"Promise me you will be careful," Anastasia ordered after I had finished telling her about the Doctor and I's plan to go sneaking around to try and figure out what was going on.
"The Doctor won't let anything bad happen to me. He's probably having a case of the vapours just because we're not in the same room," I said. Anastasia laughed lightly and shook her head.
"Men don't get the vapours," she protested. I laughed.
"The Doctor does. He wanted to come with me this morning, but Dimitri said nothing good would happen if anyone saw." Dimitri had told me that he was going to stay behind by my room to try and keep the Doctor calm. He'd decided this after he watched the Doctor jump and clench my arms when he opened the door this morning. I could tell Dimitri admired the Doctor for wanting to protect me so much. Anastasia studied me carefully.
"I can already see that he is good for you. You no longer look dead on your feet."
"Thanks," I said dryly, and she smiled at my sarcasm. There was a knock at the door and one of the court doctors bustled in. I shifted my gaze to the floor, curtsied and made a quick escape down the hallway. Dimitri sighed in relief when he saw me and loosened his shoulders. I walked a little faster so that I could take the Doctor off his hands because he could be a little overwhelming to the unfamiliar. I had just reached the door when it opened, and the Doctor sighed in relief at the sight of me and sagged against the door slightly.
"Dramatic," I said and shared an amused look with Dimitri. The Doctor frowned at me, so I stepped forward and grabbed his hand to soothe him. "Well I mean really that looked like a move out of a soap opera."
"Guard I am taking this woman with me to the apothecary in order to assist in Her Majesty's recovery," The Doctor announced loudly as the court doctor exited Anastasia's room. I chomped down on my lip and shifted to look at him as he led me down the hallway after Dimitri had given him a salute.
"That's your brilliant idea?" I hissed under my breath. The Doctor looked down at me with an eyebrow raised.
"I certainly wasn't going to leave you behind." I made a well, duh face at him. "And I definitely wasn't going to risk you being accused of sneaking away from your guard to poke around Ivan's things."
"I probably shouldn't ask, but do you have part of a plan?" I asked. The Doctor hesitated.
"Well," he drawled, and I shook my head while smiling.
"You had part of a plan and now we've caught up to the parts that you had planned out?"
"Well." He dragged the word out longer this time and I pressed my fingers to my lips to muffle my laughter. He frowned at that and reached out and pulled my hand away from my face.
"Don't. You've never covered up your laugh and I don't want you to start now," he said.
"I seem to recall the fact that my laughing almost got us both murdered by the Krillitanes," I said. He lifted my hand and brushed a lingering kiss over my knuckles.
"If your laughter is the last thing I hear it would be a worthy price to pay." I rolled my eyes at him immediately even as I felt my cheeks heat in delight.
"You have left a trail of broken hearts throughout history, haven't you?" I asked. He scratched the back of his head guiltily and didn't answer. I decided to take that as a yes.
"I once got engaged by accident while visiting the Aztecs," he admitted, and I burst out laughing, so surprised by his admission that I didn't have time to try to catch my laughter with my hand. He gave me a victorious look.
"Did you actually? How on Earth do you get engaged accidentally?" I tried to hold in the laughter, but it felt nice to feel safe enough to laugh.
"I drank some hot chocolate." I giggled again, and he flashed me a wink. "I was younger and more foolish."
"And I'm sure that was the last time since you've become so wise," I said with a laugh. He affected a fake hurt look which made me laugh harder, which garnered the attention of a passing member of court. I flinched immediately and stopped.
"Sorry bad habits," I muttered at the Doctor's look. He frowned harder.
"Don't tell me that laughing started fights," he said. I looked away from him.
"Okay then. I won't." He caught my hand in his and grumbled something under his breath that I couldn't quite catch. I was beginning to think that he was swearing like a sailor in Gallifreyan but didn't want me to know.
"This looks promising," he said suddenly and dragged me towards a door. I gave him a look as he fished out the sonic again.
"You can never, ever again give me crap about anything that has to do with spontaneity," I said before I nudged him to the side and plucked two hair pins from my hair while squatting down and slid them into the lock.
"Where did you learn to do that?" the Doctor asked.
"Dimitri taught me when I couldn't stop shaking on night three," I said and glanced up at him as the lock clicked. "You really need to consider fixing that whole 'doesn't do wood' thing."
"I keep forgetting. Also, what happened to tell me everything?" He asked as he pulled me up to my feet. I shrugged.
"I keep forgetting." I burst out laughing at the decidedly unamused look on his face. He swung the door open and I tipped my head to the side as we walked in.
"This is not what I was expecting," I said as I took in the completely empty room. The Doctor looked at me surprised.
