Author's Note: Barely edited. Low-key garbage. Happy Holidays.

Mickey's friends and Clive's family come directly from the novelization of the episode Rose written by RTD. Highly recommend reading if you're in a Ninth Doctor mood but are tired of rewatching the s1 episodes.

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Chapter Thirty Two:

Misadventures in Purgatory

Part Five

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~.Buffy, Dec. 12, 2005.~

Thank God I don't need a resume.

What the hell would I even put on one? None of my skills can be verified by a degree, and anything I would put under the Experience section would land me in a mental health ward. My Previous Job sounded like a drug trip, and if I were to put my Previous Employer down as a reference, said previous employer would be offended by the implication that I had been his employee.

With UNIT, though, Travelled with the Doctor opened doors.

Even without a degree or any military training whatsoever, the skills I had gathered on the TARDIS were actually proving really, really useful. I could list them, but after a week of working as a Strategic Advisor, the most useful one turned out to be that I could listen to a stuck up science genius for more than five minutes and resist the urge to punch them in the face.

Which was basically exactly what I was doing now.

It was my second real assignment, and like the first, I had been sent to some lab in the basement of some 'well respected' university that I had never heard of to listen to a scientist hoping for UNIT funding pitch his invention to me and other representatives.

I was with my UNIT liaison, Captain Hugh Abbott. As my future self promised, we got along fairly well. He was a tall man in his mid thirties with mousy brown hair and the tendency to tap his foot when he's bored.

We had ridden together to the university in one of the UNIT jeeps that came with its own driver, which was how I knew that he was running on about an hour of sleep and really just wanted to go home. Hugh's wife, Marilla, had recently had a baby — a little girl named Jenna. Apparently, Jenna was colicky, so neither of them were getting a lot of rest.

The scientist presenting spoke about all kinds of data and hypotheses. Hugh and I weren't the only people being preached to; there were about twenty other people in the room, a healthy mix of visiting scientists and a journalist or two. Most of everyone looked attentive, nodding along seriously and taking notes like they knew what the scientist was talking about and that it all made sense.

I wasn't so sure. Not that I was a scientist or anything. But one of the other benefits of having traveled with the Doctor is that you get used to listening to long tirades full of scientific jargon and come away with at least a shaky understanding what's going on. If nothing else, I knew how to listen for key words. For action items. This bit takes power to this bit and makes it do this. This part is made of this material so it does this but not that.

So while I might not understand exactly how the gizmo worked or how to build one, I was pretty sure that the design was shit. I listened quietly anyway, mentally noting potential conceptual flaws to ask about when the demonstration was over.

Beside me, Hugh started to snore.

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~.Clive, Dec. 14, 2005.~

For Clive Finch, the hardest part about having traveled to the 8th Century was that his family didn't believe him.

The sword Buffy had used to threaten Creat Seven-Five-Nine now hung on the wall in his shed. He'd wanted to put it in the living room, but his wife had vetoed the idea on the grounds that one of the boys might knock it down (or take it down) and hurt themselves.

Caroline Finch was tolerant of her husband's hobbies. She never complained about his shed or when he spent £100 a month on photocopies, and while she did believe in alien life and occasionally saw logic in some of the points he made while talking about conspiracies, she never made him feel like an idiot when his lines of reasoning went beyond her interest or what she was willing to acknowledge as plausible.

It was different this time. One of the first things Clive had done upon returning home after his first real adventure was to tell his wife everything. Stone angels that came to life. Giant warthog aliens. Time travel and knights.

For the first time ever, Caroline had looked at him like he'd gone insane. She asked him if he was feeling well. Suggested that he see a doctor.

Of course she didn't believe him. His sons, Ben and Michael, hadn't either. They didn't tease him for it, but Clive had a sneaking suspicion that Caroline had warned them to let it be. They thought his sword was cool, though, so that was nice.

Frustrated, he had called Buffy for advice. She had been sympathetic, but ultimately said that, "It's not like kids believing in Santa. For some people, you have to really see it to know that this stuff is happening. And sometimes that isn't even enough. That's just the way it is."

On the same phone call, he had nearly asked her how she coped with it, how she handled adjusting back to normal life when no one around you believed in the things you had seen. Then he remembered what Mickey had said about how depressed she'd been over the last few months, and wisely kept his mouth shut.

For Clive, life trundled on.

