Finding Neverland

by RainingCoffee

Mabel was fairly certain she had done nothing to deserve this. All she wanted to do was figure out how she got to the hospital, and to possibly stop running about everywhere. She keeps pulling her stitches and it's really starting to hurt. (This is a jumping around the Doctor's timeline fic. OC/3rd Doctor-13th Doctor)

15. Independence (Under the lakebefore flo)

Hello everyone! Finals have been kicking my ass, so I decided to ignore them and write 20,000 words for this fic instead.

Smart idea, right?

Anyways, hope you enjoy this chapter!

-RainingCoffee

PS. There is sex in this chapter, right at the beginning.

---

I curse, stumbling as I try to figure out where I am now.

"Mabel!" A female voice exclaims, a hand coming around my arm to steady me.

I'm thankful for it, even as my face falls into a sour expression.

A throat is cleared from behind us, and we both whirl around. The Doctor is standing there, arms crossed, looking unimpressed. "Is there a reason you are holding onto the arm of my partner while she's dripping on the grating?"

The woman, who still has a hold of my arm by the way, tightens her fingers and gives the Doctor a cheeky look. "I was helping her, she would have fallen flat on her face if it wasn't for me." Still smiling, she turns to me instead. "Besides, I'm still waiting for my chance. Maybe if I sweep you off your feet enough, you'll give up on the lug over there and choose me instead."

I bark out a laugh, charmed despite myself. Turning to look at the Doctor, I send him a smirk. "Oh please tell me I was the one who picked her."

He grumbles, moving from his spot and heading towards us. Removing his coat as he does so, he uses it to cover my body. "It was more like she was the one who choose us."

"Wait, what?" The woman asks, eyes flickering between the both of us.

"Haven't met you yet, but I'm most definitely looking forward to it." I tell her, slipping my hand up out of the top of the coat and wiggling my fingers to say hello.

"I'm right here." The Doctor blusters, though I can tell he isn't really mad, just amused. "Stop flirting with Clara."

Raising an eyebrow, I turn my head to look at him. "But she's so sassy."

"And you like sassy, I remember." He mutters, rolling his eyes.

"You're sassy too, this go around." I beam, delighted by the discovery.

The Doctor smiles, just a little. "Shush now, Mabel. You'll make an old man blush."

I tilt my head to the side, studying him. While his hair may be grey this go around, he feels lighter than normal. And honestly… "I don't see an old man here. Just the Doctor."

Clara coughs lightly in the background.

Placing his hands on my shoulders, the Doctor pushes me towards the hallway. "Alright, Alright. No overt pda in front of the companion."

I look over my shoulder, catching site of Clara's amused expression as we go deeper into the Tardis. "Since when?"

"Since Clara got tired of walking in on us." He mumbles, a mix of embarrassment and laughter in his voice.

"I'm liking this Clara more and more." I can't help but tease.

The Doctor grumbles once again, letting go of my shoulders and just picking me up, jacket and all.

I ooph, twining my arms around his neck for more leverage. "What's the hurry sweetheart?"

He takes a deep breath, eyes darkening in response. His side of the connection is humming with energy. "You smell..delicious."

Flushing in response, I hide my face in his neck. I can't believe he just said that.

"Did you just jump from the me with the leather jacket?" The Doctor asks, voice an octave lower than before.

"Yes." I respond.

Humming, he inhales once more. "Increased pheromones, I'm fairly certain I know exactly where you just jumped from."

I smother my face further into his neck, embarrassment making my face light up. "Yes, I'd imagine you do."

"No need to be embarrassed." The Doctor murmurs, dipping his head so that he's speaking directly in my ear.

"I can't believe that I jumped right then." I mumble, not happy about the fact that I had jumped right before we had gotten to the good part. And it was leather jacket who I had jumped from, there was just something about him…

He laughs. "You always did have a preference for leather jacket."

Pulling my head back from his neck, I peek at his face. "You aren't..upset at that.?" He doesn't feel upset, but you can never be fully certain.

"No." The Doctor's face is fond. "Each of us have our own personal favorites when it comes to the bodies of the other."

Huh.

A surge of affection rushes through me for this man. I beam up at him, fingers playing with the fine strands of hair at the back of his neck.

He shivers once again, eyes getting just the slightest bit darker. Hiding the satisfied tilt to my mouth into the skin of his neck, I slowly drag my lips across the available space.

"Mabel." The Doctor scolds.

I hum, tongue coming out to trace along the same path. The Doctor stumbles, arms tightening around me to ensure that I don't fall.

When the Doctor next speaks, his voice is strained. "You minx."

"You don't seem to mind." I laugh, breath hitching at the way his fingers tighten on my leg. "Are we close to our room yet?"

It takes a few seconds for the Doctor too respond, distracted by the way I've just swirled my finger along the side of his neck. "I have no idea."

"A room?" I ask, nipping at the bottom of his chin. "Any room at all?"

He makes a noise of frustration, abruptly turning to the left and shouldering his way into what looks to be a closet. Using the leverage of my hands around his neck, I pull myself up to kiss him properly.

Moaning into my mouth, I feel his arm arc out behind me, the sound of multiple things hitting the ground filling the air. He sets me down in the area he just cleared off and I make a noise of appreciation. The new position I'm in is the perfect height for me to sit right in the cradle of his hips.

Using my legs, I hook them around his hips and pull him closer. The heat of him through his clothing is intoxicating.

The Doctor dips his head down to press kisses along my neck. Kisses which quickly devolve into open mouth nips. He focuses on my pulse point, sucking in time to the beat of my hearts. Each pull from his mouth sends an arc of arousal straight to my center.

Raising my hands to touch him back earns me a growl, as the Doctor lifts his mouth from my neck.

I blink at him in confusion, brain not quite working properly. "Why did you stop?"

