"I wasn't much help, was I?" Tegan grumbled to herself as she stared at the figure of the Doctor, barely visible, meditating at the front of the capsule.

"Not really, no…" Turlough fiddled with the comms scanner, flicking through Earth's stations. The planet, still the size of a blue-white mango, lay before them though the view screen.

"It was a rhetorical question." Tegan stared at her world. Almost home. Back to meet her- that, that… thing. "It's not me, you know. I don't care what the Doctor says. It's the Mara… it has to be."

Turlough frowned. "Why does she bother you so much?"

"I'd never do that, any of that." Tegan remembered the way her other self had macheted her way through the aliens. "I'm not a killer."

Turlough rolled his eyes. "One more time for those hard of hearing: she saved our lives. I don't know why everyone is so upset about it." Turlough glared at Tegan as if she was some sort of idiot. "I for one am very happy about that. You should be too."

"All those creatures…" Tegan stared out through the foggy portal. "I'm not a murder."

"Then what are you, Tegan?" Turlough sighed. "What good are you?"

"Excuse me?" Tegan bristled. "Who do you think you are?"

"Again with the endless arrogance!" Turlough punched the display panel with his fist. "I was stranded on your planet for years and you know the worst thing about living there, what made it such an endless hell? The fact that each and every single person there thought that they knew best, that they've got it all sorted out. Imagine living among them, knowing the whole time that they're nothing more than wet bags of sopping molecules, worshipping primitive deities and waving their 'technology' around as if it's something impressive, and not being able to tell them to their face, one at a time, that they don't know a damn thing."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"You! So she's a killer so what? She's killing all the right people so that we can survive. What would you have done? Screamed? What do you ever do?" Turlough was on a roll now, his anger spewing unchecked. "I'll tell you: complain. Bitch and complain. You don't know how to fight, you have no technical ability and you have diplomatic skills that will probably someday start World War Three. Yet you still walk around mouthing off left and right, and most often to me." Turlough drew a breath, delighting in Tegan's stunned expression. "At least she's effective. So what if she's a killer? Most of your planets leaders were in the armed forces, they've all killed and you honor them. The world doesn't stop once you've killed someone Tegan, the world doesn't change, it doesn't end just because you've become a murder. The next day you've still got to go shopping for crisps and milk." Turlough gathered up his data wafers and headed back to the Doctor at the front of the ship. "Not that I'd know of course."

Tegan found herself looking dumbly at where he had been sitting. Shocked, hurt and remembering….

The Mara. The Mara, inside her mind, digesting her slowly. Analyzing and commenting… Not just a parasite- the Mara was worse than that, it editorialized as it devoured too, echoing Turlough's words.

Ineffective.

Lifting every fear she'd ever known to her face, showing her how small and puerile she really was…

Useless.

Worthless.

Pathetic.

Tegan was back, remembering the experience all over again, hating it, reviling it, detesting it, wishing it would stop, stop, please god not again

notagainohgodnodoctorhelpmepleasehelpme...

Ace shuffled slowly up the dark street, trying to limp with style.

It wasn't easy, but she hoped that her dress gave her the illusion of cool, assuming no one got close enough to realize her face was a bloodied mess.

Act casual; don't look rushed.

The trouble with trying to outwit a viscous space bitch wearing a TARDIS battle suit was that said bitch could travel through time. Technically, if Ace could get back to her bike, she could too, but right now she was exposed in all eleven dimensions; a duck sitting on an erupting volcano about to be sucked into a black hole.

She'd get it back. She'd get there first. She had to. She'd take it somewhere safe. Back to the Doctor, but right now Ace really wished she had a decent pair of sunglasses right now.

Added moucho cool points, especially at night.

God, was that woman what she looked like back when she was into leather and ass-kicking? Ace hoped not. She suddenly felt terribly, terribly old.

Her broken toes were killing her. Regardless, the bums kept their distance and no leather clad harpies descended from the night sky. Yet.

After Kadiatu had kindly right hooked the whore into the nearest skyscraper, she'd nodded at Ace before leaping after her prey wearing what only Ace could imagine was a magical suit made of shifting force fields.

Typical. Ace never was much one for the latest fashions. Hell, she'd worn a dress to a rave for Christ's sake. Not to mention one that was over two hundred years old.

Ace had broken a promise to herself; she'd called Kadiatu for help using the ring the Doctor had left her. Not that she didn't trust the genetically engineered bio-weapon that the Doctor had seen, for some reason, to imbue with Time Lord powers; she genuinely liked the woman. Liked in the kind of appreciative way that one 'likes' the sun; it's wonderful, kept at a comfortable distance of several million miles. Up close it's another thing entirely. Ace pressed her aching limbs to walk faster.

Ace turned the corner. And there was her bike, right where she left it. And her purse… where the hell was her purse?