Chapter 9 - A Noble Rescue
After class was over, Wilf smiled at the feral girl, with her dark glasses and skittish movements. He had long ago learned to recognize a suffering soul and he was quite incapable of leaving anyone in the sort of dire straits she was obviously in.
Her clothing was carefully mended, but nothing she had on her underfed body was fit for anything but the rubbish bin. Her shoes were held together by little more than duct tape and hope and her clothes were even worse off. He resisted the urge to cluck at her and drag her off to buy her something decent to wear. He could see that he'd have to go slow with this child, she had pride to spare, he could see it in the neatly patched holes in her jeans and the way she carried herself, shoulders back, head high.
"That was very kind of you, Masha," he murmured, turning to watch as the children scattered, running with gleeful laughter through the tall red grass, chasing each other and calling back and forth. "These children have lost so much. They need a lot of love and kindness." She smiled at him.
"You ought to show him how he can make it into a pendant by putting it between two pieces of glass… hope he doesn't smoosh it before he can put it away somewhere… but I have others if he does," she beamed at Wilf. She had eaten her apple down to the core, and was now munching on the core itself, picking out the seeds and throwing them away. It gave him an idea of how to approach her, to ease her into accepting his help.
"Come along then, dear, let's get some lunch," he suggested and tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, escorting her across the tiled meandering roads, as though she were a great lady, but keeping tight hold of her, so that she couldn't just run off. "I know a very nice place nearby." Masha stopped and frowned at him, her resistance to anything that might look like charity already starting to show.
"I don't have any currency," she told him and he sighed inside. She was definitely going to be a tough nut to crack, but the kindness and generosity she'd displayed to Hadrian made him want to put in the effort.
"What sort of gentleman makes a lady pay for lunch!" he asked her with his best 'sweet harmless fellow' smile. Masha giggled, but he could see that she was feeling uncomfortable.
"I hate to take advantage of you just because you are generous." Her response made him warm to her even more. She was far too sweet and dear for him to leave her on her own.
"My dear child, it is I who will be taking advantage of you," he assured her with a wink. "It's not often that I can sit and chat up a pretty girl." He was flirting, being utterly silly and outrageous, making certain she knew he wasn't serious, but he also flashed her a smile so sweetly hopeful that it was, he hoped, impossible to refuse him.
"You are a charmer," she laughed. "All right, wherever you like, lead and I will follow." He smiled brightly, pleased that she was willing to come along with him. Thinking quickly, he choose their destination with the intention of someplace that she would feel safe, or at least a place where she wouldn't be overwhelmed by too many people, or too much sensory input. Her face was tense, whether she knew it or not, and he could feel her nervousness though the shifting of her fingers on his arm.
"This way, my dear," he told her, steering her to a little outdoor cafe. It was a place he frequented often, but more importantly, it was a place she could easily run away from. She scanned the area as they approached, much the way some of the orphans did, looking for a bolthole if things got dangerous.
"Hello Wilf!" called Lucy and she ushered him into a seat by the railing, where they had an unobstructed view of the people walking by.
Susan hit the door switch and sighed as it opened onto UNIT's Geneva office.
"I hope she's all right," Koschei muttered and Susan looked at him in surprise.
"The Agent?" she asked and he shook his head.
"No, the girl we rescued in space, Masha," he responded and she nodded, remembering with a bit of chagrin.
"I do wonder why Grandfather couldn't find her," she agreed and her husband's eyes became shadowed.
"She probably got lost, she was a bit off kilter when we picked her up. I'm just worried because she was rather fragile," he sighed.
"Fragile?" the Doctor asked as he stomped in. "Who was fragile?"
"Masha," Koschei replied.
"What? The kick-arse girl with super strength, who feels no pain?" Dar sputtered from behind the Doctor. "Fragile is not the word I would have used there."
"I meant emotionally," Koschei answered with more patience than Susan had been expecting.
"Oh," Dar muttered.
"What makes you say that?" the Doctor asked.
"She didn't care where we dropped her, as long as no one was trying to shoot at her!" Koschei snarked. "Well-adjusted people ask for a tropical planet, with nice beaches!"
"Right. Good point," the Doctor agreed and they went out of the TARDIS to go chat up General Petrov.
