The Doctor and Blon had gone on their stupid date- erm, dinner. Well, they were having dinner together and were basically bonded together by force, so I classified it as some sort of a twisted date.

I was scrolling through a bunch of memes on Pinterest on my phone as Jack stared at the technobabbly thing, occasionally touching it and making a bunch of weird noises. I turned to him. "Do you two need to be left alone?"

He scowled at me. "Do you know how amazing this is?! It's a tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator! Probably one of the most advanced ones as well, the teleport function is so much better than the one in the microkinetic extrapolator, although that one's sleeker. But, this is seventy fifth century tech, that's when the teleport revolution happened, and this evolves into- why are you looking at me like that?"

I laughed softly. "Sorry, it's just that you're such a dork! I mean, sure, you act like you aren't, but look at you going on and on about triploblastic waveform macro something extrapolators."

"Tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator, and also, dorks are your type, so shut up."

I stared at him in horror, and he suddenly covered his mouth in horror. "No- I wasn't implying- Liza, gross!"

"You're blaming me? You're the one who even said that!"

"I was talking about the Doctor! He's everyone's Dork Overlord!"

"Dork Overlord? Also, for the last time, he is my best friend. Platonically. Nothing more. Maybe he's my bestest friend, but it's platonic. Completely platonic." Truth is singular. Lies are words, words, words.

"Okay, let me get this straight. You get platonically jealous when literally anyone flirts with him, and you platonically blush every time he calls you fantastic." He raised his eyebrows in an extremely annoying way.

I groaned. "It'll obviously sound ridiculous if you put it that way, and also, I don't get jealous!" He raised an eyebrow. "Fine, maybe it bothers me, but that's because he's supposed to be flirting with Rose!"

Jack laughed. "Okay, one, he isn't supposed to be flirting with anyone, and two, neither of them even like each other!"

I folded my hands. "Then tell me how NineRose and TenRose are two of the most popular pairings in the entire fandom."

"Aren't you the one who said that you can affect stuff here?"

"I'm not."

"Maybe not intentionally, but you are. You like him, he likes you,"

"And cannon decided to go on vacation."

"Rose doesn't like him! She told me that she used to, but she values your friendship more than a quote unquote idiotic, oblivious bloke."

"Adorable, but if that's your attempt to make me admit that I may have a crush on the Doctor, I'm sorry, but it was a terrible one."

He nodded slowly. "You know what? You're right. You don't have a crush on him."

"Thank you-"

"You're in love with him."

I threw my hands up. "What is wrong with you?! I don't love the Doctor! I just think he's adorable and he makes me laugh and everything's always better when he's around and-" Oh. My eyes widened, while Jack smirked. "Oh my God, Jack, I think I'm in love with him!"

"And it only took you four months to say it out loud. And that's how long I've known you, only the Lord knows how long you've actually been in love with him. Anyway, what are you gonna do now?"

I took a deep breath and shrugged. "I don't know. Not tell him and hide it until it goes away?"

"I honestly don't think love goes away. Either that or the nonsense Jackie makes us watch whenever we visit overdramatises everything."

"They're soap operas, they have to overdramatise everything."

"Thank you for ruining my sentence."

"Thank you for using a soap opera as an example for advice."

"You're welcome, and stop trying to change the subject. I say you should tell him."

"And ruin what we have?! No way! Anyway, falling in love with the Doctor always ends the same way- you fall for him, he doesn't love you back, it all ends in heartbreak."

"Except, he likes you too."

"No he does not. He's the Doctor."

"What, and that makes him above falling for people?"

I shook my head. "No, of course not, he does fall for people. It's just- he's gone through a lot of pain, he's guarded when it comes to making emotional connections. Especially after the Time War and the trauma of him losing his entire planet." Or, well, that's what he thought anyway. "And anyway, even if that wasn't the case, he would never fall for me."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "You don't know that."

"I also don't know if he does."

"But that's the whole point. You'll never know until you tell him. So do that. Tell him."

I shook my head. "No way. He's-"

"Supposed to end up with someone else. Like I said, you being here might be affecting cannon, making that claim useless."

"It'll never work." I turned to the console, folding my hands.

"Give me one good reason for that."

"Jack-"

"Don't 'Jack' me. I need a good reason."

"Why?!"

"Because I want you to be happy."

"This won't make me happy."

"That's a lie."

I turned to him. "You want a good reason? I'll give it to you." I snapped. "I'm human, he's not. He's lived for centuries, I'll be lucky if I live for a century. He doesn't age, I do. I'll die one day. Very soon, in his perspective, and he'll be all alone again. And I can't let that happen. He hates endings, he hates it when his companions age, because then he knows that they might want to leave him and settle down. So he abandons them before they can leave him. And that's what's gonna happen to me, unless I leave him before that, and who knows? I might. I don't want to, but that's what will happen, because that's what always happens. Well, unless I die while travelling with him, and I can't let that happen either because he's seen too much death. I can't tell him, Jack. And even if he feels the same, we both know that he can't get too close! He'll just lose me, like he loses everyone else, so no matter how happy it makes me, it's bound to end in either one or both of us getting hurt."

