eleven.

"portefeuille"

"I'm afraid I do not understand," said Hannibal very slowly, after a tense few seconds of silence. For a moment, he looked utterly lost, and then his usual mask of calm, cool detachment returned, flattening out his features. Still, he sounded rather tentative as he asked, "Will-?"

Will Graham let out an uncharacteristically unrestrained bark of laughter. "You don't! Now, that really is rather delightful to witness."

"Hate to break it to you, mate, but that's not your friend," said Ace, taking a step back to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Professor. "Or whatever he is. Do you even have friends? People who you haven't eaten yet?"

"Bigger fish," the Professor reminded her, not ungently.

"Bigger fish indeed," said Will, quite cheerfully.

"Possession," Hannibal guessed, sounding remarkably calm for a man probably completely reassessing his entire worldview. Or maybe not, because he'd already witnessed her in full cheetah-mode, and the Doctor in full I'm Not Even Remotely Human And Am Ready To End You Where You Stand mode, and – no, she didn't want to think about Hannibal Lecter's state of mind. Besides, if he really did end up losing his marbles over a few aliens and a body-snatching god-thing from the dawn of times, Ace would probably throw a very small, very vindictive party over poetic justice.

"If you want," Will says. "Hannibal? Oh, can I call you Hannibal? I know we haven't talked all that much yet, but I've been a – what's that phrase? – huge fan of yours, that's it; for quite a while now. From one killer to another, I rather think we're on first-name terms, don't you?"

Hannibal stared at him for a very long moment, and for the first time since she'd met him, Ace thought she understood perfectly what he was thinking about.

Will Graham was... well, he wasn't nice, exactly, but in the few times that Ace had met him, he'd been quiet and wry and she'd kind of liked him, in a distant, vague sort of way. He'd been polite in that way you tend to get when you've been being polite for a very long time to hide how angry you really are underneath it all – and although she couldn't exactly relate to that, she definitely could get where he was coming from. He'd also made a point of making himself as physically unobtrusive as possible, avoiding eye contact like the plague, and keeping his facial expressions mild and unexaggerated.

On the other hand. Fenric-as-Will stood with the confidence of a leading-role actor, looked you right in the eyes when he was talking with you, and grinned like a Cheshire Cat on steroids.

Ace made eye contact with the Professor, who looked just as thrown as she felt. They hadn't planned for this. They hadn't planned for a possession, even though they probably really should have. She didn't know what to do, and she was pretty sure he didn't know, either.

Stall, she decided. The best thing they could do, really, was stall for time until either her or the Doctor came up with some brilliant plan to save all their hides. And if neither of them could before Fenric did whatever the hell he had planned – well, that didn't really bear thinking about.

"This is the part where you take over the universe, then," Ace said before she could think too hard about any of it. She was taking a leaf out of the Doctor's book, she realized, letting her mouth run away from her and hoping that her brain would catch up and make sense of whatever nonsense she was about to spit out into the world sooner rather than later. "Destroy all sentient life, or maybe enslave everything and everyone in existence – start playing around with the universe like a kid let loose on the universe's biggest sandbox? Oh, wait, you've been doing that already, haven't you?"

"I have missed you," said Will to her, almost fondly. "I didn't think I was capable of it, but you're really such a breath of fresh air, my dear."

"Don't you my dear me, toerag." Ace eyed Will, who was still standing across from them, at the edge of the clearing. "And what's up with all of this – this confrontation bullshit? I know you have a flair for the dramatic, but seriously. If I were you I'd just have killed us by now. Save you the trouble of doing it later, when we get really annoying."

There was a silence that lasted just a few seconds too long, and was very nearly awkward, and there was a peculiar expression on Will's face for a split second or so that she couldn't quite pin down, and then...

"You can't kill us," Ace said, realization gradually dawning, and she couldn't help the humorless smile that spread across her face. " You can't kill us, or you would've done it already – oh, that's priceless . How? Why not? Did you get your mortal murder licence revoked after choking all of your previous victims with plants?"

The Professor had that look on his face which said 'please don't antagonize him, but you're right and I'm thinking very hard about it right this moment'. She'd gotten very good at reading his strange, specific looks over the years.

"Killing you isn't the problem," Will said, and Ace was almost pleased to see a faint twitch of displeasure at the downwards curve of his mouth. "I could kill you in a second; less than that. I almost did, many times."

"Sure," snorted Ace, "because spiking my dinner with aconite was so clearly an honest proper murder attempt, and you totally didn't have any other options at your disposal. And fine, you could probably disintegrate me into atoms by just thinking about it, I believe you – but why aren't you doing it?"

