Sexy grounding all of us had a massive toll on the three of us. Well, mainly me, anyway. Liza seemed to be having the time of her life as she kept exploring the TARDIS. She's always coming up to me and telling me about all the rooms she found on her exploring sessions- which could last for hours and lead to me and Rose looking for her for hours until we would find her in a room, looking through a cabinet or a box or something.

She wouldn't even notice us till I would clear my throat and tell her that she'd been gone for hours. She'd then shrug and reply with her standard comment- "We're in a time machine, there's no concept of time!" and I would just drag her out because she needed to eat some food and go to sleep. With great difficulty. Normalising her sleep schedule was a hard challenge- but, she was human and survived on four hours of sleep per day. She was one of my best friends, and I needed her to be safe and healthy. Even if it meant I had to read to her every night while persuading her with a huge mug of cocoa and a truckload of marshmallows. But still, her nightmares never stopped. I tried asking her about them, but she lied every time.

Rose- well, she seemed to be talking the grounded thing worse than I was. She'd just seen her father die- twice- and was trying her best to keep her mind off it. She'd have this huge front of her being perfectly alright and unaffected, making jokes and laughing at me and Liza (well, mainly our 'increasingly childish' arguments, as she put them) while making a sarcastic remark here and there. She always kept herself busy, doing something or the other, and was always with someone or doing something all day. Even when she'd sleep, she'd be curled up in the TV room, the telly blaring something or the other (I think she even watched all the Avengers movies in two nights).

And of course, I couldn't do anything about either of their problems because both of them were so bloody determined to convince me that they were perfectly alright and deny that they were facing any problems whatsoever. I knew they were lying, and I know that a part of them knew that I didn't believe them- but they kept going.

Both my best friends were torturing themselves and trying so hard to hide it- and as usual, I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't even take them on any adventures to cheer them up a bit because 1) Sexy still refused to let me use the controls and 2) If the adventure went wrong, well, I'd end up becoming an even more terrible friend than I was. But maybe a trip to the Trojan Mountains would've done them good. No people, no aliens, not many life forms except for the trees of course, and complete peace. And, well, the view there was fantastic. They'd probably feel better- or not- since I was, like Liza so eloquently put, a danger magnet. We'd probably run into tree Cybermen even though that was supposed to be the most peaceful place in all of the galaxy.

She made a joke, of course, but the more I thought about it, the more I found it true. How many times has someone suffered because of me? Or died? How many times has an entire species been wiped out because of me? I was probably the only person in the universe, who wasn't a Dalek, for whom you had to use the phrase, 'another genocide'. Rose would disagree and tell me that I had no other choice, and Liza would lecture me for an hour and a half about why I shouldn't view myself like that ("What about the number of people you've saved, genius?! Why don't you ever take that into consideration when you decide to hate yourself like this?!") because I was the kindest person in all of time and space according to her, and that the whole universe would go cold if I stopped saving it.

I was flattered by the two of them, but none of that was true. I'd killed my own kind. The High Council- well, they deserved to die anyway- but everyone else, the civilians, the people who lived in the outskirts of Arcadia and the children. The 2.47 billion children- they were all gone because of me. Couldn't even see the universe properly because of a cowardly old man.

"Doctor?" I snapped up from my thoughts and looked up from below the console as I tried to fix something- or, well, appeared to be fixing something while really just letting my mind consume me. I plastered a grin on my face as Rose approached me. "I made pancakes and you haven't eaten in a while-"

"Oi, that's not true, I had a banana yesterday-" I pointed my sonic at her and she shook her head.

"And by yesterday, you mean about a week ago." She folded her hands and I raised my eyebrow. She shrugged. "Liza showed me where the TARDIS clock was, and I've been keeping track. A whole TARDIS week since you've eaten because you were 'fixing the TARDIS'."

"Blimey, you sound just like your mother!"

"There's a reason I'm her daughter. But I'm right, so come on."

I threw my hands up and opened my mouth to say it, but closed it again. "Rose, honestly, I appreciate the concern, but I'm fine. It's really you we should be concerned about."

She raised an eyebrow and I shrugged, "You know, with your Dad and all-"

"Doctor, I'm fine!" She snapped, and realised what she had just said. She took a deep breath and looked up at me, "Listen, Doctor, I've said this once to Liza and I'm telling this to you now. I hardly knew my Dad, the only reason I even wanted to visit him was because I wanted to know what he was like! It was like meeting someone, talking to them for a bit, and having them die. Bit traumatising at first, but fine later."

I was about to open my mouth to protest, but she shook her head, closing her eyes. "Honestly I'm perfectly alright, you're not my Dad to treat me like a baby!"

