Nyssa remained still after she'd woken to the muffled voices of her friends'. She felt guilty for unintentionally eavesdropping but anything else would have made the situation worse, especially now that the Doctor was, at the same time, growing more symptomatic and more comfortable with the respite Tegan provided. Of course, she had known the Doctor's mother was Human; she had given him an extensive examination during the few more peaceful parts of their journey to Castrovalva as he floated peacefully in the now-jettisoned Zero Room. She also knew that Tegan had or would soon put the pieces together that his parentage meant compatibility on both physical and genetic levels. But the revelation also told her that the Doctor was far from himself, and unaccustomed to the symptoms of exhaustion; he was going to be very ill-at-ease, perhaps, if or when he realized what his muttered comment would imply, especially at the time and place he spoken it.
Nyssa sighed quietly and once again made sure she was the last to rise. She needed the extra sleep regardless after the time she had spent contemplating her two friends and the journey they might take beyond this one. Such an unexpected complication, she thought wearily, as she headed out of the door behind them, back into the flickering darkness. The walls of the tunnel seemed closer "today", as if her musings had trapped them in a situation beyond the one already holding them in thrall. She wondered as much what was going through Tegan's mind as she catered to the ramblings of her own. She was angry with herself that she was having trouble concentrating on what change to the formula they now had for the Doctor would result in a permanent antidote. Even that was a distraction, she had to admit to herself. Without a Gallifreyan medical lab at her disposal, there was very little she could do here, walking through a darkness that seemed as bleak as Space itself and now… focusing on Tegan's example didn't seem to help as much.
It was an hour into their journey that they came upon an open room that they hadn't opened themselves; that in itself made it worth their exploration. It was large, circular and occupied by a large machine made mostly of an expansive empty chamber surrounded by a few small consoles and the remains of open containers and small bones. This time even Tegan knew what it was. "Let's get out of here; it must be where they send down the food. It might be feeding time any minute. Come on." She tugged at the Doctor's sleeve and when he didn't move, sighed angrily and went back to the door of the room, gun in hand. "What are you doing?" She hissed back at the two scientists. Moments later they joined her at the door and the Doctor put up a patient hand to ward off her comments.
The Time Lord closed the distance between them quickly, glancing back at the debris-cluttered apparatus. "I wanted to find out why our host didn't simply let us transmat at least this far. The machine isn't set for living matter. It's probably also why they haven't lured the inhabitants here and brought them out. Pity. I think it could be converted with a simple upgrade to the ---."
"That's great. Let's talk away from here… Please." Tegan gave him one last impatient look and moved off. He glanced back at the open room and followed her, ushering Nyssa before him, noticing that she was eager herself to get away. She had developed a broadened respect for Tegan's opinion in the last few days, understandably so, and it was perhaps wise to leave the area where they were guaranteed at some point to encounter more Ecosians, ones already drawn by hunger.
"By offering to upgrade that transmat, we can give this Miros a way to help these people. Perhaps we can convince him to send some medical teams down and then stun them and return them as they arrive for food. That way they won't be in danger from one another."
Tegan looked up at the Doctor as she moved, still on edge from the nearness of the food source and clearing the rank smell of it from her nose. "Good idea but we'll do that after you're okay. We don't really have a choice."
Nyssa was glancing about herself, grimacing when something screeched behind them and something else answered. "No, we don't but we will insist he take action. If they were advanced enough to develop a drug to affect the Doctor, we have enough expertise with temporal biophysical degeneration that we should be able to add to that knowledge and help them. It's only a small chance. Right now we know nothing of their biology but the symptoms are superficially the same as most other species."
"Well, if they have a chance, you and the Doctor can give them the best one. If we can get past Miros and reach the families of these people… tell them what kind of conditions they're in, that ought to help. I don't get the feeling he's got a lot of the hometown crowd on his side, if he did why resort to blackmail and three aliens to unmake his mess, even if he needed a Time Lord?"
Nyssa shook her head quickly. "Yes, he said he owned this moon, not ruled it or controlled it. Taken in the usual sense that implies a capitalistic government, a democracy or socialist one where all the people would be more accessible. They may also not know the danger he's put them in with this failure. Even if he has control, making others aware of that would certainly cause enough animosity to force his hand to help these people."
"We'll find him first when we leave. His wife may have a thing or two to say to him, too, I'll bet, and she'll know where to find him."
The Doctor listened to them talk, applying themselves to a solution for the miseries of the trapped Ecosians even as they stood ready to defend themselves against them. Cruel irony again. He had returned his weapon to Tegan when they had discovered that the Ecosians were unlikely to die from the blast, by design or some providence of their predicament. The women's voices were low and familiar and he was able to screen them out as he listened for the sounds of pursuit or ambush ahead of them or above them. He stopped them when the noises inevitably came, from the corridor ahead, just beyond the perimeter of the light provided to them. He pointed to the opening of the corridor they could just barely see and Tegan raised her weapon as they side-stepped their way to the opposite side of the corridor. Tegan growled to herself and looked at the ground, only then realizing the other disadvantage of the diffuse and indirect lighting, there were no shadows, no way to keep perspective on her aim if she were moving and shooting at the same time. She understood perspective from her drawing. It had helped her when Uncle Walter was teaching her to shoot; she'd known how to look at the target, see the angle as if she were drawing it in motion. The source of light would help her determine where to put the shadows, now it would have helped her know where to put the shot. She was still waiting for the unseen target when something grabbed her arm, a hand she knew immediately did not belong to the Doctor or Nyssa. It was rough and painful and attached to the arm of something that had been lying in wait in the corridor across from the one they'd been cautiously approaching.
