eight.
" julienne"

There was something tickling Ace's nose. At first, she tried to reach it up to brush it away, but her hands wouldn't move properly, so she wrinkled her nose and tried to blow it away; then inhaled and sneezed. The smell was roses; a strong, overpowering odor. Almost sickly sweet. She sneezed again.

"Hold still," admonished a voice from somewhere to her left. There was the shriek of metal against metal – once, twice – and then a contemplative hum that was followed by a soft clink.

"Sorry," said Ace reflexively, and opened her eyes. The sky was bright with stars above her, and she took a moment or two to just admire the patterns they were making, bright sparks in the endless darkness, free of any sort of light pollution.

"A lovely view, no?" The same voice as before, and she could hear its owner moving around her – walking over to stand to her right. "Not visible under normal circumstances, I'd wager, but if a miracle presents itself to me, who am I to refuse it?"

"It's brill," said Ace, trying to recognize any of the constellations. She couldn't. None of them were in any sort of pattern that rang a bell with her. She tried to sit up from where she was lying, flat on her back, but found that she was completely unable to. "Where are we?"

"My dining room," he said.

She turned her head sideways to see him. He was standing in front of one of the side tables at the side of the room, picking up knives and examining them one by one. He looked over his shoulder at her, and smiled. His eyes were dark and cold. She realized she was a lot less frightened than she should have been, and couldn't quite figure out why. "It's a nice dining room," she told him.

"It is. I have put quite a lot of effort into making it thus – that and my kitchen."

She nodded, or tried to. Whatever was preventing her arms and body from moving had also done the same to her head; stopping her from doing anything that wasn't side-to-side movement. "I wrecked it, didn't I? With all the blood. Must've been a real pain to clean up."

"Whatever are you talking about?" he said, and selected a long, sharp blade, drawing it out from its casing with a sharp whisper of steel. She turned her face away, instinctively, and looked at the stars again. "You have not bled for me, Miss McShane. Not yet."

She could see the places where the dining room bled into the night sky.

"I don't like blood," she said after a moment, breathing the thought out to the stars.

"And yet you have seen more than your fair share of it."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it." She tried to look over at him again, but the bonds that she couldn't see had tightened ever so slightly and now she was stuck staring directly upwards. "Every time I see it, or smell it, or – god, when I taste it – it burns into me, and that animal that's inside me, it just... howls. Wants to come out."

"All animals can be tamed, given time. The same can be said for restless thoughts."

"Yeah, well – not mine." She watched as he leaned over her, unzipping her jacket and pulling her shirt up to expose her stomach to the cold night air. She still wasn't afraid. She thought that she should probably be, but couldn't remember why. Another thought occurred to her. "Why can't I move?"

"The table has bound you in place," he said. He used the knife to cut her shirt roughly down the middle, and pulled it off her too, discarding it to the floor. "It is a favorite possession of mine. I acquired it during my visit to Milan nearly a decade ago, quite by chance. Fiendishly difficult to transport to Baltimore, of course, but well worth the effort, wouldn't you say?"

Ace cast her eyes down to the wood of the table below her. It was rich and dark; looked expensive. "Oak," she guessed.

"Once, perhaps. Not for long."

He raised the carving knife and cut into her stomach – neat, surgical strokes, performed with the most inelegant and unwieldy of instruments. The pain was exquisite, utterly so. It bloomed like a flower within her, something dark and horrifying and full of crystal thorns. She screamed and screamed and writhed against her restraints, invisible as they were and felt the blood welling up and spilling down over the sides of her body, hot and dark and thick.

"Do stop that," he said, stopping briefly to cast her a look of disapproval. "It is immensely distracting."

She stopped screaming, and laid still. "Sorry," she said again.

He began to cut once more, drawing the blade neatly from the tip of her shoulder until it reached the center of her chest, where the first incision had been made, and then repeated the motion on the other side. "Quite aside from distractions, screaming during dinner is very rude indeed."

"Yeah. Don't know why I was doing that." She tried to think. The blood was congealing, melting into a puddle that clung to the outline of her form, lapped up around her skin. "The table?"