"I want you to keep your hands on the table." The Doctor murmurs, voice dark with promise. "Can you do that for me Mabel?"

My hands twitch, the need to touch him almost overpowering. His hands come up to cover mine, lowering them back to the table and curling my fingers around the edge.

"You can do that for me, can't you Mabel?" The Doctor reiterates, eyes intent on mine. "Just keep your hands on the table and let me touch you."

"Doctor." I manage to get out, voice unsteady. His words are making my body burn.

Nostrils flaring, the Doctor gives me a look of satisfaction. He can obviously tell the effect he's having on me.

The Doctor reaches out, fingers of both hands sliding along the sides of my neck and maneuvering me into a kiss. He tilts my head to the exact position he wants it to be in, deepening the kiss into something filthy and wet and absolutely perfect.

By the time he pulls back from the kiss, I'm sopping wet, and I can smell my own arousal in the air. His fingers trail down the side of my neck and follow the lines of my body until they reach my legs. There, he encourages me to spread further apart.

I whine, feeling a droplet of slick slide from my body to the desk below me.

The Doctor shushes me, kneeling down, which places his face exactly in front of where I want it. I tighten my fingers on the desk, the urge to grab onto his hair and pull him closer flaring up. He sends me a heated look, aware of the conflicting feelings swirling around inside of me, full of smug male satisfaction at the fact. Our connection is humming. Anticipation and arousal a heady mixture.

Finally, after an age, the Doctor moves closer. His breath feathers across my lips and I clench just from thinking about how it's going to feel.

"So eager." The Doctor murmurs. "So wet for me."

Before I can gather my thoughts and respond, his tongue extends out and licks a stripe straight up my center. A strangled sound is torn from me as I arch my back to try and get more friction.

Hands coming up, the Doctor restrains my legs, taking away even the leverage the desk offers me. Then he dips his head once more and laps at what has become the center of my world. Everything narrows down to the sensation of his tongue, and the pleasure it is drawing from me.

He drives me through two orgasms, and almost into a third one, before he abruptly pulls back. I whine in confusion, hardly able to think through the urgency. The sound of a zipper sliding down reaches me and then the most welcome feeling in the world, his own arousal pressing against mine.

I rock against him, leaning my head up for a kiss, uncaring of the mess on his face. His eyes are dilated, intent on me.

The Doctor pushes forward, sliding into me in one easy stroke. He throws his head back at the feeling of my body accepting him.

"Mabel." He grits out, voice strained.

I laugh breathlessly, arching my back and pushing him further into my body.

The Doctor starts rocking against me, little thrusts, never pulling out. It drives me wild. The sensation building until I'm screaming with it.

"Doctor." I call out, panting. "Doctor please."

"Almost there, aren't you Mabel?" The Doctor asks, breath feathering against my ear. "You just need one little push."

Throwing the connection open and practically slamming against the pleasure centers of my mind, the Doctor provides that last push. I implode, body squeezing around his even as he pushes himself just the slightest bit deeper into me with his own completion.

There is a pause, then the Doctor collapses on top of me, blanketing my body with his own. Little aftershocks shoot through me, each one drawing an appreciative sound from the Doctor as well.

It takes a few minutes, but my breathing starts to quiet, heart rate slowing back to normal. I release my hands from their grip on the table, flexing my stiff fingers. The Doctor slowly leans back, gently rubbing one hand and then the other, placing a kiss on each one after he's done.

The action also allows me to very plainly see the ring on his ring finger, one I had noticed the last time I'd jumped to this Doctor. A ring from me? I'd very clearly think so at this point in time.

"You are such a sap." I can't help but tease, smiling at him.

He hums, brushing a piece of my hair away from my face. "Always."

Affection swells in my body for this man, even as my hips try give a twinge from being in the same position for such a long time. "As much as I don't want to move, if we don't shift position soon I'm not entirely sure I'll be able to walk out of here."

Putting his hands on my hips, the Doctor gently pulls himself out of me, ignoring my hiss of displeasure.

Leaning up for a kiss, one that he immediately responds to, I enjoy the unhurried nature of it. Now that I'm paying attention to it, I can almost feel my body cataloging what the information means. The Doctor is happy, satisfied, and completely content in this moment.

A burst of male satisfaction bleeds over from our connection. Burying his nose in my neck, the Doctor inhales once again. "Hmm, increased levels of Dopamine and Oxytocin."

I snack a hand against his back lightly. "Stop feeling so smug."

"Never." He laughs.

xxxx

After my second shower of the day, and one for the Doctor as well, we head off to look for our abandoned companion.

"She's going to know exactly what we just did." I say, slightly anxious over the fact. It's one thing for them to suspect, but we were gone for such a long time that it was incredibly obvious what we had just gotten up to.

The Doctor rolls his eyes, placing his customary hand on to the small of my back and directing me down the hallway. "Clara is used to us going off by now."

I hum, still not convinced. "Maybe, but that was rude."

"Why is this bothering you so much?" The Doctor asks, pausing and turning his head to meet my eyes with his own.

"She seems important." I murmur. "I don't want her to have a bad impression of me." He throws his head back and laughs in my face. Any anxiousness I'm feeling immediately turns to anger. "Are you laughing at me?"

"Yes, I am laughing at you." The Doctor sasses, wiggling his eyebrows. "Clara thinks that you are single handedly responsible for all the good things that have ever happened in the world. Trust me, this isn't going to change her opinion of you in any way."

He reaches out and closes my mouth, tapping my nose afterwards.

A flush spreads across the bridge of my nose involuntarily. The sass…I really like it.

"I know." The Doctor tells me, smirking.

Now the smugness? Not so much.

"And you are very wrong about that." He continues, smirk settling into something sweeter.

Okay. Maybe he's right about that as well. "Shut up." I grumble, pressing back further into his hand.

The Doctor laughs. "Not a chance."

