"Parsley!"
"Sorry?" Turlough blinked awake, his mouth thick and gummy from his sleep. Tegan dozed fitfully by his side. At least she'd stopped screaming.
"Nothing…" The Doctor was gently stroking the casing of the generator, muttering quietly. "Just having a craving that's all… How's Tegan?"
Turlough looked over at Tegan's slumbering form. "Just bad dreams I think." Turlough considered telling the Doctor about his own disturbing dream but decided that even if the evil woman were trying to take over his mind and destroy the Universe, he'd prefer that fate to discussing his sexual fantasies with the Doctor. Instead he said, "You're sure this Mara thing isn't trying to possess her?"
"Positive," replied the Doctor. "I've seen it enough often to know. There's nothing in Tegan's head except for herself." He frowned at her discomfort, obvious even in sleep. "Which is just as well… I'm afraid we may be up against something far worse…"
Turlough looked at the him with concern. "Are you alright? You seem a bit… off."
"I'm not a carton of milk, Turlough," the Doctor frowned rubbing some grease from his elbows onto his creamy jacket. "I like to think that I have a tendency to be more humble in this regeneration…"
Turlough couldn't help but roll his eyes; he pulled himself off of the bench and slowly began to pick his way towards the cockpit.
"… No, it's true. Honestly." The Doctor protested, his face indignant. "Nonetheless, I… This… I don't understand…. This thing."
Turlough paused and stared at the device: it was as if someone had tried weld a rotten cheese cake onto a bloated metal tortoise. The yellow gunk seemed to have melted irregularly against the scuffed and battered shell, leaving stained, crusty trails that congealed in bruised brown lumps. The panel that the Doctor had pried open was spitting out tongues of blue green light that dribbled sparks onto the Timelord's shoes.
"It can't be doing this. It simply can't. There is no way that this can be causing all this dimensional instability." The Doctor seemed almost petulant. "I have disassembled and reassembled technology from a thousand sectors from the dawn of time till the very end and I cannot fathom how this works!" He bashed it with his fist and then started to suck on his throbbing pinky finger. "And, for some reason, I'm craving tortellini with a nice white wine sauce garnished with parsley."
Turlough looked at the man with bemused awe. He never quite understood how Timelords could be the superior race in the Universe. He hoped that if his own race encountered them that at least they'd put of a fight. A bleeping from the front of the cockpit called for his attention. "Doctor, we've made orbit- we're ready to land. Doctor?"
The Doctor remained crouched over the device, gently whispering, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, oblivious.
Turlough glanced back to Tegan, still unconscious, her eyelids twitching, a slender trail of drool glistening as it snailed its way down her chin.
Turlough sighed and dumped himself down in the pilot's seat and disengaged the autopilot. It was probably just as well. He had the feeling that if the Doctor were ever to fly a ship like this he'd probably wind up crashing into the nearest planet.
Calculating a descent path he checked the fob watch that the Doctor had tied to the steering column: they'd make it to the coordinates before she would. But only just.
Which, Turlough couldn't help but feel, seemed terribly convenient.
As Earth loomed large on the screen, he caught a flash of his face, a transparent reflection caught within the viewing glass set against the blackness of space and he remembered, for a moment, an image from his dream, of himself, overly muscular, strapped into black leather and spikes standing over him wearing a raven cowl and a wielding a whip in one hand while a disturbingly large Crystal gleamed in the other.
Shaking his head in disgust, Turlough dove the shuttle into the upper atmosphere, vowing never to fall sleep again.
Ever.