Alright all! I know it's been a hell of a long time and honestly that's because I hit a road block in the upcoming chapters but I swear I'm working on it. Trying not to rush things though. But thanks for keeping up even though I've been inactive so here you go!
Disclaimer on Doctor Who
When Caligo first stepped back onto the Tardis, she hadn't expected anything to change. Rather, she didn't expect to be treated differently than before or feel like she was. It started when the Tardis doors shut behind her. All was quiet save for the Doctor talking about something she might've been half listening to and the hum of the ship herself. When she had entered her room, she plopped her belongings down on the end of the bed and had to take a moment to collect herself. Only hours before she had finally become truly aware of all the voices and thoughts of almost a hundred other individuals in her mind, chattering away like noisy birds as if she weren't there. Now, inside the Tardis, all of that was gone save for very distant hums of almost coherent thoughts. Her thoughts independent of the Draugr network bounced around in the dark, emptiness of her mind while those faint echoes took no notice. There was still Wilhelm and Yuki but for the first time, Caligo came to realize how faint their presence felt. More coherent than the fragmented smattering of memories from the dead but still not the same as those of living, breathing Draugr. People, she reminded herself, even though it felt awkward to reference themselves as such. It took a little bit of time but eventually she concluded that perhaps the current state of things wasn't necessarily bad and it was just after that thought that she became aware of the room.
The walls were still white and the furniture was still rather basic, but the sheets were now a light green and looked soft and puffy like a cloud. There was an empty bookshelf for her to store the few books and research logs she brought from Blackridge, a wooden desk roughly a meter long with a comfy looking chair, a rack for her tools and two extra chairs beside her bed. Wilhelm and Yuki promptly parked themselves each in a chair of their own as she had suspected that was what they were there for. Her closet even had a few extra hangers, although she didn't have much else to put in there and there were several replicates of her usual clothes; seven pairs of olive green blouses with the sleeves rolled up and buttoned, two brown leather aviator jackets, seven pairs of jeans, undergarments stored in her dresser and four pairs of black boots, all for different types of basic Earth weather.
She couldn't help feeling awkward for the fact that the ship had taken it upon herself to do all of this and quietly murmured a thank you, though she wasn't sure if the Tardis would hear it or not. Caligo put what few belongings she took with her away in their proper places and took a nice hot shower before settling in for the night. She honestly didn't remember dreaming or even the fact that she had fallen asleep, at least not until she woke some time later. Caligo certainly hadn't been expecting the Doctor to not be in the consul room for once but rather in a kitchen of sorts. She wouldn't call it an outright kitchen because she didn't fully believe that all the appliances present in the room were entirely for cooking or storing food items.
Caligo looked very confused when the Doctor offered her a full English breakfast and a cup of tea or milk if that was what she liked. He quickly got the impression that the scene of Wilhelm and Caligo having breakfast together when she was trapped in the stasis unit was more fantasy than memory and wondered if she'd ever had a proper meal with an individual in her life. Judging by the data that he'd looked at from the research lab in Central though, he estimated that the former lieutenant hadn't been alive for a little more than seventeen years at best yet she certainly didn't look like a teenager. Perhaps in her late twenties to early thirties if he had to guess. The cellular degeneration would be something he would have to watch out for, and sooner than he'd like to admit. He hadn't thought about it when he'd brought her back onboard the Tardis but now that the thought was there, it wouldn't leave him; a life full of running into and from danger would most likely only cause the cellular degeneration to speed up. If she was afflicted by it – and he was almost certain that she was – She shouldn't be here with him, gallivanting across the cosmos. Life back on Earth would be boring but she'd be safe. She'd be alive and if she took care of herself, she'd live to a fairly old age; though nowhere near as old as Patricia. Thirty years at best according to the researcher… Let's see if I can't do better.
"Doctor," she called hesitantly from across the table. All the Time Lord seemed to do over the last fifteen or so minutes was stare at her from over his cup. It was strange, unnerving and last time she checked, rude. The Doctor might have a penchant for being rude but that didn't mean she had to like it. "Doctor!"
"Yeah? Right here, no need to shout."
