Order
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
"So why did you make me give the order?" asked Bill, wrapping both hands around her teacup because the cold of 1814 – or something else - was still in her bones.
"What order?" The Doctor tilted his head.
He looked so calm, sitting there in his black Victorian cloak, with his top hat perched on a pile of papers on his desk, everything about him blending in so perfectly with his cozy, old-fashioned office, that she didn't know whether to smile or shout at him.
He looked as if freeing giant sea monsters, escaping rooms full of explosives, and causing people to drown in the Thames was nothing special. All in a day's work.
"Oh, you know the one! 'If you let this creature suffer, what is your future worth?' – I mean, seriously?" She made air quotes in defiance of the frown that was beginning to make his eyebrows bristle. Then she dropped her hands in her lap to disguise the fact that they were shaking.
"I mean," she said, with a voice that was none too steady either, "If you were actually gonna let me make up my own mind, the least you could've done was not guilt-trip me like that. And don't give me any of this 'I serve at the pleasure of the human race' – we both know you do whatever you bloody well want to. So – so why?"
The one advantage about Regency gowns, she discovered, was that they came with folded cloth handkerchiefs in the pockets. She blew her nose, making a sound like a foghorn. The Doctor winced, whether in sympathy or irritation, she couldn't tell.
"You're going to make this difficult, aren't you?" he said, in the forcibly level tone of a teacher about to deliver a punishment. "I see I've gotten too used to Nardole and his obedience."
She stiffened in her seat and scrunched her handkerchief. What did he mean by that? Was he going to kick her out of the office and never speak to her again? In her current mood, she felt as if she'd be glad to slam the door on him, but her sensible side knew she'd regret that later. He was – as bizarre and somewhat alarming as that thought was – her best friend. She didn't want to lose him.
"The truth," he said, putting down his teacup and rising majestically to his feet. "The truth is … that moments like this are the real reason I travel with humans."
"What do you mean?"
"I may not be a complete monster, but I'm not the hero people think I am at first meeting, either. And as I said, I'm two thousand years old. Much older, if you count time inside the TARDIS and other forms of Time Lord technology." His tone was very quiet and, when she dared to look up at him, his eyes were unfathomably sad. "If you live that long, your moral compass tends to get a few twists. I need people like you to help me keep it straight."
Bill swallowed hard. The responsibility was staggering. She wondered if the weight of it might crush her. She hadn't been able to stop him killing that guard, after all, or stop the sea creature from eating Lord Sutcliffe. What if she and the Doctor both made the wrong call someday, and something terrible happened?
But then she remembered Kitty, Perry and the other children, smiling as the Doctor fed them fish pies and read them a story. She remembered the archived news article just now, describing how Perry had been named Sutcliffe's heir and had lived safely with his friends in that house for the rest of their lives.
Two thousand years or older, and he still stopped to consider the future of a street child. Perhaps, she thought, his moral compass wouldn't need that much work after all.
He was, to put it bluntly, a hypocrite. Giving that speech about the value of all life, and then casually killing Lord Sutcliffe and his guard, was evidence of that. But if it weren't for those deaths, hundreds more people would have died, and the sea creature would have been stayed a prisoner under the Thames.
Despite his two thousand-or-more years, the Doctor, like her, like any other ordinary person, was just muddling along as best he could.
"So never stop being difficult, Bill Potts," said the Doctor. "Question me. Challenge me. It may not seem like it at the time, but I respect you for it. If, that is … you still want to continue being my student after this. I'd understand if you don't."
He twisted his long, knobby fingers around each other constantly as he said this. She realized, with a jolt, that he was nervous. Had she ever seen him nervous before, even in a life-or-death situation?
That, more than anything, made up her mind.
She'd admired Heather's beauty and the star in the eye, but hadn't fallen in love with her until Heather confessed how badly she wanted to escape her life. She loved Kate, her foster-mother, in spite of Kate's terrible luck with men.
Knowing someone else had flaws too – knowing that Bill wasn't the only one who lay awake at night sometimes, wondering if it was her fault her life wasn't better – was profoundly reassuring.
She couldn't idealize the Doctor anymore. But she could still care about him.
More so, because this time he really was giving her the choice.
"Hey, Doctor. Remember that story I told you about the girl who got fat because I always gave her extra chips?"
He shot her a glare that, unlike the one he aimed at Lord Sutcliffe, only made her smile. She was beginning to read that face of his quite well.
"You asked me what the point of it was, and I couldn't think of one back then, but now I can. The point," she said gruffly, "Is that I don't give up on people. Even when it might be the smarter thing to do. I stick by them. So yeah, of course I'll stay."
Most of her friends, she knew, would have hugged her at this point. But he wasn't the hugging type. He didn't even look at her. But his nervous hands stopped moving at once, and relaxed by his sides. It felt as if a mass of tension had drained from the room.
She wiped her face one last time, stuffed the handkerchief back into her pocket – she had a feeling the TARDIS wouldn't mind if she kept it, though the gown was another matter – and stood up.
"Now," she said, "I'd better change out of this fancy dress before I go back home. Folks in my neighborhood would die laughing if they saw me in this."
"Hm, yes. The feather especially." He tugged on her ostrich-feather fascinator in passing, making her squawk and push him away. "What were you trying to do, fly?"
"Oi! I didn't pick it, thanks very much, the TARDIS did."
"I could introduce you to a species of winged humanoids who'd be very offended if they saw you with that. You'd be suspected of cannibalism."
"Wait, seriously? People with wings? How does that even work?"
Talking rapidly and joyfully all the while, Bill and the Doctor strolled back into the TARDIS, which promptly began to wheeze. Flickering in and out, in a way that suggested a mischievous wink, the ship disappeared.
Nardole came bursting into the room just in time to see its outline fade off the floor. He slumped against the door, his round body shivering all over. First the terrible knocking from inside the Vault, and now this.
"Oh, Hydroflax," he cursed. "Not again!"