The Doctor had lied shamelessly to the aliens about the reason for the malfunction in their ship's power core, and gravely accepted on behalf of Earth their apologies for all the trouble they had caused. They guaranteed to have the necessary minor repairs completed by the following afternoon and be on their way.
And so after a night of rest so total that no one could even remember how they managed to get into bed, the Doctor encountered Jenny in the main hall. He had his coat on.
"Would you like breakfast, sir?" she enquired. "There's bacon, kidneys, eggs..."
"You're not fired then?" he observed, casting a glance at her dowdy maid's uniform.
"No, sir," she said, bobbing an automatic curtsey. He cocked his head quizzically on one side at her humble, head down pose and moved towards the door.
"Tell you what." He pulled the door open and with an exaggerated hop from one foot to the other jumped over the threshold. "There. Now I'm not a guest in your master's home any more and you don't have to treat me with respect if you don't want to."
Jenny's eyes flickered from side to side and she twitched a smile.
"It's just that, with things being back to normal now, I thought I should probably try to get back into the habit." She glanced down at the uniform. "And no, I'm not fired. I think we're going to pretend none of it ever happened. That means whatever I might have said gets forgotten as well."
"Well, that's fine." The Doctor half turned away. "Er, Alison should be up soon. When you see her, can you tell her to head back to the Tardis and wait for me there? I just have a short errand to run."
"So you're leaving, then?" asked Jenny, unable to keep the regret from her voice.
"Yes. Mystery solved, monsters gone, lives saved. No place for me here any more."
"And I won't see you again?"
"No." He was poised to leave but then paused, looking like a man who'd just realised he'd forgotten his keys. "Or, I mean, you could, you know..." He shrugged. "Come with us."
Jenny looked blank for a moment before the meaning of the offer permeated her mind. She started.
"Oh! Come with you?"
Cautiously she smiled in appreciation of the joke, but the Doctor's gaunt features were unmoving. His eyes were on her.
"It's not an invitation I make often."
"I..." The reality of this choice sent a shiver through her bones.
"See the world," he pressed her gently. "See other worlds. Open your mind, find out what you can be."
"No."
She silenced him with that one word.
"No?" he repeated a little forlornly, and she felt a pang of guilt at having made him unhappy. Uncertainly, she grappled with the unfamiliar concept of finding the words to express what was hidden away in her mind.
"Doctor, I would love to come and travel round the universe with you in your magic cupboard." This, at least, brought a smile, and he ducked his head as if to hide it. "But I have my job here, my parents, my home town. My life's a boring little thing, I know, but I think I want to see what I can do with it before I throw it away completely."
He nodded mournfully, and she relaxed at seeing there would be no argument.
"And then there's the Master," he added.
"Yes," she admitted. "There's him too."
"I'm a Time Lord," he whispered half under his breath. "I wish that meant I could see how this was going to come out." Briskly he shook the thought off and looked at Jenny as if he was going to be seeing her again tomorrow. "Well. It's been a privilege."
She took his formally extended hand, felt the chill of of his pale skin.
"One other thing," he said seriously before he turned to go. "Remember, whenever you're fetching his lordship's slippers or scrubbing the front step, all the money and titles in the world won't change the fact that you're worth more than everyone else in this house put together. Ask me how you'll know this."
"How will I..."
He looked her in the eye.
"Because the Doctor said so."
--------------------
Alison pushed open the Tardis doors and found the Master circling the console. He glanced up incuriously at her arrival.
"Solo, Miss Cheney? Surely the Doctor hasn't decided to stay and take the job as butler?"
She shrugged irritably.
"I didn't see him this morning. Apparently he said he had to run an errand. I don't get it, what errands could he be running round here?"
"I couldn't say." After mulling the question with raised eyebrows for a second, he leaned forward over the console. "Exactly where and when are we, anyway?"
He ran his fingertips over the controls and breathed a soft "Ah" at the displays which lit up.
"What?" asked Alison, drawing closer to look over his shoulder. He looked round.
"I think I've just worked out why the Doctor couldn't face landing here, all those years ago."
