6.30 had rolled around again by the time Alison had zipped up her hold-all. She had entered the TARDIS with very little but the clothes she had been wearing, so it was quick work to pack up her belongings. Now her bag was filled with her clothes, her books, the petty personal effects that she had picked up on this planet or that planet in an effort to make her room aboard ship seem a little more like home. She had never quite succeeded in that, and now the room was stripped completely bare, with no decoration but the characterless, dully luminescent roundels on its creamy walls. Alison had re-made the bed, turning down the blankets primly, like a sheepish guest in a swanky hotel.
She sat on the floor, resting her cheek against one of the bed's freshly made hospital corners, and thought. She had already decided what she was going to say to the Doctor; how she would let him know that she wanted to be taken home. Those words were already chosen, right down to the goodbyes. She was now thinking about Lannet, about Joe, how she would explain to him that she was back but that, as far as he was concerned, that she was not back at all. She was trying to find words to explain how an arrival could also be a departure, and then . . . then she was trying to explain to herself what she would do next.
Alison could imagine with fair accuracy the look on Joe's face when he saw her back in Lannet, hear his grumbling remark about her having "fallen out with her new mates" as he put the kettle on for her tea, and she could already see how badly she would react to his thinking she had come home because of some stupid tiff.
After all, she wasn't leaving just because the Master had lobbed a jam jar at her. Alison came from a big family, she knew how to do volatile and plate hurling was part of her emotional repertoire, albeit a partshe did not care to dwell upon. She wanted to go because, well, because the incident had shattered her illusions, made her realize how unwelcome she was on the ship. As her mother would have been only too quick to point out, why stay with a man who doesn't like you and a man who doesn't speak to you? And, more that that, Alison had increasingly begun to ask herself what she was doing on the TARDIS in the first place. She had originally come aboard thinking she was running towards something, but now she wondered if she had been running away instead.
So she was packed to go and her bed was made, and when the Doctor strode into her room without knocking and sat down she didn't bat an eyelash. What was there to be embarrassed about? All those words were chosen, even the goodbyes.
"Are you alright, Alison?" he asked, spreading out the skirts of his coat.
"Yes," she answered truthfully, glad that she didn't have to lie to him.
He took out his pocket watch and began to play with it, twisting it on its chain and polishing the metal casing. "I'm sorry about what happened", he said, at length.
Why? You're not the one who chucked a glass at me! You shouldn't be the one apologizing!"
"The Master has never been particularly good at apologies."
"Surprise surprise."
"And really, deep down, it was all my fault."
He stood up abruptly and strode towards the door, hands behind his back: "Sometimes I think it was unfair of me to ask you to travel with me."
He paused and Alison held her breath. Was he going to offer to take her home of his own accord?
"I sometimes think that it was unfair of me to ask you to be my companion. Both of you."
"Both of us?" Alison enquired, raising an eyebrow.
""Yes," the Doctor affirmed, walking back towards the bed and sitting down again, "I understand that you and the Master might find it a little difficult keeping me company here. That you might find it a little tedious. Particularly this last month."
Alison was a little taken aback, both that the Doctor should have had any inkling of her own feelings, and by his remark on the Master. She had considered that not being able to leave the TARDIS might be difficult for the Master, or the knowledge that he had an off switch. But that it might be difficult for him to simply be the Doctor's companion, that she had never considered, and it intrigued her.
"Why?" she asked, because the Doctor seemed unusually communicative, and because she was leaving anyway, so it didn't matter.
"Why what?"
"Why would the Master find it difficult to be around you? To be your companion?" Alison knew as she asked the question that she was being somewhat disingenuous, sometimes she found it difficult enough being around the Doctor herself.
"Well, the Master and I haven't always got along terribly well – "
Alison chuckled as she though of the two Timelords' incessant bickering, "You don't always get along terribly well now!"