"It is becoming something else," he said, and then, "every living thing requires sustenance of some sort to grow." He carefully, almost reverently, peeled back her skin. "Water, sunlight – nutrients, fruit." A sharp, uncanny grin. "Meat. But in the case of your current predicament, I suspect you will be more than enough to feed both I and the space I will find myself dining at."

"Tables aren't alive," she said.

"Aren't they?"

The grip around her neck and head loosened enough so that she could move her head around freely, and she saw that she was not so much tied to the great wooden table in the center of the dining room as embedded into it. Thick whorls of wood held her hands and her ankles, sprouting from the flat surface and coiling around her limbs. She saw that the pool of blood forming around her was dwindling away just as quickly as it came pouring out of her. It was being absorbed into the wood, she realized, soaking away into its depths, staining it a rich dark crimson.

Around her, thick shoots of brown began to sprout out of the table, some growing faster than others. One of them wound its way around and up her left arm, trailing thorns all the way, and near her shoulder it erupted into blossom, wood giving way to leaves and petals – a blindingly bright white rose. She stared at it for a moment or two, and then looked down. White roses were blooming all around her, weaving their way around her body and enveloping her in a tangle of thorns and that sweet, heady scent. They were neatly avoiding her chest, and the person who was operating on her. She wasn't sure if she should be grateful or not.

"Not oak anymore, you said," she said, and wondered to herself for a second. "Rosewood, then?"

"I suppose it must be," he agreed. He wasn't wearing gloves, not like a proper surgeon would. The red was staining his hands and fading into black the more it collected on his skin. He wasn't letting that stop him. He dug deep into her, exploring with the eagerness of a child, and she was silent for a good minute or two, allowing him to work.

"Oh," he said after a while. "Oh, dear ."

"What? What is it?"

He was silent for a moment. "My dear Miss McShane," he said eventually, sounding genuinely sorry for her, "you seem to be utterly hollow inside."

"That can't be right," Ace said, and craned her neck to look at what he had exposed. Obligingly, he brushed away several of the roses that had gathered themselves around her open chest, and they fell away at his touch, allowing her to see properly as he reached into her and plucked out her heart. It was still pumping in his hands as he turned it over and over, eyeing it thoroughly.

"See," she said defiantly, looking up at him. "I still have my heart. Can't be hollow if there's still a heart in there."

"It has been dropped far too often for it to be of any use to you," he told her, and indeed, there were a great deal many cracks running through the still-beating organ, vivesecting it over and over again, gold stitching detailing every crevice. It seemed to be a miracle that it was still working at all. He looked at it again, and raised an eyebrow. "Somebody has been handling this very carelessly indeed."

"He always puts it back together," she whispered.

"Yes. And he has done an admirable job of it, too," he said, fingering the gold thread that kept it from breaking, and then he raised her heart high, framing it against the stars above. "But the cracks are still there. And hearts are such delicate things." His eyes met hers, and hardened. There was something behind those eyes; something ancient and monstrous. "The Doctor is not coming for you," he said, and the words were heavy with power. He tightened his hand almost imperceptibly, and Ace felt her heart shatter, an electrifying jolt of grief and terror that quickly dwindled into a cold emptiness, just as she saw it happen – flesh and meat and gold crumbling away into nothingness and dust, right before her eyes.

"As for the rest of you," he said, and the roses grew thicker around her, "there is nothing within you worth speaking of."

She frowned, although it felt numb and distant. "Okay, that's definitely not true."

"Oh, but it is." And as she watched, he peeled her back, layer by layer, until she could see the truth – she was utterly hollow within. Her bones were there, true, but that was the extent of it. Any internal organs that should have been there were simply absent; nonexistent. "You see, you were never meant to be anything but a pawn, my dear. And nobody ever puts any detail into the pawns. They are unremarkable, standard – sixteen in every set."

"Pawns can become queens," she said, feeling empty in more ways than one. "If they reach the other side of the board."