Rolling my eyes, I shoo him off, turning to take in the new console room that we've made it to. I had briefly noticed it earlier, but it hadn't exactly registered. The new desktop is gorgeous. It was a step away from the organic look she had taken a liking to in the Doctor's later regenerations and something a bit closer to the clean cut lines the earlier regenerations had favored.

This desktop was a combination of metal and efficiency, with an upper level that has bookcases full of books, as well as all sorts of other knickknacks. While the orange, coral, theme bow tie favored had looked homey, this desktop looked lived in.

"So what do you think?" The Doctor asks, leaning against the railing from the upper level.

"Oh, she's gorgeous." I breathe out, eyes fixed on the top of the rotor where Gallifreyan writing is evident on each panel.

The Tardis burbles, warmth bubbling in the spot of my mind that is reserved for her.

The Doctor hums, drawing my attention. "You always say that."

I raise an eyebrow. "That's cause she always is."

"Can't exactly argue with you there." He murmurs, leaning back and turning to go do something else.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch the dematerialization flip over by itself. And suddenly, we are in flight.

"What's that for?" The Doctor exclaims, catching himself on the railing as the sudden shift throws him around.

I shake my head, trying not to put my hands on anything I shouldn't while also trying to hold on to something. "It wasn't me. The Tardis took off by herself."

The abrupt departure ends just as suddenly as it started, the Tardis groaning in the aftermath.

"What was that?" I ask her, touching the rotor.

The Doctor clambers down the steps. Heading over to the monitor, he presses a few buttons and then frowns at the information he receives.

The Tardis presses the urge to leave the console room against my mind, and I'm already heading towards the door before I can consciously think about it.

"Was that us moving? Please tell me that was us moving to somewhere else, and that means the two of you are finished." Clara calls out, footsteps loud as she enters the console room.

I take the opportunity to slip out the door, sparing a brief glance at the space around us before turning my attention back to the Tardis.

The Doctor appears at the door as well, giving a concerned look to the box. "What wrong?"

The Tardis grumbles.

"You aren't happy. Why did you bring us here if you aren't happy about it?" I ask her, touching the door gently. I get a sense of frustration from her, as if she wishes to tell me but can't.

Clara peeks around the corner. "C'mon, monsters, blowing things up." She lights up, beaming at the both of us. "Oh, hey, can we go back to that place where the people with the long necks have been celebrating New Year for two centuries? I left my sunglasses there. And most of my dignity.

I shake my head. "Unfortunately, there will be no leaving right this moment. She brought us here for a reason."

Peering at the space around us, the Doctor runs a finger along the wall. "Underwater." He states, pulling a handkerchief from his packet to wipe his finger off. "Some sort of a base. The technology's twenty second century. Maybe military, maybe scientific."

"Is there a crew?" Clara asks, disappointment forgotten now that there seems to be a mystery.

"Must be, somewhere, if there's oxygen." The Doctor murmurs, heading down the corridor with Clara hot on his heels.

I close the door, making sure no one else can get in, before following after them.

"I want another adventure." Clara states, turning when I catch up to them and putting an arm around my shoulder. "Come on, you two feel the same. You're itching to save a planet, I know it."

Not…particularly? Right now all I want to do is figure out why the Tardis is acting strange. The Doctor brushes his hand against mine and I get a hint of longsuffering patience.

Huh. Long-term problem then. We'll have to work at that.

"Mabel." Clara calls out, voice serious now. "Look at that."

Turning my attention from the Doctor, I look in the direction that Clara is indicating and pause. "Well something definitely happened here."

"Looks like you got your wish Clara." The Doctor murmurs, brushing past us and heading over to the counter.

The place that we've stumbled upon looks like it is a mess hall of sorts, but it didn't look like the last encounter here did anyone any good. Chairs are overturned, plates of food abandoned on the table. Even a cooler door was left open.

There is even a knife sticking out of the wall.

"Food fight?" Clara offers, shrugging.

I slip out from under her arm and give her a look. "What kind of food fights have you been a part of?"

"I think there was more to it than that." The Doctor states, sticking his finger into a cup of tea. "Whatever it was, it happened pretty recently. I's say about seven or eight hours ago."

"You are full of it." I tell him, watching as he wipes the tea off his finger. "There's no way you can tell that from cold tea."

He smiles at me briefly, before pointing to something that's behind me. "No, but that clock is broken. Probably broke when it fell."

Spinning, I take in the clock that's leaning against the wall on the ground. 10:55. Huh. He was right.

"Observation, dear." The Doctor murmurs. Raising his voice, he addresses Clara as well. "No bodies though."

"And they took provisions." Clara states, closing the cabinet behind her. "Okay, so something or someone forced the crew to abandon the base. Maybe they went for a swim in the creepy flooded village outside?"

"Maybe." I respond, thinking it through. Though, if they had fled with provisions the chance was good that they hadn't gone out 'for a swim'. Unless they had some sort of machine that could also carry the provisions with them.

"Oh, yeah. You see, this is more like it." Clara beams, raising her hand for a high five.

The Doctor looks at the hand, then back to her face.

A small tug on my arm has me joining the him, backing the both of us away from her slowly.

"Oh, come on." She complains. "Don't leave me hanging."

Sorry Clara. I hide my smile in the shoulder of his jacket, waiting for the footsteps I know are coming. Sure enough, right when we go out of sight, Clara hurries to join us.

The three of us walk down the corridor, turning left at the next intersection and going through an automatic door.

"Look. Told you. Crew." The Doctor states, the first person to see the two individuals crouching next to something further along the hall. "Hello, sailors!"

The men freeze, standing up and turning to face us. A jolt of apprehension runs through me. They are both see through, with black caverns where their eyes should be, lips moving as if they are trying to say something.

"Right, I did not expect that. Hands up who expected that." The Doctor murmurs, a hand on my shoulder keeping me from taking a step back like I wanted to.