As fast as it grabbed her, the Doctor grabbed it, the hand of an Ecosian belonging to a man a good deal smaller but with the strength of the mad. He tightened his grip on her arm and dragged it toward his opening, crag-toothed mouth. Tegan grabbed her own wrist with her other arm. Nyssa's gun was moving back and forth, trying to get a clear shot at the Ecosian and still cover the hallway where the others might still be waiting. She looked at the Doctor in confusion when he yelled sharply at the Australian woman struggling against him and the Ecosian both. "Let go, Tegan!"
"What!"
"Trust me! Let go!"
Her better judgment screaming, she released the arm tugging her hand away from the filthy, claw-nailed grip of the madman. As she did the Doctor pulled it sharply in the same direction the Ecosian had been pulling and snapped Tegan's fist, still tightened around the butt of the gun, into his temple. His grip released a moment later and the Ecosian collapsed to the ground. Tegan looked down at him as she rubbed her fist and then up at the Doctor. He was smiling brightly and recovering his breath as he reached to tap her flushed nose. "See what happens when we work together."
Tegan stared up at him, listening at the warring halves of her brain. "You used my fist to hit him?"
The Doctor almost laughed, "And you wouldn't have?"
"Well, I…", she shrugged suddenly and couldn't think of an argument except that she would've wanted to do it herself and that seemed just a bit childish. She settled for a thin smirk. "I told you you were still a clever bastard," she said and shared a half-witted look with Nyssa as they fired a few shots at the roofs of the tunnels, enough to cover them side to side, then dropped the unconscious Ecosian into a nearby room and sealed it. The Doctor glanced down the corridor opposite them where the original threat had been.
"I wonder if they're working together or that was mere opportunism. The others didn't – oh, dear…"
Tegan turned to look behind them, weapon raised and Nyssa turned to look at the Doctor. "What is it?"
"When I say "run"…"
"Oh crikey…."
"Run!"
They did, six Ecosians pursuing them as they reached the far end of the lit corridor, ones who had moved back out of sight when the diversion had failed. They reached the next juncture in a few seconds and made the turn down the closer of corners. The lights moved with them but it took several moments for the Doctor and Tegan to realize they were alone. They caught a brief glimpse of Nyssa as she vanished down the corridor they were now in on the opposite side of the intersection. Nyssa's side of the gray hallway was plunged into darkness as soon as she was approximately 100 meters away from the Doctor. The heard her startled gasp and got a last glimpse of her as she moved against the wall. Tegan shoved the Doctor against the wall in their own corridor as soon as she saw the lights go black around Nyssa. "Stay here! You trust me!"
And he did, knowing what she was thinking after a few shaky moments then resigning himself to being bait. So, this is what it was like. How many times had he been forced to put companions, most of whom had volunteered he had to admit, in the same situation? He wondered again about Leela as Tegan disappeared into her own pool of blackness once she was far enough away from him. He backed to the far side of the corridor and watched with some trepidation as Tegan's shots, delivered from the darkness beyond him, felled three of the Ecosians as they scrambled toward him. The others broke off and ran, headed into the blackness that had surrounded Nyssa.
The Doctor bolted after them, cursing himself for being unarmed and looking in relief at Tegan as she caught up with him. The pool of light triggered by the Doctor's presence moved with them quickly as it had moved with them slowly. After a few hundred yards down the three nearby corridors that intersected the ones Nyssa had taken, they stopped, looking about with growing alarm, calling for Nyssa through the echoing bleakness. She could never have gone forward no farther and there was nowhere else for her to go. They searched each room, both crew quarters and the storage areas that were now beginning to appear with greater frequency, using the codekey still in the Doctor's possession, finding no one. Silence and the occasional howl were their only answers as they considered every reasonable possibility and explored it. They halted their search only when The Doctor, fist clutching his chest, had finally gone to his knees at Tegan's side.
Tegan retreated back through the door quickly once the perimeter alarms were in place. Outside the rooms she and the Doctor had taken, the dim strings of lights remained the only source of brightness Tegan could see, lighting up the better part of the short corridor. The perimeter alerts would not only tell them if the Ecosians approached but would also tell Nyssa where they had finally been forced to rest. With a final shout of the younger woman's name and a slow look in either direction, Tegan shut the door and engaged the electronic bolts. She leaned against it for a moment, knowing the Doctor couldn't see her and gave in to a few silent sobs before going to the sink and throwing cold water on her face and holding a wrapped cube of ice to her eyes to end the puffiness and redness. It had fallen to her to be strong for all of them and now was simply the time to remember all the worse scrapes they'd survived. Having few skills to match those of the Doctor and the others who had traveled with them, even she had managed to defy their enemies a few times. Surely Nyssa would have a better chance than she to do so and she was armed.
Tegan had to calm herself all over again when she caught a glimpse of the four, finger-shaped bruises on her right arm.
She was composed when she walked into the sleeping quarters some few minutes later, a plate in her hand for the Doctor. She lied and told him she'd eaten already when, in fact, she had barely managed to graze a bit as she fixed a few slices of what looked like deer meat and some leaved vegetable that tasted like it was already dusted with pepper. She'd actually liked it, counting it as the only pleasant surprise they'd encountered so far. She pulled her sleeve back down to cover the bruises before she reached the Doctor.