"Unless they are sacrificed before that can happen." His hands were cold against her skin. "Or if they are..." – he hesitated briefly over the next word – "...captured."

"So we're doing the whole chess metaphor thing again. Great." She tried not to look as he continued to probe around her. It really was excruciatingly painful. "So if I'm a pawn, what does that make you?"

"The white king," he said, without hesitation. "I am essential to all things, and I may only capture those who are foolish enough to come within the limited space of my domain – you, for instance. Although," he added, "I can hardly blame you for doing so. Pawns do not have any will of their own, of course."

"Sacrifices must be made," she said. The words were not her own, not really.

"Precisely." A pause. "I'm very glad you understand."

She was silent.

"This has been a waste of my time," he decided after another second or two, stepping away and not even bothering to close her chest up as he did so. "You have already been sucked dry; been plundered. There is nothing for me to harvest from you." He acquired a contemplative expression, and then stepped forwards once more, raising the carving knife. "Nothing internal, perhaps..."

The knife was silver, brightest silver. It flashed down, glinting in the starlight.

She felt her wrist flare up in endless agony –

"Step away from her." His voice was a low growl. It would have made her shiver, except she was already shivering uncontrollably.

There was an arm around her waist. It was not a kind arm. She found herself wanting to twist away, but she couldn't move in the slightest.

"Ah, Doctor Smith. I wondered when you'd be joining us."

"Did. You. Really." Each word spoken oh-so-clearly. "Let go of her. Now. "

The room was cold. His voice was colder.

"Your scent is rather unique. I did wonder. If your friend is alien; or as alien as she claims – what does that make you, Doctor Smith?"

"My friend is human, Hannibal Lecter," he said. "More human than you will ever be, at any rate."

She tried to move, to grapple weakly at her captor, but didn't manage more than a slight twitch of her fingers.

There was a sudden, violent intake of breath, and then – quick and sharp: "it is your extreme misfortune that you are currently stuck in a room with me; since I am the least human creature you will ever meet, and at this precise moment in time I am growing less and less so." His voice was soft; bubbling over and seething with barely-concealed fury. "You have made the worst mistake of your life in deciding to hurt Ace, Doctor Lecter. You have made me angry. "

Slowly – painfully – Ace forced open her eyes –

– and found herself half-clinging to a tree in the middle of a dark forest, with the breeze carrying towards her the distant sound of somebody sobbing desperately.

"Shit," she exclaimed under her breath, pulling herself away from the tree and forcing herself to catch her breath. For some reason she was panting heavily, like she'd just run a marathon. She looked up; peered through the tangle of trees and branches above her, and saw that the moon was a thin sliver of a crescent and was glowing a bright, unreal yellow. She tried to assess the situation properly, but it refused to be assessed. There was nothing explicable about the place that she found herself in.

"Hey!" she called out into the forest, with a lack of anything else to do. "Anybody there?"

There was no reply. The sobbing continued. She forced herself to listen; to pinpoint the direction it was coming from. It was the really heartbroken sort of sobbing too, the sort that you could only manage when you were properly devastated and unable to stop doing it. There . From the west; or what she was assuming was the west anyway.

She started jogging towards the source of the noise. There was firelight glinting through the trees, and she could smell smoke. Was there a forest fire – were people in danger?

But no; as she drew closer and closer and the sobbing became louder, it became entirely apparent that the light was being cast by a campfire. There was a large, partially rusted pot nestled over it, although nobody was attending it. At the edge of the light cast by the fire, a small, obviously malnourished boy sat, barely even a teenager; rocking back and forth and muttering to himself with tears rolling down his face.

Ace paused for barely a second before stepping into the clearing. "Hey, kid – you all right?" she asked tentatively, not sure what else to say – it was pretty obvious that he wasn't all right, not in the least.

" Mischa , Mischa, " the boy wailed to himself, barely looking up at her.

"I'll take that as a no, then," she muttered to herself, and sat down next to him on the forest floor. "Hey, uh. My name's Ace."

He looked up at her and actually seemed to register her presence. His dark eyes bored into her. "Ace," he repeated, "Ace."