Susan followed behind the others. She was a doctor, not a soldier, and always felt out of place in these sorts of meetings. Still, when the head of UNIT asks for a briefing, 'no thanks' was not really an option. Gallifrey still really needed the assistance of Earth and Earth's government and that meant being attentive when the General needed you to be, even when you'd barely been home four hours when he'd called.
They were escorted into a small conference room with only about five other people. Knowing that Petrov could have arranged for dozens of others to be present, she was pleasantly surprised by the few people and the trays of cold cuts and fruit on the table, as well as the sodas, tea, and coffee.
She sat down and the General's Aide proffered her a cup of tea, without a word. She took a sip and found it precisely to her liking. The point was not lost on her; the General had done his homework.
General Petrov appeared two minutes after they had all been served and the fact that he didn't keep them waiting, just to prove how important he was, impressed her. He was a tidy little man, he reminded her forcibly of a Russian version of Napoleon. He had thick bristly moustaches and a neatly pressed uniform and a pair of penetrating dark eyes, set deep under heavy brows.
"Good afternoon," he told them in barely accented English and her respect for him when up another notch. "I apologize for dragging you off to Geneva, I know you must be tired and weren't home for very long. I'll try to make this short, so you can get back to your families." Susan warmed to him immediately. He actually sounded as though he did regret it and she sipped her tea, liking the man immensely.
"Not at all, General," Grandfather replied in fluent Russian and Petrov chuckled, his eyes crinkling in amusement.
"Your accent is perfect Muscovite," he complimented and Grandfather shrugged.
"Fyodor was very generous in his lessons," he replied, with a twinkle in his eye, and the General coughed.
"Dostoevsky?" he asked in surprise and Grandfather smiled rather dreamily.
"He was a great man, I did tell him to stop gambling, you know, but he never would listen," he sighed. Petrov opened his mouth and then shut it again, forcing his mind back on track.
"Right, we have a problem with these bombs, Doctor," Petrov reminded them and the smile was wiped from Grandfather's face.
"We do indeed," he agreed. "As well as with the people planting them."
"Indeed."
"Have you managed to get through all the surveillance tapes from the park yet?" Darginian asked and Petrov nodded.
"Yes and it netted us about thirty suspects, winnowing them down is going to be difficult. It takes a lot of man hours to thoroughly check the backgrounds of that many people," he told them, settling into his chair with a disgruntled look.
"So, what did you need from us today?" Grandfather asked and the General looked unhappy.
"The Secretary General wants to look like she's doing something," Petrov apologized. "She wants to create a special UN taskforce to deal with this and she wants Kate Stewart to head it up. I don't mind that, if it helps, that's great," he explained.
"So, what's the problem?" Dar asked, leaning forward on his forearms to study Petrov.
"The problem is that she wants all the resident aliens investigated and if anything weird shows up, she wants them sent off planet," he sighed.
"They are aliens, which of them won't be 'weird'," Susan protested and the General nodded. "They are mostly good people, who just want to live peacefully."
"I can't disagree with that, but I don't know what to do," he sighed.
"You want us to tell you how to handle this?" Grandfather asked and Petrov shook his head.
"No, I want you to tell me about the peculiarities of each race, so that when Kate sends her people in, they can ask the right questions."
Susan sighed and wondered how bad things were going to get for the resident aliens here before this was all solved.
Masha noticed that a lot of the passing people seemed to know Wilf. People kept stopping to have a word with him, or just waving as they passed by. He was a popular person, it appeared.
"You order whatever you like, Masha, they pay me far too much money for the little I do around here," he confided with a wink.
"I doubt that," she snarked but then added, "Oooo - all you can eat pasta!"
"The cook here is Italian, he makes wonderful pasta!" Wilf assured her and the waitress took their order, the pasta for Masha, and a tuna sandwich and soup for Wilf.
"Coffee or Tea?" she asked, smiling, and Masha just stared at her.
"You... serve tea here? Real tea? I haven't had tea in…" She shook her head. "I would love tea."
"It had better be real!" Wilf chuckled.
"The Doctor gets a bit snippy, if it's not!" the waitress told her with a laugh and Wilf grinned, his face crinkling with a thousand wrinkles and folds.
"True, he is a bit particular, Lucy, isn't he?" Wilf agreed. "Tea for me as well, if you'd be so kind"
Fifteen minutes later they had food, tea, and a basket of bread sticks and rolls. Wilf ignored the bread, to concentrate on his soup and sandwich, leaving the rest for Masha.