The ghosts walk towards us.

Clara takes a step back instead, but the Doctor shakes his head. "Wait, wait. I don't think they're going to hurt us. I think that they're just curious."

"Curious?" I hiss, completely uncomfortable with the situation.

One of the ghosts, an individual wearing what looks to be a suit, continues to advance until he's only an inch away from me, leaning his face even closer.

"Are you sure?" Clara asks, voice an octave higher than usual.

"Well, I mean, define sure." The Doctor replies, watching the ghost that's in front of me intently. "Look at you lovely chaps. What's happened to you, then?"

Predictably, the ghosts don't respond. But they do take a step back and walk past us down the hall. All the while their lips are still moving.

The Doctor walks down the hallway after them, gesturing for us to follow as well.

Clara sends him a look that he pretends not to see. "What are they?"

"I haven't a clue." He responds, teeth flashing as he smiles. "Isn't that exciting?"

"Exciting until they try to kill us." I mutter, not happy with the fact that we are following the ghosts that just mean mugged us.

Ghosts man. This is a sure fire way to get killed if this was a horror movie.

During my internal rant the ghosts had disappeared through a door at the end of the hallway. When we got close enough and the doors whoosh open, they've disappeared. How predictable.

"Where did they go?" Clara asks, before her attention is drawn to the large white spaceship in the middle of the room. "What is this, some kind of submarine?"

"No, it's alien." The Doctor corrects, shooting me a confused look. "Are you okay?"

Ah, so he has picked up on my apprehension.

"I don't like ghosts. They're creepy." Shrugging at the look that gets me, I study the room. "I also can't help but feel this in one big trap."

He grabs my hand, squeezing it while giving me an encouraging smile. "I could, or it could not be a trap. You can't deny it's interesting though."

"You have me there." Grudgingly, I take a step forward into the spaceship. The Doctor face lights up and he pulls me the rest of the way in, dropping my hand once we are inside.

There is a table in the middle, taking up most of the space. But most interesting part are the symbols carved into the wall. The rough edges tell me that they hadn't originally been there. I nudge the Doctor and gesture for him to look at the symbols himself.

The Doctor hums. "That's weird. The Tardis hasn't translated it."

Clara turns to see what we are looking at, picking up a flashlight that had been sitting on the table and shining it over the symbols.

After she does so, there is a noise from outside of the ship, a sort of hum. Clara turns to look, setting down the flashlight. "Hey, look, they're back."

Rounding the table, the Doctor smiles at the ghosts who are close to the back wall. "Hello! Did you want to show us this? It's very nice."

Clara narrows her eyes, glancing at me. "Wait, are they saying something?"

"I think so." I murmur, putting a hand on both of their arms. The one ghost grabs an axe from the wall. God, I hate being right sometimes. "I think it's a good idea to leave now."

"Yes, I think so too." The Doctor responds.

Pulling them down the stairs, I hurry my steps as the other ghost grabs a harpoon gun from the wall as well.

"Was it something they said?" The Doctor asks. "That happens. They once had an argument with Gandhi!"

A sharp tug on his arm has him safely out of the way of the axe swing that was heading in his direction. "Less banter, more running!"

"Yes dear!" He replies as we hurry through the door. Just in time too, as the sound of something impacting it reaches our ears.

"I'm starting to see why the crew did a runner." Clara murmurs, glancing back at the door we just went through.

The ghosts come through the door, though the good news is that it doesn't seem like they can bring the weapons with them. What follows is a game of cat and mouse, with us being the mouse. Eventually we lose them, rounding a corner and hiding behind some bulkhead struts as we try to regain our breath.

Or at least I thought we had outrun them, but the arm coming through the wall behind us kind of ruins that. So does the ghost coming up through the floor behind us as we try and back away from the one coming through the wall.

There is only one way else to go, so I take it. "C'mon!" I tug on Clara and the Doctor's arms.

Clara is the first to take off, with the Doctor right behind her. At the end of the hallway there seems to be a different type of door than there have been all around the rest of the base. Also, we seem to have found the rest of the crew.

The door opens, a woman gesturing wildly for us to enter. "In here! Quick!" As soon as we are inside, they close the door behind us, backing away as the ghosts get closer.

The ghosts don't come up to the glass, but don't enter the room.

"What are you?" The Doctor murmurs, studying them just as they seem to be studying us.

Almost as if in response to his inquiry, they turn and leave. Their lips are still moving, saying something to themselves.

"Who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?" One of the men in the cage demands, disapproval on his face.

I turn, noting Clara and the Doctor doing the same to my left. "I'm Mabel, this is the Doctor and Clara."

The Doctor pulls the psychic paper out of his pocket and shows it to group of people in the room.

"You're from UNIT." A different man states, almost accusingly.

"Well, if that's what it says." The Doctor shrugs.

The same man nods, gesturing to different man beside him. "I'm Pritchard, this is Bennett."

"O'Donnell!" A woman with a baseball cap chimes in, face lighting up as she steps forward to shake the Doctor's hand. "Are you really the Doctor? I'm a huge fan!" O'Donnell seems to realize that she's being a little too enthusiastic and calms herself. "I mean, er, you know. Nice work."

"Nice to meet you O'Donnell." I take a step forward, smile sharp. I pointedly eye the hand she has yet to drop.

O'Donnell flushes, dropping the hand at once as she takes a step backwards.

The Doctor glances over at me, humor in his expression. I will my own face not to flush. There is nothing wrong with not wanting someone else to fangirl over your partner/future husband.

The last man, which was also the first man who spoke to us, speaks up while gesturing over to the woman next to him. "Tim Lunn, I sign for Cass."

"Tell me, what about those things out there?" The Doctor looks around at the group. "What are they? Why are they trying to kill us?"

"Well, they're er, they're ghosts." Bennett states, sounding unsure.

The Doctor gives him a look. "They're not ghosts."