"At a guess," said Hannibal from his position several metres away – carefully removed from the action but still observing Will with an unsettlingly discerning eye, "I would suspect it is because he needs you for something. Speaking strictly as one killer to another, you understand."

Which of course was right; it had to be. It didn't mean Ace had to be happy about it, and she wasn't. Not about any of it.

"It does take one to know one," the Professor said, tone light, jaw tight. He wasn't looking at Hannibal at all, but was very clearly addressing him, when he said, "would you happen to have any more insights into exactly what that something is?"

"That depends," said Hannibal, and now his tone was rather sharp and calculating. "Will. You know how to return him to himself, yes?"

"Getting Mr Graham back will be a delightful side-effect of getting rid of our unwanted guest, yes," the Professor said. Still that light, strange tone. "I assume that is an outcome you wish for?"

"Very much so. Will he recall any of this when he returns?"

"I do not believe he will. I assume that is also an outcome that pleases you?"

"It is. And in that case, I am more than content to share my extrapolations," Hannibal said with the air of someone about to do them a great favor. "The first thing you may want to be aware of is – "

"I don't think so," said Will, and took one steps, two steps, three, and then he was standing right in front of Hannibal, smiling blithely into his face with a bright openness that was so very striking – to Hannibal, at least, because he looked so very startled, so very undone, so very unlike Hannibal Lecter and for a good long second it seemed as though he would be willing to stare Will right in the eyes for the rest of eternity, silent with pleasure, and be most content man in the universe.

And then Will braced both hands on his chest like he was about to grab Hannibal by the lapels and draw him in for a passionate make-out session, but that didn't happen. Instead, he leaned up, and pressed a sweet little kiss to Hannibal's nose (which made Ace full-body flinch) and shoved him firmly and violently into stumbling back. And Hannibal tripped, falling right into a mess of light and color that enveloped him entirely, and then swallowed him up, neat as you please.

And then he was gone.

"Right," said Will, quite briskly. "Who's next?"

Ace had almost immediately recognized the acrid ozone and electric blue sparking of a particularly potent time storm, and opened her mouth to say something – but Will had already grabbed the Doctor by the arm, and with a smooth, sharp movement almost akin to a judo flip, flung him forwards and through time and space.

"I am so sick of you," Ace said fervently, taking a step back, and Will grinned at her with an easy wide genuineness that normal non-possessed Will Graham had likely never displayed.

"Don't worry," he said, stepping forward to match her. His hand shot out to grasp her forearm, and she could feel something long-hidden within her rise up to meet the touch of an Elder God. "You're going with him."

"Joy," she deadpanned, although following the Professor really was the optimal turn of events here.

Will actually reached out to ruffle her hair in a gesture that was almost fond, and in return she brought her knee up sharply between his legs, thinking, sorry, real Will Graham, never really interacted with you much but you probably were a nice bloke before all of this cannibalism started. He didn't drop her, but he did let out a satisfying noise of shock, right before pushing her back into a whirling, sickening vortex that twisted her and thrashed her and made her want to rip her eyes out with the sheer amount of colors contained within.

God, she really did hate time storms.

Ace landed roughly, half-hitting the grassy ground shoulder-first. She choked back a pained noise, and pulled herself to her feet. Beside her, the Doctor was already up and brushing grass clippings and dirt off himself.

She hurriedly dug her fingers into her arm in an attempt to stop the flaring pain. It didn't work. She scowled and decided to just ignore it until it went away. "So, any idea where, or – you know, when – we are?"

"It seems that Fenric has made his next move," he said, grabbing her arm and twisting it very precisely before pressing his thumb into the palm of her hand. The pain stopped, instantly, and she shot him a grateful look. "Which is to say – no. None whatsoever."

"Great," she said, and looked around them. The two of them, sitting in the middle of a field. Nobody else in sight. "Lecter's not here. I guess Fenric didn't think he was worth sending along with us."

"That's probably for the best. We'll have enough on our plate as it is without a cannibalistic psychiatrist to deal with as well."

She checked, and she still had her rucksack with her. The Doctor was still carrying his umbrella, too. "Yeah – I'm definitely not complaining." She took the opportunity to properly survey their surroundings. There was a forest to their north, although it wasn't at all like the nightmare forests that had up until recently frequented her dreams. To the south, there was an empty-looking road that led into the distance, over fields and hills, and beyond that road, there was a quaint-looking cottage. "Looks like somebody lives over there."