Masha nearly fainted when she saw the food. The sight and smell of it were overwhelming. She hadn't had a real meal in months, and it showed in the way that she tucked in. She was desperately and horribly hungry and it wasn't until she had worked her way through three bowls of pasta and was halfway through her fourth that she managed to slow down a bit, enough to discover that there was tea. She took a sip.
"It is real tea," she said, "It's real!" She seemed surprised at the tears which were suddenly on her cheeks; but she scrubbed them away impatiently. "Real tea!" she said, and downed it.
Wilf said nothing, merely watching her with a compassionate serenity that nearly undid her.
"We'll need to find you a job, Masha, and a place to stay, I think," he told her gently.
"Mmm, I have a place to stay," she said, now trying the bread. "There's tarps set up all over by the windmills and I can find work. I'm good at working," she beamed at him.
"I'm sure that you can do anything you can put your mind to, Masha, but you really ought to have a real house to live in," he contradicted with a small wince.
"Mmm, I will," Masha was reaching for more bread, "I signed up on that waiting list thing? Be a couple of years, but that's all right," She was well fed for the first time in many months and was feeling very good about the world.
"Masha, that waiting list is for family homes," he informed her. "There is temporary housing for recent immigrants." She considered this, chewing idly on a breadstick as she thought.
"Units are in very short supply. I wouldn't want to take one away from someone that really needs it. I can stay anywhere, and it doesn't really matter. Someone else might not be able to pull that off." There was that pride again, showing in her eyes; the reluctance to be a charity case, the clear determination to make her own way in the world; balanced with the plain fact that she was faced with a sheer lack of resources to do so.
"But, my dear, that's what the units are for!" he looked perplexed. "Now, how did you even get here without knowing any of this?"
"Oh... I got dropped off in a bit of a hurry." She frowned as she thought. "Something about bombs... or something," she shrugged.
"Bombs? Dropped off?" he frowned and then his face cleared. "Did the Doctor bring you?"
Masha nodded.
"Well, that explains everything," he chortled. "That fellow is always running about at top speed and often forgets where his hat goes."
"He did seem pretty busy," Masha responded, "But that's OK. He dropped me off, and it's amazing here! I'm set for life! It's just… I mean, wow, you know?"
"Yes," he told her in a soft and wondering tone. "I most certainly do." He looked around at the bustling city with a smile on his lips, before turning to address her again with a more serious demeanor. "But, I am quite sure that he meant you to be cared for, my dear! Not just having you kipping it in a field!" Masha stared at him, stunned at the very concept.
"Well I ... I never thought about it. Kipping it in a field is a ridiculous improvement, but I… I guess I never thought about what I would do, if I made it all the way out. Wow, that's right, I'm all the way out." She paused to savour the delicious freedom. "I never really looked beyond that point," her brows furrowed for the first time, as the enormity of it all crashed in on her.
Rose sat down at the computer and began working through the equations. It was always weird for her to watch the swirling figures taking form under her fingers. The adjustment to being a Time Lord was always difficult, but the way that she was becoming alien, even to herself, was the hardest bit.
Andred knocked on the door jamb and she grinned up at him, speaking Gallifreyan to him, without even thinking about it, the liquid syllables just pouring off of her tongue.
"Greetings to you, Andred," she called and he smiled and came into the room. She gestured him into a chair. "What can I do for you?" she asked, slipping back into English.
"Well, I have a few problems to lay before you," he warned. He was such a formal man. At first, Susan had thought him a touch priggish, but she'd come to realize that he was just rather serious and shy.
"What sort of problems?" she asked, instantly feeling nervous. Andred shook his head and folded himself into a chair, brows furrowed as he gathered his thoughts.
"That fight yesterday wasn't the first time that that child has been both belligerent and mean," Andred grumbled.
"Assiloran?" Rose asked with a frown.
"Yes, he's been a great deal of trouble." Andred ran his hands through his short-cropped brown hair with an aggravated gesture.
"He lost his family, his brother, most of his friends," Rose pointed out. It wasn't as though the orphans were normal, well-adjusted children after all. "Look at Myrdin, he can barely be civil to an adult."
"Yeah, but he's good with his younger brother and Freeya adores him. He's got a core of kindness in him, he's just really angry at the adults for having that damnable War!" Andred snapped out.
