The street was dark, and deserted. The lamps lit everything in a strange glow, making the shadows cast from the walls and dumpster stretch eerily. There was not much to be heard, except the footsteps of the three people who were heading towards the warehouse. Everything seemed to echo off every wall, so they kept their voices low.
"I never thought that we'd find trouble here, of all places," Danni commented as they slowly approached the metal side door. The darkness made it easy for them get close without being seen, and the warehouse seemed pretty deserted. "Then again, no matter where we go, trouble always seems to appear. Why should retirement be any different?"
"Are you sure you don't want to head back?" Jack asked. "I mean, I know how your husband gets when you're not home on time."
"He had every chance to join us at the restaurant. And the bar afterwards," she pointed out. "If he wants to miss all the fun, that's his own fault. He will just have to grin and bear it when we brag about it later."
"And you're intending on bragging about it?"
She shot him a look. "Aren't you?" she countered. "Surely it's one of the perks with stopping alien threats? Being able to brag about it to your friends?"
"You mean, above the 'saving the world' part?"
She shrugged. "I mean, if that's what you're into…"
River rolled her eyes. "Can we focus on the task at hand?" she asked.
"Yes, mother," Danni replied and River shot her an exasperated look. She just shared a cheeky smile with Jack before reaching into her pocket and pulling out her sonic screwdriver.
Jack adjusted his grip on his gun. "Everyone ready?" he asked. The two women nodded. "Right, stay quiet, stay low and stay behind me. Whatever is in there won't be friendly."
"This isn't our first time doing this, Flash," River retorted. "Danni-Girl, if you would."
Danni grinned to herself. "A nice, fun, family adventure," she declared. "What could possibly go wrong?"
~0~0~0~
They were all panting as the Doctor pulled Danni's hand, indicating that instead of continuing to run down the street, they should instead turn off into another building. Happy to not be running for her life, Danni followed as did Grant and his remaining soldier. The Doctor chucked the door open and found that they had entered an old store. Rusted metal shelving lined the small area, whatever the store had been selling long since gone. But the Doctor had quickly scanned the room to see if he could find anything of use in the dark, and spotted a rather sophisticated till at the end of the aisle.
"Perfect," he declared before letting go of Danni's hand. "Lock the door. Hopefully they will be too stupid to notice the giant window."
"With what?" Danni asked as he moved quickly to the register desk. "I don't have the key."
"You really haven't done this in a while, have you?" he replied. "Your screwdriver, remember? Point and think?"
She rolled her eyes, mocking him slightly as she reached into her pocket, only to find it strangely empty. She'd had her screwdriver on her that morning. Where could it have…
Missy stepped towards her and Danni shot backwards, dropping her screwdriver in her panic. "Stay back," she cried. "Stay away from me."
Ah, of course. That was where her sonic screwdriver was. In the Vault, with a madwoman who was hellbent on escaping and kidnapping her, to then take over the universe together. A woman who wanted to torture Danni into submission and had very little else to do but wait until she found her chance to escape. A woman who only had Nardole to stop her. A woman who would rip through Nardole like he was a piece of paper.
She ripped her hand out of her pocket. She shouldn't have gone into the Vault on her own. She should have listened to her own instincts. Why was she so stupid?!
"I-I don't have it!" she called over as her hearts raced painfully in her chest, the panic rising. The Doctor paused, his own screwdriver in his hand as he went to work on taking apart the register until he found something useful.
"Why not? Where is it?"
She should tell him. She should totally tell him. He'd tell her off, but he'd understand. He would look after her. He was so good whilst she was scared.
"In-In the TARDIS, I don't know," she snapped back. "I don't carry it around with me anymore, why would I?" She turned back around. "I don't have it, you do. Pass me yours."
He signed but threw it in her direction. She caught it and turned to the door. "What was the point in me getting you one if you're never going to use it?"
"Don't start on that again," she warned, because it wasn't the first time that they'd had this discussion and she was happy to let the old argument distract her from the very real possibility that she had unleashed Missy onto an unsuspecting Bristol. "We live in a university. Unless it's going to do my homework for me, I very rarely have use for it. I only want to carry stuff around that is useful to me."