"That's my name," she agreed. "You wanna tell me yours?"

He shook his head, and said, "they hit her," heavily accented; stilted and distressed, "hit her over and over; and then they hit me too, and then she was gone ."

"Her?" Ace asked.

"Mischa," he said, and then said it again – "Mischa, Mischa –"

"Your friend?" she guessed, and then when he shook his head violently – "your mum, then? Or – oh no, wait, your sister ?"

"They took her from me." His hands seized upon her jacket sleeve and tightened, fingers digging in sharply. His eyes were wild in the firelight, far too bright. "I was ill – I could not stop – they would not –"

"Who's they?" Ace asked, grabbing onto his wrists in turn.

"The men. They – they made me – I did not know..."

He was skinny, thin. He looked as if a stiff breeze would knock him over.

"We have to eat," he said, turning wide, haunted eyes onto her, "or die."

She became aware of the rattling of the pot sitting on top of the fire. At first, she had assumed that it had been doing so due to the wind, or the water inside boiling, or something similar; but it was far too rhythmic and loud to be either of those things. Click, click, click. Something tapping against the inside of the lid.

Ace looked over at the boy sitting next to her, but he had gone near-catatonic again, shaking and muttering his sister's name over and over again. Slowly, she stood up, and approached the campfire. The rattling was getting louder. She reached into the flames, and cautiously wrapped her hand around the handle of the pot's lid.

She pulled the lid off, and a cloud of thick, acrid-smelling black smoke spilled out. She waved it away, coughing and choking. Despite herself, she leaned forwards to see what had been producing it, and said, "oh my god –" as two bone-white claws curled around the rim of the pot, and long, tangled antlers rose up impossibly from the depths, dripping with some dark liquid.

The creature unfolded itself from the cooking pot; a horrible mistake of long limbs and cracked, exposed bone that skittered and chirruped unpleasantly as it emerged. Ace sprang backwards, horrified, and yelled out, "kid, run! "

The boy that had been sitting stirred from his trance, and looked up. As he saw the creature, he broke out into the hugest smile that Ace had ever seen, his entire face lighting up in delight and cried, " Mischa! "

" What? " Ace exclaimed, completely thrown by this. She looked at the creature, lumbering forwards on uneven, red-raw limbs, as weak as a newborn fawn but a million times more grotesque-looking, and back to the boy. She swallowed a sudden spike of revulsion. "No – listen, kid; whatever that thing is, it's not your sister–"

The boy scrambled to his feet, ignoring her, and stretched out a hand. "Mischa – sesuo –"

The creature, mirroring his movements, did the same. Ace exclaimed wordlessly, and grabbed the boy by his shoulders, pulling him bodily backwards. "Oh no you don't ."

She succeeded in tugging him a few steps away from the creature, but then he became bigger and taller and stronger beneath her hands, and when he turned to face her, she recognized him instantly, even with the dripping dark antlers sprouting from his head like they were always meant to be there. He had merged with the creature from the pot at some point, and now she realized that they were and always had been one and the same.

"Oh hell," Ace said.

"Caught you," said Hannibal Lecter with a brilliantly dark smile, and reached out with both hands to embrace her throat –

The world was vibrating around her with panicked intensity. She could hear a bell ringing, quite loudly but very distant, and frantic footsteps, but when she tried to see what was going on, all she could see was a long stretch of white floor leading to a white wall and the white was quickly becoming stained with red. Her eyes wouldn't focus. She couldn't stop looking at the wall. Everything hurt.

She tried to move her head, and cried out in pain. She heard beeping and clicking and the bang of somebody slamming a level down fiercely, and then, as the footsteps moved towards her and a familiar groaning wheezing sound began to echo all around her, somebody saying, "we've dematerialized; we're safe –"

A hand on her shoulder, and her vision clouded over with yellow and she lashed out. Her left hand wasn't cooperating properly, and neither was her other hand really, but she still clawed and ripped and fought like a demon, or a cheetah maybe – like her life depended on it, because it did, didn't it? He had a knife. He was prepared to kill her. Kill or be killed.

