Nyssa had enough sense to pretend to be asleep until the Doctor and Tegan awoke. She had been half-roused by their almost silent but long conversation and surprised when she had finally opened her eyes once their breathing told her they were asleep. She'd heard very little of it but they'd certainly seemed on good terms, a feeling that was confirmed when Nyssa turned to look at them and found herself impolitely staring.
Tegan lay on her back, dead to the world, and the Doctor lay on his side so close to her that his forehead rested against the crook of Tegan's long neck. Nyssa wondered if their positions had been achieved without their knowing it, a consequence of simple unconscious proximity or if Tegan (and it must have been Tegan) had brought the Time Lord to rest as he was, coiled next to her, head on her shoulder. Then she wondered briefly if he'd worsened and this was purely necessity but dismissed that in light of their long, quiet conversation. One of them had confronted more demons than the circumstances already had inflicted, and facing sudden mortality, she realized that it would have only been the Doctor. Despite his court-worthy manners in every other circumstance involving women, he now seemed deeply content in Tegan's embrace, as if the Universe had finally meted him out a measure of justice in the midst of yet another nightmare. For her part Tegan seemed more at peace as well, as if some need of her own had been filled.
Nyssa stared at them for a long moment before returning to sleep herself, wondering about what the future might now hold. It left her much to think about after she awoke and lay still, listening to them rise and ready themselves for another dark day. She rose only when Tegan clattered the dishes loudly enough to have woken her anyway. They ate quickly, looking at the ground tracking planner and guessing the extent of their travel time. The Doctor told them that his awareness of the temporal displacement was growing steadily but slowly, not enough of a factor to be a concern and that, ironically, it seemed the presence of the TARDIS was having a stabilizing effect. It made only more annoying that Acquintal Miros had been paranoid enough to deny them the timeship.
The darkness welcomed them again but the lights came on as soon as they were outside the door. Tegan looked around at the smooth, rounded gray walls for a camera, feeling peevish enough this morning that she wanted to do something rude into it. She adjusted the fit of the holster as they set out and found the darkness not quite as oppressive today for some reason. She glanced behind the Doctor's back as she walked by his side and caught Nyssa's eye. She jerked her head slightly at him unseen and Nyssa nodded in turn and offered her a fractional smile, which Tegan knew immediately meant he was doing somewhat better. She had seen Nyssa using the bioscanner out of his sight just before they'd left the latest set of crew quarters and thanked heaven that she had another woman to communicate with on their travels. There were many things Time Lords and men could do but unraveling the complex, silent messages of women was beyond the reach of either.
The stench of death met them after a few hours, a kill only a few days old; the young woman they had seen through the air vent earlier was sprawled in a puddle of thick blackened blood, face down in the juncture of a short hallway. Tegan looked up and down the brief length of it as Nyssa turned away. "Good place for an ambush, I guess. Not much room for a warning in either direction."
The Doctor nodded as he finished closing the eyes above the torn-open throat. "And they still have a rudimentary sense to work in teams. We may be dealing with a particularly nasty group this time if they're still about."
Nyssa moved away from the body slowly, beginning to hedge down the shortened hallway, "Why do you think the ones who did this are any worse off that the ones before now?" She was nervous, uncharacteristically resting her elegant hand on the butt of the pistol.
"Because the body is intact." the Doctor answered, standing slowly, one hand against the polished wall.
Tegan frowned in agreement and moved closer to him as they drew even with Nyssa and continued onward. "They've killed before for… food." Her eyes rolled in quiet horror, "but this time they killed to kill."
The Doctor, busy wiping his hand against his coat, met the eyes of both women. "Exactly, they seemed to have struck from more than the motivation of hunger. I can't imagine they killed her to have the body available for later. Of course, it could have been a random thing. She might have surprised them in the dark and they just reacted. I don't suppose we'll ever really know but best to be prepared that those who did this require us to be even more cautious."
And, of course, they were. Somehow. Tegan pulled her weapon and simply held it in her hand with the safety engaged. They slowed and listened for minutes at a time when reaching the "T"-junctures of the corridors that were open at both ends of the turns and when they were guided around the "L:-shaped bends took them on the outside so as to see down them as far as their guidelights would permit. Several times they heard scampering or howling but never in a way that was directed at them and twice they could see figures crouching in the darkness that ran when the lights came up. It was Nyssa, with her trained, scientific eye, who noticed the difference in the ones they were seeing as they neared the central chamber housing the unstable Temporal Initiation Field.