"Are you sure? Because you ignored me the first time." Caligo scowled at him when he started to say something about how she wasn't enunciating enough for him to understand her and that alone quickly shut him up. In the back of her mind, she wondered if her expressions gave off different signals than they had before. Stupid question, of course they would if she didn't have many to begin with before today. Right now, Caligo had more important things to focus on than what her face must've looked like at that moment. "What's going on? You're acting strange. All of you."
The Doctor cocked an eyebrow at her. "All of us?"
"Yes! First you ask if I'm coming with you again, then shoo me off to bed once I get back onto the Tardis. Then I go into my room and see that she's redecorated it for me, which I'm not complaining about because it's weird but it's pleasant actually, and now you've been staring at me for about fifteen minutes now with this look like," she sputtered, running out of breath toward the end of the short ramble. Caligo saw the way he frowned and she knew that he was worried about what she would say next. Hell, she was worried about what she was going to say next but she sucked it up and said it anyway. "You're looking at me like you did when we went to see Patricia in the hospital. Like you think I don't have a lot of time left and I want to know why because if you haven't noticed already, I kind of like having some input about what becomes of me."
Caligo's frown had softened, probably without her noticing, and the worry showed through the irritation. It was probably just as strange to the Doctor as it would've been to her if she could see herself right now. He was back to being on top of things, back to knowing what his companion was thinking before she probably did and the young woman didn't even realize more than just her eyes were an open book now. The Doctor could feel the corners of his lips turning up into a grin before he could stop it and laughed.
"Hey!" Caligo picked a bean up with her fork and flung it at him in frustration. She almost didn't realize that it was her who squealed when he threw a tiny bit of toast back in turn but to hell with that if he was going to keep throwing buttered bread at her. The fun ended when the Doctor was hiding behind his chair, the bean from earlier stuck to his cheek and Caligo finally gave him some leeway. She found herself laughing just a little and that her laugh sounded strange to her. It was some sort of cackle, but not as sinister as it should be and sometimes when she laughed a little too hard she would start to snort. She didn't like it but perhaps she just needed time for the sound to grown on her.
The Doctor finally got up from behind his chair and sat down again, laughing a little himself when he saw the smile on her face. Caligo was almost curled sideways in her chair, trying hard not to laugh as he picked the bean off his face and cleaned the rest of himself off with a napkin. Happy, he thought, She's happy right now. He waited for her laughter to dissipate to avoid any more food flying – that had honestly escalated quicker than he thought it would – and looked at her dark eyes. "I just want you to be okay," he said, waiting for her to work through the confusion and realize that he was finally answering her question. Sort of.
Caligo quickly glanced away, still smiling just a little though the mirth was gone from it. Hollow. The word came unbidden from the darkest corner of her mind, whisking away the last remnants of that fleeting happiness and it felt like her but it didn't feel okay. "I will be. Someday, right?" She got to her feet and walked over to his side, gently nudging him with her elbow. "Couldn't stop running around when I actually had a job to do on your ship and now that I've got nothing planned, you just wanna lounge? I'm starting to wonder if you're okay, Doc."
"Guess I was right about you being cheeky!" The Doctor finished his tea and got up. "Fine then, if an adventure's what you're after then you'll get it~"
"Doctor," Caligo called, chasing after him as he strolled back to the consul room, "What about the dishes? Can't leave that lying there.'
"Don't worry about that. Trust me. Again, he thought about Wilhelm's warning to her about trusting him. He still had his back to her but he could hear her breathing change just a little.
"I do," she finally said after what felt like ages when they finally got back to the consul room. Caligo hadn't forgotten what happened in her 'dream' in the stasis unit but part of her still couldn't figure whether that was Durellis' device affecting her or if Wilhelm's AI actually thought that. The AI himself certainly didn't think too highly of the Doctor, but you didn't necessarily have to like someone to trust them, not really. Most Draugr were living proof of that. However, the Doctor was a likeable man and so far, there was no reason not to trust him, but things always happened. I guess it would've been more appropriate to say "We'll see", she thought. But it wasn't a lie at least. He just didn't ask how much. The answer must've been satisfactory enough because he was already moving and talking again like this was normal.
"Well, do you trust me enough to pull you out of trouble if we happened to be running into any?"
