"Ow," said the Doctor, sucking air between her teeth as Graham ran his fingers through her hair, carefully extracting bloodied shards of glass and dropping them with a clink into the waiting metal bowl at his elbow.

The Tardis console room was otherwise quiet, the soothing hum in the background only disturbed by the Doctor's pained gasps and the chime of extracted glass. Yasmin and Ryan were off exploring the planet on their own after Graham dragged the Doctor back to her Tardis to look at her injuries.

Thankfully her injuries were minor, only cuts to her face and arms, and a mass of glass impaled in her scalp. Or rather, that was all the injuries she was admitting to.

True to human cliche despite her alien origins, the Doctor was a reluctant patient.

"I can do this myself, you know," the Doctor growled as she scowled at the floor between her knees. "A few minutes in the med bay with the -ow- tissue regenerator and I'll be as right as rain. I'm fine - you can go back to having fun with the others."

"You are not 'fine' - you fell about five meters head first through a pane of glass." Two more pieces fell into the bowl balanced on the console to prove his point. "You can't see where the glass is so you'd probably hurt yourself further by blindly searching for it. Let me get it all out and then you can get the tissue regenerator."

"I told you earlier it's not glass, its transparent silica alloy."

"Well it certainly shattered like glass as you fell through it. And you still haven't told me how badly you are hurt, that fall would have killed a human.

"Well I'm not human am I." She paused and sighed out a deep breath, realising that pain (and her dented ego) was causing her to snap at her friend. "I'm rather bruised but otherwise sound. There is nothing that a trip to the med bay won't sort out."

"Good. You scared us all for a little bit there."

Graham's fingers were gentle as they carded through the time Lord's hair in the following comfortable silence.

"Why'd it push you anyway?" He asked after a while, doing one last sweep through the Time Lord's hair before he declared her glass free and let her go and clean herself up.

"I got too close to it's nest and thought I was a threat. Typical parent behaviour found across the universe - the desire to protect your own offspring."

"Okay. So how did you get so close to the edge of the platform that you fell off it? I thought you Time Lord's were supposed to have more common sense than that."

"I tripped, ok? I was focusing on the youngsters and wasn't looking where I put my feet. I didn't realise I was so close to the edge until I had already fallen off it."

Graham settled the Doctor's hair back in its original position, making sure the parting was approximately in the right place.

"I think that's all the glass I can find. But be careful when you are washing it just in case. And you'd better wash it after you have fixed yourself up - you are more pink than blond at the moment."

The Doctor rose and put a hand on Graham's shoulder.

"Thanks. That probably was quicker and less painful than if I had done it myself. Now go clean my blood off your hands and find the others. Make sure Ryan hasn't got in trouble again and I'll join you in a bit. Try and make sure you lot haven't wandered far."

Graham looked down at this hands in surprise, he was so intent in helping the Doctor that he hadn't realised just how much blood he had got on them. Turns out that Time Lord head wounds bleed as much as human ones.

By the time he looked up again the Doctor had picked up the bowl of bloodied glass shards and was making her way to the doorway that led into the depths of the Tardis. He watched her walk, coat swishing behind her, moving with an ease that belied the events that had only happened a half hour before. Had it really been that short a time since he had seen the Time Lord fall; saw her smash through the not-glass; saw her lying unmoving for a few seconds that lasted hours before she sat up with a false smile on her face, hiding her pain?

He mentally shook himself from the memory and headed towards the bowls of the Tardis himself, hoping the bathroom hadn't move since the last time he had used it.

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