He was sitting up on the low bunk bed, just where she'd left him once they were inside so he wouldn't have to move again. Tegan dug deep and put on her bossiest tone. "Eat. You know you're in rough shape already. Don't do it for you, do it for Nyssa." Her tone retreated to one of reason and determination. "We'll find her in the morning and then get moving again. We should almost be there and then we can get these people some help and the Hell out of this system."
The Doctor took the plate of cut meat and shredded pepperleaf and the three-pronged fork from her slowly and nodded. Tegan was right and he hoped it carried through the plan she had laid out for them. She left him to eat and went back to the kitchen area, managing to take in bit more herself of the pepperleaf. She walked over to the door and looked out of the small window again, raising on her toes and twisting around for a better view as she saw movement at the end of the corridor. Picking up one of the weapons from the counter, she opened the door for a better look, her hopes dashed when she realized the movements she'd seen were only more of the Ecosians, down at the far end of the corridor from which they'd come. There were five of them, huddled around something on the floor. Suddenly there was a short-lived but agonized scream and the flurry of activity around the object on the floor changed, as did the howls echoing off the smooth, round walls. Tegan leapt back and slammed the door, her already tired heart pounding as she locked the door then sagged forward onto the counter, trying to banish from her mind the sound of the Ecosian being killed.
She held back the tears for nearly a minute, and then bit her lip and sobbed in silence, wondering how much longer she could hold out, especially if something had happened to Nyssa. She lowered her head onto her crossed arms and let the exhaustion and nervous tension flow from her. Several minutes passed before she started slightly at the cool arm that was across her shoulders. She stood and let the Doctor turn her into his embrace and they passed the next few minutes in silence as Tegan calmed down and the emotional tension was put back in its place. She lifted her head and fell into a chair in front of her untouched plate with an appetite that was partially returned and looked over at the Doctor as he slowly sat down across from her, his own empty plate having been placed on the counter.
"One of the Ecosians we stunned, or the one we hit, the others just killed him. I couldn't see it but I heard it. I thought I heard something that it might be Nyssa, and I opened the door just in time to hear him scream. I guess the only thing to be thankful for is that they still kill each other instead of eating each other alive."
The Doctor looked more than physically uncomfortable for a moment. Tegan had once again cut to the heart of the matter, and faced the bitter reality of Ecosia Beta with her usual emotional outburst, followed by a stolid acceptance. He offered her a second larger silver lining for the dark cloud and cursed irony again. "There is one more thing… If they're distracted with less able-bodied prey, they'll be far less interested in Nyssa."
The woman looked up at him with disgust and relief on her face at the same time, her expression much like he himself was feeling. "I hope she's far enough away to be spared the dinner show. The entertainment stinks on this planet."
"We'll find her, Tegan. I can still sense her; she's alive but--."
"But what?"
"But it's very vague."
"Well, that's something. At least she's alive, maybe somewhere safe. She had another key."
"True, but we checked every room into the tunnel where she headed and those in a reasonable distance which joined it. I can't imagine where she'd be. We would have seen her if she doubled back."
"There has to be a logical explanation. If that's the case, I might not find it but you will and then we'll get going and get this over with."
The Doctor smiled slightly, "If it's an explanation that requires common sense, then you'll have to be the one that discovers it. Mine seems to abandon me at times."
"No comment. Promise me when we get out of here you'll take us to the most godforsaken, unpopulated, quiet place in the Universe that has enough sunlight to melt Antarctica."
"Fair enough. I have the perfect place in mind. No one's seen it in eight millennia, unless you count seventy-eight species of butterflies and thirty-two species of parrots that sound like songbirds instead of shrieking."
Tegan smiled as she stood up and tossed the empty plates back on the sink. "What's it called?"
"That's the best part. It isn't called anything. I believe I may have been the only person ever to see it, until a week or so from now. It'll take time to get there even in the TARDIS."
"Sounds perfect. Let's just make sure we don't leave any trouble for the place. First maniac that shows up, you're heading right back in the TARDIS and leaving him spinning his wheels."
"Fair enough," he answered and then slowly followed her up, leaning heavily on the table as he brought his legs out from under the small table. Tegan came out from around the counter and supported him as they went back to the sleeping area, feeling slightly strange. It was harder and easier that they were alone as they prepared to try and rest for what was passing as night. On the surface of the planet it was sometime late morning if one counted time on a bleak worldlet with a painfully slow rotation.
Tegan thought about the thermal blankets being with Nyssa, along with all of their other gadgets when she looked at the wide bottom bunk. She reached up onto the one above it and pulled down the two blankets there to add to the ones where she and the Doctor would be resting. She'd just straightened them out and sat down when the Doctor emerged from the bath, still moving slowly, his eyes taking in the bright green interior of the room, complimented by a few small nautical decorations. Unsurprisingly the vast seas on their homeworld played an important part in their lives. He was still looking at the painting of a large sailing vessel when his right leg locked up and he fell forward, snapping a hand out to the top bunk to catch himself at the same time as Tegan's hands seized his waist from her seat on the bed and proceeded to guide him down beside her.
"What's wrong?"
"My legs cramped up, just after I sat down in the other room. I'm afraid the running about has made things worse."