"Doctor, if I'm not mistaken, the deeper we go, the older these poor people seem."
Ever the teacher, he nodded. "Come to think of it, you're right. They do seem older. Why might that be?"
Nyssa thought for a moment, of cellular decay, of temporal mechanics, of genetic mutations, and such. "The chronomitic particles. They've developed a sort of radiation-induced progeria. If that's the case, depending on their life-spans, these people have less time than a few months or weeks. I doubt a medical team has been able to do even a scanned examination of the ones who are this deep. That would also explain their more violent tendencies, the effect of premature senile dementia, if their race suffers from such a thing." She hesitated for a moment and looked about, "I don't believe it should affect Tegan and myself because of our time in the TARDIS. Am I correct, Doctor?"
He nodded solemnly, pity in his eyes and anger. "Very. You've built a resistance to chronomitic influences because of experiencing temporal grace, and the TARDIS is able to sense all three of us because of our telepathic resonance with her. Doubtless she's doing what she can."
Tegan looked up at him then. "She can even sense me?"
The Doctor nodded, suddenly sheepish, his hand moving habitually to the back of his neck. "Unlike when we were back in the Console room, I can sense her awareness of you now, Tegan. She was aware of you through me before but she is familiar with your brain wave resonance now since you touched the synaptic interface. The TARDIS is watching out for all three of us. Glad to have a pair of friendly eyes as it were."
Tegan's own eyes narrowed and she stopped and looked around. "Should this Miros hear us talking about this? What if it puts the TARDIS in danger if he thinks we're getting any sort of help? He was paranoid enough before about her."
"Hmph, well, we don't know that he can hear us but obviously he knows where we are somehow because the guidelights shut down and reactivate outside of each crew quarter we use to rest. Nevertheless, he shouldn't be able to be a danger to the old girl, not with the security shields that I left in place."
Tegan's mouth twisted a bit. "And he shouldn't've been able to poison a Gallifreyan, either."
The Doctor's hand fell at that and after a look at the two women, they did indeed drop the subject, moving another few kilometers before they came upon the next subject worthy of discussion, a great deal of it. Tegan regarded the huge, jagged crack that ran the circumference the tunnel with determined frustration. It looked as if a giant's hand had grabbed the corridor on the outside and snapped it, then laid it roughly back into place. The lights, tiny and endless, that had guided them so very deep into the heart of Ecosia Beta stopped on the other side of it, all three trails of them. She bit her tongue and watched the Doctor as he examined the edges of the crack, no more than 10 or 12 centimeters apart but enough to have broken the circuit that carried the power.
Nyssa also remained silent but her eyes were searching the corridor behind them and forward as far as she could see for another set of doors. It was nearing the time they would have retired and it was perhaps best that they tackle this complication with some rest behind them. She was also looking for door that may have lead into any of the equipment rooms they were also now passing. If they could build a very rudimentary time machine they would certainly have something that could bridge a circuit, provided the code keys would let them into those rooms as well.
Tegan knelt down next to the Doctor as he rose back onto his knees. "What did this? An earthquake?"
"Well, a moonquake, one probably caused by the geologic stress of the time distortion. That should have eased once they regained partial control of the T.I. F. The circuits have been snapped clean, as has the strength member supporting this section of the tunnel." He pointed at the metal bar running just under the surface of the polished rock that served as walls, floor, and ceiling. "Ingenious really. They created a support system for the tunnels by inserting superheated coils into the stone and then pouring through the molten stone an amalgam of several metals with a higher specific density to reinforce the openings they were cutting." Looking closer in what little light they had, she could see that what had seemed like a metal bar running behind the rock actually was fused with it.
"And when this thing cracked, the power lines went with it?" She pointed at the tiny dead light immediately on the other side of the gap from its lit companion.
"Apparently so." The Doctor looked a bit grim but undefeated. "Even if we had some sort of portable illumination it wouldn't be enough to be warned if our Ecosian friends were about to spring upon us. We can't go forward without the lights being repaired even if the blast-corridors are shorter. It should be as simple as reconnecting the line as the right location."
If he'd been well, and she'd still been with him not of her own choice, Tegan would've had an answer for all the things that "should be" and ended up not. Instead she looked up at Nyssa as the other woman joined t hem but remained standing, rubbing her arms lightly against the chill. "I doubled back as far as I could. There is a set of quarters about sixty meters back and one of the small personal computers is there. Perhaps it would be of some use."