"Doctor, I told you. Just because Wilhelm and I used to," she hesitated briefly. "I guess we still sort of share a consciousness for lack of a better term, but that doesn't mean I don't have my own independent thoughts. I'm not the one who made him lie to you back on that human colony with a disturbing taste for chrome." Caligo had to think about his question a little more. "Besides, it's a little late to be asking that, don't you think? You already have," she said, that barely there smile making an appearance as she circled the consul to inspect the various levers and buttons on it.
It was like she'd regenerated and there was an entirely different person standing there in front of him, wearing the lieutenant's skin, using her body and talking with her voice but when he thought about it, this was the lieutenant. He could just imagine her as she had been prior to a day or so ago, almost sure that she would've reacted similarly to the changes the Tardis made to her room and breakfast but far calmer than the brief food fight they'd had. The Doctor mentally stored this away as part of a growing list of his companion's developing personality traits and went on to set the coordinates to their latest destination. "Been thinking about how you admire craftsmanship," he said, waiting for her to circle back around to him again and put his hand down on a lever. "The Daramaxians of Creta Five are expert craftsmen and artisans in just about everything imaginable. Art, textiles, food, drink, carpentry, architecture, even engineering with enough time~" He flipped the lever up, keeping an eye on her in case she lost her balance this time.
It was Caligo's turn to cock an eyebrow at him, in part for possibly attempting to rock her balance and what he might be insinuating about these particular aliens. "Meeting my betters am I? Sounds interesting." The Tardis rocked to a stop a moment later and she strode out after him, taking notice for the first time how much faster he seemed to walk compared to her. It's because he's taller, that's all.
The Doctor took a quick look around the area where they'd landed and came to the conclusion that it was an area akin to a town square surrounded by a half dome of intricately twined branches of foliage, still attached to what looked like overgrown shrubbery as opposed to trees. Natural architecture. "What do you think of this?"
"The topiary," she asked, looking in the complete opposite direction of him. Caligo missed the Doctor's eyebrows practically shoot up into his messy hair, too preoccupied with a little red flower growing along the border of the dome. "You don't see things like this on Earth, that's for sure. Well, not anymore at least."
If Caligo was going to find the foliage so much more interesting than his presence, then perhaps he'd just have to find something to entertain himself with. The Doctor made his way further out into the square and examined the rest of the nature based architecture. Wait. Basically everything here was formed from naturally occurring elements, hardly changed from their original state which meant that this was essentially the nature version of the human Renaissance which meant he'd missed his mark by almost seven thousand years. "Oh boy," he murmured.
"So can we go and look around?"
The Doctor turned to see Caligo just catching up to him and silently debated shuffling back to the Tardis with her to try again for the correct era, but what harm could come of this era? The Daramaxians were a relatively peaceful race and most problems were solved by following strict and carefully laid out rules of equivalent exchange. "Well, we could always- What," he asked when he saw her eyes widen. The Doctor followed her line of sight which landed on one of many Daramaxians going about their daily business.
Long, spindly creatures that looked comparable to praying mantises on Earth, though lacking the compound eyes and pincer like jaws and came in colors ranging from dark green to greenish brown. This particular region was warm, a little humid and relatively shielded from the rays of the red sun high above them by the canopy of large shrubbery like trees, most of the inhabitants dark in color. Each individual had six legs and along their torsos were two sets of arms, the ones just below the shoulders were smaller and had three long needle like fingers, mostly used for fine detailing work of various sorts. The main pair just above those each had a set of three spindly fingers as well and were larger although they had fewer joints than the smaller pair. Their heads were slightly elongated similar to a dog, the eyes dark black spheres of obsidian and a fleshy, dome shaped mouth that concealed several needle like teeth.
The Daramaxians were probably one of the species that were the furthest thing from humanoid and the Doctor assumed – nearly panicked – for a moment that Caligo might be too frightened or disturbed by their appearance to want to stay. He glanced back at her, doing his best to hide the concern of what exactly her expression meant. "Not scared, are you," he asked, trying and succeeding at sounding as if he were taunting her.
