"No. Well... sometimes. I've lived a long time. Twice. It's hard to explain."
from Love and War by Paul Cornell
The office of UNIT's CO was small and spartan, painted an altogether inoffensive shade of beige –– although the colour was so similar to that of the fatigues Liz was of half a mind to wonder if the design choice had been intentional, to better allow one Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart to blend into his surroundings like a moustached chameleon.
Most of the available floor space was consumed by furniture: a couple of chairs, a desk covered in reports and reams of much scrawled-upon paper, several filing cabinets, and a small bookcase sitting innocuously in one corner, straining under the weight of meticulously organized folders and file boxes. There was even a washbasin built into one wall.
The man himself sat behind his desk, framed by the cabinets at his back, his hand hovering over the receiver from which he'd ordered Sergeant Benton to allow Liz admittance. Lethbridge-Stewart was a tall man when he wasn't bent over requisition forms or penning reports to his higher-ups in Geneva. He had a soldier's lean, athletic features and dark eyes that watched carefully and keenly, as though even in the sanctuary of his own headquarters he was weighing the possibilities of neutrals changing their stances and balances of power shifting.
Oblivious to her vivisection of him –– or fully aware and remaining, as ever, patently unruffled –– the Brigadier interlaced his hands and smoothed his face to patient indulgence... the calculated amount of politeness and consideration necessary to ensure that their discussion remained civil.
"How may I help you, Miss Shaw? Tea?"
"That's very kind of you, Brigadier, but I want to be on the road before the bulk of the evening traffic. This shouldn't take too long." Liz folded her hands behind her back. "At the risk of sounding blunt, I'm here to let you know that my final day with UNIT will be Friday, October sixteenth."
To his credit, the Brigadier looked only very mildly surprised, his first and best instinct to keep a stiff upper lip foreclosing any outward signs of shock or dismay. Lethbridge-Stewart merely blinked at her, a tiny muscle firing in his jaw.
"Oh," he managed at last. The monosyllable contained the surprise and disbelief he refused to let show on his face.
Only half-aware of the motion, Lethbridge-Stewart shifted a lengthy broadsheet across his desk, as though unsure to which pile of paperwork it belonged, an unusual amount of tension in the movement. Liz spared a momentary glance towards the open door and caught sight of tall, stocky John Benton standing guard in the corridor, evaluating the scene while he awaited his orders.
"Is there a problem?" asked Liz patiently, eyebrows arching.
The Brigadier's gaze went to the broadsheet, scanning its contents from a distance. Then he looked at Liz, guarded.
"You understand this is..." he considered his next words carefully, lips pursed. "Rather sudden."
"Yes, I suppose it must be. But not unexpected, surely?"
"I don't follow."
"I was forcibly shanghaied into your service, Brigadier. As I believe I've made perfectly clear on a number of occasions, grunt work as UNIT's deputy scientific advisor ranks rather low on my shortlist of career choices."
"Ah... indeed you have."
"Your powers of observation do you credit."
Lethbridge-Stewart sat back, assessing his opposition, clearly unimpressed with her sarcasm. He could brandish displeasure as effectively as that damned swagger stick of his. "That's well as may be, but this is still a top-secret security establishment. Stepping away is a little more involved than handing in a two week notice."
"Whatever you need from me, you'll get it."
"The Official Secrets Act––"
"Yes, I know all about the little piece of paper ordering me to keep my mouth shut regarding UNIT's abuse of 'national security' in order to justify breaking the rule of law."
An agitation was surfacing in her and she knew the Brigadier had made a note of it. "Oh, come now, Miss Shaw––"
"For chrissakes, Brigadier," she snapped, surprising both herself and him by the strength of feeling in her outburst. The first stirrings of a headache pulsed behind her eyes. "I am a doctor half a dozen times over. At least do me the courtesy of using my proper title if you're going to condescend to me. If nothing else, I'll savour the irony."
"Then may I remind you, Dr. Shaw, that regardless of your moral quibbles with this organisation, your signing the Official Secrets Act has no effect on which actions are legal, as the act is a law, not a contract."
"If you're worried I'll blow the gaff, don't be. I'm quite content to spend the rest of my life as far away from straight-jackets and antipsychotics as humanly possible, thank you."