Two weeks in, he was managing. It was mid afternoon. Ben and Michael were playing in the garden with one of the neighbor's kids. Clive ambled to the fridge and opened it in search of milk to add to his tea.

They were almost out of milk. After using it, Clive closed the fridge back and checked the shopping list on the front to make sure milk was listed.

It was, but something else caught his eye.

The list read:

Groceries

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-Oranges

-peppermint sticks

-eggs

-sugar

-flour

-milk

-sausages

Then, at the very bottom, in a clumsy, childlike hand, read:

cELry

Meaning 'celery', Clive assumed. He frowned at the addition, trying to think of who in his family would want celery, and why the handwriting and spelling were so atrocious.

Then again, he had two preteen sons.

Clive shook his head, wondering if someone was playing a trick on him. He'd had enough ridicule for the holiday season, thank you very much.

Clive took his tea and went about his day.

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~.Buffy, Dec. 16, 2005.~

My kitchen table was covered with a clear plastic tarp, as was the floor around it. Grunting with effort, I lifted the bucket of clay up to the tabletop, then added the bowl of water, sponges, and other tools I'd bought in anticipation of this afternoon.

It was partly a present to Jackie, partly a present to myself. This was the first Christmas I was properly celebrating in this universe, and it was stupid, but I was actually a little nervous.

Geronimo stood up on his back legs, trying to sniff the clay. I shooed him away from it.

There had been that first Christmas during those awful fourteen months that I'd done my best to ignore. After that, the Doctor and I hadn't really landed anywhere during Christmas, and even if we had, we wouldn't have really celebrated.

So, officially, this was my first Christmas without my family. It was also Jackie's first Christmas without Rose. I knew that there was no way to soften the blow of being without her daughter, but I hoped I could ease her pain a little by introducing a tradition from my own absent family.

Jackie let herself into my flat with a cheerful hello, then stopped and frowned at my setup.

"What's all this, then?" She asked, poking a finger into the clay bucket. I hadn't explained what we would be doing, but had told her to come over and to wear old clothes, so she wasn't too surprised that I had everything ready for a potential mess.

"It's one of my family's Christmas traditions." I felt a flash of self consciousness. "It's kind of stupid, and I get it if you don't want to. It's just something my mom got me and my brothers to do to keep us busy."

"It's a holiday tradition," Jackie chided, "they're all daft. That's what makes 'em worth doing. Go on, then. What exactly are we doing?"

My heart lifted and I beamed, then explained how each member of the family would make each other something out of clay that reminded them of the other, or just something you thought they would enjoy. We'd had a neighbor with a kiln who would fire them for us, and then we'd give them on Christmas Eve.

In place of a helpful neighbor, I'd done the research and found a place in London who would do it for me. Their holiday hours were strange, so if we wanted to have them ready by Christmas Eve, we needed to get started.

Despite my reservations, introducing my family's little tradition went better than I could have imagined. Jackie was even more invested in the Christmas clay craft that I thought she would be. We spent the afternoon watching cheesy Christmas movies from the table as we worked, and I found myself feeling happier than I had been in a long time.

Since we were working in the same space, the gifts weren't exactly a secret, but the point was to spend time together anyway.

I couldn't give Jackie her daughter back, but I could give her this little piece of me. It was only an echo of a past life, but it was the most valuable thing I had to give. I could let her into the space I reserved for my absent family, and prove to her that she wasn't alone.

In a few days, some of Jackie's extended family would be coming over to visit for the holidays. I had learned from Mickey that Jackie's Christmases were always a little on the emotional side, that she had a tendency to serve her guests dry turkey, would have too much brandy, get the photo albums out and start crying about Pete and other members of the family that were no longer around to celebrate it.

I didn't expect this year to be any different, especially since it would probably be even worse. There would be meddling relatives for her to deal with and probably a lot of booze and tears.

I knew I couldn't claim Jackie's Christmas, because that belonged to other people, some here, some not. But I did have December the sixteenth, and I finally didn't feel alone anymore.

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~.Buffy, Dec. 23, 2005.~

It was my first official assignment with UNIT that didn't involve listening to some old guy talking about an invention that almost certainly wouldn't work, and I was already confused out of my mind.

Two days till Christmas, and all the stores in central London were completely out of milk.

It wasn't an issue of supply and demand. They hadn't simply run out. The cartons of milk had been delivered and shelved as normal. Nothing was amiss. Then suddenly, every jug, carton, and bottle was empty.