"What do you mean? What else could you have expected?" He waved his hand out broadly in the general space of the room. I blinked at him.
"Wait, is the room not empty for you?" I asked before I winced at how dumb that sounded out loud. "Okay never mind, it's probably because of your superior brain compared to my little human one." He beamed at me, so I decided to take that as a yes.
"Would you like a boost?" He held his hand out to me and wiggled his fingers and eyebrows in tandem. I rolled my eyes slightly at this antics before nodding and leaning towards him. He smiled at me and pressed his fingers against my temple. I wondered if he actually had to do that or it was just a way of preparing people.
"I need a connection with humans because you only have latent psychic abilities. But I suppose both is the most appropriate answer," he said, and I blushed slightly. "Okay now blink."
"See now this is what I was expecting," I announced after I had done as he said, and a bunch of laboratory tables and chemistry stuff appeared in the room. It looked like a mad alchemist's lab in the movies. I pointed at a centrifuge sitting in the corner. "That is not historically accurate."
"Thanks," he said dryly as he shut the door behind us. We wandered towards the centrifuge and the Doctor waved the sonic over it. "Not Earth accurate to be specific."
"Well unless you dropped it off there's another alien here somewhere," I said as I peered over his shoulder. He arched an eyebrow up at me over his shoulder and I realized how I had positioned myself out of the way without thinking about it. "Right, rule number two. I'm going to look at the chemistry stuff and see if I can find any labels."
I sorted glass vials into three groups of deadly, maybe deadly and not deadly while I listened to the Doctor coo over the centrifuge as he took it apart. My middle group was the biggest because it had been a long time since my last chemistry class and I couldn't decipher the writing on all the labels.
"What discoveries have you made?" I asked after he had put the centrifuge back together and came to stand next to me.
"Definitely not from Earth, but not too horribly uncommon either. Probably from the twenty second century. You?" I explained my system and the Doctor started further sorting out my maybe deadly group and occasionally handing me a few vials to hold.
"Why these?" I asked and hefted the vials in my hands carefully.
"I'm fairly certain that mixed together with an assist from the centrifuge that these would combine into a mixture the exact same colour and smell of the tonic that the doctors were giving Anastasia," he said. I rolled my eyes fondly as I propped my chin up on my palm.
"Fairly certain, hey?" I grinned at his bemused fake hurt look. "I'm just going to throw the idea out there that I don't think Ivan is purposefully poisoning his wife."
"Go on," he said as he pulled his glasses out of his pocket and slid them on before starting to mix the chemicals together. I squinted at him suspiciously.
"You totally wear those to make yourself look smarter." The Doctor pursed his lips guiltily and I laughed. "You are such a dork."
"We were discussing your ideas about Ivan," the Doctor prompted.
"Well you sidetracked me. But yes, we were. I was thinking that he might not be knowingly doing it. Maybe its like mind control or demonic possession?" I mused.
"Not hypnosis?" He asked idly.
"Too boring," I said. He laughed loudly.
"I've ruined you," he said and nudged me teasingly with his elbow. I grinned at him.
"Yep. So, if the centrifuge is from the twenty second century does that mean this alien is also a time traveler?" I asked. The Doctor paused in his mixing to consider my question.
"Possible, but I'd almost say unlikely. Time travelers generally aren't content to linger in any place for too long. Get's boring when you have so much to see and the ability to see it." He winked at me and I rolled my eyes fondly at him again. "They could have fallen through a time singularity while traveling elsewhere."
"And they just decided to poison the Tsarina for fun?" I asked with an arched eyebrow for emphasis. He scratched the back of his head.
"Well, it's a theory." I tipped my head to the side and hummed an agreement. I reached up with my free hand and twirled a curl around my finger as the Doctor started to put his concoction into the centrifuge.
"Does her death have to happen? Anastasia's?" I asked, and the Doctor looked up at me. "Never mind. It's just my human sentimentality."
"I will mind your human sentimentality because I've become very fond of it." He frowned at me at this as if trying to ram the point home. "And no, her death isn't a fixed point, but."
"But we got here too late to save her. She's had too much poison at this point," I said after the Doctor trailed off and looked at me sadly. Honestly, once you knew what to look for the man was an open book.
"I'm sorry Emma." His hands twitched like he wanted to cross the room and sweep me up in his arms but was concerned about overwhelming me. I shrugged and twirled the curl a little tighter, while I shifted my gaze to the table.
"It was stupid of me to get attached. I should have known better. People leave when I get attached," I said, and the Doctor threw his arms around me and squeezed me tightly.
"I'm here. And I'm not leaving." I reached up and grasped his forearm.
"Thanks." I leaned against his warmth slightly. "Your centrifuge is beeping."
"It'll keep."