"It's because it ruins the lining of your clothes," the Doctor corrected.
"Do you blame me?" she retorted. "I look amazing, I don't need a sonic screwdriver shaped lump on my side if I have no need for it."
Grant watched the two, a little bewildered at that fact that they seemed to be arguing like it was just an average, normal day and they weren't being chased by monsters that were intent on either draining their energy or turning them into one of them. He expected anyone who was new to what had become of their home town to be more, well, scared. "You do this often, don't you?" he asked Danni, who nodded.
"He thinks he knows better than me, but it's rare that the clothes I like have pockets and he's so used to having…"
"No, the 'running away from monsters' thing," he cut in before she could start ranting. "You seem like you're used to it."
She looked down at the screwdriver in her hand. The Doctor's looked so much different to hers, but it didn't feel foreign in her grasp. "We used to, quite a bit. Life's been a bit still since those times," she replied before shooting him a smirk. "Still, I'm still pretty fucking awesome at it."
She was about to head over to the Doctor, when the noise of their chasers made it pretty obvious that they were about to be caught. Danni pushed herself up against the wall between the door and the window whilst Grant dropped to the floor. The Doctor also hid behind the counter and they all waited, silently, until the sound disappeared and the infected moved onto their next target.
Danni peeked out around the window frame and could barely see them as they moved. "What do they do?" she asked. "When they're not trying to eat everyone?"
"You know, I've never thought to ask," Grant drawled. She shot him a look.
"Maybe if we can work that out, we can work out why they are like they are," she commented.
"I don't think they do much of anything but move and suck the energy out of anything they come across," he retorted. "Not sure what could be useful about that."
"I don't know," the Doctor drawled and Danni almost jumped a mile as he appeared next to her. "Perhaps that's what they're lacking; the art of decent conversation."
"Don't sneak up on me like that," she hissed at him. "I might have punched you, then where would we be?"
"You have my screwdriver, my Pet," he reminded her. "I need it to get into the computer system."
"What is it you're looking for, exactly?" she asked after handing it over. "It's just a shop register, I doubt it has any information."
"It might have sales information, distributors, internet access," he listed off, walking over to the register and straightening it up. He hated working on messy equipment. "It might have the number for corporate, then I can give them a call and complain about the appalling service. Either way, it has more information than we do right now."
"We should be heading to the town hall," Grant told him. "We're not safe out here, we're safe in there."
"That's another thing. Why the town hall? What makes the town hall such a safe haven?"
"Maybe they respect the democratic process?" Danni drawled. "Or, maybe, they're not stupid enough to attack a large crowd."
The Doctor stopped what he was doing and pointed his screwdriver at her. "Ah, but it's not a large crowd, is it?" he reminded. "After all, you noticed it yourself. These lot are children. There are no adults. I bet there's a lot more zombies than there are alive people. Even the most basic of predators knows when they're not outnumbered."
She shrugged. "Then what else could it be?" she asked.
"Exactly," he replied. "There is something we don't know. Something that, I suspect, no one is supposed to know about."
"Something that, perhaps, the government might be apologising over?" Danni suggested pointedly and he nodded.
"Wait, you think they did this to us?" Grant asked.
"If it was an accident by a private company, they would have cut you off and left you all to die. But they're not, they're apologising. What use is that to all of you? After all, you're all supposed to be dead by now," the Doctor explained.
"Which means they're not apologising to you. They're apologising to the people on the outside, who are probably looking at your town as a failure on the governments part," Danni finished for him.
"So, the message is just a PR stunt?" Darren, the remaining solider, asked and they nodded. "But why?"
"Why indeed," the Doctor muttered. "That's what I need to find out."
~0~0~0~
Danni dropped to the ground, rolling behind some boxes that were stacked a little too haphazardly for her liking. The loud roar rumbled through the large room, causing everything to shake. Jack was hiding behind the boxes as well, gun at the ready as he pulled her closer.
"Where's River?" she asked.