I closed my mouth again and swallowed, but plastered a grin on my face as she opened them and pretended that the small glossy layer over her eyes was nonexistent. "All right then!" I stood up and started walking to the kitchen. "Pancakes, you were saying? More of a beans and toast man myself, but give me a pancake and I'll like it!" I absentmindedly rambled as I walked toward the kitchen.

I pushed the patterned door open and almost fell over as I saw what was on the table. And what Liza was trying to do to it. "Liza, you're probably gonna fall down and blame gravity again."

She stood on her tiptoes on the table and scowled at me as she tried pouring syrup on the massive tower of pancakes. "Shut up, I'm trying to concentrate, and what's the point of learning physics if I can't blame it when horrible things happen?"

"You're on a table with a leaning tower of pancakes and trying to pour syrup while standing on the very edge of the table." She ignored me and gave the syrup bottle a squeeze. My eyes widened at the amount she put on the pancakes. "That's too much syrup,"

She continued to ignore me as she poured nearly what was the whole bottle of syrup into the pancakes and bent down to pick up her plate, which was also on the table. She took her spoon and took the top bit of the tower- the one with the most syrup- deposited it on the table and climbed off. "Presenting the Leaning Tower of Pancakes- can be found only in the TARDIS kitchen. Italy stands no chance."

Rose snorted at that and I raised an eyebrow at the two of them. "Why the tower, though?"

Rose shrugged sheepishly. "I may have gotten a bit, er, carried away," I turned to Liza, who took a bite of her pancakes and decided to put even more syrup. That was too much, even for a sugar addict. Or a Time Lord. Or a sugar addict Time Lord. Definitely nightmares. She looked at me, swallowed her mouthful of pancakes, and reached for another bite. "Well, she got carried away and I wanted to see how many pancakes she made."

"So you made a tower out of them." I then turned to Rose. "A tower which was taller than you. How long were the two of you even here?"

Liza shrugged, putting another bite in her mouth and Rose said, "I dunno- a few hours, maybe? I woke up early and decided to make breakfast, and Liza came and saw the number of pancakes and decided to make a leaning tower."

I shook my head and went to sit at the table, taking a few pancakes from the top of the tower. "I go fix the TARDIS for a short amount of time and you both already built a pancake tower. What will happen next? New York City made out of sandwiches?"

Liza shrugged, "You know what? That actually sounds like a good idea. The World Trade Centre could be made of ham sandwiches, and the Statue of Liberty can be made of lettuces or something, and Winter Quay could be-" Her eyes widened and she stuffed a mouthful of pancakes into her mouth.

"Winter what?" Rose raised an eyebrow and frowned as she picked up her pancakes.

Liza said something, but it was muffled because she was eating her food. "Spoilers?" I asked her, and she nodded. "So, what are the two of you gonna be doing today?"

Rose shrugged as she took a seat beside Liza. "I dunno- maybe finish that movie I was watching and watch something else... grounded in a TARDIS- many options, but not many options at the same time."

"I'm definitely going exploring again," Liza swallowed her pancakes and coughed a bit before saying that. I gave her an I-told-you-so look, which she ignored as she cut another piece to eat. "I discovered a bowling alley yesterday, and now I'm honestly wondering if you have a golf course hidden in here somewhere."

I shrugged and ate some of the pancakes. Not as good as bananas (but come to think of it, what was?), but it was better than Liza's pancakes, anyway- well, mainly because the kitchen didn't get set on fire this time ("But I was distracted, okay, thought trains can be the worst sometimes!")- but honestly, I could relate a little. "Gonna have to get started on the attic after this..."

"You've still not cleaned out the attic?!" Liza looked up at me in surprise.

"What? It's full of stuff from god knows when, I might get lost in there!"

Well, the attic wasn't as bad as I expected, but it was bad. And by bad, I meant that we could open a space bazaar and end up becoming millionaires after selling half of what was there.

I was trudging through a bunch of boxes full of alien objects I'd acquired over time- even I didn't remember how I came across many of them. I sorted through a box full of what seemed to be like a bunch of instruments from different planets, blowing off the dust in quite a few of them.

After I finished the box, I groaned as I figured out that all the instruments I had 'sorted' were actually not in any sort of a pattern- which meant I had to do it all over again.

I sighed and picked up a string instrument from a pile and examined it by turning it through my hands when a large crash sounded. I gasped as I was thrown about the attic left and right. It was almost like an earthquake had hit the TARDIS, but that was impossible unless- no. No, that couldn't be.

After the tremors stopped, I scrambled to my feet and ran across the attic and outside, tripping over a few boxes, and made my way to the console room.

A/N: Okay, I'm finally back after my exams, and I finally updated. Anyway, the chapter was a bit short and the A/N will be too because my brain decided to abandon me because it's mean (lol). What are your theories on what just happened?