"True, true," grinned the Doctor ruefully, But, believe it or not, we used to be worse! You remember what I've told you about the Master, about what he is – No! No! About what he was. That's not what he is any more . . . Anyway, I imagine that it must be difficult for him, being what he was, to be around me, knowing that he owes me his life and that, in some odd way, I owe him mine. Especially given the limitations I've imposed on him."
"Yeah, I can imagine that knowing someone had you on remote control would piss you off a bit!" Alison had never quite forgotten the first time she had seen the Doctor switch their traveling companion off.
The Doctor bowed his head: "Sometimes I think that I may have acted rashly – selfishly, if you will."
"Why did you do it?"
"Alison, before we were enemies, the Master and I were friends."
"Close friends?"
"There is no-body in the universe that I would rather be friends with. Excepting you, of course!" he added with a mischievous laugh.
Alison laughed along with him, but her mind was on her next question. Just as she was leaving things had finally decided to get interesting.
"Doctor, why haven't you landed the TARDIS anywhere for so long?"
He started at his question, bit his lip and starred down at his watch again, twisting around on the chain.
"Is it because . . . it's just that . . . well, do you think that Master could have broken his programming?"
The Doctor almost smiled at that, "Whatever gives you that idea?"
"Well, you said he's programmed not to hurt anyone, but he had no trouble at all chucking that jar at my head."
"No indeed, he didn't! However, I've investigated the matter a little, and had a think about it myself, and I believe that, in his own, slightly twisted way, he was only trying to help."
Alison tried to imagine the logic that could consider flinging jars of condiments about the control room helpful and drew a blank: "Why did the jar explode?"
"The inside of every TARDIS is protected by something called the "State of Grace" which prevents the use of weapons. Something that the Master knows as well as I do."
"He could have forgotten."
"Yes," the Doctor conceded, "he could have forgotten. But I think not. I think that he was, in his own way, as I said, trying to help."
"And how on earth was pelting me with jam jars going to do that?"
"I believe that he was trying to provoke you, trying to make you attack him. More importantly, I think, he was trying to shock me. As far as I can make out, he was taking it quite badly being cooped up here, and he thought you were too . . . I suppose he wanted to demonstrate that I was sending you both a little stir crazy."
Alison suddenly found her mind filled with an image, that of herself standing before the console, looking at that wretched button, and she could almost hear again the voice that had urged her to press it, to break it. She shook her head to clear her thoughts, and another image swam to the top of her mind – the knowing look that had been on the Master's face when she had finally turned away from the controls.
She told the Doctor about the incident, despite – or perhaps because of – the fact that she was ashamed of it
" . . . and so what if he was trying to make me sabotage the TARDIS?" she finished.
"It's possible. The Master is an accomplished hypnotist, after all. But, on the other hand, we Timelords are intuitive – empathic, if you will - so it's perfectly possible that he simply picked up on what you were already thinking and decided, in his own inimitable and ridiculous way, to do something about it. You did say he'd been acting normally up to that point?"
"For the Master, yes. But why would I think such a thing?"
"I'm not sure. Perhaps . . ."
He returned to toying with his watch-chain, letting the words trail off into nothing.
"Perhaps?"
"Perhaps you are going stir crazy," he finished, rather too brightly, standing up to leave. As he did so he laid one long, elegant hand upon her hold-all: "I see you're all packed!"
Alison opened her mouth, ready to begin the speech she had prepared earlier, but the words seemed to freeze and shatter upon contact with the air, skittering and shivering away from her in a million brittle pieces
"How did you know?" she finally, lamely managed.
"We Timelords are intuitive, you know!" he said with a broad grin, and the long hand came up to rest on her shoulder, "Actually, I didn't know at all, I assumed. If you do wish to leave . . . well, might I ask you a favour before you go?"
"Of course, Doctor," Alison replied, finding the moment to be, now that it had come, much more than she had imagined.
"I would like us to take a holiday together, the three of us, to end things on the right note. I think we need that. No bickering, no mortal peril – "
Alison beamed, "Where abouts, Doctor?"
"Well, I've always promised the Master that we'd go to Bognor Regis . . ."