She tasted blood in the air, and thought that it must be a good thing.

"Ace," somebody was saying, a veil of calm tugged hastily over complete panic, "Ace, no – Ace!–"

She bit and kicked and finally managed to wrench her head around to face the enemy, and as she forced her eyes to focus, she saw the figure standing before her. Not tall; not wearing an immaculately tailored suit – instead, a diminutive figure, kneeling a short distance away. His hair was ruffled and askew, and his worn pullover and overcoat were both covered in blood. It threw her for a moment, because he seemed very familiar; but at the same time she knew that there was most definitely an enemy, and since there was nobody else there but him –

"Eyes on me, Ace," he said softly but sharply, like he was coaxing a spooked animal. Unwillingly, her focus snapped to him, and she was caught. She whined in pain and terror instinctively, but his gaze was steady and oddly warm. She couldn't tear herself away. His eyes were brown – no, blue – blue-grey? – no... "Shh. That's right. Looking at me, only me. Eyes on me. Just me. You're you; you're human. Your mind is your own."

She felt the yellow in her own eyes retreat, washing away like the tide. With its disappearance, the pain re-emerged with renewed intensity. His hands sprung up to her shoulders, steadying her as she began to sway.

"Blood," she managed, still caught in his stare, then, "yours? Sorry."

"No," he said, and broke eye contact, turning away to loop his arms around her. She crumpled at the loss of grounding; folded like a paper doll. He lifted her up into his arms somehow, and she cried out. There were tears on her cheeks although she couldn't remember how they had got there. Everything hurt. Everything hurt. "No, no – stay awake, Ace, please; just stay awake – just a few minutes longer –"

Staying awake wasn't nearly as appealing as closing her eyes was, although she felt an intense sense of déjà vu cascade over her as her head lolled back and his pleads for her to stay with him dulled away into distant whispers.

At least I'm dying at home this time, was her final coherent thought, and then the blackness swept her away.

"You're not going to lie around there all day, I hope."

His voice was light, amused; and came from somewhere above her and to the right. The console was whirring and beeping lightly, and she heard the faint, distinct sound of him fiddling around with the controls.

Ace grinned at the ceiling. "Yeah, well – I didn't get that much sleep last night." She sat up, yawning. "And whose fault is that?"

"By your tone of voice, I would assume that you consider it to be mine." He leaned around the console and regarded her for a moment. "And because of this, you... decided to use the floor as a makeshift mattress."

"Seemed as good a place as any," she returned, gathering herself up off the ground and rounding the console to stand by him. "So what're you working on, Professor?"

"As I have told you many times before, I am not a Professor of anything," he told her, shooting her a stern look. "Kindly refer to me by my proper title."

"Right, sorry –" she sighed, "what are you working on, Doctor? "

"This and that. Just a moment, please – if you will."

She suspected he was being deliberately evasive, but waited patiently for him to finish up whatever he was doing.

"Tell me," he said eventually, "have you any comments or opinions as to the current state of the console room?"

She arched an eyebrow, puzzled. "I mean... should I?" She looked around. "It's just the same as it's – oh." She paused, taking in the state of the room around him. " Wow. "

The walls had vanished – there were no doors; leading outside or deeper inside or anywhere else. And although the ceiling remained, the simple fact of it was that they were now surrounded by a vast, bleak wasteland. The earth had been scorched grey and black by some unknown, calamitous force, and there were no signs of life whatsoever. The flat landscape of destruction stretched away as far as the eye could see, in all directions. The remaining console of the TARDIS seemed to be the central point of everything around them.

"If this is you redecorating, I don't like it," Ace said after a moment or two of taking it all in. "It's some sort of hologram projection, right?"

He laughed. "I assure you, everything around us is as real as it is possible to be."

"That's not nearly as comforting as you seem to think it is." Ace felt a shiver of something cold and fearful run up and down her spine, but she quickly pushed it away. "Where are we, exactly?"