Cass starts to sign and Tim translates. "Cass is saying-"

"Thank you, but I actually don't need your help. I can speak sign." The Doctor interrupts, leaning down closer to Cass's face. Signing as he says the next words. "Go ahead."

Judging by the look on Cass's face, those weren't actually signs, but she starts signing anyways. There is a few seconds of silence as the Doctor attempts to understand before I get an intense burst of his embarrassment.

I roll my eyes, pulling him back from Cass's face. 'Sorry.' I sign, making a fist on my chest and moving it in a clockwise circle. Pointing at the Doctor, I then sign embarrassed, making an exaggerated face at the same time.

Cass's face had lit up when I started signing and she giggles when I finish. She makes the sign for 'Okay'

"You know BSL?" Tim asks me, signing so that Cass can still be a part of the conversation.

"I learned ASL primarily." I tell him, racking my brain for the correct signs. Tim seems content to let me translate for myself. "But I did take an intro course for BSL, because I was interested in differences between the two. So I know some signs, but I'd be lost in a bigger conversation." Finishing with my signs, rudimentary as they are, I give them an embarrassed look.

That was just as hard as I remember it being when we tried it in class. Translating is hard, kudos to Tim.

"I didn't know you knew ASL." The Doctor chimes in, recovered from his earlier embarrassment. His face falls into a pout. "How come I've never known you could sign?"

I raise an eyebrow at him. "Probably because you just told me that you didn't find out until now."

He pauses. "Good point."

"Anyways." I shake my head at how far we've gone off topic, turning back to Cass. It isn't an extraordinary thing that I know sign language, it's just like knowing any other language. "Can you tell us about the ghosts?" Stumbling over the sign for ghosts, which Tim helpfully shows me, I smile at him in thanks and finish the question.

Cass starts signing, while Tim translates for her. "One of the ghosts is our previous commanding officer. The other, um moley guy, we don't know what he is."

I was right, there were several signs I didn't recognize in that.

"He's from the planet Tivoli." The Doctor explains.

"See?" Bennett, I think his name was, states. "I told you he was an alien. Didn't I say that?"

"Weird thing is, they're not violent." The Doctor continues, ignoring Bennett. "They're too cowardly. They wouldn't say boo to a goose. They're more likely to give the goose their car keys and bank details." He looks around at the group of people. "When did they first appear?"

"Oh, did you see that spaceship in the hangar?" O'Donnell asks. "Yeah, we found that on the lake bed and we'd just got it on board and one of the engines started up and then Moran got-" She pauses, looking down. "Moran was killed."

"Then they appeared and pretty much straight away started trying to kill us." Tim says, translating as Cass signs. "So we grabbed what we could and we were looking for somewhere to hide, and that's when we realized the ghosts couldn't come in here."

"What is this place?" Clara asks.

Gesturing at the space, the Doctor falls into what I like to call his lecturing voice. "It's a Faraday cage. Completely impenetrable to radio waves, and apparently, whatever those things are out there." Turning back to the group at large he makes eye contact with everyone. "So, who's in charge now? I need to know who to ignore."

Cass signs 'me' and Tim translates. "That would be me." There is a pause before he shakes his head. "Her."

Pritchard takes a step forward, handing the Doctor a business card. "Actually, that would be me. I represent Vector Petroleum. We've obtained the mining rights to the oil."

Ughh. Please tell me these people are stuck here because help hasn't arrived yet, and not because of oil rights.

"The oil? Where are we?" The Doctor asks, deliberately tossing the business card to the side.

Bennett responds while Pritchard bends down to pick his card back up. "This used to be a military training site. There was a dam overlooking it, but the dam burst and the valley was submerged."

"Then twenty years ago, we discovered a massive oil reservoir underneath it." Pritchard continues.

The lights above us flicker, then brighten. "Good morning." A computerized voice calls out. "Entering day mode."

"Okay, it's morning. We can go outside now." O'Donnell states, opening the door.

"Thank God for that." Tim mutters.

"At last, we can get out of here." Pritchard says, stretching.

Clara looks around, confused. "Morning?"

Bennett takes a take from a hook on the side of the Faraday cage. "Yeah, we're too far below the surface for daylight, so we have to demarcate artificial days and nights."

"I'd like to have a further look at that spaceship." The Doctor speaks up, studying the corridor outside. "But what about those things that aren't ghosts?"

O'Donnell smiles at him. "Oh, it's all right. They only come out at night."

"Weird how that is not comforting." Clara leans over towards us, whispering.

While the others leave, Cass helpfully keeps the door open for us to go through. I smile at her in thanks, even as my mind whirls. The Doctor brushes his shoulder against mine. Exchanging a complicated look with him, I turn to frown at the bulkheads as we walk past them.

"If whatever they are-" The Doctor starts to say as we walk into the hangar, but he gets interrupted.

"They're ghosts." Pritchard states.

"They're not ghosts." The Doctor gives him an impatient look. "Have been trying to kill you, why haven't you abandoned the base?"

Pritchard nods decisively. "That was my call. We've got about a trillion dollars worth of mining equipment here. We're not just going to abandon it." I slow my pace, seeing the Doctor do the same at my side. Pritchard looks back at us in confusion, which quickly turns to self-righteousness. "What? If it all goes pear-shaped, it's not them that lose a bonus."

"Yes." I look at him in contempt. "Because a bonus is worth far more to you than the lives of everybody on this base, obviously."

The Doctor puts his hand up to stop me. "It's okay. I understand. You're an idiot." He tells Pritchard, patting him on the shoulder. Taking a few steps towards the ship, he pauses and turns back around quickly. "Come to mention it, why is there a Faraday cage on the base?"

"It's the mining equipment." Bennett tells him. "It runs on nuclear fission. The Faraday cage has been lined with lead to act as a shelter in the event of a radiation leak."