Every store. Empty containers of milk. They hadn't been opened. No sign of leaks or spills.

Just gone.

Lacking any better ideas, I had gone to the affected store nearest the center of the phenomenon. I was standing in the middle of a grocery store, in front of the dairy section, at an absolute loss.

Because What. The. Fuck.

In the corner of my eye, something moved.

I turned to look and saw a tiny creature with wings scuttle up the wall and into a vent near the ceiling. It looked a little like a gargoyle.

Huh.

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~. Ben Finch. Dec. 24, 2005.~

It was Christmas Eve. Fairly late at night. Most everyone in the Finch household was asleep, except for Clive's youngest son, Ben.

Ben was too old to believe in Santa, but that didn't mean he wasn't excited about Christmas morning. Unable to sleep, he crept down the stairs to take one last pre-Christmas peek at the lovely tree in the sitting room and the presents that had been placed beneath it.

The house was designed so that a person could see into the sitting room from the stairs. Ben was about half way down when he happened to glance into the sitting room.

He froze.

Something was standing in front of the Christmas tree. Though maybe standing wasn't the right word, because it didn't have any legs. It was just a lump. A big, four foot tall lump of black fur was lurking in front of the Christmas tree.

And it was looking at him.

Ben was too shocked to react. The two of them sat there for a good thirty seconds, staring at each other, motionless.

The lump of fur melted into a puddle, and the puddle of fur seemed to slither across the floor to vanish under the sofa.

Ben blinked at where the thing had disappeared, suddenly not sure if he'd actually seen something, or if he was just imagining things.

Clive's youngest son went straight back to bed, and decided not to mention the encounter with anyone.

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~.Buffy, Dec. 25, 2005.~

Jackie was hunched over the toilet, puking her guts out. I crouched behind her, doing my best to pull her hair out of her face and put it into a ponytail.

Christmas Day had gone just about as expected. I had done my best to stay out of the way of her guests, but Jackie had invited me to Christmas dinner and I couldn't make myself say no.

Jackie had started drinking early in the day. I was surprised that it had taken her this long to start vomiting. A handful of Jackie's cousins, an aunt, and a few friends from around the estate were hanging around her flat. They were all also pretty drunk, and I doubted that Jackie would be the last one to end up vomiting in the bathroom tonight.

Strangely, everything had been going more or less smoothly until about an hour ago, when Jackie's aunt, on her fourth or fifth glass of cheap wine, had made comment about Rose's disappearance, saying that it was to be expected, because, "Tarts like 'er find someone shiny an' new and run off, then turn up dead or pregnant."

Jackie, of course, had lost her shit. Then she really started drinking, and now here we are.

I finally got all her hair into the elastic.

"Merry Christmas, Jackie," I said wearily. "You know, in theory, next year is supposed to be better for us both."

Jackie kept vomiting.

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~.Buffy, Jan. 18, 2006.~

Since it had been over a month, I finally let Clive drag me back to his shed so he could pick my brain.

This time, I didn't have to hide the fact that I knew a lot more than the average human did. Except my knowledge of the Doctor was almost encyclopedic, so I still had to limit myself to the things that the Doctor had done up until I had last seen him. Doctor Who was still a topic that I refused to discuss with anyone except the Doctor.

Clive showed me Daleks, and I named them for him and told them a bit about the species, and then what I could remember about the Kaleds and Thals. In return, Clive told me about how his dad had died in unusual circumstances involving the military and Daleks. I couldn't remember if there was a specific Classic Who episode that dealt with that particular attack and made a mental note to look it up with my UNIT credentials.

"Oh, that's me!" I pointed at a figure in a black and white photo. My face was turned, but I remembered the dress. The Doctor was up on the stage, telling horrible jokes to buy a musician named Artie time to work up the courage to play piano. No wonder I was hiding my face. "Paris, 1946. We helped save this musician, a guy called Artie Berger—we should look him up!—from this, sort of, sound creature thing. And there I am again!"

It was so surreal. Seeing the Doctor in pictures scattered throughout time and space was one thing, but me? I wasn't supposed to be there, but there I was. I'd left a mark on this world, on this universe. Did that mean I belonged?

Clive and I poured over the pictures with renewed vigor, now looking for a flash of red hair or a bird-like frame. There were a few pictures of places I recognized, where I had been around but not caught on camera.

There were others of me, too.

Pictures of me in places I hadn't been.