Tegan shook her head and reached around to the back pocket of her pants, producing on of the spray injectors. "Go on, lay down. I remember what Nyssa showed me." He complied as she adjusted the dosage and noted there were only two more after this one. That meant they were definitely close as Nyssa had prepared each injector with the full number of dosages needed to get the Doctor through to the unstable chamber. She twisted around to find him lying flat but with the creases at the corners of his eyes drawn tight. He didn't react as she rolled up his pant leg and gently felt along the back of his knee until she found the most pliant spot, one where she could get a slight pulse. She replaced her warm fingers with the pad of the pressure injector and delivered half the dosage and then repeated her actions on the other leg. He relaxed visibly and sank further onto the bed as she began working to further loosen the muscles in his calves from the outside. She wondered how her hands could still be so strong as tired as she felt.
Tegan looked up ten minutes or so later and saw that some of the youth had returned to the Doctor's face and his head had fallen slightly to the side. His eyes didn't open but his head came back to center when she switched positions so that she could lift his near leg across her lap. His breath caught slightly as her hands began working at the muscles in his right thigh. She met his gaze when he did open his eyes narrowly and began the litany that had reached him before. "It's just me, Doc, just Tegan, the crazy one who came back." He smiled, almost laughed, and his eyes closed once more as her touch became more familiar, her gentle chatter hypnotic. Her scent began to change again as her hands moved further up his leg but her touches remained strong and medical in nature and she stopped as soon as the muscles had unlocked under the influence of the drug and her hands.
She folded his leg back and braced his ankle against her backside as she lifted the other leg and repeated the same treatment, feeling along its length and starting where the tightness was greatest and working outward. Tegan smiled thinly when she realized from his almost non-existent breathing and knew that he was falling into the healing trance again. She began to ease down beside him and pulled the four sets of heavy blankets over them both but hesitated before lying down completely. Several seconds passed before the Doctor opened his eyes and looked at the indecision in the woman's before she met his gaze. "What's wrong?"
Tegan lowered her eyes and then raised them to look at the empty bunk across from them, seeming sheepish for a moment and then resolving it. "I know this isn't easy for you. Nyssa isn't here for tonight; I can fix it so I can sleep over there."
The Doctor lay still for a moment, confused by her implication about Nyssa's absence, not sure if it were because Nyssa would not have to tolerate the heat if she turned up the thermostat, or if, since they were alone, it would be easier to avoid the possibilities provided by their sudden privacy. The Doctor dismissed the second notion quickly, and with some embarrassment within himself. It only proved how affected he was to think Tegan would be engaging in carnal thoughts while Nyssa was separated from them and possibly in danger. Only the poisoning let him forgive himself for that thought, but it had brought the young woman's absence foremost in his mind again. He looked up at Tegan and reached out from under the blankets to take hold of the arm bracing her upright, "If it's not an imposition, Tegan, please stay. I need to know I can keep at least one companion safe."
Tegan took a sudden breath, shaking her head as she lay down beside him, her eyes on his face. "You never said much after Adric died. You vanished for almost three weeks. We needed you as much as we were worried about you, we even wondered if you'd… if you'd… let something happen to yourself. You were understanding enough for us later, but it was almost like it'd never happened for you when you came back."
The Doctor looked away from her, slightly horrified. "You thought I had harmed myself, on top of all that had happened to you both already? Good Lord, Tegan, I'm sorry. I didn't think, I couldn't really, so it never occurred to me that either of you would think such a thing."
"I didn't, at first, but Nyssa couldn't sense you any longer after about three days. We searched and couldn't find you, and the TARDIS was unstable and kept changing so much we gave up. It gave us something to concentrate on, that and the power failures. You never did say what you were doing or what went on but the power failures stopped after you came back."
The Doctor's eyes stared off into the distance despite the fact that the only view available was the bottom of the top bunk; he took a breath and turned his head toward the Earthwoman without seeing her. "I was in the temporal core of the TARDIS, trying to find a way to do what I told you and Nyssa I couldn't, a way to save him that wouldn't violate the Laws of Time. It took me ten days to run all the parameters, to resolve for myself that there was no way. The TARDIS was reluctant to help me; that was the source of the power fluctuations. I kept rerouting things. In the end she only did because she knew I would have no peace otherwise."
Tegan found her eyes were filling with tears again, "You were trying to save him. I'm sorry for snapping at you all those times over it. Why didn't you say something?"
The blue eyes focused on her now, seeing her clearly in the half-light even as the exhaustion began to catch up with him again and, his restraint now compromised, gave her a glimpse of his private hell. "It was simpler; I didn't want you to know how many times I had to watch him die."
During her time traveling with the Doctor, in her times running from monsters and madmen, Tegan had felt her heart pounding against her sides more times than she cared to remember, had felt it heating her body for flight, had felt it pound the blood through her ears to the exclusion of all other sound. Only now did she feel it stop, just for moment as her breath caught in her throat and the tears spill from her eyes again to land, untouched upon the Time Lord's face as she leaned over him. She had to remember to breathe and her voice returned a moment later. "Oh, Doctor, we should have trusted you, should've taken your word there was no way and not driven you to go through that. It must've nearly put you out of your mind."
"Less than if I hadn't tried. You're not to blame for my doing so, and it was the only way I could accept what happened."
He turned toward her, slowly taking the hand resting between them, his voice became rough with emotion suddenly, a revisited grief that had awoken to be shared. "He went back. He figured it out and he went back. He missed the last real calculation, you see. He thought he had time."
Tegan shook her head slowly and strangely smiled. "I know. Somehow I always knew." She used the arm she had slid beneath the Doctor's neck to cradle his head and lift it toward her and pressed a long, gentle kiss against his forehead, her tears touching his face again as they slowly dried. The Doctor turned toward her further without encouragement or any needed invitation to settle into her embrace, reassured by the blurred impression of Nyssa still in his mind. Tegan's hand moved slowly across his back, helping to relax the tightened muscles as her gentle breaths stirred through his hair. Beneath his ear a single, steady heartbeat drowned out the voices of centuries of ghosts.