The Doctor stood up quickly, a smile on his face. "Good work but you shouldn't have gone alone."
Nyssa sighed very lightly. "We're running out of time, Doctor," she said quietly and turned to lead them back to the crew quarters. The computer was back in the living area and yielded quickly to the Doctor's fiddling courtesy of the small collection of tools in his pockets. Inside were several optical circuits but none large enough in itself to bridge the centimeters' wide gap they had examined.
"There's another problem," the Doctor commented as he fingered the handful of clear chips strung through with nearly invisible gold wires. "These are hardly sophisticated enough for industrial signal transfer. You'd need a much larger capacity element. They could melt in hours and leave us in the dark completely. In fact, I have no doubt they will."
Tegan frowned. She knew they couldn't press on under those circumstances but they had little choice. She came to her feet and looked around the set of rooms. Her eyes went from the computer to the kitchen area and she smiled for a moment before killing her own hopes. No sense letting them build up yet. "These people are a bit less advanced than Nyssa's or especially yours, Doc. Maybe we don't need a more fancy circuit, just a much bigger one." She pointed at the cooking unit between the sink and the freezer.
The Doctor looked at her quizzically for a moment, then the smile she had kept off her own face lit his and he stood, "Once again, Tegan… you take my breath away!" He leapt past her with energy they hadn't seen in days and immediately began tugging on the back of the cooking unit. It came free of the wall after the fourth tug and he was able to begin levering it downward. Tegan and Nyssa moved quickly to help him, sharp-tongued in their warnings to him as he exerted himself against the appliance. As they succeeded in lowering it, face front, to the ground, the needed heavier circuit came into view, a thick, black, round cable wired directly through the wall.
Tegan allowed herself a smile but stopped the Doctor when he reached for it. "Wait! Everything we've touched has worked down here. It's only been sitting a few months. That thing could be live. Isn't there some way to cut the power off?"
The Doctor stopped for a moment to address her concern, certain that there was no danger. "This should be perfectly safe. You doubtless recalled, as I should have, that your stoves and ovens on Earth need heavier voltages but they also had grounding circuits, and should here as well."
Tegan scowled but nodded at the same time and moved away as he gave a sharp yank and the cable came free, spitting sparks for a moment as the Doctor fell onto his backside and nearly collided with the table. He sat on the floor looking almost childish for a moment and smiled up at them. Another smart tug liberated the short but heavy cord from the back of the face-down cooking unit.
Ten minutes later they were back in the corridor, the Doctor on his knees and then on his stomach as he worked a narrow section of the cable he'd freed down into the opening, careful to keep the insulation between himself and the circuits. His voice, strained from his position and exertions reached them in breathy spurts as he cut and trimmed and adjusted the improvised linkage. "Ah, excellent. The diameters of the cable circuit… and the diameters of those embedded in the wall are the same… Now it just remains to find… the one carrying the signal for…" a thin stream of brightness rippled through the corridor before them, "for the lights."
Nyssa and Tegan returned his smile and watched as the lights came to life again under his skilled hands on the opposite side of the tunnel. Two thirds of the light had been returned to them but the trail of lights in the ceiling remained dark. Nyssa pulled on his arm as the Doctor looked up at them, his mind spinning through ways to insert the section of cord into the gap nearly three meters above them. "You've done enough, Doctor. We'll take on that one in the…. when we wake up."
Tegan took the other arm and shoved him back toward the crew quarters they had cannibalized. "Come on, that other microwave cooker thing is still fine. I can zap us some food in there. It's been a long day and half a long night or is your Time Lording circuit out of whack?"
Before they left the area, Nyssa set up two of the perimeter scanners, reasoning they should put up warning around the repairs since they didn't want the affected Ecosians near the improvised pieces that were in easy reach of curious fingers. She wondered briefly why they hadn't found any dead Ecosians near the still-live open circuits but then decided she didn't want to think about where they would've ended up.
The Time Lord was in front of them as they went back toward the crew quarters not so much to lead them but because he was reminded he would be pushed from behind otherwise. Nyssa produced the codekey and was about to open the door again when something shrieked not far away, not in pain or anything else that could have been anything but rage. Five of the demented Ecosians were edging into the long pool of light from the direction of the repair. They looked worse, older, broken-toothed and starved, days from turning on each other. Two of them were nearly naked. Nyssa gasped and fumbled with the lock as Tegan drew the weapon at her hip. The Doctor made eye contact with the leader of the group and never broke it as he shoved both women inside the opening door.
