Eight
As soon as the audio link was cut off, a visible change could be seen in the Doctor's demeanor. He gave a long sigh, his shoulders slumped, and he buried his face in his hands. Rory and Amy stayed silent, a bit frightened by what they had just seen.
"Doctor," Amy said finally, and hesitantly. "Did you actually lock everyone in?"
After a moment, the Doctor raised his head and looked directly at her. "Yeah. Of course I did, Pond. Everyone except us, because we've got the TARDIS!" He tried to sound cheerful, but failed. "Plus, we've got what we came for, and that took care of the problem of those scientists. Didn't it? They won't ever hurt the Squeaks again, if they ever even get out of here, not if the psychic lock works."
"Okay," Rory said, "but we still need to leave, before they come looking for us."
The Doctor nodded quickly. "Yes, yeah, that would be smart. TARDIS down this corridor, then left, right, right, and left, I'm pretty sure." He turned and strode away quickly, but Rory could see his slight trembling that gave away how shocked he was by his own loss of temper.
Back in the TARDIS and hanging around in the Vortex to, as the Doctor put it, "save time" which Rory found a bit amusing, the Doctor was examining the toxin at an atomic level, and Amy and Rory were doing their level best not to disturb him. They wandered into their room that the Doctor had given them on the TARDIS and sat on their bed. Amy picked up one of the books that lay in little piles on the bedside tables, and flipped through it, then put it back down. She had read it several times already. Rory just put his head back on a propped up pillow and looked at the ceiling. Per Amy's request a long time ago, the Doctor had made it so the ceiling seemed like it was an open window to the outside when they were in deep space. It didn't work in the Vortex, but it played recorded material instead, and Rory found it beautiful and very relaxing to watch the nebulae and stars drift across their own little sky.
Amy was getting bored. "How long is he going to take?" she complained.
"Be patient," Rory told her. "Go check on him if you're tired of waiting."
Amy sighed. She sat up and bounced a little on the bed before rolling off it and saying, "You know what, I think I will." She flicked her red hair out of her eyes. "I'm a bit worried after what happened earlier. I'll go talk to him." She walked out into the TARDIS corridor. Rory smiled at his Scottish wife without knowing exactly why as she left.
The Doctor was sitting cross legged behind the stairs to the lower level of the TARDIS console room.
"Hiding, Raggedy Man?" Amy asked, jokingly but kindly, as she spotted him.
He was holding two small bottles of liquid that looked nearly identical, comparing them and squinting at them, shining onto them a light which he held in his mouth. "Hiding, Pond? From what?" the Doctor replied distractedly through the tiny flashlight between his teeth.
Amy came and sat next to him. "Oh, I dunno. Rory and me. Yourself."
"Why would I be hiding from myself?" he asked, placing one of the bottles onto his left side, the other on his right. Both were joining an already numerous amount of similar bottles on either side, and another group stood in pairs in front of him.
"You do it all the time," Amy told him. "Can I help? With the bottles, I mean."
The Doctor shook his head. "Nah, that's probably not a good idea." Amy laughed a little in agreement. He picked up another pair of bottles. "You could hold the light, though." She picked it up and shone it into the bottles he was holding. "Look at this!" the Doctor exclaimed indignantly. "This is rubbish, absolute rubbish! Both of these. They look like they haven't been replaced in a hundred years! How do I not have good chemicals here?" He sighed in frustration. "This one will have to do." He placed the bottle he was holding in his left hand on his right side, and vice versa. He looked at Amy. "But seriously, how is it that I've not refreshed my chemical store for a century?"
"Because you forget things." Amy reached over to try and flatten his still mussed-up hair. "And because you don't use it very often and because, for a Time Lord, you really have a pretty bad sense of time."
The Doctor smiled, and picked up the next set of bottles. "That's true," he said softly. "All three of those." He chose which bottle to use almost instantly, not even bothering to ask Amy for the light. She would have gotten it anyway, but his hair just wouldn't lie flat. Well, as flat as it ever did.
"Your hair is ridiculous, anyone ever tell you that?" she laughed. He laughed, too.
"Yes, actually. More than once, and in more than one body. Always check your hair first, after regenerating, Amy. I mean…" he broke off. "I mean, if it ever so happened that you regenerated. Which is not likely, of course."
"No," Amy agreed. "It isn't very likely. What did you think of first, when you checked it this time?"
The Doctor gave a sheepish grin. "At first I thought I was a girl," he said. "Then, I was disappointed that I wasn't ginger."
Amy laughed again. "You want to be ginger?"
"Always have," the Doctor confirmed. "Never managed it, though. Hold the light?" He inspected another pair of bottles and placed them in their respective collections.
"Which group is which?" Amy asked curiously, after another few bottles had been placed in each.
"What? Oh, left are the good bottles, right are the bad ones."
"And what exactly are you sorting them for?" Amy persisted.
"I'm trying to mix an antidote for the poison," he said. "But some of these old chemicals are just too old to be effective, and it's hard trying to figure out which ones are better." He continued sorting for another couple minutes in silence. Finally, they reached the last couple of bottles. "There," he said, relieved. "Done."
"Now what?" Amy asked.
"I have to mix them all together, basically. Well, acidically, technically, but that wasn't what I meant. And you knew that."
"And you probably want me well away from that in case it blows up in your face," Amy inferred. "All right. But, Doctor, one more question."
"What is it, Pond?"
"Are you okay?" He didn't answer. Amy pressed on. "I mean, about what happened in that lab. You weren't acting like yourself at all."
"I lost my temper, is all…" the Doctor replied, not looking at Amy.
"Yeah, but you don't do that very often. At least, not around us."
He still wouldn't meet her eyes. "I'm not proud of it, Amelia." He finally looked straight at her, and his ancient eyes looked deeply troubled. "But I did make sure that they had plenty of food and water before I locked them it, I promise. I only…" his voice broke a little. He cleared his throat, and carried on, more quietly than before, ashamed of what he was saying. "I only made it seem like I didn't care whether they died to scare them. And that scares me, Amelia. And I can't risk crossing our timelines again, the TARDIS didn't like it the first time, and having three of us on one planet would be too much. And I wasted time frightening those scientists, when I should have been leaving as soon as we got the sample. What if one of the Squeaks dies because I was too slow, Amy? What if the three minutes it took to do that was too long and I'm too late for them?"
Amy listened in shock as the Doctor voiced his fears. "You won't be," she said when he paused for breath. "Hey." She took his hand. "Listen to me, Raggedy Man. You won't be too late. I know it."
He took a deep breath. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Now, go mix your chemical whatevers, and stop beating yourself up," she told him sternly.
"Yes, ma'am."
Amy stood up, letting go of the Doctor's hand. Being careful not to knock over any bottles, she leaned down and kissed the top of his head, then walked up into the main console room and back to her and Rory's bedroom.
"What happened?" Rory asked as she came in.
"The usual," Amy said. "He's blaming himself for everything and feeling awful, but is determined to figure everything out all by himself. Also, he's mixing chemicals, and I'm not sure if I should be scared or not."
Rory laughed. Above them on their little piece of sky, a faraway star burst into a supernova, spreading colored light across its whole distant galaxy.