--------------------
It was a longer walk than Alison had anticipated. All the way along the main road to the coast, then left along the ridge which gave her the view down the bracken-covered slope, a hundred paces to the clifftop track, and beyond that to the sea far below. When she found him he was sitting alone just below the head of the ridge, half hidden by the bracken, his hands clasped about his drawn up knees.
Perfectly still and quiet, his white-streaked hair ruffled by the ocean breeze, he was watching two figures who sat with their backs to him, looking out at the sea from a stone bench by the track. Little detail could be made out from this distance, but one was a hunched old man in a black hat and coat, his walking stick clasped in front of him. The other was a little girl in a white dress with a mass of dark curly hair. Her legs were too short to bend at the knee over the bench, and her feet stuck straight out in front of her.
The Doctor looked up at Alison's approach and she tensed for a hostile reaction, but his expression on recognising her barely seemed to shift.
"How did you find me?"
"The Master. He said you'd be here."
"I see." He returned to his steady contemplation of the people on the bench. "And did he tell you who they are?"
"The old man is you, and..." There was one thing you didn't talk to the Doctor about. One name you didn't say. Alison had found this out very quickly and the habit was difficult to break now. But he had asked. "And the little girl is her. Jasmine."
There was only a slight twitch of the muscles around his eyes at the mention of her name.
"The Master knows a lot of things," was his sole comment.
Alison sat down beside him and for a few seconds shared the silence, watching the old man and the child on the bench, their words inaudible, lost on the wind.
"Are you okay?"
The question was impertinent, but he nodded slowly.
"Surprisingly so. I really only came down here to wallow in self pity."
He said it as if it were a joke and Alison took the easy way out, with a brief smile before she spoke again.
"So are you going down there?"
He looked round at her, and there was an ironic twist at the corner of his mouth.
"Are you going to make me explain the first law of time to you?"
Quickly she held up her hands.
"No! No!"
Satisfied, he looked away, and seemed to drift contentedly away from her, as if he would be happy to sit there all day, just watching. Watching a former version of himself and a long lost friend pass unhurriedly the time of day, their time together limitless, their future a story still to be written. Alison thought of the Doctor, her Doctor, and of how in those rare unguarded moments the vivid dark blue of his eyes, bright with life and the force of his own certainties, would slide away like steel shutters to unveil darkened windows to a world of tears and loss and loneliness. Caught unawares, she found herself swallowing hard against the lump rising in her throat, and the words coming of their own accord.
"I've never told you," she said haltingly, "How sorry I am."
As soon as it was out she regretted it, this intrusion into his privacy, and was ready for him to withdraw from her and be sarcastic, or clam up altogether. But he sat quite still for a moment, gazing on unblinkingly, and then spoke so quietly it seemed he was hoping his words would go unheard:
"No one ever has. There was no one to mourn her but me."
He shifted and sat back, supporting himself on his palms pressed against the ground behind him. The sigh he gave while shifting his focus up to the sky was mild and wistful.
"But I am okay. I really am. Apparently missing her isn't something that's going to go away by itself. I suppose I'll always have the feeling she ought to be here, with me. If I think too much about what happened..." He pressed his palm to the centre of his chest, fingers spread. "... It gets hard to breathe." He hesitated for an instant, lips parted, face still, as if trying to recall what he had been saying. "But there was a time when I would have written her whole existence out of history if I could, just so I wouldn't have to feel that way any more. Now..." A gust of wind brought a peal of happy laughter to their ears. The old man was enlivened, gesticulating with his hands in describing something, and the girl wriggled energetically in her seat, her dark curls bouncing with the tossing of her head. The Doctor smiled softly. "The past isn't gone, what we're seeing here will always exist. Nothing can change that. How could I say I'd be better off never having met her?"
Alison didn't attempt to think of something to say in reply. They sat there quietly together for a bit longer. At last the Doctor placed his hands on his knees with a sudden air of decision and pushed himself upright.
"Right, come on. Worlds in peril don't just save themselves, do they? I'm sure we're needed somewhere."
Alison jumped up to join him and they walked away up the slope side by side. The Doctor looked back just once, and something glimmered in the corner of his eye. Then he blinked it away and mustered a strong, confident stride away, and onward.
END