"Not sure," he admitted, which she wasn't particularly happy about. "Did you get a good look at it?"
She shook her head, panting slightly from the running. She was starting to get out of shape, it was embarrassing. "Teeth. I saw teeth," she offered. "Lots of them, close up. It had really bad breath."
"That was your takeaway?" he asked.
"There's nothing wrong with good dental hygiene. Especially with teeth that big. They were huge, Jack."
"As you've said," he interrupted before she could get into a rant about the giantness of the teeth she'd seen. "We need to find your mother, then contain… whatever it is." He dipped his head out from behind the boxes, looking around the darkness. He could see the large, bounding shape of the creature that was obviously looking for the three people who had spooked it. "We need to neutralise it."
Danni's head appeared underneath his. "I know we're kinda a military family, but can you not use words like 'neutralise'. It implies that you're going to kill it."
He looked down at his daughter. "It's not my first choice," he whispered back. "But we're trapped, and it's dangerous and we can't let it get out. It'll cause carnage."
"We don't know that," she hissed back. "It could just be scared."
"Those cats we saw in pieces suggest otherwise."
"Oh, and that bacon you're so fond of suddenly means that you're a monster that needs to be put down," she snapped back. She ducked back behind the boxes and he followed her. "Just because it's hungry doesn't mean it's dangerous. And just because we chased it into the dark, scary building doesn't mean that it's trying to lead us to its death. It could be the interplanetary version of a mountain lion. Would you call a mountain lion evil?"
"No, I would call it a danger," he replied. "I don't want to kill it. I'm just saying that it is something we're going to have to consider."
She couldn't deny that. It was a rather disappointing part of her life, that sometimes the way to save everyone was to kill the creature that was doing the damage. She had no qualms doing it to people who knew better, who were actively trying to make the universe a bad place. There was something rather sadistically satisfying about watching a Dalek explode, knowing the pain it would cause. A harmless creature, though, never sat right and it never felt right. Ultimately, it was just as scared and as hungry as the rest of them, and she had spent a lot of her time feeling both very acutely.
"We're not going to kill it," she reiterated firmly. She looked back around the corner of the boxes. It was shaking the floor with each step, but in the dark she could see that it had a lot of fur and she knew it had a lot of teeth. "We just need to find River, then get hold of the Doctor. He can help us take it somewhere safe." Her eyes lit up and she turned to Jack. "Like a zoo!" she cried.
Then she immediately winced as the creature roared, hearing her shout and she shot Jack a sheepish look. "Oops."
~0~0~0~
Danni knew when the Doctor was looking for something specific. He went very quiet, and rather grumpy, and dismissed everyone around them until he found what he was looking for. Even if, sometimes, he wasn't sure what that thing was. That was why he was tapping on the register's screen with his 'attack eyebrows' out at full force. There had been a time in their lives where he would have pulled out his 'smart glasses' just to impress her. Luckily, he had retired the sonic sunglasses and they probably would have hindered his work considering how the only light source was the screen in front of him.
It was amazing what could go through someone's head whilst they were panicking. She thought a million and one different things about her husband – she loved how his hair was longer than ever, and curly, and she always had the urge to just reach out and stroke her fingers through it – and yet every time she did, her thoughts were brought straight back to Missy and how she had probably destroyed the Earth by leaving her sonic screwdriver behind. It was like a heavy anchor, pulling her back, drowning her in the inability to focus.
Still, though, her mind seemed pretty set on the notion of keeping it to herself. And it wasn't as if it would help to tell him. They were nowhere near the TARDIS and they were more likely to get eaten on the way back than they were to make it safely. She was sure Nardole would notice anything amiss, anyway, and probably fetch the sonic screwdriver out before Missy could get her psychopathic hands on it.
Oh Lord, she was leaving the Earth in the hands of Nardole.
"Ah, here we go," the Doctor suddenly declared. "Glucosphere was bailed out of near bankruptcy five years ago by the government." He tapped his finger against the screen, which had an article about the history of the company. "With a huge sum, apparently. It's the most money they'd poured into a single, privately own company."