Not yet.

Germany. 1942. I stood behind a tired looking woman crouched at the edge of what looked like a bomb crater. I was dirty, my face streaked in dirt and ash, my hair windswept and poorly tied back in a ribbon. I was in period clothes with a ragged quilt wrapped around my shoulders. I looked down at a twisted mass of metal resting at the bottom of the crater, a serious frown on my face. The Doctor — my Doctor — was a dark blur behind me, caught mid stride, probably explaining something.

I was lightheaded. Dizzy. There I was. There I would be.

France. 1740s. Clive had taken a scan from a college textbook of a sketch from one of Madame de Pompadour's personal diaries. It wasn't of a person, but of a long knife, slightly curved along the blade to end in a tanto point. It was absolutely the one I always carried in a bag strapped to my leg.

Logically, I had always known that I would see the Doctor again. Would travel with him again. Because I had too. There were still tears in the fabric of reality that needed to be fixed. Still chronomites to kill. The Doctor still needed me to handle those. Because no one else could.

Boston. 1993. The Doctor — the Tenth Doctor — smiled cheekily at the camera from behind a bookstore counter. A red haired woman clutched his arm, hiding her face in his jacket. Laughing or embarrassed or both. The red hair could've passed as Donna, but the woman in the picture was too short. She seemed happy.

Emotion made my chest tight. I couldn't tell what the emotion was. Couldn't even tell if it was good or bad. All I knew was that there was a lot of it. Too much. Too strong. I was drowning in it. I couldn't breathe. Couldn't see straight. The pictures I held in my hands juttered with every beat of my erratic heart. I dropped them back onto the pile and rushed out of the shed, ignoring Clive's concerned shout.

I stumbled into the garden. Puked behind a bush.

Was this year of hell the Doctor's way of putting me in timeout? His way of saying, Sorry love, but there's only so much I can do for you. Go home. Pull yourself together. We'll try again when you can do this without falling apart.

Was it because I'd asked too much of him? Did I depend on him for more emotional support than he was comfortable giving? Was it because I loved him?

Was it because I needed him?

I thought back to all the nights I had spent clinging to him because my nightmares were more than I could stand alone. All the tears I'd shed against his leather jacket. The anxiety and indecision. The panic attacks.

I remembered it all, and I felt ashamed.

I finished vomiting and sat on the ground with my back pressed up against the garden wall, feeling small and miserable. Clive had followed me out of the shed and stood over me, helpless and confused.

"Are you okay?" He asked, looking genuinely worried.

"Yeah," I said dully. Except I wasn't okay. Wasn't sure if I ever had been or would ever be again.

"What happened?"

I'm so alone.

I shook my head slowly. "Doesn't matter."

"I think it does," Clive promised. He shoved his hands in his coat pockets, looked from me to the house and back again. "Can I… can I get you anything? How can I help?"

"No." I think I must've been crying. I wasn't now, but I could feel the tears drying on my face. Sticky and cold in the January breeze. "You can't help, but thanks anyway."

"Oh."

Silence enveloped us for a few long minutes, and as it did I realized that there was one thing that I needed to address. I originally wasn't going to say anything about it, but suddenly I felt an overwhelming need to tell Clive something extremely important.

I might be alone, but Clive wasn't. It's not too late for you.

"You can't have both, you know," I explained, my voice strangely distant and cold. "Traveling and a family."

Clive didn't respond. I hadn't asked him, but I knew what he wanted, deep down. He wanted what I had… what I used to have, and would apparently have again,whether I wanted it or not. Traveling in the TARDIS with the Doctor. Endless adventure. Next stop: everywhere.

Everything, yet nothing.

But there was a lesson that I had learned and felt that I needed to pass on. I had learned it for myself, personally, as well as from the other companions that hadn't happened yet: from Martha, Amy and Rory, and Clara.

"Traveling in the TARDIS sounds great," I went on. "It is great. It sounds like it's all adventure and wonder, but there are bad days." I closed my eyes and hugged my knees to my chest. "The thing with the Angel? That was nothing. I've been beaten, shot at, tortured, hanged. I've seen whole armies turned to dust and whole planets burned to nothing. You said it yourself, back when we first met, that death is the Doctor's constant companion. So when you're with him, it's your companion too. And sometimes it follows you home. You have to accept the risk, for you and for your family."

"Did you?" Clive sounded defensive. "Accept the risk?"