The surprised look immediately fell from her face and turned into one of borderline disinterest. "I was nearly killed by what was probably a particle of the left butt cheek of a living ocean, Doctor. I think I can handle a thirteen-foot insect alien," she snorted. Ignoring the stare the Doctor was giving her, Caligo took another look at the alien as it stood beside on of the many buildings in the area. "Although I think it only comes to about seven feet in height, honestly." Seven feet or thirteen, it was still bigger than her but if there was one thing Caligo still firmly believed in after all these years was that the bigger something was, the harder it hit the ground. Not that she planned on getting into a tussle with it.
"Anyway," the Doctor murmured, trying to draw away the awkwardness of her words, "They got smaller over the centuries but other than that they didn't change much. Large hands start the framework, small hands do the fine detailing and one of the things they've been renowned for over the ages is their jewel crafting! Some of the most fascinating and valuable geologic properties occur here. Absolutely brilliant."
As Caligo had quickly found out, the Doctor could in fact talk and walk at the same time and despite all the fascinating things they passed as they entered what looked to be an open marketplace – alien fruits, vegetables, meats, garments, animals – he kept his subject on the rocks and gemstones of the planet. She could see them quite literally everywhere and there was some sort of gemstone affixed to every individual they passed in some form or another. A side note to this was that while she heard sounds coming from the Daramaxian citizens, she couldn't understand what they were saying at all and there wasn't any type of signs for them to read save for a very specific looking symbol over each vendor's area. Actually, it looks more like a territory, she thought, observing the way two neighbors hissed at each other from opposing sides of their supposed property line.
Her suspicions appeared to only be further confirmed by the fact that the amount of space each vendor had varied based on the number of individuals present or allowed into that area. "It's like they're working out of their homes," she said, only to be met with no response. Caligo took a quick survey of her surroundings and found that the Doctor was nowhere in sight. "The only other alien here that looks like a human and I lose him. Damnit," she muttered. "Nine hundred years old and he wants to play hide-and-go-seek." However, as much as she grumbled, Caligo inwardly worried for his safety.
Now he'd gone and done it. The Doctor might not have been sure as to how or when it happened, but Caligo had gone and wandered off. Again. "Honestly. I'm starting to wonder if all of my companions are leaving each other notes in the Tardis somewhere so this keeps happening at least once. Although the first time they'd been separated he'd had a borderline heart attack. Two, actually, and he wasn't keen on going through another two. "Should put a tag on her or something," he grumbled to himself. "'If found, please return to the Doctor at the Tardis. Big blue police box, can't miss it' or something like that." The Doctor flagged down the closest Daramaxian whose attention he just barely managed to grab and smiled. "'Scuse me? You happen to see a little human running around? About this tall," he half shouted, holding his hand up to about an inch below his chin, "Leather jacket, dark hair, dark eyes my god am I talking about Cal or myself here?" Aside from the dark hair and being a little human, the Doctor was really going to have to rethink exactly how he could describe Caligo in the future. More specifics, of course, which would easily distinguish her from his ninth incarnation. Then again, the only person that was bothered by it was him, because he was the only person in current company who knew what he looked like in that previous regeneration.
"Anyway, sorry. Getting off track here. Have you seen someone who looks kinda like me?" All the Doctor got out of the Daramaxian, who was amazingly small, perhaps a juvenile, were clicking teeth and soft, snake like hisses as the alien stooped closer to get a better look at him. Odd, it couldn't be so young that it didn't know how to speak. Unless this is so far back that this was before they established a native oral language, he thought, cringing at just how far off his mark he had been in landing the Tardis. He couldn't understand what the Daramaxian was saying because the Tardis didn't have anything to translate which means Caligo was wandering around an alien city with no means of communication with him or any of the locals and that could easily lead to all sorts of trouble with their current track record.
The Doctor didn't have another second to react before the young Daramaxian wrapped something soft and a little bit heavy around his neck, the smell of freshly worked hide and a warmth just below his Adam's apple instantly apparent to him. He couldn't quite see it, but just feeling the object was enough to know that it was a necklace and the warmth was an Emberite gemstone. Emberite. There was something super extremely imperatively important about it that he had been telling Caligo – well, he thought he had been telling her – about it that he definitely needed to remember now. Big, clever, stupid brain can't remember what I need it to when it's important. Emberite isn't exactly common and it's hard to get and they don't just go around giving Emberite as gifts to random people, especially not random aliens who pop out of a police box in the middle of town! It's supposed to symbolize fire, intensity, passion- As it always did, that's when it hit him. "Oh boy," the Doctor sighed and forced a smile as he looked back up at the Daramaxian who regarded him carefully. "This is really nice and all. Did a brilliant job making it, you, but I'm not-"
The young alien made a sound that was a cross between a click and a hiss when he moved to take the pendant off. The Doctor stopped, wary of that sound and what it might mean, never having heard it in his entire life or in any other era he'd visited on this planet. It didn't seem like this one was going to take no for an answer because as soon as it was certain he wasn't about to take the pendant off, it locked its four hands around his body, lifted him up and carried him off.