"Which I really can't blame him for," Rose agreed.
"No," the old soldier sighed out, looking weary and far too old suddenly. "I can't either."
"So, give Loran some time, eh?"
"You don't understand, he's not getting better, he's getting worse!" he replied, jumping up out of his chair and pacing the room. "He's started taunting Arista, telling her that Leela's going to die soon," he snarled and Rose stared at him in horror.
"What a cruel thing to say!" she gasped. It was true that Leela's human lifespan was going to mean that Arista and Fin would lose her far sooner than they would Andred, but a large number of the orphans had been placed with families whose allotted time could be counted in decades rather than centuries. Rose hated that, but it wasn't as though they'd had much choice. The Time Lords who'd survived were not themselves in the best of shape. They also had the burden of rebuilding the planet on their shoulders.
Susan's cloning project was also creating children who needed to be raised and there simply weren't enough adult Time Lords to go around. Too many children, all of whom needed love and caring and the only ones equipped for that were the immigrant families. Rose stared off into space and groaned.
"Right. I will make time to go down and observe the classes," she promised. She had her own two adorable monsters to wrangle, plus she had her work doing the Block Transfer Computation for the TARDIS nursery, then she also had her work teaching BTC to the younger Time Lords, and her work for Torchwood. "In my copious spare time," she whispered.
"Hm?" Andred asked and she waved off the question.
"Nothing, nothing!" she assured him.
After all, sleep wasn't something she needed as much of, now that she was a Time Lord.
So much of Masha's life had just been surviving. She had just been fighting to keep alive today, so that she could do it all over again the next day and the day after that. It was all she'd ever really known, one crisis, one horror after another. There had been little bright spots in amongst the blood and screaming, but they had been few and far between.
"Well, what would you like to happen?" Wilf asked, breaking her from her reverie.
"I… " She paused, "I don't know." She sat in the chair flailing for an answer, any answer and her gaze fell on her now empty bowl. "I want to eat food, I definitely like the whole eating food thing. That's a winner," she announced decisively and Wilf chuckled.
"You're a champion eater, that's for sure!" he assured her, with a benevolent smile. "What about after eating? What else do you want to do?" She considered for a long moment before answering.
"I'd like to find a real pencil, and some paper. Having a pencil and paper would be awesome… um… new needle and thread… I'm running low on duct tape… " She was at a loss. She'd always gotten by on whatever scraps she could find, living hand to mouth, day to day, the idea that there was more to her life now would take some getting used to. Which reminded her of something Aislynn had told her. She'd said that life was a garden, "filled with a thousand seeds all waiting to go into the ground and grow. You just need to pick the blooms that you love best and cultivate them." She nodded to herself and came to a decision. She had found her plot of dirt, she thought, looking around at her new world. Now, she just needed to choose her seeds.
"Wilf, you know in class today? When you talked about that flower? How they weren't there any more…? The thing is, Aislynn had a ton of them, here…" She dug in her pack and handed him her pressed flower book. "Can you do anything with this? Is it helpful at all?"
He looked at it helplessly.
"Not really, I was a soldier my dear, a very long time ago, and now I am a teacher, but I don't know much about this sort of thing. You'd have to ask Susan about that. But, as far as paper and pencils go, if you are done with lunch, we'll go and take care of that, okay?"
"I was a soldier until very recently," she put the book away and then stopped. "Oh, wow, I hadn't thought of that. Official entanglements would be bad. No, I'm not taking a unit. I am very definitely not taking a unit. I'll just kip up by the windmills, and that's fine." She carefully wrapped up all the leftover bread and put it in her pack for later. "Onwards to pencils!"
Wilf looked like he was going to argue with her for a moment, before he shrugged and rose from the table, pressing his thumb into the surface for a moment.
"Lunch bill paid by Wilfred Mott," the table told them with a cheerful voice and they walked off into the crowds.
It was a short trip, down two of the meandering streets to one of the domed buildings. There were more of them in the center of the city and they were older looking than the other buildings. They were lovely, like decorated Easter Eggs, plunked down across the plaza, with brightly painted round doors and windows and fabric draped entryways. It was all quite elegant and a bit dizzying, with all the textures and colors, dancing across the walls.
Wilf ducked into one that was painted in soft blues with a pattern of diamonds in silver stenciled across the walls and with golden draperies that hung low enough in the arched doorway that the tassels tickled Masha's ears.