He followed her gaze. "It does. And judging by the architecture and general style of construction, I would say that this is... England, possibly late nineteen-eighties."

She grinned, although it felt forced. "Show-off."

"Simply circumstantial deduction, Ace," he said, and swept a hand in the direction of the cottage. Despite his light tone, he looked as grim as she felt. "Shall we?"

They headed down the hill, and crossed the road. As they approached the cottage, it became apparent that there was somebody there. An old woman, looking to be in her eighties, was working in the garden, cheerfully shovelling up the flowerbeds and whistling to herself as she deposited the dirt in a cardboard box that was near her feet. She didn't seem to notice them as they walked up to the house, too caught up in her work and her whistling. As they came to a stop on the road running up just beside the house, the Doctor cleared his throat.

"Excuse me, madam," he began, but before he could continue, the old woman straightened up instantly with a speed that didn't seem to fit with her appearance and age.

"Aha," she said, with a wide, grandmotherly (or maybe great-aunt-like) smile. "Doctor – Ace. It's so good to see the two of you again."

There was a short, embarrassed sort of silence where neither the Professor or Ace had any idea how to say 'we don't know who you are, and the fact that you seem to know us is kind of massively creepy, in this context'.

"Do come in, do come in!" said the old woman, and scooped up her cardboard box full of dirt. Without waiting for any answer whatsoever, she set off down the short garden path to the house, beginning to whistle that same song again – a strangely familiar song that Ace couldn't quite place.

"This is great," said Ace to the Professor. "Great start. I'm loving this."

"I'm not overtly fond of this situation myself," he admitted. "But I rather think we have to follow her. I can't see anyone else around willing to provide answers, do you?"

Ace hitched her rucksack up onto her shoulder and said, "I hate that you're right."

When they got to the cottage, the door was wide open and the old woman was inside, bustling busily around a small circular table that was neatly laid out with all the necessary tea-things. The whole setup was cramped and shoved to one side of the small room, owing to the fact that the majority of the walls were covered up with carboard boxes full of dirt, similar to the one that she had been filling up outside.

"Fallout preventative measures," the Professor said, under his breath.

Ace felt a cold shock of dull understanding pass all the way through her body. "Is this-?"

"Oh, don't worry, dear," said the old woman from across the room. "The bombs won't go off for nearly an hour. Plenty of time to sit and chat over a good cuppa, don't you think?"

Which really only raised more questions than answers.

"Are you going to sit down or not?" she added, placing two steaming aluminium ration-issue mugs in front of two of the chairs.

Ace and the Professor exchanged glances. And then he sat down, and after a moment, so did she. She said, "okay, this is all well and good, but, well – who exactly are you?"

"Oh, of course you wouldn't know me – I'm sorry, love; I got caught up in all the excitement and forgot to introduce myself!" She patted Ace on the shoulder. "My name's Peggy, dear. Margaret Marsden, but you can just call me Peggy."

"And we know you from... where?" Ace asked, not drinking the tea that had been offered to her. She wasn't taking any chances this time.

Peggy dithered, fussing over where to sit down, nevermind the fact that there was only one spare chair. "Ooh... well, I don't really know if I should say , dear. I don't know if it'd be against the rules, you see."

"Rules?" the Doctor asked abruptly. He, like Ace, had not even touched his tea. He had set it to the side as soon as it had been passed to him, and was regarding Peggy intently, distrustfully. "What sort of rules are you talking about? Fenric's rules? Your own?"

"Why, the rules of time, Doctor," Peggy said blithely. "I'd expect you know all about them, you being a Time Lord and all of that nonsense."

"So you're saying that we meet you at some point in our future," Ace guessed.

Peggy decided on where to sit, at last; and reached out for her tea. "I really couldn't say, love."

"We don't have time for this," the Doctor said, something close to anger seeping into his voice. "Either tell us clearly exactly what we need to know, or we will leave and find somebody else to talk to."

Peggy smiled at them over her mug of tea. "That might be a tad bit difficult for you, dear. Now, where's that young man of yours? He was the sweet one, out of you two – and important, I remember that. His name's slipped my mind, rather – Tom? Hector?"

Ace blinked at her, exhausted and confused. The Professor could hardly be counted as young – or even a man, really, and she didn't know anyone by either of those names. "You've lost it," she says. "Whoever you are."

"Ah, Hex!" Peggy exclaimed. "Hex, of course, that was his name. Strange sort of name, I thought; you young people pick such strange things to call yourselves."