I smiled bitterly to myself. "I don't have anyone to lose."

Clive scoffed, but his moment of indignation softened until he just looked sad. "That's not true."

I had made friends in the past few months. Jackie, Mickey. Clive. I cared about them a lot and wanted them to care about me too. Especially Jackie. Except none of them were mine. I could pretend that they were my family, but they belonged to other people. I wanted Jackie to be my mother, but she was Rose's mom. I could never take the place of her daughter, no matter how hard I tried to earn her love. Mickey was probably my closest friend at the moment, but he belonged to Rose, too. Clive wanted to be near me because I was the closest thing to the Doctor he had access to. As soon as he met the Time Lord, I would be irrelevant.

I was a placeholder. A pale imitation. I could fill in the empty space for other people, but I would never really belong. In the end, I would be cast aside.

The pain I felt was empty. "It is."

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~.Buffy. Jan. 23, 2006.~

I had been down in the dumps for the better part of a week, so Mickey finally put his foot down and insisted that I go out with him and his little gang friends for pizza and bar-hopping. Initially, I refused, but they all came over to my flat anyway and wouldn't leave unless I left with them.

They were good people, full of bright smiles and easy laughter. Mook, Patrice, and Sally. They were all outcasts, clinging together in a sweet little found family because they struggled to find acceptance anywhere else. Mook had been crawling slowly out of the closet for years, and had only recently found the courage to shamelessly find himself in the arms of Patrice. Patrice worked three jobs to stay out of his mother's house, and thus her crappy boyfriend's way. Sally had moved out of her family's home after she started transitioning, and evidently kept a toothbrush and clothes at five different flats spread out across the Powell Estate.

I tagged along, relying on my quiet and aloof persona to hide how uncertain I was. But after I got pizza and a few beers in me, I started to relax. It had been a long time since I'd been able to do this, mindlessly hang out with friends and enjoy myself without having to worry about being arrested or getting eaten by an angry alien or something.

I promised myself that I would do this more often, realizing that maybe getting so caught up in my interdimensional, spatiotemporal responsibilities wasn't good for me. I was a human — desperately trying to be more than what I was so I could keep up with the extremely bizarre hand the universe had dealt me, and then having a crisis because I kept falling short.

The Doctor is not human, I kept telling myself. But I am. I have always been human. I will always be human. And that's enough.

To get it into my head, after I'd said goodnight to Mickey and his friends, I went back out to my favorite of the bars we visited and found someone to take me home with them.

It was a good experience. Long overdue. They had wanted more, though. Made me promise to stay the night and have breakfast with them. I agreed, but lying with a smile is second nature. I slipped out of my sleeping partner's bed in the small hours of the morning, quietly collected my things, and headed out into the crisp February dawn.

Being human is enough, I thought as I walked, my breath fogging in the cold air. For that moment, I almost believed it.

I could lie to myself all I wanted.

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~. Buffy. Feb. 4, 2006 .~

I decided that it was finally time to move out of my apartment on the Powell Estate. With my UNIT paycheck, I could afford to move somewhere nicer — somewhere with a location not directly influenced by Doctor Who.

Jackie wasn't particularly happy about it, but understood the need for a fresh start. And anyway, the new place was only a 10 minute walk away, so it wasn't like we wouldn't still be seeing each other all the time.

Under the direction of Jackie, Mickey and his friends descended upon my old flat and had all of the boxes I'd packed the night before downstairs and in a rented van within a matter of minutes. It might've been easier for me to just shove everything in my bigger-on-the-inside bag, but once they'd caught wind that I could use a few extra sets of hands, there was no talking anyone out of helping.

My new flat was a bit bigger than the old one. It had a balcony, big windows that let in a ton of natural light, two bedrooms, and a decent sized kitchen. I'd also bought new furniture to fill it with, and it was unexpectedly satisfying to have a place completely filled with my own stuff. Stuff that I'd bought, bought with my own money and not stolen from the TARDIS.

Geronimo seemed to enjoy the new space. After everyone had gone, he spent a long time scurrying from room to room, squeaking loudly as he explored. It still wasn't the TARDIS, but he'd been more or less limited to my flat with the occasional excursion to Jackie's for months, and clearly appreciated the change.

I spent the next few days feeling unusually content, unpacking, decorating, and even cooking. For a while, at least, I could pretend that being left behind was a good thing. Another lie, but it wasn't a hard mindset to get into — especially since the Doctor's return was looming, and I was filled with an overwhelming sense of inevitability and sickening dread.