"Ah, now that is a markedly more difficult question to answer. I think it best that my explanation is conveyed to you in a method far more visual than a simple conversation can provide." He swept over to the rack at the edge of the room, where simple white floor was on the verge of meeting dusty grey earth, and plucked a simple black umbrella from it. He twirled it in one hand, and then took a step away from the TARDIS, planting it firmly into the ground outside. "Come," he told her.

"Do I need to?"

He shot her a pointed look, and started walking into the wasteland without saying anything else. She rolled her eyes, and hurried to follow him.

"Where are we, then?"

"Everywhere," he said. "Nowhere. Possibly both at once. Does it ever truly matter?"

She sighed at this typically evasive remark, and said – somewhat sarcastically – "does this mean we're playing Questions, now?"

His lips curved faintly, and then he turned to her, rising to accept the bait even as he kept walking. "Are you referring to the game from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead ?"

"Are you surprised that I've read it?"

"You're quite intelligent; why would I be?"

"Well, I don't usually read classical stuff, do I?"

"Rhetorical question," he said, raising his umbrella in the air, as if to accentuate this. "A point to me, I believe. One-love."

Ace sighed, and looked back behind her. The white column that was the console was nothing more than a distant speck behind them. When she looked forward, there was only more of the same wasteland stretching out before them. "Where are we going?" she asked.

"Why does it matter?" he retaliated.

"Why do you always feel like you need to do this whole 'mysterious' thing, especially when it's just me here to hear it?" she fired back.

He raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "In a game where the primary objective is to ask question upon question, without end, why are you asking me anything in the hope that you will find a genuine answer?"

She took a brief second to consider this, and then said, "has anybody ever just straight-up punched you for being so bloody infuriating?"

"You are intending to punch me, then?" he wondered.

"If I wanted to, would you let me?"

"Would you be fast enough to hit me, if I didn't?"

"Would you get angry at me, if I managed to?"

"Do you see that?" he asked, instead of responding to her previous question – pointing towards a spot in the far distance that looked like far more than just more flat wasteland.

"Non-sequitur," she said, squinting as she followed his finger. It was hard to tell, but it looked almost as if the earth had been torn apart. "That's my point; one-all. And yeah, I do. What is it?"

"Our destination," he said simply.

"Statement." Ace seized onto it triumphantly. "One more to me."

He sighed, although there was no real irritation behind it – he looked amused, more than anything else. "Have we started playing again?"

"Did we ever stop?" she challenged.

"Sorry, what did you just say?" he said, feigning temporary deafness.

She laughed, and shook her head. "D'you really think you can catch me out like that?"

"Wouldn't you agree that it was worth a try?"

"Are you trying to deflect?"

"Deflect away from what?"

She bit her lip to prevent herself from growling aloud, and said, "look, why won't you tell me where we are or where we're going?"

"Isn't the preservation of suspense reason enough for me to conceal it from you?"

"When has it ever been?"

"If I told you what we were doing here, would you believe me?"

"Why don't you try me?"

He shrugged, sighed, and then said, rather philosophically, "do you suppose that death could possibly be a boat?"

This threw her for a moment. She was about to call 'non-sequitur' again, but then she realized that the new question was, in fact, slightly relevant. She sped up a little so that they were walking side-by-side – until now, she had been trailing slightly behind him. "Are you saying that we're dead?"

"Don't you think it could be a distinct possibility, given our current circumstances?"

She thought of the TARDIS's odd configuration, and glanced behind her. It was no longer visible – only empty land remained. She looked back ahead, and saw that the once-distant landmark of torn-apart earth was drawing closer and closer as they walked. "Is that boat of yours some sort of metaphor?" she wondered.

"When is it ever not?" he asked wryly, which forced a surprised laugh out of her.

"So are we in a boat, then?"

"Well, are we considering death to be a boat or not?" he asked.

"Isn't death supposed to be the ultimate negative?"

"And what if it is?"

"Have you ever not not been on a boat?"

"That," he said, "was a double negative."