Inside, she entered paradise.
It was an art store.
"Oh they have paints!" she burbled, wandering around in gleeful excitement. "Look at the charcoals! Here are oil paints! Prestretched canvases ! Look at this! Look at that!" Masha was beaming as if Christmas had come early.
In the end, though, she selected a single mechanical pencil, a new eraser, and a sketch pad. "Come on," she beamed at Wilf, "If you'll cover these, I'll do your portrait," she said hopefully.
While she'd been darting about like silverfish, Wilf had been quietly gathering up various things, he took her purchases, put them on top of the rest, and paid for it. They walked out of the store and he handed her the bag.
"A gift, for the time you have been kind enough to spend with me," he told her. It was filled with all the things she had cooed over.
Masha stared at him: and then she threw her arms around him and hugged him hard.
Wilf blushed and stuttered a bit, giving her a gentle little hug in return, but looking a bit flustered.
"Not at all, really," he murmured and then chuckled. "Now, we just need a place for you to stay, where your nice things won't get ruined," he told her in a decided tone, looking around him with a considering expression.
"Don't think I don't see what you just did there," Masha scolded him, but in a teasing tone. "Come on, let's sit on that park bench and I'll do your picture."
"That sounds lovely," he told her with a broad smile.
She sat down and pulled out the new sketch pad and pencil. For the first time all afternoon, she was completely at ease: she did love to sketch, more than anything in the world.
"Did you ever have dreams?" she asked him as she sketched. "Of the wars and the battlefields, and the places you fought?"
"They sent me to Palestine, you know, but I got there just as the war was ending. I never fought, not once," he told her, looking peaceful as he spoke. "I don't think I'd have been much good at fighting, really. I would have shot someone and then I would have had to go over and see if he was all right," he teased and she found herself laughing at the mental image of him stooped over an enemy soldier apologizing profusely.
"I'm glad you didn't have to fight," she said. After a few minutes of silence, she ripped out the page, and handed him his reflection.
"Oh my goodness!" he exclaimed. "This is really quite wonderful! Brilliant, as the Doctor would say." He fell silent, staring in wonderment at the beautifully detailed rendering.
"I don't normally show people my sketches," she said, "But this has been such an amazing afternoon that I wanted you to have one."
"Thank you," he told her in a hushed and reverent voice. "I will treasure it always." Pleased by the compliment, she kissed his forehead.
"As far as a place to stay," she said, thinking hard. "I need someplace that I could stay without having any official involvement. Official involvement would be bad. Are there places like that? Like… subcontract or black-market or unofficial units?"
He laughed and shook his head.
"Come along, you can kip on my couch until the Doctor gets back," he told her. "My granddaughter Donna won't mind, she loves having company about the place."
Masha looked a little doubtful, but nodded, and followed.
The Doctor leaned back in the chair and studied General Petrov for a long moment. They'd been discussing the matter for more than hour now and he really wanted to believe that the man's intentions were good. He did seem to be genuinely concerned about not making the resident aliens on Earth feel persecuted, but it was hard to tell. He'd trusted politicians before, only to have something go terribly awry.
Dar looked over at him and raised a brow.
/What do you think?/ he asked.
/I want to trust him,/ the Doctor replied.
/He's saying all the right things, but the human race is still new to the whole concept of alien races. Thinking about us all as people, still doesn't come naturally to them,/ Dar sighed and the Doctor shook his head in disagreement.
/No, they are a surprisingly flexible species, humans, Rose took only a few hours to adapt to meeting giant floating heads in a jar,/ he disagreed.
/Face of Bo? I wonder how that old reprobate is doing?" Dar's mind wandered briefly into areas that the Doctor's mind shied away from and then he snapped back into focus with an apologetic smile. /Sorry, we used to talk shop all the time, one of the better spymasters in the Omega Quadrant./
/I did not know that about him. By the time we met he was very old and rather fond of talking in riddles,/ the Doctor grumbled.
/Which doesn't answer our main concern,/ Dar reminded him and the Doctor turned to study General Petrov again.
/There's nothing we can do but trust him,/ the Doctor told him. /We don't really have any other options./
/Trust, but verify,/ Dar muttered.
/Trust, but verify,/ the Doctor agreed and turned a smiling face on the human soldiers and politicians around the table. After all, they could be telling the absolute truth and he could just be a paranoid old man.