Great. How does this always seem to happen to me? Now on top of finding Caligo and making sure that she was alright, he had to escape what was probably a hormonal teenager in essence. Couldn't be too hard, he thought, ever the optimist, It's a small one so maybe I can slip away once it's distracted.
Caligo's watch might not have been adjusted to whatever sort of time zone this was – if it could be called such – but she knew that at least a few hours had passed. A portion of the time had been spent looking for the Doctor but she had found herself distracted by a number of things she wouldn't have before. The first individual she stopped to ask for any sort of direction or if they'd seen the Doctor hadn't told her anything of use, not that she understood any of what it was saying in the first place. Instead, the Daramaxian placed what looked to be a silver and green silken bracelet it had woven into her hands and began picking out more colorful material to make more. As she watched them work, she noticed that this particular one was large but looked rather weak and moved slowly. It must be elderly, she thought, and her thoughts wandered back to memories of Patricia wandering about her shop, working all by her lonesome.
A portion of the fabric the Daramaxian wove was trailing along the rough, stone covered ground and was soiled slightly by the dust. Caligo carefully picked up the ends and wiped them clean with her leather clad fingers, holding it out of the way as the alien kept on their work. Age must've made its fingers stiff, for it worked very slowly and sometimes fumbled so she took the loose strips in hand and did her best to work them back into the pattern that had been made, patching up the holes where she saw them as best she could. Worry for the Doctor's safety never left her, waging an internal battle with a sense of obligation in helping the elderly alien until another had arrived, bringing with it more materials and supplies.
Caligo made her move then to excuse herself as politely as she could manage without actual words but the elder Daramaxian wouldn't let her leave without something first. A sack roughly the size of her head was given to her and inside was a small number of various materials, including strips of the silken material and some odd gemstones. The Doctor would surely be able to tell her all about them once she found him so Caligo took the gift carefully and bowed, a sign of respect they seemed to understand, before taking her leave. "Four hours," she hissed quietly to herself, "Awful, terrible job I'm doing of keeping him safe!"
Back to her aimless wandering, Caligo figured she had to be very lucky to see none other than the Doctor himself hiding in a tree. Beneath it was a Daramaxian hardly bigger than the Tardis who appeared to be grooming. The sight alone was absolutely laughable.
The Doctor noticed her by her laugh first and shot her a look the second he was sure the Daramaxian wouldn't make another grab for him. "Oi! Where have you been!"
"Better question is what the hell are you doing up in that tree," she laughed loudly and without pity or shame for the Time Lord or herself. Caligo didn't pay much mind to the only present Daramaxian, though her presence was certainly detected. The alien hissed at her but the woman couldn't be bothered by it. One way or another, she had to get the Doctor out of the tree or else they would be stuck there for quite some time. "Are you stuck up there?"
The Doctor felt an old habit so to speak rearing its ugly head, his previous regeneration's 'stupid ape' look violently creeping onto his face but settled for throwing his head back and making an exasperated noise. It should've been obvious, even to a human, that if he'd been up there the entire day that he was in fact stuck. "Just thought I'd get a better view of the sunset is all… Yes! I'm stuck in a tree!" It sounded much better in his head but when he said it out loud, the only one who looked like an idiot was him. "I'm almost absolutely certain that this one claimed me as a mate earlier in the day and really isn't taking no for an answer so that's why I'm up in this tree."
Caligo felt a toothy grin settling on her features as she tried not to laugh any more at the Doctor's clearly uncomfortable predicament. "Couldn't just jump down and run? I thought you'd be fast enough for that!"