"So? Maybe they just wanted to make sure a lot of people didn't lose their livelihood," Grant reasoned. He really hadn't expected them to come up with anything except, perhaps, maybe a strange chemical spill that had gone very wrong.
"Big businesses fail all the time," Danni replied. "You can't bail them all out. What made this one so special?"
"According to this, it was their emphasis on 'research and development'," the Doctor recited.
"Which is just a politically-friendly way of saying 'they're doing something shady, but interesting, that we didn't want directly linked to us, so we bought off someone who could do it for us'," Danni added. She leant a bit closer to continue reading the article. "Seems people weren't happy with the fact that the government had wasted their taxes saving a company that went on to create zombie creatures. The message, along with a memorial garden, were put in place as show of good faith." She rocked back onto the flats of her feet. "A five second video and some flowers? That's the best they could come up with?"
"Don't forget the dome," Grant bit out. "I'm so glad I've never had to pay them any taxes."
"But why?" Danni asked, as the article was about as typically vague on the subject as she'd have expected. "Why did the government want a food additive company doing their dirty work for them?"
"Glucosphere probably were much more advanced than your typical government. Perhaps they needed something making."
"Or, maybe it's the food," she reasoned. "Maybe you've got a bit of a Bond-evil population control going on here."
"You think they were trying to poison us?" Darren asked slowly. She nodded towards the window.
"To me, it looks like they were succeeding," she replied. "I mean, it's quick-acting, it works. Those people have been surviving for four years only on sucking the occasional person to death. Most of them die, that's a rapidly reducing food source. And yet, they seem to be a rather spry bunch of zombies."
"But they're zombies," the Doctor pointed out. He loved watching her brain work, the thoughtful look on her face that would appear when she was quickly working something out. Sometimes she worked things out before him, sometimes he just loved watching her catch up. Either way, she'd always adored his 'smart glasses'. He'd just loved how clever she could be.
"It worked, though," she said. "It was quick, it spread, it converted all those who could be converted. Sure, I'm sure they didn't mean to make people actually eat each other." She then shrugged. "I mean, maybe they did. But apart from the fact that the wrong thing spread, it still spread, and it spread well."
"Exactly," he replied. "Just because it's the wrong poison, doesn't mean it's still not poison." He turned back to the monitor. "Just because you're a llama instead of being dead doesn't mean you're still not a llama."
Danni stared at him, a little baffled before being rather amused. "Did you just…"
"What can I say, I'm sucker for a Disney movie," he retorted. "The question isn't why Glucosphere, it's why poison? Whatever they were trying to do wasn't supposed to be this deadly, so if we can work out their original plan, we can work out why the food additives and then, finally, maybe we can find out how to stop it."
Grant leaned into the conversation a little more. "Stop it? Stop it how?"
"At the very least, let's hope we can stop it spreading any more. Contain the infected," he explained.
There was a loud rumbling outside, the sound of a lot of people heading their way and they all knew that it meant more of the creatures were approaching. They all dropped to the floor in a crouch, keeping quiet. Shadows of lurching figures stretched on the floor as they made their way past, looking for more food.
"We still need information on what they were actually making," Danni whispered lowly. "Is there anyone still around who worked for them who we can actually talk to?"
"Only Debbie," Grant whispered in reply. "She was part of the admin team. She was on maternity when the outbreak happened, so she never caught up in it."
"And she would be…"
"At the town hall, with everyone else."
Danni looked at the Doctor. "I guess that's where we're off next, then."
~0~0~0~
"Can't you ever do anything right?" River snapped. She was angry. She was pissed. Even in the dark, Jack could see how her eyes had narrowed and how she straightened. She looked ready to throttle him.
"What was I supposed to do? She ran out!" he argued back. "If I'd grabbed her, it would have slowed her down and we both would have been eaten. Her best chance was running away."
"With it chasing her! What kind of father are you?" she continued. "If she dies, it's your fault."
"Actually, I think it'd be the monster's fault," Jack joked, unable to help himself. There was something about riling River up that he just couldn't resist. And, right on cue, she moved forward, as if she was about to hit him.