Next to her, the Professor had gone silent and stiff, hands tightening around each other.

Ace shifted nervously, and said, "Doctor...? Who's Hex?"

"An offshoot of a discarded strand of time," he murmured, almost to himself, "a memory of a friendship that will never place its weight and echo through history ever again. Forgotten, forsaken, forlorn." And then he shook himself and his gaze sharpened and he glared at Peggy, even more fervently than before. "You're not from this timeline. What is this? What are you?"

"So she is with Fenric," Ace said, tensing. Her hand went to her rucksack. "She's got to be. This is another trap, right? He sent us here, so..."

"No," said Peggy. "You were pulled off course. As a matter of order, Fenric has no idea whatsoever that you're here, and he's most likely wondering why your time storms are taking so long to arrive."

Ace refused to untense. "So – "

"I don't serve Fenric, dear," Peggy said, and put down her mug at last. "Not anymore, anyway. I represent other unspeakable forces, who, between you and me, aren't all that keen on letting dear Mister Large, Vast, And Floral out there out into the rest of the universe – oh no they aren't."

"Because once he's broken out, it will end up being just that much harder for the rest of them to emerge," the Professor deduced swiftly.

Peggy's smile was sly and sideways and all-too-knowing. "Now, if I didn't know better, I'd say that you've been involved in outer-rim politics."

Ace tried her hardest to wrap her head around what the other two members of this unhinged little tea party seemed to be grasping intuitively. "It's a... massive eldritch sabotage campaign?" At Peggy's nod, she said, "And you've been sent to recruit us? Does this sort of thing happen a lot?"

"You'd be surprised," Peggy said. "One can end up getting quite the workout from all the energy it takes to constantly run around, shoving clusters of tentacles and arms and legs back into their neat little jars on the other side."

"Hm," said the Professor, no longer quite as angry, and looking rather more thoughtful than before. "I never quite spent enough time pondering it to realize but – yes, it makes a certain amount of sense. Did you ever wonder why Evil From The Dawn Of Time, with all its unlimited power and unimaginable abilities to warp reality, wasn't constantly breaking through the thinness of the universe to terrorize every living being?" he added, glancing over at Ace.

"...No."

"Neither did I. And I should have, because the answer is rather obvious. It's a self-regulating process. Crabs in a bucket, Ace. Leave them to their own devices, and they'll drag each other down."

"Right. Fine. Okay." Ace shook her head. What a day. What a day. "So, I won't ask why us, because – yeah, we're the obvious choice for beating Fenric's scrawny multi-limbed arse back into oblivion. We've got the experience, plus you seem to already know us, sure. But what do you get out of this?"

"I get my Albert back," Peggy said simply. "It was the condition set on my release, and you can bet your bloomin' arse I'll be holding to them. Now, shall we get on with it?"

The mood in this quaint little cottage had shifted. It was no longer 'slightly awkward tea party at your gran's with mildly threatening undertones' – it had spun neatly into 'full-on council of war'.

"The plan was always to trap Fenric," Ace said, and took the tesseract box out of her rucksack. It shone and spun in her hands, a three-dimensional shadow of a fourth-dimensional object that she couldn't hope to perceive properly. She spun it timewise absently and watched it cycle through various shapes and forms. "The thing was, we kind of figured he'd be in a body of his own. Or at least in some kind of physical form."

Peggy was now giving them both an extremely judgemental sort of look, which Ace did not care for at all. "You didn't think for a second he would end up possessing someone?"

"The logic," said the Professor, "which I'll thank you not to vituperate us in the name of, was that he had to have acquired some unorthodox form of manipulating the world around him to commit his equally unorthodox murders. And considering the nature of some of them, I'd say we were fairly justified in believing he was operating on a more conceptual level."

"But surely you must have noticed something." Peggy's eyes glittered. "Nobody gets possessed by almighty Fenric himself and doesn't show at least some signs of it happening."

"Not necessarily. Will was the perfect candidate for possession," the Professor pointed out.

Ace cycled the tesseract through its phases again. Her arm ached fiercely, and she ignored it, just as fiercely. "Everyone said he was weird, which is why we didn't question it at all when he... you know, did weird things. And apparently Fenric's particular brand of weird wasn't enough to set off the alarms of anyone around him, so – seriously, stop blaming us for this one, Peggy, we're doing our best."

"The tesseract is a fine enough solution, I suppose," Peggy agreed, rather grudgingly. Now that she had dropped most of the act... well, she still reminded Ace of a slightly batty aunt or grandmother, but in a more Arsenic and Old Lace way. Ruthless. Probably likely to suggest murder as a solution, no matter what the problem was. "You just need to get him in a position where you can catch him with it."

