The TARDIS
The Doctor waited until the door shut behind Ace, then fiddled with the console with his back turned. Kyris had already disappeared into the TARDIS interior. "So where are we going, then?" Ace demanded.
The Doctor shrugged. "Away from here."
"To check on the Brigadier?"
"No, I don't think he's in any danger. Not because Sarah Jane told the Master what he wanted to hear," he added without looking. But knowing that Ace was going to object anyway. "But because he knows I'm here. He knows he's finally got my attention."
"Which means what?" Ace frowned. The Doctor still wasn't looking at her, and she knew it was because he didn't want her questioning him further on Kyris' unexpected healing abilities. But that, Ace had decided, would wait. There were more pressing needs to be addressed. She moved away from the door, deliberately acting as if she were leaving the console room, then whirling suddenly to face the Doctor. Who, of course, had conveniently moved around the console so his back was still toward her. "So, what's his next move, if he isn't going to go after anyone else?" Ace prodded.
The Doctor's shoulders moved in an elaborate shrug, and Ace blew an annoyed sigh. Fine, if he wanted to ignore her, she was happy to oblige. Just as she reached the interior door, however, the Doctor spoke: "He's going to wait for me to come after him. Then he'll set some kind of trap, attempt to take someone hostage in exchange for this." He held up the disk, still without turning around, then somehow prestidigitated it into his pocket. Or up his sleeve; either way, Ace no longer saw the small disk flashing between his fingers as he returned his hand to the various levers and buttons on the console.
"Well, if you know that's what he's up to, are you still going after him?"
"Of course." The Doctor's voice was weary. "That's how the game is played. Only this time, he's raised the stakes. He wanted to be quite clear in his intentions."
"They won't stop, will they?" Ace asked slowly, pulling absently at the end of her partially unraveled braid. "The killings, I mean. He won't stop even if you give him that thing."
The Doctor shook his head, finally turning to meet her gaze, his eyes as weary as his voice. "No. They won't. So we'll just have to find a way to keep him away from this."
"We could destroy it." Ace and the Doctor both turned to face the now-open interior door. Kyris stood there, half-in and half-out of the room. "Then he'd have no reason to kill anyone else."
"He doesn't need a reason," the Doctor disagreed. "You don't know him like I do, Kyris. If we destroy this--" the disk reappeared in his hand "--he'd try to kill everyone who ever traveled with me, out of spite. Or at least us." Ace winced at the brutal honesty in the Doctor's voice. "And there is no way I will allow him access to Susan." His voice was flat, cold.
Kyris stilled. "Of course not." His eyes flashed with understanding before he turned to leave, then hesitated, giving Ace a half-smile. "Right. I've forgotten the way to the bedrooms, would you mind?"
It was Ace's turn to hesitate, but the Doctor had turned back to fiddling with the console, so she smiled back at Kyris and took the arm he offered. "I think a quick stop at the baths first, eh?"
oOo
They were nearly back at the bedrooms before Kyris spoke. "I need to know something."
"What?" Ace asked cautiously. The race to save Sarah Jane's life had taken a lot out of her, out of all of them, and she for one was starting to feel it. She and Kyris had each used the shower facilities near the TARDIS pool, and that had helped, as had changing into sets of the clean jogging outfits stored there. But there was still blood on their own clothes, which they'd left in heaps outside their changing rooms, for the TARDIS to work its mysterious cleaning magic on. Blood on their clothes, and heavy in their minds.
The whole time, Ace had felt the weight of Kyris's expectation that she would bring up his healing abilities again, and had taken a perverse sort of pleasure in not even hinting at it. Oh, she had questions, loads of them, but intended to wait until the right moment to ask them. Now, he was too much on guard; she could practically hear him inventing elaborate ways to put her off. Much better this way. Never let a chap think he had you figured out. Not this early in the game.
"What do you want to know?" Ace hoped it wasn't anything to do with murder; she'd had more than enough of that for one day. And he'd already extracted quite a bit of her own life story out of her, the first time she'd shown him around the TARDIS. More than she'd meant to share with him, or anyone else for that matter. She realized with a start that she'd told Kyris things about herself, blurted them out, really, that she hadn't even told the Doctor. Something else to file away.
Kyris paused in the hall just outside their bedroom doors, ducking his head in an embarrassed manner, hands thrust into pockets as if he didn't know what to do with them. "I want to know about my father," Kyris replied softly.