I ran a hand through my hair and looked at him properly. He was staring at me, his eyes wide. He ran a hand through his hair. "You- I- I'm sorry. I went way out of line."

I forced a smile. "It's alright, you didn't know."

The two of us stayed in silence for a while. He pretended to fix some wires beside the tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator while I stared at a coral pillar at the other end of the room. It felt good to finally admit to myself that I loved him, but then again, that brought out a slew of complications. Including one where I'd have to accept that this wasn't gonna be permanent. One where I'd have to accept that no matter how amazing travelling with the Doctor was, reality would always catch up.

"How do you cope?" I turned around to face Jack, who was looking up from his "work".

"Hmm?"

"With this, you know, knowing that you're never gonna be with him forever? That- that you'll have to leave him?" He sounded vulnerable. Scared, even.

"I try not to think about it. You know, live in the present instead of worrying about the future. Figured out that I'd rather enjoy the time I have with him."

He nodded, looking down. "Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. Total sense."

At that moment, the tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator suddenly lit up. Oh- how could I forget?!

Jack jumped up. "What the-"

"Oh God, it's the rift! It's opening! Disconnect the damn thing!"

"I'll need you to help me!"

"No, there's something else that has to be done, Blon- erm, Margaret's like a magpie!" I ran towards the console, looking for a place to open it up. Or well, ask Sexy to help.

"Seriously, your spoilers are starting to get on my nerves!"

"Thank you!" I turned to Sexy and whispered. "I need your help. I know you know what to do, and I know it isn't supposed to happen till much later, but please. Your thief's gonna be in danger, and so's your Bad Wolf. I know everything gets alright in the end, but I'd prefer if minimal damage was committed and I know you would too."

Rose burst inside. I looked up. Any minute now. "Rose! I need you to go and stand next to Jack- don't ask me why, just do it!" She ran toward Jack, who was running around frantically. "I disconnected it but it's still feeding off the engine!"

"It's all my fault! I should've remembered!"

"Don't you dare blame yourself, we all know what happens when you try to change something!"

I looked up to see the Doctor, who had burst in with Blon. He ran towards the console and started pressing some buttons and looking at the screens. "Jack, update!"

"It's using the TARDIS for something!"

"Never mind Cardiff, it's gonna rip apart the entire planet!"

I looked at the console and closed my eyes, trying to talk to her. Please. You're the only one who can save us.

"What's happening?!" Rose exclaimed.

Blon chuckled. "Oh, just little me."

"What?!" Jack yelled.

"The short version, she had a backup plan where the extrapolator starts feeding off the energy of anything extraterrestrial!"

"The psychic's correct. Now, lay the extrapolator at my feet."

"And why would we do that?" The Doctor demanded.

"Because if you do, I might consider sparing you and your three little pets."

Suddenly, a burst of warmth made me look down. I smiled slightly as wisps of energy slowly trickled out of the side of the console. I slowly inched towards the Doctor as the light started becoming brighter. "What the-" The Doctor muttered, looking down at me.

"Your ship loves us a lot more than she lets on."

"What's that?" Rose pointed to the slowly opening heart of the TARDIS.

"The heart of the TARDIS." I said.

"It's so bright." Blon slowly walked toward the light.

"Look at it, Margaret." The Doctor seemed to realise what was going on. He slowly pulled me farther away from the heart of the TARDIS, which was growing brighter by the second.

"Beautiful." She murmured.

"Look inside, Blon Fel-Fotch. Look at the light."

She stared into the light, as did I. From the other side. It really was beautiful. Blon slowly looked up, smiling. "Thank you." She told the Doctor, who smiled at her. And then, she disappeared. The skin suit fell to the floor, empty.

Blon had reverted back to an egg, and we'd decided to take her back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, which came as a surprise to no one. Well, probably not to me, because of the whole show thing, but, oh well.

We all decided to go and take a rest before Raxacoricofallapatorius since we all had a long day, and since the Doctor had apparently not slept in two weeks. Hypocrite.

Before I went to sleep, I looked at one of the walls and whispered. "Thank you for listening to me tonight. And for saving us."

A voice then buzzed in my head. There's no need to thank me, my Dreamer.

A/N: We're almost at the end of Nine! Idk if that makes me happy or sad because on one hand, I can't wait for Ten, but on the other hand, I don't wanna say goodbye to Nine.

Anyway, a lot happened in this chapter- we finally get to know why this is gonna be a slow burn, also, more importantly, Liza can now understand the TARDIS (I'm just saying it, I'm sure everyone already guessed it at this point tho). We're gonna go to the finale two-parter soon, which I'll be posting fully in a couple of days ig.

Anyway (I swear, we all know I'm overusing this word at this point), do you guys have any predictions for what might happen in the finale? Let me know in the comments! Thank you so much for reading and I hope you all have a great day/night!