"So, we are fighting an unknown homicidal force that has taken the form of your commanding officer and a cowardly alien, underwater, in a nuclear reactor." The Doctor reiterates, exchanging a look with me. "Anything else I should know? Someone got a peanut allergy, or something?"

He doesn't even wait for a response, turning on his heels and going up into the spaceship once more. "It all started with this ship. This is where the answer will be." Frowning at something on the floor, he bends over and opens up a hatch. There is something clearly missing from it.

The Doctor stands back up and frowns at the crew. "What's happened to the stuff you've removed? This is for long-haul flights. There should be a suspended-animation chamber for the pilot right here. Plus, one of the power cells is missing."

"Power cells?" Pritchard asks, running up the steps into the ship. Bennett and O'Donnell follow.

"Yeah. You can see the casing is empty." The Doctor explains.

"It's not safe out here!" Comes the sound of Tim's raised voice. A glance in their direction shows Cass and Tim having a heated discussion.

"What's the matter." I ask, taking a few steps down the steps in their direction.

"She won't let me look inside the spaceship." Tim snaps, clearly frustrated. "She says it's not safe. I'm saying it's not safe out here."

"I imagine they're pretty valuable." Pritchard murmurs from behind me.

I whirl around, glaring at him, he's very quickly wearing against my patience. "No. Don't do that."

Pritchard looks at me, taken aback. "I meant powerful. The power cells I mean."

"Well, they can zap a vessel from one side of the galaxy to the other, so, you know, take a wild stab in the dark." The Doctor states, giving Pritchard the same kind of look you'd give someone who dribbled on themselves.

Pritchard looks down at the one power cell still in the ship. If this was a cartoon, you'd be able to see the visible dollar signs in his eyes. "And the missing one must still be out there."

"What did I just say?" I increase the power of my glare. "Don't be stupid. Money is not worth your life."

"You have no idea what I'm going to do." Pritchard glares back at me.

"Sorry." The Doctor murmurs, looking confused. "Why is this man still talking?"

"We haven't removed anything. There hasn't been time." O'Donnell cuts in.

I watch Pritchard leave, a sinking feeling in my chest, but the Doctor distracts me by taking a hold of my arm and pulling me down the steps with him. "So what have we got? Moran dies, and then those things appear. They can walk through walls. They only come out at night and they're sort of see-through."

"Doctor, wait, you're not saying –" Clara cuts herself off.

The Doctor grins, spinning towards O'Donnell. "Where's the command center?"

"Er." O'Donnell looks confused. "What?"

"The main control room?" I offer.

Her face clears of confusion and she jerks her head towards a door opposite the way we came in. "This way."

The room she leads us to has all the typical things you would expect for a control room to have. Computers, control panels, even a nice illuminated map of the base.

The Doctor waits until everyone has settled before his enthusiasm boils over. "They're ghosts! Yeah, ghosts."

Clara narrows her eyes at him. "You said there was no such thing. You actually pooh-poohed the ghost theory."

"Yes, well, well, there was no such thing as, as socks or smartphones and badgers until there suddenly were." The Doctor snarks, shrugging. "Besides, what else could they be? They're not holograms, they're not Flesh Avatars, they're not Autons, they're not digital copies bouncing around the Nethersphere. No, these people are literally, actually, dead." He pauses, almost giddy with excitement. "Wow. This is, it's amazing! I've never actually met a proper ghost."

I step on his foot, while simultaneously elbowing him as hard as I can in the chest.

He oophs, sending me a hurt look. "What was that for?"

"There are people who are dead right now, one of their crew mates in fact. And you're brimming with enthusiasm at the thought." I hiss, actually, truly angry in a way I haven't been with him since the time he left me behind at Amy's. "I don't care that you are excited about this, that's your prerogative, but show these people some respect. It's their friend that died." I pause, before steam rolling through. "How would you feel if I was dead and someone else lit up at the thought like you just did?"

The Doctor's face, which was already pale at my lecture turns furious, eyes glinting in anger. "It would be an incredibly foolish thing to do."

I narrow my eyes at him, nodding to the rest of the crew. "Then I think you have something to say to these people now."

He swallows, nodding, before turning to the crew. "I, uh, I get carried away sometimes. Sorry about that."

No one says anything in response.

"But don't you see what this means?" The Doctor continues, apology forgotten in the face of his burning curiosity. "Death! It was the one thing that unified every single living creature in the universe, and now it's gone."

The crew just looks at him, and for that matter, so do I. This is an older Doctor, I know that much. But he used to feel sad over the death of people. I'd seen his reaction, just as severe as mine in some instances. If this was what time did to him, what was it going to do to me? Get excited over the fact that someone had died just because it led to something happening that I had never seen before?

No. I refuse to believe that I would let go of that.

"Oh c'mon!" The Doctor exclaims. "How can you just sit there? Don't you want to go out there right now, wrestle them to the ground and ask them questions until your throat falls out? What's death like? Does it hurt? Do you still get hungry? Do you miss being alive? Why can you only handle metal objects?" He pauses, a look of realization coming to his face. "Oh, I didn't know I'd noticed that. Okay, so they'll try to kill you, blah, blah, blah. What does that matter? You come back. A bit murder-y, sure, but even so!"

Turning away from the crew sharply, he takes a deep breath before muttering to himself. "Calm, Doctor, calm. You were like this when you met Shirley Bassey." There's a beat of silence, and the next time he speaks his voice is calm, serious. "Okay. Question one. What is a ghost? Question two. What do they want?"

The lights dim before anyone gets a chance to respond. Flickering, then turning on in the same way they were when we first got here.

"Whoa. Whoa, what's happening?" O'Donnell asks, getting up from her seat and looking around.

"Good evening. Entering night mode." The Computer chimes over the intercom.

Brilliant.