Wilf walked her out of the little park and onto one of the many curving streets.
"We used to have a house on Earth, in London, Chestwick, actually. It was a nice enough place. But that was when my daughter and her husband lived with us. They died about seven years back. Cybermen, you know." He shook his head, looking sad for a moment. "After that, it was just Donna and me, then Susan stayed with us for a bit. Not once the Doctor found her again, of course. She moved in with him, after that." He fell silent for a bit, as if his mind was off somewhere. "Then the house was just too big for us. Big, empty, and filled with memories." He sighed and then smiled at her, turning off the main road and down a side street that curved downwards.
There were more squared houses here, rather than the domes. Houses that had little gardens in them with plants unlike anything she'd seen wandering about on the hillsides. The grass here was green and the plants were more like vegetation that she'd seen on human settled worlds. He stopped and unlatched a gate in a white wooden fence.
Masha studied the building with interest. It was a pleasant looking house, with two stories. There were balconies and wrought iron railings all around the sides of it. Roses and other flowers climbed the railings and it was painted in soft peach colour that looked especially nice in the light of the two suns, the reddish hues giving it a rosy, warm feeling. The front door was white, with a round iron knocker in the middle, but Wilf simply pushed open the door, stepped into the entryway, and called out.
"Donna, I've brought home a guest!"
"Oi, Gramps, did you remember the shopping?" was called back at him and he grinned.
"Course I did! It should be delivered soon."
The entryway was dominated by the staircase along one wall, and the cabbage rose wallpaper made it feel a bit crowded, in Masha's opinion. Pictures on the wall, of Wilf and several other people were interesting to her. The ones of him and the Doctor, or him and the children, were particularly nice, she thought.
His granddaughter came out of an archway, drying her hands on a dish towel, and a broad grin stretched across her face at the sight of Masha. She was a curvy ginger with a loud voice, but gentle brown eyes. Her hair was pulled up on her head. She was wearing brown trousers, a frilly blouse, and sensible shoes.
"Picked up another stray, Gramps?" she asked and then pumped Masha's hand with enthusiasm. "Donna Noble," she introduced herself. "Pleased to meet you. Good heavens, you look half-starved! We'll certainly have to feed you up!"
"Masha," she smiled shyly, a bit overwhelmed by the brash affability of the woman. She seemed nice, but was looking at her like she was a doll that needed dressing, or, maybe a stray dog. "And Wilf just did that."
"Well, good on him!" she nodded firmly. "You'll still need another few pounds on you before a stiff breeze blows you away! You look positively green too! You must be getting over an illness." Masha didn't have time to dispute that statement before Donna was off again. "Now, don't just stand there, you two, come in and let's get you settled, shall we?" Donna insisted and the irresistible force had Masha in her grip, whirling her off up the stairs.
This was a thought that hadn't occurred to Masha. She looked down at her hands and frowned.
"No, I... I'm not sick...I can't get sick ... I'm immune," she stammered. She didn't want Donna and Wilf thinking she was contagious, or that they would get spots or something. It was a cringe inducing moment. Was that really what she looked like?
"Not to worry, Masha, everyone gets sick sometimes, you'll be fine, once I make you some soup and get you fed up! Now, I'll put you in the spare room, that way you'll have a bathroom to yourself, that's better, eh? No one likes to share a washroom with total strangers, after all!"
Masha was very taken aback. On the one hand, if her immunity was found out she'd likely be cut into slices to make microscopic slides: on the other hand, it wasn't any good if people thought she was sick. She wasn't sure what to say and so let the matter drop.
Masha was dragged into a little bedroom with a twin bed, dresser and it's own bathroom, with a porcelain shower/tub affair and little frilly hand towels.
"Oh you have a shower!" she cried, staring at in wonderment. She couldn't remember the last time that she'd taken an actual bath. "Oh, it's beautiful," Masha beamed at the whole room, thrilled to the bone to have a bathtub and shower. What a wonder it was. She had a chance to be clean, to get really clean, with soap, even. She nearly danced around the room, just thinking about it.
"Right." Donna gave her a penetrating look. "Gramps obviously found you not a moment too soon!" she decided. "You just get yourself cleaned up, and I will go see about getting you a nightshirt." With the air of a general headed off to the Front, Donna sailed out of the room, leaving Masha in possession of an entire bathroom, all to herself.