"And that right there is a statement," she said, raising a finger in the air. "Ha – I knew you couldn't resist correcting bad grammar. Two-all, final point. Let's go."

"Why don't we continue with our previous avenue of discussion?" he suggested.

She snorted. "Was it actually going anywhere?"

"Are you conceding defeat?" he asked, sounding more than a little smug about the idea that she might.

She crossed her arms. No chance of that. "Well, are you going to get to the point?"

There was a significant pause.

"If we are not dead," he said, sounding serious, "then what are we doing here?"

"You don't know?" she asked, starting. She had assumed that he knew exactly what was going on here, but judging by the expression on his face, he was being genuine about this, if nothing else. The thought disturbed her somewhat.

"You have no alternatives to our current situation?"

"Is this a dream?" she wondered after a moment of careful consideration.

He didn't miss a beat. "Yours or mine?"

"If we're both dreaming it," she said, "does it matter?"

"Very good," he said, smiling at her like she'd just unravelled the answer to the most important question in the universe.

"Statement," she pointed out, slightly hesitant to do so – this felt like a trap of some sort.

"I am aware," he said, and then, "making it three-two – your game, I think. Congratulations."

She nodded, although she didn't feel any great sense of accomplishment. "You... let me win," she said, careful not to make it into another question.

He shook his head, and said, somewhat cryptically, "I didn't need to. We're here," he added, and stopped walking. After a second, he dropped the umbrella to the ground, and then moved forwards.

She stopped as well, and looked around, and only just about managed to muffle a surprised gasp. It seemed borderline extraordinary to her that they had been walking through a featureless scrubland all this way, and yet somehow it was only now that she was realizing what their destination was. The rift in the ground was so long and so all-encompassing that it just about split the earth from horizon-to-horizon, with the other side only barely within sight. Staring down into the depths, she couldn't even begin to make out how deep the bottom of it lay, although a sickly green-and-white glow was barely visible.

"Professor..." She trailed off, and then looked up at him, now standing at the very edge of the precipice. "What is this-?"

"Some several weeks ago," he said, "reality was rended apart in a most unexpected and violent manner."

"That... does not sound good."

"Mm." A noncommittal little tilt of the shoulders, as she stepped forwards to stand beside him and peer into the chasm yawning before them. "Really, it all depends on your point of view."

She tried to parse this new non-sequitur, with some difficulty. "What, you mean – how would it be a good thing? Did... someone want this crack-thing to open up?"

"I imagine whoever was waiting on the other side to be let out wanted it very much, yes." He was still peering down into the depths, eyebrows slightly raised. "Goodness, that's a long way down."

"Careful not to fall in," she said lightly, although his proximity to the abyss was worrying her. Just a little bit. She looked around, swivelling on her heel to fully examine their surroundings in a three-hundred-sixty turn. The sky appeared to be darkening, and she couldn't make out the distant dot of the TARDIS, in any direction. "If you do something stupid like trip on your own laces, and go tumbling down to break your neck – listen, I'm not going to be the one to climb down and fish you out, Professor."

His hand shot out, grasping tightly at her arm, and he tugged her all the way around so she was now facing him directly. She felt a sudden surge of intense fear rush through her, heady and sharp, and suddenly all the levity of the situation faded away like so much mist.

"I am not, " he said, enunciating every word very carefully; his rather distinctive accent crystal clear, "the Professor. And you would do well to remember that."

She stared at him, not moving to pull away. "Yeah," she said, although her voice only came out in something uncomfortably close to a whisper. "I'm realizing that now."

"And?"

"And I think," she said, "I think I might have realised it too late."

"My dear Miss McShane," he said, skin already warping and flexing into something dark and twisted and inhuman in every sense of the world – and he was smiling as it happened, too – "I'm so glad we see eye to eye at last."

His hands became claws, and found their way to her heart, and then he began to tear into her as the sickly white-and-green glow behind her intensified and sharpened.