"Would it be entirely unreasonable of your commanding officer to inquire as to the reason why you've decided to leave on such short notice?"
Commanding officer. Liz rankled. "I've just told you why."
"Specifics please, Dr. Shaw." The Brigadier could be very patronising when he was irritable. And no thanks to her –– and the Doctor –– he was frequently irritable.
It wasn't that Liz wasn't grudgingly fond of Lethbridge-Stewart; she found his dogged pursuit of something resembling a cordial working relationship with her in spite of her resistance and her, admittedly, difficult disposition oddly endearing. She admired his tenacity if nothing else, and he in turn recognised and respected Liz's strength and self-reliance.
Nevertheless, in recent months he had shown an antagonizing bull-headedness in trying to shackle Liz to UNIT permanently: retirement savings plans, PTO, vacation days –– provided no galactic street toughs kicked up any fuss while she was away in Lanzarote for a long weekend, of course. It all meant nothing to Liz, except in serving as yet another reminder of already having had access to many of the perks of permanent employment back at Cambridge. Liz resented the time and effort Alistair spent week after week on what she knew was a fool's errand.
Best, then, to chose brevity over further argument:
"Very well," she stated, the words clipped. "I was brought here against my will, putting my academic career on indefinite and likely damaging hold. I object to the violations of fundamental freedoms and democratic principles I've observed while in UNIT's service. Accordingly, I cannot reconcile UNIT's high-minded raison d'être with the suffering consequent of this institution's interventions. Where my position is concerned, I am utterly surplus to requirement; despite expectations to the contrary, I did not study at university for the better part of my adult life to stroke the Doctor's ego, pass him his test tubes, and tell him how wonderful he is." She found herself forcing the words through a lack of breath. Liz broke into a deep sigh and concluded: "And finally, in regards to my career prospects, I was offered a lucrative position back at Cambridge... one I intend to accept.
"Satisfied, Brigadier?"
The silence that followed was emphasized rather than disturbed by the dogs barking in Walpole Park and the dull, rhythmic hum of the traffic along High Street. Agitation seemed to fill the small corner office, pressing against the walls, keeping the atmosphere turgid with tension. Liz tasted the air on an inward breath and found it foul and upsetting. Sergeant Benton, she noted idly, had excused himself.
She expected the Brigadier to inquire about the nature of the Cambridge position. She anticipated further stern reminders regarding the Official Secrets Act or an impassioned defence of UNIT against her accusations.
But when the Brigadier finally knitted his hands back together, he said, with uncharacteristic quietude, "I'm sorry to hear you're unhappy working with the Doctor. I laboured under the impression he enjoyed your company, and he yours." One of his brows creased as he took stock of her expression. "It may well be abused and neglected, Dr. Shaw, but even my powers of observation occasionally manage to be a nuisance."
"You refer to me as his company as though I'm the man's wittering lady companion, not one of the most qualified applied mathematicians in the home counties."
"Dr. Shaw––"
"Shall I tell you about the Cambridge position, Brigadier?" she interrupted.
She knew that most of the men of UNIT preferred to think of her as habitually detached from her feelings, the cold, clinical scientist through-and-through. But, poised in front of Lethbridge-Stewart's desk, Liz felt herself run through a gaunlet of emotions in a matter of moments, flickering across her face in small jerks and twitches: her lips curling back over her teeth then pressing to a thin line; her eyes narrowing, closing, the skin around them crinkling; the muscles of her jaw tensing and dancing beneath her skin.
"It's the Lucasian Chair!" exclaimed Liz, unable to stifle her manic little laugh. "For my work in astrophysics. My god, Brigadier, I'll be the first woman to hold the the most prestigious academic post in the world, and you would have me cooped up here running electrolytic deposition experiments for a creature who studied quarks in the crib! I'm being..." Swallowing back her bitterness, Liz managed, "If you must know, I feel as though I'm being suffocated."
"The Doctor alleges your indispensability, you know," he dared to protest, moustache twitching like some poor thing having a seizure. Once more she noted his hectoring tone, as though she were a child, unable to make proper decisions. He didn't have to say the words aloud, but Liz knew both men well enough to work out by instinct the unvoiced criticism...