Ace blinked in surprise; he'd been so adroit at avoiding the subject the last time they were alone together that she'd expected it to be a long time before he brought it up. If ever. "I don't know anything about him except what I've seen the last few days, and what my mother told me. I'm curious," he admitted. "He isn't anything like I expected, but at the same time, he is."
Ace glanced around self-consciously. "Look, let's take this inside, shall we?" She pushed his door open without asking permission, and he followed her inside and sat easily on the edge of the bed.
Ace dragged herself over to sit next to him, plopping heavily on the bed and forcing herself not to fall backwards onto its welcoming surface and sink into an exhausted sleep. If Kyris wanted to talk about his father, she wasn't about to set things back any just because she was a little tired. Although how he'd bounced back so quickly after what he'd done for Sarah was as much a mystery as the healing itself…… "What do you want to know?" Stay on subject, Ace. "And why don't you just ask him yourself?" She held her breath on that one; had she gone too far? After all, he'd met his father for the first time under circumstances that were hardly conducive to starting a friendly father-son relationship. Not when all that was on their minds was murder and attempted murder.
"I can't." The statement held a hint of panic, but Ace was glad he didn't seem upset at her for asking it. "I'm just not ready for any cozy little father-son chats, not yet. You've been traveling with him for a long time haven't you?" Ace nodded. "I'd really like to hear what you have to say about him, before I talk to him myself. Do you mind?"
Ace shook her head. "Course not." She understood Kyris' nervousness; she knew she'd probably react the same way if she ever met her own father. In fact, it was kind of funny that she and Kyris had that in common, that their fathers didn't even know they existed, in the most literal sense of the words. Ace remembered asking her mother about her father when she was small, maybe five or six, when other kids were teasing her for not having one. She also remembered her mother's response quite clearly, every word of it: "He don't know about you, luv, and I don't know where he is, so don't worry about it no more." And that, as far as Ace's mother was concerned, had been that. The subject had never been raised again, by either of them. "I'll do my best," Ace said, returning to the present. She held up a restraining hand as he opened his mouth. "But you'll have to answer some of my questions, too. Fair's fair." She grinned cheekily at him.
"You want to know about the healing." Kyris was very quiet as he stared down at his hands. "I promise to tell you what I can."
"Later," Ace guessed, then smiled at his nod. "Got it. So what do you want to know?"
"Everything. What regeneration is he? He was third when he was--that is, when I was--well, you know." He floundered to a stop as Ace nodded her understanding. "What does he like to do?" Then, wistfully: "What's he like?"
Ace nibbled on her bottom lip while she considered the barrage of questions. "He's seventh, so there's been three of him since your moth--since E-Space," she corrected herself awkwardly. "He likes to go round rescuing people and helping them, which you've seen hasn't changed. You seem to be a lot like him, at least that way," she continued slowly, not caring if he disliked the comparison or not. He'd asked for her opinion, after all. "He likes to travel, doesn't like to spend too much time sitting still. He doesn't," she added, "like to have too much time on his own, where he can think about things."
"What things?" Kyris asked, intrigued. That sounded like what he wanted to know. How his father's mind worked, or at least as close as someone could get without actually being him.
"Personal things," Ace said, giving the door a guilty look. "I probably shouldn't have said that; it took him nearly five years to talk to me about anything personal, and I don't think he really meant to. I should go now," she added, standing up abruptly but not moving away from the bed. "I'm glad you want to get to know him, but asking me is the same as talking to your mother, getting it second-hand."
"But you've been with him for a lot longer than she was," Kyris argued. "Surely there must be something more you can tell me?" He smiled coaxingly.
Ace felt herself giving in at the sight of that smile. "He likes to help people, he has a very strong sense of what's right and what's wrong." She nibbled her lip again, choosing her words carefully. "He feels very responsible for the people who travel with him, I think you already know that." Kyris nodded. "I guess what I'm trying to say is that he's having just as rough a time of it right now as you are. It may not look like it, but he really does care. He just likes to keep himself to himself, if you know what I mean. He's very private, and I think I've already said way, way too much. I really should go now." She shifted uneasily, suddenly uncomfortable with the turn the discussion had taken. Time for a strategic withdrawal.
Kyris' hand on her wrist startled her. She gazed down at him in surprise. "Please, don't go," he said, his voice hesitant. "I didn't mean to make you feel uncomfortable. I just...I just wanted to see what he was like. What you thought he was like. And you told me what I wanted to hear."
"What was that?" Ace asked, allowing herself to be drawn back down beside him.