Tegan's quick preparation of food, and Nyssa's tending to the Doctor took place under the accompaniment of a nerve-wracking hour of banging and shrieking outside the door. Nyssa scored two sharp tears in the metal near the window and hung a black cloth from somewhere over it again, this time sealing the bottom, too, so that no light could ease around the sides. It took several minutes afterward for the noises to stop.
Nyssa glanced toward the silence and leaned on the countertop near the door. "I wonder if that's the range of their retention, twelve minutes or so."
Tegan looked up from the plates she was setting in front of the Doctor and the place for Nyssa. Hungry as a bear she had eaten herself while she was cooking, "As long as they're gone in the morning is all I care about. I don't fancy shooting my way through five of them and trying to fix it so that they won't eat one another." She left them to prepare herself to sleep, only dully realizing her timing was off several minutes later. She should've gotten ready last and saved the Doctor the trouble of maneuvering around Nyssa's finding out that Tegan had been asleep next to him. Tegan smiled thinly. Oh, well, what he didn't think she knew wouldn't hurt him and she wondered a little uncomfortably herself if Nyssa had seem them last night. It seemed so long ago after this day that she almost wouldn't have remembered it herself. She looked into the mirror over the sink in the bath and looked away.
It did feel like a month since she'd last rested but more than she remembered the time, she remembered her feelings, the rush in her gut as the Doctor had allowed her to hold him, his voice more felt than heard, the strange sensation of his skin warming against her own in the few places where it met. And then she fought to put the feelings aside, focusing on the necessity of what she was doing, knowing she ought not to confuse herself. It was easy enough when the Doctor hadn't known she was beside him but more confusing when he had not only permitted her nearness but welcomed it. She forced herself to remember that for this very brief time, he was vulnerable and likely to draw on any source of strength, herself included, more than even he was aware. Letting herself get confused would simply take advantage of him and worsen things when this was over. Knowing why he had withdrawn didn't make him any more likely to overcome it for her or anyone else. That was up to him, and certainly not something he should deal with in the middle of a desperate situation.
The Time Lord had worked out the timing for her regardless, going into the bath last and emerging to find Nyssa dead asleep and Tegan forcing herself to stay awake in the bottom bunk as she waited. She knew he was still uncomfortable with the whole arrangement, needed or not, and took the initiative when he emerged, his hair damp and already shivering as he stood not looking at her, seeming befuddled and so deceptively young in his striped trousers and untucked shirt. Tegan stood and dropped onto the wide bunk opposite the one where she'd been sitting beneath Nyssa's. She was still wearing her cleaned tank top and trousers and would have been comfortable ditching them but didn't want a dead Time Lord on her hands. She rolled back against the wall and bunched the blankets into her hand.
"Come on, it's been a really long day. You need to rest." She made it n statement and an order, her voice quiet but with its bossiest edge, as if she were distancing herself from the situation, reminding him of the reasons she could so well aggravate him. Her tone and the fact that she wasn't really looking at him made things a bit easier as she expected. The Doctor put his back to her has he sat down on the edge of the bed, his eyes on Nyssa's still form. He lay down slowly, becoming more aware of his tiredness as he did. He wondered how the Humans and other races that lacked a Gallifreyan's usual stamina put up with this business of needing sleep. When his head finally reached the pillow, he realized Tegan's arm was under the curve of his neck. Overridden by his emotional tension, which admittedly was nothing like it had been the first two nights, the muscles there began to relax immediately as they were touched by the wave of heat from his companion's arm. The Doctor closed his eyes and reached his outer hand across his chest to take hold of Tegan's as she pulled the covers and the thermal blanket over them both.
Tegan turned on her side slightly when the Doctor took her hand and kept hold of it as her free arm coiled against his near shoulder, spooning against him at an angle made slightly awkward because of their heights. She crooked the arm under his neck and brushed her fingertips over his forehead. "It's just me, Doc. Just Tegan. Rest. We're another day closer and you're still the clever bastard you always were."
"I'm afraid you were the clever one this time. I was only the repairman," he answered quietly, his eyes closing as the heat slowly built up from Tegan's body. She felt the muscles of his back spasming as they relaxed. The heat wasn't quite to the point yet where he could begin to lower himself into the healing trance and he was almost too tired to start it but needed to stay awake until he could. "What made you think there would be a heavier line leading into the cooking unit?" He was asking more to stay awake than anything now, but did want to know.