Ace yelled out –

– she woke in a burst of blood and radiant light, thrashing and hyperventilating. There was somebody holding her down. Someone was holding her down, somebody with a inhumanly strong grip. She fought harder. He wouldn't catch her without a fight. She wouldn't let him take her without injuring him first. He –

" Stop! "

The voice was like a whip, cracking sharply through the air and shocking her into stillness. Her arm hurt. Her arm hurt. What was wrong – what was happening? Her eyes opened, properly now. It was white, blurred white, all around her. She had been in the wasteland. Where had the wasteland gone?

"The psychic circuits are still malfunctioning," he said, "it's making things worse for you, no doubt. I'm sorry. I'm so very sorry."

Words. Just words. She couldn't make out the meaning of them at all, and tried to tell him so, but her voice failed her once more. Her arm was throbbing with pain.

"Shh, don't talk – don't try to talk," he said, back to her side in an instant; hands ghosting over her face. His eyes were dark and worried, and his lips began to move. There was some sort of sound, too...

It took her what felt like several eternities packed into a single, stuttered breath to realize what was happening. He was singing. Alien words, even more incomprehensible than the English he had been speaking before. The words flowed like honey, thick and sweet and she felt herself relaxing, despite everything. It felt like her bones were melting; warmth spreading through her body – her rapid heartbeat slowing to a more manageable pace.

Her eyelids grew heavy; lowered again. "Didn't know you sang," she murmured sleepily, feeling the pain melt away.

The music faded for a second, although the melody still lingered in the air around her. His fingers brushed the side of her face, then moved higher, to her temples. "Hush now," he said, and she sighed. His hands were cold but her mind was warm, getting warmer... "Sleep," he told her quietly. "No more bad dreams, Ace. Not while I'm here to stop them."

She wondered briefly what he was talking about, but then he was singing again, soft and smooth, and after a second or two she didn't think about anything at all.

Ace was in the dining room – the wasteland – the forest –

– no.

Ace was in... she was in the library. Which library? It was unclear, but the location certainly rang a bell somewhere in her mind. Wherever it was, the place seemed familiar to her, and safe. She knew, without a doubt, that she was safe here.

She struggled to sit up, and looked around at her surroundings. Rows and rows of books surrounded her, the spines ranging from old to new – dusty and untouched for centuries to often-thumbed and well-loved. Rich brown hues and deep red carpeting, and she was sitting in an old, immensely comfortable armchair. Somebody had tucked a thick, fluffy blanket carefully around her, and it was a reasonable guess to assume that the same person was responsible for lighting the bright, roaring fire that danced in the fireplace opposite her, casting warm shadows across her face.

She could smell fresh lemons, somewhere distant yet close, and the room was vibrating faintly; kindly. Lemon trees in the library, just beyond the nonfiction section, she recalled, that was something abnormally normal for her. But she couldn't remember why .

In any other situation, she would have stood up and gone off to explore, but she was so very cosy where she was – the blanket was warm and soft, and the fire was crackling and hissing gently, and any pain that had ever existed within her was nothing more than a distant memory. She snuggled up into the blanket, and brought her feet up to curl beneath her, and realized that she had never felt more comfortable in her life.

Faint footsteps on the carpet made her raise her head and look across, and she saw a cat approaching from behind a set of bookshelves – a small, brown cat with its tail crooked slightly at the end, as if in the shape of a question mark. At its approach, she found herself smiling, although she wasn't sure why.

"Hey," she whispered, and the cat gave a friendly noise of greeting in return as it came to pause right in front of her armchair. It jumped, coming up to stand on one of the armrests, and looked up at her for a long second, studying her intently. After a second, it seemed to decide that she was perfectly fine, and headbutted her affectionately before swiping at her nose with one paw. That accomplished, it jumped down into her lap and settled there, coiling itself neatly into a ball of warmth.

She placed a hand on the cat's back, as if to stroke it, but ended up not doing that and just leaving it there. Its fur was soft, and it didn't seem to mind the gesture. After a second or so, it let out a long, rumbling purr.

To the sound of the fire hissing and popping, and the cat's gentle, constant purring, she curled up in the armchair – safe, warm, and content – and stayed there forever and ever until she woke up.