He's very fond of you. He enjoys a pretty face around the place, someone to humour his foul moods and mend his ills. You wouldn't want to make him unhappy, would you?
She didn't care if people called her callous or shrewish: all Liz Shaw craved at the end of a working day was her private space, clean and ordered, organised exactly as she liked it, free of emotional storms, from guilt and recriminations... from a life where someone else's happiness was her responsibility...
It suddenly came back to Liz why she made a point of avoiding the Brigadier's company: so often she found herself slowly stifling under the weight of his condescension, always couched in upper-crust British niceties and carefully curated conversations intended to preserve Alistair's suffocating military propriety. Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was well suited to emergencies of a martial nature, to holding his nerve under extreme duress, to quick thinking and fast reactions, but found the qualities demanded by Liz's acid wit and hardnosed personality more difficult to summon. She had precious little doubt that the Doctor alone was enough to empty the reservoir of his patience.
As it happened, he and the Doctor were more alike than either would care to admit. And she had no intention of getting her head bitten off by drawing their attentions to the fact.
The Doctor alleges your indispensability...
"The devil he does!" she muttered in a guttural voice.
The Doctor was bloody aggravating: grumpy, vain, taciturn, unkind, ungrateful.
But he was also clever and charming; generous and selfless; remarkable for the simplicity and singleness of his aims, for his detachment from all petty human jealousies and ambitions, for the breadth and depth of his intelligence.
Perhaps it was not her inadequacy in the face of the Doctor's brilliance that disturbed her so. Perhaps it was the fact that, next to him, the colours of Liz's own mind were flat and dull, an ingot of lead-grey light beside which blazed an aurora...
And it didn't bother her as much as it should.
Liz had felt herself growing indolent over the past twelve months, her companionship with the Doctor lulling her into a state of dull contentment. The bright ease of their friendship was sometimes enough to fill her with a happiness that nothing, no society nor the company of any individual, no prize or publication, could equal. She had often wondered, in the intervening months, what would happen if she abandoned the ambitions that came with being a career academic, if she could make her own story's denouement true to the strange, nuanced, and infinitely interesting life she shared with the Doctor. She would never dream to ask him for anything so obvious as a formal partnership, but she valued their close and satisfying if altogether unconventional attachment, a camaraderie characterized by loyalty and care and affection as well as solitude and self-direction.
And yet, sometimes, the shock of her own complacency came to the fore with a strange and insistent ache which Liz would entertain at long, guilt-ridden intervals. She found herself ashamed. There were moments when she hardly recognized herself.
The problem wasn't that Liz didn't think she'd learn to love her work with the Doctor. On the contrary, she thought it likely that she would enjoy their collaboration to the extent that her work with UNIT, for which she had involuntarily sacrificed a promising academic career, her safety, her sleep and oftentimes her sanity, would have to be sacrificed in return. And how would she feel, afterward, about the person who'd made that sacrifice necessary?
"I am not leaving UNIT, Brigadier, because so far as I'm concerned, I was never a member of it to begin with. From day one I've wanted nothing whatsoever to do with this organisation." Straightening imperiously, her hands clasped, Liz looked not at Lethbridge-Stewart but peered blindly at the cobwebs in the corners of the room. "But I will be leaving the Doctor, because he does not need me, and I have nothing to offer him."
"You must come to terms with the fact that that's hardly unusual," said Lethbridge-Stewart, just managing to keep his tone free of exasperation. "He's probably seen more of the unusual and bizarre than you or I have had hot dinners. None of us, quite frankly, has anything to offer him! But that's hardly the point, is it, Dr. Shaw?"
"I care deeply for him, Brigadier," she said, gentling her words. "More than I probably should. I trust him to do the right things for the right reasons. I am often astonished by his almost total lack of resentment, considering his circumstances... And I admire his drive for justice, his determination to settle and to solve, which has made him invaluable to the people of this planet.
"But I need something neither UNIT nor the Doctor can provide, Alistair. And whatever that something might be... I must discover it on my own."
It was Liz's grave misfortune for the object of her declaration to pass by the Brigadier's office at that very moment.
"Not interrupting anything important, I hope?" an oddly accented, lispy voice asked benignly, glancing from one set expression to the other.