Nyssa had patched herself up quite well, stopping the bleeding with a garlic-like spice she had found in the cupboard. The blood on her hands had vanished into it as if it were cotton almost instantly and so she had taken the chance and put a good amount of it on the cut near her right temple and searched for something to tone down the swelling. She found some ice and very quietly packed it into a towel and held it to her head for a few minutes. During the time that she took it down, she rooted even more quietly through the satchel she had managed to keep with her and found something for the pain in her head. It was nothing that would likely help the Doctor and so she ran a glass of water and took the tablets herself. In moments the pressure was gone and she relaxed enough to take inventory of her situation.
She had a head wound and possibly a slight concussion but the damage had only been enough to knock her out for a few hours. Her knee was sore from the fall but not in a way that would hinder her continuing with her companions. At least she was safe again from the Ecosians. Two narrow escapes after her separation from Tegan and the Doctor had nearly convinced her she would never be able to face them again but some rest (much of it enforced) and a meal had restored her spirits. She hadn't been as good a cook with the more primitive implements as had Tegan, but the food had been acceptable and satisfying. She wished she hadn't slept as much on the floor of the kitchen area of the crew quarters but she considered herself lucky to be alive at all. She had only retained consciousness long enough kick the door shut and hear it seal.
She put the ice to her head again and noticed that there was now very little new blood on the light blue towel that she had used. Whatever the spice was, it was effective as a coagulant and stung only a bit. Chances are it would even have antibiotic properties. Now her goal would be to get the swelling down and to get some rest since she could do so safely, as well as get the caked blood from her hair. She moved quietly into the bath and gingerly used a rag to remove most of it, careful not to start any new bleeding. She sat down on the edge of the tub, slightly dizzy, and held the ice to her head again for several minutes before standing up and returning to the bunk room. She loosened her clothing as best she could and then settled down on the bed and pulled one of the blankets over her, the ice-filled towel held to her head for a few minutes more before she let herself rest.
As a child in the great palace on Traken, she had learned how to move quickly and quietly, stealing around corners to hear the latest intrigues of adults as she was trained to someday engage in them herself. It had become a game to see who could get past the guards the most quickly and remained undiscovered, or better, to go completely undiscovered and then slip back past the guards to report to her friends what she had heard and about whom. She had become the best of them at this bit of cloak and dagger and it had served her well in her adventures with the Doctor.
It had served her again an hour or so prior when she had finally resumed her search for the Doctor and Tegan, her way lit by the torch she had made from a table leg and cut strips of blanket fabric soaked in cooking oil from the kitchen. It had been as much a deterrent as the laser weapon at her side, she'd found. The regressing minds of the trapped Ecosians feared fire more than a modern gun. It had taken her less than twenty minutes searching to find the red glow of the perimeter sensors and then slip silently into the rooms where the Doctor and Tegan rested and slept respectively. She smiled at them now with relief and decided not to wake them. They had exhausted themselves searching for her, no doubt, and since they were both at rest, they would be just as happy upon waking to find her as they would if she disturbed them now, even with good news. The Doctor had doubtless done himself some damage trying to find her, probably collapsing before Tegan had brought him here to rest. Nyssa carefully erected shields around her mind to keep the Doctor from detecting her nearness but to reassure him at the same time. She would never have been able to fool him under normal circumstances but was grateful she could for now. She saw it begin to work after a few minutes. Some of the tension left him and he sagged more heavily against Tegan.
Tegan came half awake a few hours later, hot beneath the four layers of blankets but cool where the Doctor lay against her. She ran her hand along his back and felt the muscles there twitching only slightly. They stopped when her hand stayed more than a few minutes. By her estimate they should only have one more "night" to need to do this, or looking at it another way, to leap from the frying pan into the fire of a messed up time machine. If the Doctor's people had been doing it for millennia and still botching time travel, these idiots must have done the job royally. She wondered, not for the first time, why they'd even tried it. If they knew about Gallifrey, they must've known they were going to be stopped or perhaps they thought burying it in the middle of a moon would keep their project hidden. She doubted that. Even in her very brief time traveling with the Doctor, she knew that the energy it took to time travel was too enormous for one miserable little moon to hide. She still wasn't even sure how big the TARDIS was inside, only that she wished she were inside it again, finding something flashy to wear in the massive closet, or swimming in the pool, or just in her own bright, feminine room with Harry Potter keeping her mind off their own adventures. She adjusted the covers again with her free hand and arched her chin up to settle her head further up on the pillow, taking a deep breath of the cool air.
It roused her slightly even as she tried to return to sleep, and Tegan wiggled what little she could to try and get more comfortable. It took her a moment to register what sounded like another set of breaths. She kept calm, thinking it had to be her imagination or a wheeze in the ventilation system. If one of the Ecosians had managed to get past the door she'd known was locked then they would certainly have attacked long before now. Screwing up her courage, she opened her eyes and looked toward the vent near the floor to see if the circular sounds of the air could be timed with the flapping of the blanket tails across from them.