"You," she started. "You aren't allowed to speak anymore. You're not in charge of any of us, Captain Flash." She walked over to the door out of the small office. "You're going to follow my lead, understood?"
"If I recall correctly, me following your lead is what got us into this in the first place," he teased.
"And what the hell is that supposed to mean?"
"Well, it was your idea to go out for dinner," he reminded her. "And then it was your idea to follow the sound of footsteps."
"No, actually, that was Danni," River corrected. "She thought someone might be in trouble. I just… encouraged her." She opened the door, dipping her head out. There was no sign of either the monster or her daughter. She closed it again. "She's been doing better lately. Perhaps what you're seeing is me being the only person trying to help her."
"She's fine," Jack insisted.
"No, she's not," she corrected. "This is the first time I've seen is her, on her own, being concerned about other people. Not just herself, or the Doctor, or even us. These are people she doesn't know. They might not have even existed. She just decided that they needed helping. That's progress, and I don't see you getting results."
"I'm sorry, I can't help it if redecorating my house every other day is how she relaxes," he countered. "At least when I'm helping, I'm also not getting all of us killed."
"If we waited around for her to change wallpaper to confront her feelings, the night would have come and gone," River snapped. "She needs us to make her face how she's changed, and how she obviously doesn't like it. Then we can get around to actually spending time together, mother and daughter."
"And father," he snapped back. "She wanted me here, I'm not going anywhere, no matter how much you want to argue with me. You're not driving me away."
"Can't you, just for once, let us have some time together without sticking your giant head into it?"
"If she invites me, I'm going to say yes. Maybe you should work on being better company instead."
"She just feels sorry for you," River retorted. "Don't think for one…"
She was suddenly interrupted by three gunshots, all in quick succession and they both knew what that meant. Their argument quickly fell away as, without a word, they ran together towards the sound.
~0~0~0~
Getting to the townhall had been an ordeal that Danni had only been partly present for. Each step, each shadow, was now Missy stretching out to her and it wasn't a paranoia that she'd suffered from in many years. Somehow, being on high alert for an evil mastermind of a Time Lady made her very unaware of where they were actually going until she saw the building. The windows were painted black, but there was a glowing light coming from wherever it had peeled off. She blinked to herself, looking around, trying to remember the streets they had taken. She could not.
There was a small group of people inside. They all looked young, which was somehow even more depressing than having a group of people over many generations. They all stared at the new people like they hadn't seen anyone knew in four years.
Which they hadn't. It was a stupid thought.
Grant introduced them, and explained that the Doctor and Danni were there to help. There was a lot of distrust on the faces that Danni could understand, or would have understood had she been paying attention to anything at all. Even as they were led over to the secretary that Grant had mentioned, all she could do was stand with her arms crossed, tapping her foot impatiently, because she was over this whole thing. She'd enjoyed the shouting, and the solving, and the snuggling in the dark room had been nice. Now, though, as it stretched on and on, she just wanted to get away.
"I don't have anything new to say," the woman stated, glancing again at her toddler, who was asleep just away from them. She was probably concerned that they were going to take her child. That definitely wasn't going to happen, but Danni admired her concern. She appreciated a person who had their and their family's safety at the forefront of their mind.
"I know, but just assume we're both idiots," the Doctor replied. "Please, just tell us what you know."
The woman shrugged. "All I know is that there was a bid from the government shortly after I first started. There were rumours of genetic testing, but I didn't pay attention because it seemed so stupid."
"Well, hindsight is twenty-twenty," Danni said offhandedly, like she was paying attention, which she certainly was not. "So, the government were genetically engineering something to do with food? For what? If they're wanting to poison the population, it would be a good way to go. People will always need to eat." She looked to the Doctor. Even though she was the one who first suggested it, and it made a lot of sense, it still didn't feel right. The accident, the dome, the people trapped i side… it felt too messy. "This doesn't feel like supervillain levels of population control, though, does it? For a start, it would appear that this was all an accident."