"That's not right." O'Donnell continues, frantically pressing buttons on the console in front of her. "We're switching back into night mode again. This can't happen! No, no, no!"

A bell chimes in the distance. A very familiar bell.

"Er." Bennett looks around. "What's doing that?"

"Mabel?" Clara asks.

"It's the Tardis." I tell her, already spinning on my heels and running in the direction the noise is coming from. The Doctor is already at the end of the hallway, he hadn't even said anything before he took off.

It doesn't take us long to get to the Tardis, and I get the door open as fast as I can. It bumps into the Doctor's back, he seems to have stopped just inside. One step past the door tells me why. The Tardis has lit up in a deep red color, her normal blue missing.

"What's going on?" I ask.

"It must be the ghosts." The Doctor hypothesizes, walking further into the room and rounding the console. "That's why she was upset when we got here."

"Why? I don't understand." Clara looks at him, confused.

"It's just what I was saying. You live and you die. That's it. The ghosts are aberrations. A splinter of time in the skin. They're unnatural. She wants to get away from them." He explains, running his hands over the controls.

Clara rounds the console to look at him properly. "So, what do we do?"

The Doctor pulls a lever. The cloister bell stops ringing and the Tardis's engines power down. "Put the handbrake on." He states, feeling smug.

Nodding, Clara takes her jacket off and heads towards the door.

"What're you doing?" I ask her, confused.

"Going out there, where the action is." She says, smiling in a confused manor.

Coming around the console, the Doctor feels deeply uncomfortable. "Look, you, er-"

Clara turns to him. "What?"

"Oh, this is my own fault." He mutters to himself, before looking up and raising his voice so Clara can hear him. "I like adventures as much as the next man. If the next man is a man who likes adventures. Even so, don't, don't go native."

"What do you mean?" She laughs. "I'm not."

"Look, there's a whole dimension in here, but there's only room for one me." The Doctor continues, still feeling uncomfortable.

Clara narrows her eyes at him. "Wait a second. You just raved about ghosts like a kid who had too much sherbet."

"Do you know what you need?" The Doctor asks rhetorically. "You need a hobby."

"I really don't." She states, starting to become annoyed.

"Or even better, another relationship. Come on, you lot, you're bananas about relationships. You're always writing songs about them, or going to war, or getting tattooed-" The Doctor goes off, before getting interrupted again.

"Doctor." Clara says decisively. "I'm fine."

"Back me up here." The Doctor says, looking over at me.

Even though I'm still annoyed with him, this is too important to stay quiet about. "He's right. I've only known you for a couple of hours, but I can already tell you're reckless with adventures." I pause, hesitating. "Just try and be careful, okay? If something happens to us, we have a cheat for it. You don't."

"I know." Clara murmurs, looking down.

"I just felt that I, I, I had to say something." He tells her.

"I know.' She reiterates, looking up at him. "And I appreciated it."

The Doctor looks back, intense. "Because we've got a duty of care."

"Which you both take very seriously, I know." Clara smiles, longsuffering now.

"Can I stop now?" He asks her, uncomfortable expression front and center on his face.

"Please." Clara nods. "Please do."

She turns to leave and I watch her go. The Doctor starts to follow, but I block the doorway.

"We need to talk." I tell him.

"Mabel, we don't really have the time right now." He responds, distracted, as he tries to brush past me.

I firm my stance, raising my chin. "Is this what I become in the future as well?" I ask him, watching him pause at the doorway. "Someone who can brush off death as if it's nothing? Who can look at a group of people and get excited over the fact that one of their crew mates has been killed because he came back as a ghost?"

The Doctor sighs, longsuffering patience on his face. "Mabel, you know I can't tell you anything about your future."

"Which isn't a no." I can feel my stomach sink. God, I do become like this.

"No." He frowns at me, sudden and sharp. "I need you to not be emotional right now."

That's quite enough of that. I close down my side of the connection, the sudden shift jarring. The Doctor winces, but I can't bring myself to feel bad about it. "I can't exactly just shut my emotions down like you apparently can, but I can make it so you don't have to feel them."

"And here I thought you said you weren't going to run away anymore." The Doctor murmurs, eyes intent on mine.

I laugh, the noise anything but happy. "Yeah, me too." Walking up the ramp, I attempt to get by him to go outside, but he stops me with a hand on my arm. "What?"

He studies me, eyes flickering over my expression. I can feel him on the corners of my mind, asking for entrance but I tighten my barriers. "You're really upset about this."

"Doctor. You basically just laughed in their faces about their friend being dead." I tell him, seeing the look of confusion on his face. "You don't even understand why I'm angry, do you?"

"You're angry over me not being upset?" He tries, still looking lost.

I can myself soften, emotions calming to something more like disappointment rather than anger. "No, that's not why I'm upset." Placing a hand on his cheek, which he leans into, I study him.

He's older this go, with grey hair, but also lighter in a way. The oppressive guilt that had followed him around with his leather jacket body, into his pretty boy face, and even into his bow tie self, has dissipated. Now here he is, not even sure why I'm upset, but trying so hard to understand.

"Doctor, remember what I said earlier. About the hypothetical situation in where I may be dead and someone deliberately brings that up in front of you, delighted?" His face turns hard. "How does thinking about that make you feel?"

"Angry." The Doctor murmurs.

I nod, accepting that. "And why is that?"

"It would be cruel. To deliberately bring that up in front of me and then laugh." A look of realization crosses his face. "Oh."

"Exactly." Taking a step closer to him, I make sure that he sees how serious my face is. "Now I know you can't always be nice and I'm not asking you to. But you can be kind, instead of being cruel."

The Doctor nods, looking like he really does understand. "Never cruel or cowardly."

"That works too." I hum, pleased that he seems to understand.

"No." He laughs, eyes crinkling at the corners. "When I took my name, I made a promise to myself."

Tilting my head, I watch the change in his expression. "What was the promise?"