The only rush of air Tegan heard next was her own muffled gasp as she looked at the bunk across from them and saw Nyssa sleeping peacefully in the dim light. She looked well enough but there was what appeared to be a small wet towel on the floor next to the bed that had a few dark stains on it. Tegan thought about rousing the Doctor but then reconsidered; it had taken a long time for her to help him fall into the healing trance, and his even more shallow breathing now told her he was actually asleep. She had learned to tell the difference in the times they had spent like this; in the healing trance his breaths were long and slow and, if far from regular, more frequent, asleep he barely breathed at all. And the actual sleep never lasted more than a few hours even now. Tegan didn't mind the extra surge of heat as a delighted flush passed through her but it was impossible to return to sleep while she waited for her friends to wake. Nyssa would have some story to tell about where she'd been and how they'd missed her in their long search.
Something close to three hours passed before the Doctor drew in a few of the longer, deeper breaths that he took before waking and noticed with some surprise that his arm was around Tegan's middle. He lifted his head to look at her and saw that there seemed to be a smile on her lips and what little he could sense of her thoughts, which had actually quadrupled since their encounter with the Mara, was settled and peaceful. He coiled his arm back and then lifted his head to look down at her only to have her open her eyes the moment he did, obviously wide awake. The Doctor smiled thinly and looked at the wall behind them. "How long have you been lying there?"
Tegan smiled up at him, her eyes strangely bright. "A few hours, about as long as you've actually been asleep."
"I'm sorry."
"For what? Silly Time Lord. I have a surprise for you."
The Doctor's shy smile broadened slightly. "How unsurprising. What is it, Tegan?"
She pointed to her left and behind him and watched his face as he turned on his back and saw Nyssa sleeping across from them, seeming little worse for wear. He rose up on his elbows for a moment to stare at her before settling back down with a relieved huff. "Thank goodness. She must've found us during the night."
Tegan nodded. "I came half awake when you fell asleep and thought I heard something wrong with the vent system; it was Nyssa breathing. She's probably got quite a story to tell."
"Yes, I imagine so. I'd hate to wake her, though. It'll surely have been difficult."
"I'll bet. I guess the best thing we can do is just get some more rest. We'll need it soon."
They learned just how difficult it had been for Nyssa a few hours later, eating a hefty breakfast after the Doctor had satisfied himself that her wounds needed only time to heal. Nyssa was as concerned about him in return but knew that she had shown Tegan enough to have given him proper care during her enforced absence and he had rebounded much after finding her back safe with them. Neither had even rebuked her for not waking them. She kept her tone matter-of-fact as she relayed the talk of her separation, nightmarish as it had been, running from madmen in the darkness, hoping not to concern them more.
"After I went down the opposite corridor, just before the lights went out, I saw one of the Ecosians who had been behind us closing on me. I used the codekey to enter a room very near to the edge of the corridor and lock it but he remained too close. I actually saw you both go past me but he would've gotten to me even before you could've turned around. You were both moving so fast I don't think you even saw him. Eventually he ran off, I think to join the others in killing one of the ones you were forced to stun. I left to rejoin you a while later, could just barely hear you shouting for me, and another three of them appeared. They were horrible, covered in blood, nearly feral. I shot two of them but the third I missed and he got near enough to knock the gun from my hand while I was struggling with the codekey to get into a nearby door. Unfortunately, where I'd been forced to run I'd had to double back, away from where you were looking for me."
Frustrated realization creased the Doctor's face for a moment and he clattered the cup to the tabletop, sloshing the second cup of tea over his fingers. "I never thought… good heavens, I'm sorry Nyssa. We only ever saw you go forward."
Nyssa gave a small shrug and a pale smile. "You would've had no reason to know, and that happened the second time I was out in the corridor, far enough away that you couldn't have reached me. In any case, I was in such a rush to get into the room that I fell over the threshold and struck my head on the table. I fell away from the door and just barely kicked it shut before I passed out." She gave a small sniff of a laugh. "I suppose he carried on on the other side for quite a while but the doors are quite secure. I was a bit uncomfortable when I woke but very fortunate."
"Indeed," the Doctor breathed, reaching out for a moment to take her hand and looking at Tegan as she sat down next to Nyssa.
"There's just one thing," Tegan began, and then paused to make eye contact with them both. "What happened to your gun?"
Nyssa shook her head regretfully, "No idea, it was gone when I left the crew quarters. One of them must've taken it. We can only hope they only retain enough awareness to do themselves harm with it. Nothing else seems likely given their state of degeneration. They haven't maintained the motor skills or concentration it would take to aim from any distance. They were more frightened from the fire of the torch I'd made as they were of the gun."
Tegan nodded and stood up to toss the dishes in the sink, "It's not a problem for us, I don't think. They may knock each other out."
The Doctor followed her up and looked out the small window in the door. "Yes, but even that has consequences we'd like to avoid. Still, there is very little we can do about it. We should get moving. The temporal displacement is getting worse. Much worse and even I won't be able to enter into the field."
They set off again, armed with only two weapons now, and with renewed awareness of the dangers of the Ecosians. They presented a danger only up close and so at Nyssa suggestion, they did what she had done and made two torches to go along with the handweapons, burning only one at a time. They burned at a rate where two of them would last their last walking day and prevent them from having to leave any more of the Ecosians unconscious and vulnerable.
Tegan eventually arranged it so that she was walking behind the Doctor and even with Nyssa and caught the other woman's eye on the third attempt. "Are you really all right?" Tegan asked, making it seem like a demand even though she had mouthed the words in near silence.
Nyssa glanced up to see if she were in the Doctor's peripheral vision and nodded when she realized she wasn't. "I'm fine, just…" she pointed at her head and rolled her eyes a little as she answered Tegan in the same lack of tone. "In a day or so, it'll be as if it never happened." Her eyes darted to the Doctor and an expression of inquiry passed quickly over her face.
