James stared as Rose, well, not Rose, Cassandra, smashed her face into the Doctor's. It was an mortifying sort of kiss to be looking at, something quite staged and dramatic like an old Hollywood movie kiss. Another reminder that she shouldn't have been here, privy to this moment.
She looked away, heard a wet sound as they parted, winced. "Terminal's this way," Rose-Cassandra said, striding off.
The Doctor wiped at his mouth with a sleeve, not looking like a lovelorn puppy as she would have expected. Instead, his gaze flitted back to James for a split second, almost...embarrassed. Right. The ex-soul bond or whatever. James still didn't understand whatever that was supposed to mean, but definitely knew the gist of it was like...vaguely romantic. Or maybe not? Maybe it was born out of camaraderie?
Her thoughts wander as they walk to the computer terminal, trying to organize the events that had happened over the last hour or so in her mind. Her memories had been erased. By the Doctor. They had had history, which he didn't remember, either. So either, he had erased his own memories too, or...she had met the Doctor in the future. In the Doctor's future.
But then, why had he? What had happened between them, to establish that ridiculous-sounding soul-bond?
She watches Rose-Cassandra and the Doctor bounce guesses off each other, working like well-oiled machinery even though the one didn't know who the other was. She can't imagine herself ever getting along with the Doctor—she could count the number of conversations they'd had on one hand and not a single one had not ended in yelling. To suggest the soul-bond had started because of camaraderie was laughable when they couldn't even talk properly.
Perhaps it was a life or death situation that cornered the two of them. Perhaps it was just a means to an end.
"Come on," the Doctor says, and James blinks, tilting her head down to look at the corridor formed in front of them. She had zoned out so far she hadn't even noticed the wall disappearing. Jesus. "Focus," he says, giving her a look. She almost wants to Glitch time again to piss him off.
Instead, she jogs to catch up with Cassandra—who hadn't even given her a once-over, dismissing her entirely to focus on the Doctor the moment they met—and tries not to get in the way as they walk into the cave of green human pods, covering every single surface. Thousands, no, hundreds of thousands of people in pain.
It's quite terrible.
The Doctor opens one of the cells and they're faced with a very sick-looking man, skin wretched and eyes wide with agony. It's like he's pleading for them to end it, to end his suffering, and James feels sick to her guts—she knows she should dissociate herself from this, remember that it's just a silly tv show, but that's quite hard when the man is real and tangible in front of her. She lurches back. "This is fucked up," she mutters to herself, saliva triggered by the urge to hurl. Judging by the Doctor's glance, he hears her.
"That's disgusting," Cassandra says, crisply intonated. "What's wrong with him?"
"I'm sorry," the Doctor apologizes, a clear contrast to Cassandra's apathy. "I'm so sorry."
He closes the door and James looks away, out into the void where countless cells are embedded into the wall. She hears him explain, although she doesn't really want to listen to exposition. She thinks she'd forgotten that Doctor Who was a pretty terrible universe to live in. It's different from when she was 12 years old and without a regard for any of the side characters. Now, she's a side character. She's a disposable, worthless character—
"It's for a greater cause," the Cat Nun says, and James turns around, standing behind Cassandra and the Doctor.
The Doctor's voice is scathing. "Novice Hame, When you took your vows, did you agree to this?"
"The Sisterhood has sworn to help."
"What," the Doctor scoffs, very Scottish-ly, "by killing?"
"But they're not real people. They're specially grown. They have no proper existence." Cat Nun sounds like she almost believes herself as she says the words, and James feels ridiculously outraged for fake people in a fake universe.
"Yeah, but they can still feel pain, right?" She says, shoving her hands in her hoodie pocket. "Nothing's really worth all this suffering."
"You don't know anything about the people we've helped," Hame's voice cuts through, sharp as ice. "And you are nothing to decide what this is worth."
The Doctor steps forward before James can even decide if she's going to choose violence or, well, violence. "Don't talk to her like that," he snaps, "she's so much more than you if she can see what's wrong here." Aw.
"Wait, wait," Cassandra raises a hand. "Just to confirm. None of the humans in the city actually know about this?"
"We thought it best not."
The Doctor stretches his arm, waving vaguely at the direction of Cassandra and the body-tanks. "Hold on. I can understand the bodies. I can understand your vows. One thing I can't understand. What have you done to Rose?"
Hame hesitates. "I don't know what you mean."
James feels like she should say something. At the very least, suggest that they subdue Cassandra before she does something stupid like release all these dying people out into the world, never mind their suffering. But she's trying very hard to recall what happened during the chase through the hospital, and it's difficult to remember something other than the acting being hilarious when Cass eventually takes turn joy-riding between Rose and the Doctor. Huh. James doesn't want to get possessed also, actually, when she thinks of it.
The Doctor lowers his voice. "I'm being very, very calm. You want to be aware of that. I'm being—"
"She's not Rose," James says. "She's that Cassandra lady. Last human."
James realizes her mistake five heartbeats after. Cassandra instinctively, almost as if she's been electrocuted to action, pulls out a perfume vial. And fuck—
She's either concussed or dead, because she can't breathe. All she can see is brown, brown, stripes—oh.
She raises her head from the Doctor's vaguely chest-adjacent area of his coat, and he's staring at her like she's killed his dog. Less John Wick and more Confused Neo. It's so weird. It's just...infinitely weird to be struggling up from where she's draped to him like a vine. Fine fine, he's attractive and all that, but like. He's out of her world. He's out of her league, she supposes, more realistically. It's insane he puts up with her and her dangly bangs and impulsive behavior and—
"That was just." He states. "Stupid."
"Jeez, thanks," she snaps back. Right. He didn't put up with her. They just had the soul bond thing, which, by the way, she still didn't know shit about. The cell they're in is too small to put some distance between them, and she figures she should take the wretched opportunity to bother him further.
"We didn't exactly get to talk about how you, quote unquote, erased my memories." She says, apropos of nothing. "How about we get on that."
The Doctor shifts, leaning his head back on the wall. "There's nothing to say."
"What about the soul bond shit?"
"It's not soul bond shit," he replies, clearly pissed off. "Soul bond shit is the most important ritual in Timelord history. There's been records of it even before humans figured out they're not fishes anymore. Hell, even before Earth jumbled into one tiny planet. It's not a thing to be ridiculed by—"
"Dude," James says, doubting if she's ever used the word dude in serious conversation before. "Calm the fuck down. You're saying I was one half of the most important ritual in Timelord history or whatever."
That seems to disturb him into silence.
James wonders, in quiet, how long he took from her. Is she even really 17? She has no way of knowing how much time he wiped from her memories, whether she's been here for a year, five years, or, she can't help a shudder, a decade. She shakes her head. She hadn't studied the mirror that long, but she's relatively sure it hasn't been that long. Her face hadn't...aged, as far as she can remember. Jesus Christ, what a weird thing to be pondering.
When she's about to poke him into answering more questions, the Doctor raises his head to look at her directly, face stony but eyes calmly, quietly absolute. "If what I'm sensing is true," he starts, and there's an underlying tone of heaven forbid, "I've either desecrated my entire race and the millennia of time before us."
"Or?" There's a strange sense of Deja-vu.
"We were in star-shattering love."
Oh. "Oh," she says, dumbly, like an idiot, and laughs like an awkward little idiot. "Well, time to figure which is worse, I guess."