrieved the scanner from where he'd placed it on the table and started pulling it apart. With a proper rewiring he could have it switch to manual without shorting it out first.

They stayed there for a long time, Angel holding his tea cup and the Doctor making adjustments to the medical equipment in the kitchen. Occasionally the Doctor would leave to go find some wires or a tool, mostly to see if Angel preferred to be alone, but the vampire never seemed to move during his absence, so the Doctor mostly stayed in the kitchen. Most of the times when his life had fallen apart, he had been alone. Sometimes that had been good, but most of the time it had been horrible. So he stayed and tinkered, being another presence in the room that sometimes made all the difference.

Angel never drank the tea, but the Doctor switched it out twice in case it was the warmth or the smell that he really liked. Angel nodded briefly at him when he did, so he suspected he must be at least a little right.

Four hours, thirty-two minutes and ten seconds later, Angel reached out to pick up a discarded wire and asked, "What are you doing?"

The Doctor looked across the kitchen table, taking in the piles of tools and wires and odd bits of science-y things and then looked down at the small, red, spikey ball in his hands. He blinked at it like it had snuck up on him, which it mostly had. He pointed to a large, domed machine teetering on the edge of the table.

"That is a bit like an x-ray. Actually, it's not like an x-ray at all because it doesn't use rays, but you can think of it like that if you like. That box with the screen over there is for measuring certain types of energy. That is a scanner from the 75th century; you've seen that. And this is a microsonic temporal field enhancer. Mostly, I'm making improvements, but this I'm actually building from scratch." Actually, he was building it from scraps because most of the materials used to make a new one were lost on Gallifrey. The one on the TARDIS hadn't given out, but if it did, he would be grounded until he managed to replace it.

Angel nodded, twirling the wire between his fingers. "Is there a place," he asked, sounding a little guilty, "that I could sleep?"

There was. The Doctor led Angel down a hall to a spot that seemed like the sort of place that would have a bedroom in it. The door on the left contained a small room furnished in deep colors with a large bed on the far wall. He waved Angel into it with a little bow.

Pausing briefly inside the door, Angel turned to look at the Doctor; he scratched his neck briefly and said, very, very quietly, "Thank you."

The Doctor wasn't really sure if he deserved that. Certainly not from Angel, who was so very extraordinary. He gave Angel a brief nod and told him that he'd be down the hall if Angel needed anything, confident that wherever he went, the TARDIS would be sure that it was just down the hall from Angel.

Angel nodded and closed the door.