Tegan shrugged her eyes slightly and nodded. "I remembered what you showed me," she answered, her voice all but silent. "We did okay, but it was hard not to leave and look for you."
Nyssa shook her head slightly. "You did the right thing," she said, equally quiet. "He knew I'd reached somewhere safe."
They stopped talking after that, catching up with the Doctor as they moved forward and before he could turn around and wonder why they were lingering, particularly Tegan, as they were the only ones armed. The way was now littered with more debris from the Ecosians trapped and struggling to survive. The taint of decay added to the feeling that they were moving through a massive crypt, one that might be their own and would be the Doctor's were they to fail. At least they would soon reach the point where they could try and end the situation.
That became evident a few hours later when the Doctor held up his hand for them to stop and went to what appeared to be a cracked spot on the wall of the tunnel, one deep enough to see the metal support that had been melded into the stone itself. When the Doctor touched it, his fingers came away with several flakes of what appeared to be rust on them. He made a confident face and sat down on the ground. Nyssa immediately sat down opposite him and began the process of clearing away the mental clutter of the deranged Ecosians so that the Doctor could more easily read the unstable time fields. Tegan walked to the opposite side of the hallway and drew her weapon, watching over them from where she had the greatest field of vision.
Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. The Doctor finally lowered his fingers from his temples and let himself sag forward for a moment. Tegan crossed back over and helped him rise. "Is it worse?"
"Much, we'll be there soon enough. The temporal distortion is now affecting the geophysical structure of the moon."
Tegan looked around them with a sudden new worry. "You mean earth---moonquakes, while we're this far down?"
"Possibly but the TARDIS is stabilizing the field now to some degree. The metal is an artificial amalgam. It can be broken down more easily than a natural element, the hematite, for example, that primarily makes up these walls. It's probably a combination of nickel and chelsidium and silver to soften it for pouring and make it rust-proof, but all metal breaks down eventually. On Earth, Tegan, when they find the Titanic, it will have been converted mostly to rust and still be standing. That took decades, however, here we'll only need a day or so more, and the rate of decay is only a tiny fraction of a centimeter deep. Not to worry I should think."
Tegan didn't remind him he'd said that before and added cave-in to her list of worries, then realized the TARDIS would, Miros be damned, probably come and get them. It was good to know the time-ship was still safe behind the guards that the Doctor had left. With little else to do besides walk and stare into the darkness, she stopped letting her mind wander and speculate on what she was going to do to Miros if she got her hands on him, and focused on the TARDIS, seeing it clearly in her mind, remembering exactly as she had seen it last in her artist's eye, the scratches on the glass panes, the nicks in the paint. It was easier than she thought, remembering each detail, seeing it before her, so real she could almost touch it. She caught herself raising her empty hand and stopped, then stopped walking altogether as another part of her mind seemed to stir, an awareness not of sight or sound or touch, but awareness like a warm breeze that flowed back and forth in her mind, an awareness that felt like a surprise visit from a new friend. It faded slowly but not completely and she opened her eyes to find the Doctor in front of her, smiling thinly but with infinite warmth.
"Homesick?"
Tegan smiled. Not long ago, his question would have meant Earth. "Yes and no. I feel like a little bit of home is with me."
"And so it is. I was aware of you this time, of course, but you reached her entirely on your own. Remarkable." The delight in his eyes faded to curiosity in moments but they pressed on as he pondered, walking slowly. On occasion his breathing was the loudest sound to be heard and both women remained near to him, glancing behind his back at one another with frustration and worry. Nyssa eventually reached into the bag she had retained throughout her solo adventures and withdrew one of the pressure injectors she had pre-loaded. "Doctor, you said we're within two days of the T.I.F.?"
"What?" He looked at her oddly for a moment. "Oh, yes. Yes, I did. We are."
"You're quite certain?"
"Yes, the metal decay, the small accelerations and decelerations of time around us, it's all very telling. Why?"
"I synthesized more of the counteragent to the toxin than we needed. I can give you an additional dosage which, given the short time we would have left, shouldn't deter it effectiveness, even if you're becoming more symptomatic and potentially developing a tolerance for it."
Nyssa frowned to herself as he stared at her for a moment, almost as confused as Tegan would have been by one of his answers. Except that this time even Tegan understood what Nyssa was offering. It took the Doctor, however, only long enough to understand for the two women to register his confusion, and then he smiled quickly. "Splendid. Go on. Very good of you to have thought ahead."
Nyssa stood on tiptoe and pressed the injector to his throat and the color returned to his face a moment later. And drained a little when they made the next turn, three bodies lay on the ground as the light surrounding them flooded the new corridor. These looked older than any of the others they had encountered and seemed to have been died as a result of some scuffle between themselves, a result of the dementia. The hands of one of them, a woman, were around the throat of a man who was slightly smaller, but they could see through a tear in the worn fabric of her gray, filthy uniform that at least two of her ribs were broken. A jagged three inch piece of the third body's skull lay next to it in a crusted pool of black. They moved on without comment but an hour later Tegan raised a hand. "They've stopped."
Nyssa glanced over at her, "Who?"
"No more howling, no more grunting, we haven't heard anything for hours."
The Doctor nodded. "Yes, you're right. They've probably got some rudimentary sense that this place is "evil" or such. They're only operating on instinctual levels."