She's really going for my ego's throat isn't she? "You'd be surprised how fast these creatures can be."
"If they're so good with their hands and have such slim bodies I'd definitely think they're forte lies in speed rather than strength," she called back, shrugging at him. Patting down her jacket and tool belt, Caligo finally found what she'd been looking for. A grappling hook gun. Caligo had to make the shot at maybe 10 meters. Not terrible. "Doctor, do you think you'd be able to risk ruining your tie," she asked, carefully taking aim at the center mass of the tree.
The Doctor glanced down at the Daramaxian who was carefully watching Caligo as she took aim with some sort of gun and began untying his tie. "Cal," he called out in warning as he wrapped one end of the tie around one hand and ad the other at the ready. If he was following her train of thought, that was brilliant but the Daramaxian seemed to be catching on dangerously quick too.
"Now," she shouted, firing the grappling hook into the tree trunk beside him and anchoring it firmly into the wood. The Doctor used his tie to slide down the line too her and Caligo pulled the line from the tree just a second before a pair of long, spindly alien arms came crashing down between them. "What?!"
"Run!" The two of them sprinted off through the city, weaving through the different territories and other Daramaxians, the smaller one still hot on their tails when the two unexpectedly began to bolt down different paths. The Doctor, thanks to his quick reflexes, caught Caligo just in time and tugged her down the direction he was running. "This way!"
"Are you nuts?! I came from that way and I was lost!"
"Trust me! I remember where I park my Tardis!" She was shouting something at him but the Doctor could get an ear full – and he surely would – when they were safely back in the Tardis and not being chased by a hormonal teenage alien who had a crush on him. That lovely blue box was just within sight when said hormonal teenage alien suddenly appeared in their path, spitting and hissing with all four arms bared against them. Behind the two, a crowd had gathered from the commotion and once they caught sight of the Emberite necklace around his neck, they wouldn't let the two escape so easily. In fact, they seemed almost as worked up as the young Daramaxian.
"Doctor what the holy hell are they doing," Caligo hissed, clutching the satchel tightly in her right fist and the left ready to deploy her shield, though she wasn't sure what good that would do being surrounded by so many of them. Funny though, how none of the other Daramaxians made a move to grab or harm them but they certainly didn't seem as friendly anymore.
The Doctor swallowed thickly, not quite wanting to tell her that he in fact had no idea what all the rhythmic hissing meant but he did notice that the only aggressor here was the young alien. "I think it's challenging you," he muttered with great embarrassment.
"What," Caligo suddenly shrieked, rounding on him instantly, "Why me if it's chasing after you?!"
"Because it looks like you sort of," he hesitated for what felt like ages, hoping she'd say something along the lines of 'to hell with it' and they could find a way to sprint to the Tardis before this got messy. Well, messier. But Caligo continued to bore into him with a burning, angry and slightly panicked stare. "They pretty much surely think you stole me from that one over there!"
Caligo groaned loudly and rolled her head back. She honestly couldn't believe what she was hearing and she could believe even less that she actually thought that he was making an awful lot of sense. Of course it would look like something as absurd as that. "Great. Fine. Okay then." She shoved the satchel into the Doctor's hands and tossed her jacket over his shoulder, quite unceremoniously, before turning back to the Daramaxian. "Alright then," Caligo roared as she came within a few meters of the alien that was glaring down at her, "If you want the Doctor then you're gonna have to come and get him!" She beat her fists together and motioned once for the alien to come at her.
It did. By god it came at her with all the speed of an angry bull. The Doctor really would've rather run; Run as fast and far as their legs could carry but there wasn't anywhere to run and now she was fighting for him because he couldn't land the ship in the right bloody era for the life of them-
The Daramaxian was on top of her, literally, at this very moment, when Caligo crouched down and suddenly sprung back up, vaulting the adolescent alien over her head and into the ground just behind her. Even the Doctor cringed when she elbow dropped the poor creature and finally put it in a leg lock with two of four arms trapped behind its back.
"Cal, I'm pretty sure you win," the Doctor yelled over the noise of the crowd. The Daramaxian was definitely regretting the decision to pick a fight with her. The Doctor knew he would.