I was going to travel with him again. Clive's archive confirmed that. I would travel with the Doctor again, and I would have to pretend to be okay with that. Like the other companions that he had wronged, I would be expected to forgive and forget for the good of the timeline, and there wasn't much of anything I could do about it.

I was going to get to see my friend again, and I wanted to be happy about it. Instead, I was sick to my stomach, poisoned by anger and the bitterness of betrayal.

I thought about refusing to go with him — but I couldn't because I knew that I wouldn't. The images I had seen of my future had tied my hands, taken away the illusion of a choice. Foreknowledge is a bitch.

Swallowing down bitter resentment, I tried to clear my mind and enjoy my new living space.

I cooked. I unpacked. I schemed.

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~.Buffy. Feb. 19, 2006.~

Everything.

Is.

Fucking.

Purple.

The trees. The houses. The cars. The sky. The people.

Me.

A whole town in the countryside. Purple. It wasn't dye. Not an optical illusion. Just… purple. Overnight. Everything that entered the town had its natural color leached away and replaced by a vibrant, monotone shade of violet. And the worst part of it was that I could not figure out why.

Nothing else was out of place. No missing people. No weird power surges. No suspicious building projects or top secret government bases. Just a nice little village that just so happened to be really fucking purple.

I stood in the middle of the street, really frustrated and extremely purple, just trying to work out at least a few theories on what could've done something like this and why.

It was going to be a long day.

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~. Buffy. March 9, 2006.~

I didn't have any way of knowing exactly when the events of Aliens of London would kick off. But when Jackie slammed into my apartment, seething, I knew it must be time.

"You bitch!" She screeched. "You selfish bitch!"

I froze, standing in the kitchen in my lounge clothes and bare feet, completely unprepared and vulnerable. I saw the hit coming from a mile away. To avoid it, I could've ducked, sidestepped, blocked, or even escaped through the Otherside. But I didn't; I kept my hands down and took it.

Her hand collided with my nose and I felt a crunch, felt the rings on her fingers dig into my skin. I stumbled backwards, hands snapping up to cover my nose just as blood started dripping from it.

But she only slapped the Doctor, I thought dully. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact that I was much closer to her height than the Doctor, so a punch was more likely to land. Or maybe it was because I deserved it. The Doctor might have whisked her daughter away, but I was the one who lied about it to her face for a whole year.

"You knew," Jackie seethed. "You knew exactly where she was — who she was with! You let me think she was dead! How dare you?"

Jackie raged on, yelling and crying as she took a year's worth of pain and frustration out on my flat. I kept my head down, staring at my bare toes and listening to the sounds of breaking glass and shattering china, just glad that she was working it out on inanimate objects and not me.

Finally, it stopped. Jackie's trainers stepped into my line of view. One of her laces had come untied. I cowered, preparing myself for another strike. But it didn't come.

I risked a glance up to find Jackie staring at me, gaze hazy with rage and pain. "And he'll leave her won't he?" She spat, but the venom wasn't entirely for me. "He'll get bored and dump her off somewhere and leave her with nothing! She'll be like you—" Her gaze hardened again. "And you were just gonna let it happen. Well, I'm tellin' you I'm not having that! I'm not."

She spun on her heel and marched to the door. I flinched when the slam echoed through my apartment, and again at the enveloping silence that followed.

I lowered my hand and stared dully at the blood pooling in my palm. My apartment was wrecked. Just about every dish and glass I owned was shattered across the floor. Not even the mug of coffee I'd left on the counter had escaped her wrath; it lay in four pieces, its contents making the floor dark and slick.

There was a lot of dirt on the floor too. It took me a moment to realize why, but then I recognized the shattered remains of the vase I'd made for her for Christmas. In my old life I'd been a pretty decent artist, and had used those skills to carefully roll and etch elegant floral patterns across its surface. Once it had been fired in the kiln, I had filled it with succulents and painted it a color complementary to her flat. It had lived on her coffee table since then, and had been a really nice looking centerpiece.

Gone now.

I'm not sure if I actually cried, though I think I might have. The next hour or so passed in a fog, but I know I spent it wading through the wreckage; sweeping up glass, mopping up coffee, and vacuuming the dirt. My mind was on autopilot. I didn't think. I didn't want to. But when there was nothing left to clear away, I knew the bliss of an empty mind wouldn't last much longer when the only thing left to fix was myself.