For some reason, one that he couldn't quite place and one he didn't particularly want to admit to, the fact that her brain went straight for comic book supervillainy rather than governmental corruption was rather amusing. Now unable to look at her for fear of smiling and getting on her nerves, he kept his attention firmly on the woman with the child in front of him.
"One thing I have never understood is how people underestimate the admin staff," he declared. "They're everywhere, but no one seems to notice or care, even though they're the ones keeping the cogs moving." He stepped a little closer. "I'm sure people always talked like you weren't there. You probably got used to it, just carried on with your job and let them gossip around you. It wasn't any business of yours, after all." Debbie nodded. "I bet, for a while, that made you feel terrible, but eventually you just didn't care."
She shrugged, although she wasn't quite sure what it had to do with what had happened to their lovely town. "You just come to realise that they may look down on you, but you were obviously happier than they ever would be. Just because…"
"Yes, yes, all of that," he dismissed before she could start yammering on. "It's all very inspiring. Tell me about the stuff that you overheard and didn't dismiss. Something that made you pause, just for a moment longer than you normally would. There's something in there," he pointed at her forehead, "in that brain of yours that you still remember even though you don't know why. What is it?"
They all watched as Debbie frowned to herself, thinking back over a time that was very different than it was now. It looked like she was thinking hard, for a moment Danni wondered if she was going to burst a blood vessel. Then she looked up and stared straight at the Doctor.
"There was something," she agreed and his face lit up in delight. "One of the execs, Fiona, mentioned something about extending everyone's life. Changing what it meant to be human."
Danni's eyes widened in horror. Her chest tightened; her hearts skipped a beat. Both of them knew what that meant. Someone was meddling with genetics, trying to make everyone live that little bit longer. It wasn't new, in fact people were always meddling with how humans worked. Not too long ago in their history, she, the Doctor and Jack had fought Sleep monsters who came from one man wanting to sleep less. But the words she used couldn't stop her zooming back into her memories, to a time long ago when she was ginger and clueless. To a man with a cackle that echoed in everyone's nightmares, and to a man who had tracked her down and contacted her the moment he could.
The Doctor, on the other hand, had that morbid feeling of excitement when he knew that their adventure had become more interesting. An impossible situation, genetic engineering and not a lot of time or resources to fix the situation. This was his time to shine. "Well, we know what we have to do," he declared.
"Yeah," Danni replied. "We have to kill them."
~0~0~0~
"Over here."
River turned on her heels and moved over to Jack with the grace of someone who had been trained to keep an eye on her surroundings no matter what situation she was in. It turned out that, in one dark warehouse room, he'd spotted the creature lying on the floor. It was quite obviously dead, but neither of them took their chances and approached it slowly, guns at the ready.
"Danni?" Jack called out.
"Over here."
Her voice sounded like it should have been quiet, but it had echoed against the metal walls, so they could hear her. She was sat on the floor, back against the wall, on the opposite side of the creature. Jack clipped his gun back into the place and rushed over to her but River took a little longer. The last thing they needed was for it to jump off the floor and attack them when they weren't paying attention.
He crouched in front of his daughter. "Are you alright?" he asked as he noticed the way her sleeve was torn. He grabbed it, pulling back the tattered fabric. The scratch was pretty deep and looked painful.
"It's fine. I'll heal. I always do," she told him. She sounded exhausted and she looked up and met his eyes. She looked devastated. "I didn't mean to kill it."
"I know," he replied.
"I just wanted to help," she continued. "I just- I didn't want anyone to get hurt, I wasn't trying to kill anything."
"I know," he replied again as he could tell that she was more upset with shooting than she was at being attacked. "You didn't have any choice." Apparently, that was the worst thing he could have said. What he'd meant as a comforting statement caused her to look absolutely horrified. "What is it?" he asked.
"There's always a choice," she stated. "I didn't have to shoot just because I was scared. No one deserves to die like that. It-It was probably hungry, or scared itself and I made us hound it like it was some sort of animal being hunted. If I hadn't wanted a little adventure, it might still be alive."