"Doc, I swear if this thing tries to bite me when I let go it's your fault," she growled back before letting the alien loose. It scrambled away from Caligo like she was some kind of monster and just as easily as that, the others backed away from them as well. Life seemed to return to normal in the community and the rejected Daramaxian gave the Doctor one last fleeting glance before scuttling off to nurse its bruises and injured pride. Caligo turned to give the Doctor a look of her own before realizing that he was already half way to the Tardis. "Does this happen often? Being abducted by aliens that seem to fall in love with your face?"
The Doctor actually stopped for a moment to think about that. "Yes, but not always to me? Not the abducting part and usually not to me. Sort of. By the way, special situation I suppose but maybe next time we could do this without beating people up?"
"Maybe next time we go out somewhere you could not get abducted by an alien who thinks they should fight for rights to you?" Caligo's smile was full of sarcasm when he rolled his eyes at her. She caught the satchel and jacket that was flung back in her face and donned the latter once more. The whirring of the engines, honestly, was a great relief yet Caligo found that her heart was just starting to come down from a drum like pace it had set for itself earlier whilst they had been sort of running for their lives. She couldn't deny that she hadn't had a good fight for the better half of almost a decade and that she didn't know if she was frightened or exhilarated by it. In a completely competitive and friendly manner, of course. As friendly as one could be when punching someone in the face, she thought and laughed quietly to herself. Caligo caught the Doctor giving her a funny look, probably wondering what she was laughing about, and she remembered the pendant around his neck. "Maybe we should've given that back to the poor girl."
Untying the pendant, the Doctor gave it a proper onceover before tossing it in Caligo's direction. "Nah. Far as it's concerned, you won fair and square so any rights to me go along with that too."
"I think it's pretty safe to say that was a female, Doctor," she quipped, having become annoyed with herself for referring to the individuals of the alien race as 'it' all day. It? That was something you used to refer to objects. Tools. Not living beings.
The Doctor merely shrugged and leaned against the consul. "If you like you could call them either male or female. They have all the parts so it doesn't matter who they pick for a mate. Don't think it would've worked out cross species but amongst themselves they don't think about things like that."
"That," she said, but nothing else followed. What could she say? It worked for them so what does is matter to her? "Alright then." Caligo nodded as if acknowledging an undeniable fact. "So what is this," Caligo asked, holding up the pendant. The stone in the middle looked like orange and red gas flickering violently inside a clear stone, the warmth it gave off in her palm not unpleasant but it did unnerve her some. "Not going to catch fire from holding it, am I?"
The Doctor smiled at her as if, yes, that was an absurd question but it gave him the opportunity to continue where he'd left off before he noticed they'd been separated. "No, you wouldn't even if you broke it. The gases trapped in the gemstone just looks like that because they don't mix. It's called Emberite and in any time period it's a very valuable piece of jewelry!" In a split second, he decided that it would probably be better not to tell her what it symbolized and that it was traditionally given to a partner as a symbol of commitment and marriage. If she wanted to put it into a more human perspective, it was a nice, shiny engagement or wedding ring to show off. Outside of this era, however, it had lost that meaning so it really wasn't a lie. It would be a very valuable piece of jewelry in a couple thousand years. "By all rights and as far as anyone on that planet is concerned, it belongs to you now. Keep it if you like." It was a strange thing to think, just a little, but the Doctor had a feeling Caligo might look nice in red. A nice, deep shade.
Caligo let the pendant rest in her palm for a moment before giving the Doctor a half-hearted smile. "Blue's my favorite color, actually," she murmured, "But thank you."
Of course it would be blue, he thought as they began to rifle through the bag she'd brought back with her. Wilhelm had left a great impression on her after all, even if she didn't realize it herself. Even so, he thought that Emberite suited her. More in symbolism than the color anyway. It was only her first day with her emotions but already she struck him as being wild, stubborn, passionate and perhaps just a little impulsive. Bit of a temper too, but that's what happens when you don't mind the fire. Sometimes it might fizzle out and sometimes – more often than not – it'll burn you. It could spread like wild, leaving a trail of ash in its wake or dance with the shadows in dark halls or under the night sky. It might gently warm you or take hold of you and set your body alight. But the Doctor could handle quite a bit of heat, and as terrible as it might have seemed, he wondered what the untempered fire of the human soul might become.