My nose was throbbing painfully with every beat of my heart. I could feel the heat around my eyes and knew I would find them blackening and swelling. I didn't want to look at them, but somewhere in the haze of my mind I knew that explaining my appearance to anyone — especially the Doctor — would be far worse.

I forced myself to face my reflection in the bathroom mirror. For once, I was grateful for Mirror Girl. I could look into the mirror and convince myself that the broken person looking back at me was her.

Mirror Girl had been crying. Her eyes were red and swollen from tears, surrounded by dark, ugly bruises. Blood streaked around her mouth and chin, having been smeared by her own hands. Her nose was swollen and crooked, plainly broken. The look in her eyes was that of a child; a child desperate for someone to fix all her problems and tell her what to do.

It was pathetic, really. I almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

I washed my hands of blood and sought out the bits and pieces of alien medical tech I kept with me at all times — the ones I knew how to use.

"I should be able to fix it all," I tried to sound comforting, but my voice trembled and cracked around every word. I cleared my throat. "I've never fixed a nose before, but it can't be all that different from fingers." I studied my features carefully. "But maybe we should take care of the bruises first. That'll be easiest."

I dipped my hands back into the sink, turning the water as cold as it would go and washing off my face to cleanse it of any remaining blood or tears. Then I opened the little jar of cream.

"This'll tingle," I said, smearing it under my eyes. "But it'll clear up any bruises within a few minutes."

My hands gripped the edge of the sink. Over the next few minutes, the bruises faded under my watchful eye. When they were gone, I nodded in satisfaction. I left the cream out for my nose once I was done fixing it and sought out the tricorder-looking device.

I held it level with my nose and pressed the button; a thin beam of light shot out to land right where the pain was the worst.

"If you get a broken nose, you'll always end up with at least one black eye," I explained as I worked. "It has something to do with the distribution of force, I think."

She glared back at me, unimpressed.

"Don't look at me like that," I scolded, wincing when my nose snapped back into place and gritting my teeth when the bone and cartilage started knitting back together. "You do this to yourself, you know. None of these people owe you anything. They got their own people to worry about. You're just here to do your fucking job, okay? They aren't your family. They aren't your friends. They aren't gonna baby you. Grow the fuck up."

I finished resetting my nose and moved to smear on some of the cream to take care of the residual swelling and bruising. When I was done, I looked more or less like myself again, except for a little redness of the eyes. But that would go away on its own easy enough.

"You couldn't have told her," I said eventually. "No matter what you said, she never would've believed you. If she'd had even the slightest inkling that you knew what happened to Rose, you would've been arrested and interrogated, and there wouldn't have been anything you could do to fix it. Best case, Jackie would've thought that you were some poor little brainwashed lunatic that got dumped by some pimp. Worst case, you'd be checked into a mental ward." I tilted my head, rethinking the statement. "Or maybe that's the other way around."

I cleaned up the bathroom and went to change clothes. My shirt had blood on it. I could probably save it, but threw it out anyway. The outfit I picked out was what I fondly thought of as 'work clothes': a nice blouse, the beaded bracelet the Doctor had given me in Austria when we met the Mozarts, a black cardigan, stretchy leggings that could be mistaken as dress pants, and dark grey, white bottomed running shoes.

I brushed out my hair and threw it into a ponytail. I checked the time. 5:47 pm.

I went to the living room and switched on the TV. As expected, nearly every channel was full of panicking people babbling about aliens as well as a few enterprising stations already trying to profit from a potential catastrophe. I didn't linger on any of them. I already knew what was about to happen by heart. They didn't have any new information for me. I was on my own.

I scooped Geronimo up from where he'd been puttering around on the kitchen counter and pressed a kiss between his tiny velveteen ears, then placed him back with a few crackers for a snack.

The vortex manipulator was familiar to me now. I'd practiced using it over the past few months, calculating coordinates across the planet within the same time zone — small hops, but more than enough to practice for what I needed to do next.

I already had the coordinates worked out. Too emotionally drained to give a damn and with a year's worth of planning up my sleeve, I pressed the activation button and twisted away from my flat in a burst of electricity.

No more hiding for Buffy Reid.

~0~0~0~

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Author's note: Will respond to comments from the previous chapter next time. It's almost 4 am and I don't have enough braincells left to do it now.