"Or it might have killed you and everyone else," Jack countered. "You did the right thing, Danni."
Her arm looked worse than it seemed to be, and she was right, she would heal right up. So instead of tending to it more where they were sat, he helped her to her feet.
"None of this feels like the right thing," she told him sadly. He held her close and he and River walked her out. She held onto her mum's hand tightly and as they walked past the creature, she looked back and stared at it, heartbroken.
"I never meant for anyone to die."
~0~0~0~
She could tell the Doctor was starting at her like she had two heads, but she stood a little straighter, refusing to back down. She had known that her suggestion was going to be met with some pushback – he was softer than her, no matter what people thought – but she also knew that he was sensible. He had probably already seen what she was saying was true, he was just fighting it. She loved his good hearts. But she didn't have time to think with her hearts.
"We can't just kill them," he stated. "They're-They're human, they're people."
"No, they were people. Now they're mindless animals who infect everyone they touch," she retorted. "What are we supposed to do, exactly? Leave them wandering around an empty town where they'll just starve to death?"
"We don't know if they'll starve."
"No, you're right, we don't. All we know is that they like to drink people like they're soup and, if they're lucky, they just die."
"Danielle, listen to yourself."
Her eyes flashed angrily. "You think I'm just suggesting this like it's what I want for lunch," she snapped. "We don't have the luxury of choice, here. We either save them, or save everyone else. We could try and trap them in the dome, but there's no telling if they'll find their way out. We managed to get in, after all. We can't let an unknown threat out on the rest of the planet."
"We don't know what they are," the Doctor protested. "They were humans, once, there still might be a chance to revert the change."
"And you think they'll want that?"
"Who wouldn't?"
"Oh, I dunno, how about anyone?" she exclaimed. "Would you want to know about all the people you'd slurped up over your time? Nobody wants to have to live with the pain they've caused."
"It's not their fault…"
"No, it's not, but that doesn't mean they won't feel the pain," she cut it. "It doesn't mean they won't feel the hurt, and the death. No one wants to face the damage they've caused. No one ever wants to face the monsters they've become. And you know that. That's why holding up a mirror to the universe is your signature move. It's why we turn off the inhibitor chips in the Cybermen to stop them. It doesn't matter if it's your fault or not. No one wants to live with that!"
The Doctor could see the passion she was feeling, and it did take him a moment to realise where it came from. "I'm a bit slow, aren't I?" he asked her.
She just looked confused, and a little frustrated. "What?"
"Old age does that to me," he continued. He grabbed her hand. "Next time, I'll choose the destination."
"I really have no idea what you're talking about," she told him bluntly.
"You've been running all day. Trying to get away from something that you don't want to share with me. And that's fine, I understand. No one wants to face the pain they've caused. But these people didn't cause the pain. No one chose to be like this. And we might not be able to save them all, but…"
"But we have to save who we can," she finished for him. She sighed heavily. He thought she was seeing herself in the mindless monsters. A part of her was, most likely. She needed to tell him what was wrong. She needed to tell him about the screwdriver. She needed him to know how unsafe she felt, because if anyone could make her feel better, it was him. She couldn't just keep ignoring the problem.
You can't ignore me forever.
She wasn't ignoring the Missy problem, though. There was another, much scarier, problem she was trying to avoid. One with a killer beard and the ability to make her do whatever he wanted and make it feel like her idea. A man she used as an escape from Missy despite being the same person. A mand that had her email address, despite the fact that he was trapped at the end of the universe. Except, though, he wasn't. He was here. Alive, and actively looking for her.
And sending her selfies.
"You're right, you're right," she conceded, but she made sure it sounded like she wasn't too happy at that fact. She couldn't think about his selfies. She could however, pretend that it never happened. She could hide. She hid from the biggest evil in the universe for years. Hiding from her fears was no problem at all.
~0~0~0~
Let's be real here, this chapter is pretty trashy. I know it wasn't worth the wait, but I hope you enjoyed some of it, anyway?
Thanks for all the lovely reviews whilst I was away :)
Stay safe.