The august Time Lord known as the Doctor cut a tall, impressive figure, slender, with a mop of soft silver hair and level blue eyes full of ready concentration and burning curiosity. He looked well north of fifty by human reckoning, until his leaping out of helicopters and scaling mountainsides and recovering from severe traumas within a matter of hours broke the illusion. Liz had given up trying to avoid noticing that he was a handsome man, not merely because of his proud, confident features and bright eyes, but because of his brilliance and the power his staggering intelligence conveyed.
"Nothing of importance whatsoever, Doctor," said Liz succinctly. The Brigadier wore an expression of decidedly beleaguered patience.
Glancing at Alistair's plum-purple face and bristling moustache, the Doctor adjusted his necktie self-consciously, despite the fact his velvet and ruffles looked, as ever, immaculate. "There's no need for me to take part in the discussion, is there?"
"Dr. Shaw is leaving us," announced the Brigadier without preamble.
If looks could incinerate, there wouldn't be enough left of Lethbridge-Stewart to fill an ashtray. Liz could have throttled the man.
For perhaps first time since Liz had met him, the Doctor looked taken aback –– properly flummoxed, in fact. The expression was all too human, and it seemed glaringly out of place on his lined face. Neither young, nor old. Neither partial, nor impartial. He was scientific neutrality in its finest form, and he wasn't allowed to look confused.
Liz closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had done so many times in her life, of something to say that might navigate the emotional register between haughtily confident and coolly unconcerned, but there was nothing. Not the slightest thing. Not even the dishonest sarcasm she favoured when she was feeling especially wretched. Faced with what would have been, on a human man, the first stirrings of a broken heart made Liz's own chest feel immeasurably leadened, as though something she hadn't realised even existed was weighing on her sternum like an anchor, pressing and cracking the bone beneath.
The Doctor could not have looked more stunned, more lost, if Liz Shaw had been the one to exile him herself.
"I'll draw up the necessary forms by the end of the week, Brigadier," she muttered, before stalking past the Doctor and down the corridor, trying not to feel their eyes on the back of her neck.
She was halfway down the hallway before she sensed a presence catching up to her, his long legs closing the distance with ease. She didn't know why he bothered; the cynical part of her wondered if perhaps Lethbridge-Stewart had sent him after her, to force her to spend energy she really didn't have on stubborn negotiation, to run down her reasons and her willpower until she walked away with as close to a surrender as he could manage.
"Liz," murmured the Doctor as he reached her.
She stopped. Her face felt dry and drawn, her mouth pursed in a mean little frown. In spite of her satisfaction at having done what she'd set out to do, she felt rotten.
"That man's mind isn't deep enough to float a paper boat," she hissed on an outward breath.
"Let's take a drive," he said gently.
"I don't want to take a drive... I want to punch Alistair on the nose."
"So do I, my dear, more often than I care to admit. Which is why I insist on your taking a drive with me. Clears the head."
"It's late, Doctor, and I'm too tired to go galivanting across the home counties in that lemon-yellow antique of yours."
He was concerned for her, but he paused long enough to scowl at her with mock ferocity. "Not even for the pleasure of present company?"
"Not this time. All I want is chips and my settee and to pass the evening staring at the wall, I think––"
"Liz." He brushed the edge of her shoulder and arm protectively, the merest feather-light rasp of velvet on the skin of her elbow. "I insist. Let me drive you home."
A pause. They had each grown accustomed to the other's outward tells of working through muddy, complicated thoughts. Liz intuited in an instant the Doctor's common sense entering into a short, violent skirmish with instinct and being overwhelmed. She had hoped to spot the flickering shadow of reluctance, to assure herself that she wouldn't really be offending him with her refusal, but instead it was the ghost of supplication who emerged, gazing down at her.
"If I am to understand that our days together are numbered," he said softly, "then I would very much like to spend as much time with you as possible."
He smiled a little, gentle and placid, and the tugs and creases gentled his expression; her wariness ceded to the realisation that he was being absolutely serious, without a trace of his habitual mockery or condescension.
"You overheard us, then?" she murmured, her hands grasping the elbow opposite until she was hugging her arms to her chest.
"Little escapes me, my dear, even when Lethbridge-Stewart does deign to use his inside voice."