"That he's a good man," Kyris replied simply. "I kind of knew it, from hints my mother gave me, but I'd also got in the habit of resenting him. Because he wasn't around," he added, looking to see if Ace understood him. She nodded encouragingly, either not noticing his hand still on her wrist or not minding. "Especially when my mother was killed. It still hurts, hurts a lot." His voice was low and filled with pain. "I could tell it hurt him too, but I was too angry to care."
"And now you do?"
He nodded. "I didn't expect to, not this soon," he said slowly. "Seeing him, how he was with Sarah Jane, made me realize how wrong I'd been. I expected him to be cold, but he's not, even if he tries to make people think he is. I was willing to believe it, because it was what I'd told myself to expect, you know? From someone who couldn't be bothered to check in on Romana, see if she'd changed her mind and needed a lift back home or anything. Or at least see how she was getting on."
"But now you understand it wasn't like that, right?" Ace pressed, anxious for Kyris to resolve his expectations with the way his father actually was. Whatever way that might be; no one seemed able to really get the Doctor, but Kyris of anyone had the best chance.
"Right," he agreed, without hesitation. "He wasn't ignoring her, he didn't abandon her, he just got caught up in the next crisis."
"And the next one after that, and the next one after that," Ace finished. "Yeah, that's about right."
"When we were back in Dr. Sullivan's office, it seemed like he was treating my mother's death as a puzzle piece--trying to figure out where it fit in," Kyris continued after a reflective moment. "But then, when he was so desperate to save Sarah Jane, I realized something."
"What?" Ace was intrigued by Kyris' apparent change in attitude; he hadn't struck her as a particularly forgiving person, or someone whose opinions were changed by anything short of a major miracle--or catastrophe. Much like his father.
"I finally understood that he was concentrating on the living," Kyris said. "Flash of insight, call it. Right now he doesn't have time to mourn for everyone he's lost, Mother included. Not until he knows that the others are safe. Especially Susan." He smiled self-consciously. "I don't have much of a basis for that feeling, I know it isn't logical, but there it is. I could feel myself getting angrier and angrier, and all of a sudden, it was like I was watching myself from his perspective, feeling what he was feeling and seeing myself through his eyes. Suddenly I understand what my instincts were trying to tell me, that I could trust him even when my emotions told me not to. My instincts aren't always right," he admitted, "but they've rarely let me down, at least when I listen to them."
"Wow," was all Ace could say. She'd always known that the Doctor's mind worked faster than her own--that it probably worked faster than any mind ever had on Earth, up to and including Stephen Hawking--but seeing that same speed at work in Kyris was a revelation. Not only had he gone from outright hostility to what sounded suspiciously like understanding in a short period of time, but he'd done it without any outward sign that the process was even occurring, even when they were trying so desperately to save Sarah Jane's life. She made a mental note never to challenge him to a game of poker. "What brought all this on?"
Kyris shrugged self-consciously. "He's real to me now, when he never seemed it before. His companions were more real, because I got to know them through the disk. My mother never liked to talk about him, you know." Ace nodded her understanding as he looked at her. "I just assumed it was because she didn't care for him. Now, I think it's more likely because she did care for him, and that it hurt her to talk about him. But I never realized it, selfish brat that I was."
"Well, that didn't take long," Ace said lightly. "When Time Lords make up their minds, they sure do it fast. Not that I'm criticizing, mind," she added hastily as he started to frown. "I think it's great. But I also think you're talking to the wrong person." And I am desperately in need of some sleep, she thought to herself. Some of us just don't have that Gallifreyan stamina……
"Can you show me where his room is?" Ace stifled a groan but stood back up, Kyris following suit. He squeezed her wrist in silent gratitude. Ace managed a grin as she opened the door, pointed in the right direction, mumbled the number of corridors he needed to turn down, then promptly turned around and collapsed on Kyris' bed. She was too tired to go any further; he would just have to find somewhere else to doss for the night.
Kyris stared at her in amazement, then grinned ruefully. "Good night, Ace," he whispered before closing the door and heading in the direction she'd indicated. He thought he heard a mumbled response, but knew Ace would be asleep in a matter of seconds, if she wasn't already. He couldn't blame her; he was just grateful she'd managed to stay awake long enough to talk him into seeing his father, now, before he lost his nerve or built up his resentment again. They were all emotionally raw and battered after the night spent trying to save Sarah Jane's life, but that couldn't be helped. It might even be better, he was more likely to get an honest reaction from his father now, before he had time to put his defenses back in place.