"Out in the open," said the Professor. "Yes. I quite agree."

"Right, which brings us to the big problem. How do we get Fenric out of Will's body?" Ace looked around the table. "Anyone?"

"Either we trick him, we force him," the Professor said, raising two fingers, and then a third, "or we provide him with a better option."

"He's not possessing either of us," Ace said instantly. "How would we trick him?"

"We'd need time and preparation, neither of which we have all that much of." The Professor's face did not inspire confidence, not with the expression currently stretched all over it. "Which only leaves us with forcing him out."

"Without tools..." said Peggy, and took a contemplative sip of tea. "..wWithout tools, or external help, why, I'd say the best way to go about doing that would be to get the underlying personality to help you out."

"We've got to get Will to force him out?" Ace checks, and then at Peggy's cheerful little nod, "okay, so we've got to get Will to care about forcing him out. He's probably down in there somewhere, we just need to tug him out hard enough."

"He isn't well," the Professor said, and leaned forward, steepling his fingers under his chin. "In more ways than one. If I know this timeline as well as I believe I do, he's most likely suffering from a rather dreadful inflammation of his brain as a result of medical neglect. That sort of thing is more conducive to possession than you'd suspect. We'll need to pick our battles carefully."

Ace curled her fingers into her hair. Her brain was practically on fire with all the hard, complicated thinking she was forcing through it, and her body wasn't faring all that much better. She forced herself to focus. "So what does Will Graham care about?"

"Dogs," said the Professor thoughtfully. "He has a frankly inordinate amount of dogs."

"Does he care about them enough to force Evil From The Dawn Of Time out of his swelling, fevered brain?"

The Professor's silence was extremely telling, and then he says, "I know for a fact that he has a genuine soft spot for Abigail Hobbs."

"Abigail-?" Ace frowned, trying to place the name. "That girl he saved from being murdered by her father?"

"Indeed."

Ace closed her eyes and shook her head. "But we –"

" – don't have a way to get her directly involved. I know. Blast. "

"You're not trying very hard, are you?" Peggy said, with an expression akin to someone watching a rather disappointing tennis match. "It's a bit more obvious than you think it is, dear."

And then something a bit like horror and a bit like excitement gripped Ace's chest hard, and she had to take several stuttering breaths to get through it.

"Oh," she said, and her hands tightened around the tesseract. "Oh, oh no. Okay. You said that he and Lecter go off on a killing spree together in a few years?"

The Professor's expression hardened; went all distant and alien. "Yes," he said, with the tone of some who very much did not want to think about it.

"And, the way that they look at each other..." Ace trailed off. "That's it. That's our way in." She looked over at Peggy, who studiously avoided eye contact, and then over at the Professor, who met her gaze evenly. "Will Graham doesn't care about many things at all, but – god, I think he might actually care quite a lot about Hannibal Lecter."

...The Doctor might actually have sworn at this point, or at the very least said some extremely unkind things in Gallifreyan. Whatever he was saying, it certainly didn't sound especially kind.

"That's it?" Ace checked.

"That's it," the Professor agreed, deeply unhappy. "And I can only imagine that Doctor Lecter will be only too glad to assist us in this endeavour, since I do believe the feeling is entirely mutual."

"Well!" said Peggy, clapping her hands together briskly. "I'm glad you two have some sort of plan pulled together."

Nuclear strike alarms started to sound, distant and eerie. Ace felt a horrible shiver run up and down her spine that was more than just plain old creeped-out uneasiness and understandable fear of a nuclear blast. It was a lot more personal than that. She thought, an offshoot of a discarded strand of time, and the name 'Hex' tried to find a comfortable place in her memories but didn't quite manage it.

The radio crackled into life. It said, "i f you are in the open and cannot get home within a couple of minutes, go immediately to the nearest building. If there is no building nearby and you cannot reach one within a couple of minutes – "

"That's your cue to leave, I think," Peggy said, standing up. "Good luck, you two."

"I'd say thank you for your help," the Professor said, "but from what I can distantly remember of your past actions, I rather think you don't deserve the thanks."

"Fair enough, fair enough," she said. "Well, look at it this way. At least I'm not leaving you to get blasted by an unimaginable amount of pure radiation. Take it on good authority that it's an extraordinarily unpleasant way to go."

And the moment the bomb hit, the timestorm swept them away again; chaos and chronos and everything in between.