Her every instinct to march in the opposite direction was clawing at her like an importuning dog. "See here, Doctor, if you think you can persuade––"
"No, not that. But I must ask..." Blue eyes sparkled in deep sockets beneath a pair of bushy, grey eyebrows. What was Delphon for jog on, wondered Liz. "When were you going to tell me?"
There was a certain knowing irony in his voice that made the rhetorical question all the more lacerating.
The answer, of course, was probably never; she balked at the prospect of laying bare her heart for his perusal. Because that's what announcing her resignation to him would have amounted to, in the end: she no longer had the luxury of separating her work with UNIT from her work with the Doctor. Liz had never wanted to join the Brigadier's merry band of flying saucer chasers in the first place, and the Doctor remained for the simple fact that he wasn't swimming in alternatives; their mutual displeasure was one of the things on which they had always found common ground, and it had been one of the reasons why her ability to work in such a place had foundered. As much as she basked in his brilliance and delighted in his charm, Liz deplored the Doctor's aggravating, chauvinistic, irritable moods, and the reasons he gave for them. She was always miffed when he stated life aims that condescended to hers, when he feigned an interest in a planet he begrudged for having been exiled to it, as though he were attacking Liz's own decisions and choices as well as those of her entire species by proxy. Other people her age had houses and washing machines, cars and television sets, furniture and gardens and bikes and mowers: she had four doctorates and an irritable Time Lord with itchy feet. Her working relationship with UNIT was more cracks than substance: she and the Doctor lived in a spider's web of fault lines, held together by stubbornness, frustration and disillusion.
Her consolation was that the daily irritants of working with him was no more than the penalty she paid for the privilege of having known him as the rest of the world had not, of acting as a colleague and a confidant and, if she dared, a friend to a being who conferred a strange sanctity to even the most ordinary of events, who found beauty and joy in the darkest, the loneliest of places. Someone whose age and alienness ought to have frightened Liz, for both certainly humbled her, but instead split her curiosity like an amoeba, forming an endless series of new ideas and questions and speculations.
No... saying goodbye to UNIT would mean saying goodbye to the Doctor –– which would mean coming to an understanding of how they had seen and experienced each other over the past twelve months, to come to grips with what had succeeded between them and what had failed. Such a thing took fearlessness, Liz knew, and she had in her depleted emotional arsenal few sedatives capable of postponing the pain of separation.
Better, then, to make a quiet exit.
Though the Brigadier had now made that impossible.
In the brief interval, the Doctor had begun to worry at his lower lip with a finger. No doubt he had come to a similar answer on his own, and his face sank into the sort of exaggerated despondency a dog might wear when one stopped throwing it sticks.
"I would have missed you."
And gotten over it again in a week, Liz wanted to say, but didn't. She knew how unkind it would sound.
"I didn't want to..." Heavens sakes. "I didn't want to cause a scene." Her face registered a sombre and impatient annoyance. She scuffed the corridor floor with the heel of her shoe. Personally, she was plenty ready for a pint and a miserable evening alone, but the Doctor had not been trained up in the human tendency to consider alcohol and regret natural bedfellows and she felt getting drunk might reinforce his impression of her callousness. "I can't do this anymore, Doctor."
The Doctor leant back, one foot propped against the wall until his knee stuck into the corridor, all long limbs and lamentable posture. He stayed quiet, as if he were picking over her words like fruit in a market stall, testing and discarding twice as many as he chose.
Her concern that she might offend him, either intentionally or otherwise, soon gave way to annoyance that she found herself, yet again, caring about him. Caring about the possibility that he valued her enough to miss her. Caring about not hurting him.
On the matter of her resignation Liz was resolutely committed, and she liked to think the Doctor regarded her at least well enough to respect her decision. It was the complicated issue of how she was going to spend those last days prior to leaving UNIT; the Doctor had effectively opened an overflowing cupboard, causing all manner of bric-a-brac to tumble right on top of Liz's head.
"Oh... very well. A short drive. And I still want those chips."
A satisfied smile settled on his lips, some colour coming back into his cheeks. At the sight Liz felt, as she had known she would, a slight easing of the knot of tension in her stomach.
The consummate gentleman, the Doctor offered her his arm. "Shall we?"
"You're buying."