Tegan smiled grimly at his confirmation, "That and we're past the food source." She relaxed a bit, enough to holster the weapon in her hand, and then looked up at the Time Lord. "I think it's about time that we were finding a home for the night. I know I'll get more rest than the last one." Nyssa smiled thinly as Tegan looked her in the eye.
It took another twenty minutes of searching, mostly because many of the doors now lead to rooms of equipment and monitors. There were several of the crew quarters still available but many of them showed greater states of use than the ones before and the companions hypothesized that those they had been staying in were auxiliary quarters of crew persons preparing to rotate into service who had not yet had time to fully settle in. The fourth set of quarters they found were clean, obviously previously empty, but still well-stocked. The Doctor, who had been holding up far better in the wake of the booster of the counteragent, seemed to wilt as soon as the opportunity to rest came. He went not to the sofa in the living area as soon as they entered, but to the bath as Tegan bustled about the kitchen and Nyssa about the small table. He emerged a small time later and went right to the wide, low bunk. Nyssa descended on him in moments, briefly examining him with the bio-scanner and working the cramps out of his calves.
"I don't want to give you another injection just yet. I'll do that in a few hours. You could still begin to build a tolerance to it that would make it less effective and you'll need to be in the best shape possible soon,' she said quietly, her fingers making short work of the tense muscle fibers just below his knee and moving to the inner muscles. Her technique was more accurate than Tegan's - she knew the structures beneath the skin better - but he found he missed the gentle chatter his other companion often engaged in to make the situation more comfortable for them both. It had even worked after a moment when he'd felt her hands had moved down along his thigh, although, by now, he would've argued with the phrase "Just Tegan".
Nyssa finished just as Tegan entered with the plate of food, hopefully the last time they were to see the staples of Ecosian dinner fare, and handed it to him once he was sitting up. She returned with Nyssa's and her own, then went back for the glasses of tea as Nyssa prepared another injection and put the rest of her equipment away and retrieved the thermal blanket in exchange.
Smelling of something floral she had found in the bath, Tegan settled down next to The Doctor a short time later, after Nyssa had made the obligatory show of falling asleep first. It was a show that required little effort, however, tired as they all were from the unaccustomed stresses of the past few days. The Doctor hesitated a bit as he turned toward her, even as she waited for his now familiar weight and coolness. Mistaking his hesitance, she slipped her arm beneath him and rested her hand just below the nape of his neck. "Come on. It's almost over."
The Doctor lay down but a small distance from her, enough that he could still see her as he spoke. "That's just the point, Tegan. I wanted to tell you again, while I have the chance, what your help has meant to me the past few days. You've not only helped me in a way that was difficult for us both, you've done a great deal to make it easier for me."
A small smile overtook Tegan's face and she turned toward him, her top hand taking hold of his arm through the cool linen shirt. "Tell me something, your wife, she put up with a lot of craziness, right? Authorities and councilors and colleagues all calling you insane? Late nights, cold dinners, unwanted guests, investigations?"
"That and more." He admitted, not sure where she was going but patient.
"All right, and why? Because she cared about you, cared about you enough that, whatever it took, she wanted you to be happy, even if you were never safe."
The Doctor smiled in quiet remembrance, not seeing the woman across from him for a moment, but another, a face he could still recall in detail despite the centuries, and then for a moment, he could see them both, their expressions of concern and patience identical. "That's true as well. I can't follow you yet though, perhaps I'm still unsettled."
Tegan's hand went from his arm to his cheek. Reflexively, his eyes closed and he turned toward the fire of her touch. "The point is, Doc, she put up with all that, in the end because she believed in you. But as much as she believed in what you were doing, she must've loved who you were, and when you love someone, if you're forced to leave them, you don't go hoping no one else will ever make them happy again. What do you suppose she'd do to you now if she knew that even being around a woman set your teeth on edge? Was she selfish enough that she'd want you to spend centuries alone?"
As if in answer, his head dropped onto her arm and his eyes remained closed. "Not hardly and I suppose she'd kill me."
"So do I. And I'm not talking about me… I'm just saying… let it go. What's the point of living for centuries if you can't let anyone give a damn you're alive?"
The Doctor lay still for several moments, her words gently piercing him, bursting the bubble of immunity that had surrounded him for so long, too long. He nodded his head and cradled the hand holding his face, turning her palm to kiss it as he settled toward her. Tegan saw the tears sliding sideways from his closed eyes just before his head settled against the curve of her neck, and she curled her arm beneath him, stroking his forehead. She had given him too much to think about and wanted to lighten the mood. "There's just one more thing I want to ask you now that I've introduced you to the concept of pillow talk."
The Doctor smiled against her breast as she hoped. "I vaguely recall the concept, Tegan, just haven't engaged in it for a few centuries. All right, what is it you want to know?" He'd half guessed already.
"Well, I've carried you through the jungle, let you play hopscotch in my head, intentionally charged into a freighter full of pissed off Cybermen - killed one, run up against the Master, cooked for you, and now spent a few nights being the power supply to a thermal blanket, but I'll trade you all that for the answer to one question: what the hell's your name?"
He smiled again, and laughed into her shoulder. It was just what he'd expected and a fair enough exchange. And he told her, lifting his head to say it slowly and carefully, then repeated it twice at her request. It had been so long since he'd said it aloud it actually sounded odd to his own ears. She nodded politely and thanked him but the side of her mouth quirked up after a moment. "I think I'll stick with "Doc"."
"Well, if the situation calls for it and should you feel so inclined, Thete will do."
Tegan laughed again and kissed the top of his head, and lay awake until the healing trance had taken him in full.