Unseen, Tegan scowled at the bottom of the top bunk. "I was late getting to the airport my first day on the job because my Aunt Vanessa was going to have her range installed that morning. She wanted to be there for the bloke to put it in and we ended up rushing. The range was sitting half-way out in the kitchen with this great big plug hanging off it. I wonder if the people who ended up with her flat had it put in."
The Doctor opened his eyes and turned his head, trying to meet Tegan's gaze but unable; she was staring off into the middle distance with a firmness working its way back into her chin. "I'm sorry."
"Don't be, Doc. She was killed by a monster you were trying to stop. That's part of the reason I stayed to help you after you regenerated. I didn't know what was going on on Logopolis aside from a bunch of math but I'd figured out no court on Earth was ever going to bring the Master to justice. We might not have gotten him but we wrecked his plan to wreck the Universe. I'll take that for something until he's done for." She looked down at him then. He certainly didn't look like a man ready to chase down monsters at the moment but he would recover and be his annoying, almost inexhaustible, lecturing self as soon as this was over... and she'd meant it about owing her a dinner and meeting some fascinating, rational, decent people, the sort reflected in the mind of the TARDIS.
The Doctor tightened his grip on Tegan's hand, felt the life pulsing through it, like fire beneath satin. He suddenly knew he wouldn't dare open his eyes and was glad Tegan couldn't detect the pheromonal shift of his body, one he was too tired to have been aware of and control till now. Or could she subconsciously? He could still tell she was watching him closely and the hand touching his forehead now occasionally tugged lightly at his hair. He couldn't remember the last time he'd felt the normal changes that happened in these situations but he found he was only making a one-hearted attempt to get them under control. There was too much going through his mind at once, not simply because of Tegan's nearness but the reminder that the heat emanating from her was because she was Human. Human, with only one life to spend on her existence, and she had chosen to spend part of that one life defying the Galaxy's evils with him.
Few things could motivate someone to such a decision. Revenge was one side of that coin and it nearly terrified him to think about the other, that he might have so little time left to let that other touch him again, and that he was sure that Tegan was likely no longer here out of revenge. This change, this enforced contact, had been so easy for her and she had gone out of her way to make it easy for him. The old confusion returned with the reminder of his sudden mortality, one that helped quell the older feelings stirring within him again. "How do you stand it?" He said suddenly, disjointedly, and Tegan's hand on his head, trying to coax him rest, stopped for a moment.
"Stand what?"
The Doctor did open his eyes then, meeting her dark ones squarely even as he watched her fingers move, not admitting to himself that he could see her pupils were dilated beyond what the darkness would have called for and the heat coming from her was more than it would have normally been had she been alone or that her own scent had changed. "Dealing with… death, with it being so close? Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the latest bit of trouble that I forget those of you who are with me aren't facing the same fate I normally might… to simply regenerate or I just press on assuming I'll be able to keep everything on course. If someone stopped me and asked, well, of course I know what could happen but…"
"Doc, stop it. You're exhausted; you're not used to that. You've been poisoned. We've been in this badly-lit horror flick for days now and Adric's not long been gone." She sighed and shook her head. "I can't speak for everyone who's ever bummed a ride in the TARDIS but if I get knocked off tomorrow I'll have had a life that most people couldn't imagine and seen things billions never will. How many air hostesses can say they've boarded flights to other planets?"
He laughed quietly, his eyes still closed, and it shook both of them in the growing warmth. "I think she told my father the same thing when she left with him," he said quietly, his consciousness slipping down into the healing trance.
Tegan looked down at the semi-conscious Time Lord, curious as she started to finally fall asleep herself. He'd never mentioned his family before and she had a rule about family that extended to everyone much less the Doctor: Never ask unless invited. She guessed she'd been invited. "When who left with him?"
The Doctor turned toward her, opening his eyes for one last time before retreating, "When my mother left Earth with him."
"Left… Earth?"
The Doctor smiled slightly and turned away from Tegan but only so that he could back toward her warmth more closely, his backside nestled up against her thighs. "Yes, yes, left Earth. I don't suppose I ever told you… My mother was Human."
Tegan came awake and her breath caught in her throat; her eyes fell to the top of the now-blond head down from her own. Too many implications went through her head, too many pieces suddenly fit. Despite her exhaustion she lay awake for a time, until the Doctor's cool breath on her arm had become almost as warm as her own.