"Never cruel and never cowardly. Never give up, never give in." The Doctor tells me, voice taking on a strange cadence.

I shiver, feeling the promise in the air. "And if you are, then always amends."

His eyes furrow, the power in the moment lost. "What?"

"Nobody's perfect Doctor." Reaching up, I adjust the collar of his hoodie. "Never cruel and never cowardly. Never give up, never give in. And if you are, then always make amends."

The Doctor turns and crowds me against the doorway, pressing his forehead against mine. "I need you to let me in Mabel."

I can feel the Doctor hovering outside my barriers, pressing against them, asking for entrance. Lowering them, I'm suffused with his affection, genuine awe, and..love.

"You always know what to say, it's ridiculous." He murmurs, fond. "You told me those same words the first time I told you my promise, and it's always stayed with me." Pausing, his mouth tilts up into a wry smile. "I don't always do a good job of sticking to that, but you always remind me just when I need to be reminded."

"Doctor." I murmur, overwhelmed by his words and by the breadth of his feelings for me. It's as if we are right on the edge of something. I feel as if all I need to do is reach out and everything will be different.

He smiles, a victorious thing, all teeth and manic energy. "I'm a selfish old man, always have been. I didn't start out with the intention of helping people, I just wanted to see the universe. And then there was you." The Doctor laughs. "Oh how I hated you at first."

I raise an eyebrow. "Hated me?"

"Oh yes." He murmurs. "Here was this bright, accomplished woman who stole my limelight every time she entered the room. But I was young then, and I didn't know any better. And you were very patient with me. You were also much better at spoilers than I was."

The Doctor pauses, eyes distant. "You always had one lecture or another when I treated someone callously. Relating it to something that would matter to me, to make me see why it wasn't a good idea to act that way." He shakes his head, eyes focusing back on me. "It was infuriating. But, I think it's also why I fell for you as fast as I did. You didn't care about rules, all you cared about was that I be kind."

As he talks, I can feel the strength of what he's saying. It would take a far stronger person than I am to not respond to that kind of devotion in any way. And so, I reach out for him.

Something twists, spiraling together tighter than it had been before. I gasp, eyes going unfocussed. The Doctor supports me, triumphant and fond and so very bright in the section of my mind dedicated to him.

"Doctor." I manage to say through shaky lips.

"It'll pass, give it a minute." He murmurs, pressing a kiss to the side of my head.

Tightening my fingers in their grip on his hoodie, I pull back to look at him. "What was that?"

The Doctor is still smiling, his teeth bared for the world to see. "You took the first step, you reached out."

"I've reached out to you mentally before, and nothing like that has happened." I reply, narrowing my eyes at him.

"Not like this." He feels so very pleased. "When I first connected our minds, you barely knew me. Had only been traveling with me for a couple of months. So I reached out, and I forged the connection, but I didn't make you reach back. I wanted you to make that decision on your own."

"You are an impossible man." I bite out, annoyed and yes okay, fond.

"I know." He says, eyes crinkling once again.

I narrow my eyes at him even further. "I didn't just marry you without realizing it did I?"

The Doctor hesitates, shaking his hand in a see-saw motion. "Not really, more like a proposal."

"Are you telling me you proposed to me all those years ago?" I ask him is disbelief.

"You basically forced me to do it!" He argues immediately.

There is literally nothing I can say to him. I laugh, loud and free. The pressure lets up and I feel as though I can breathe properly again. The bright spot that represents him is still in the back on my mind, humming with vitality.

"Oi!" The Doctor blusters. "Why are you laughing?"

"Because you are a ridiculous man, who just manipulated that whole situation to get me to respond to a proposal that you started over a decade ago from my perspective." I tell him, still brimming with mirth. There are tears at the corner of my eyes from laughing.

He flushes, looking away. "I didn't manipulate the whole thing, only the end. The possibility was there, and I nudged it, that's all."

I shake my head. "And you know what? I can't even be mad at you for it."

"And why is that?" The Doctor asks, looking back at me with a smile turning the corners of his lips up. It's as if he knows what I'm about to say.

Knowing how long he's known me, it's quite possible this exact scenario has happened before. "Because I love you, you idiotic sap."

He kisses me, urgent and entirely welcome.

I laugh, breaking the kiss because I can't keep the smile off my face. It doesn't matter anyways, he just kisses the side of my head in response.

"That's the first time you've said those words to me from your perspective." He murmurs, voice flush with awe. Then he devolves into Gallifreyan, the words reverent and full of promise.

"I still haven't learned Gallifreyan sweetheart." I tell him, pulling on his hoodie.

"That's fine, all that matters is the fact I know what I've just said." The Doctor replies. His eyes are bright, happy.

Clara pops her head back into the room. "Are you two done arguing?" She takes in the looks on our faces, nose crinkling in response. "Ugh, you two have those sappy looks on your faces again. We don't have time for this right now, remember the ghosts!"

The Doctor grumbles, closing the door on her to block out her voice. Then he leans down and kisses me one more time.

I let him, before pulling back and giving him a look. "Ghosts now, kissing later."

He sighs, longsuffering. "Yes dear."

Opening the door, I'm greeted by Clara's displeased face. "You closed the door on me."

"He closed the door on you." I tell her, throwing the Doctor under the bus.

He sends me a betrayed look as Clara turns her glare on him.

"What if there had been ghosts out here, and you shutting the door on me would have led to my death?" Clara asks him. "How would you have felt then?"

"There weren't any ghosts out here." The Doctor grumbles. "If there was, you would have been more panicked."

Clara narrows her eyes. "But there might have been."

"Sorry Clara." I lower my eyes as her gaze swings towards me. "It was important."

"You were probably kissing." She grumbles, but her temper seems to soften just as I'd intended.

The Doctor's amusement reaches me, so I reach over and pinch him in the side.

Clara looks between the two of us suspiciously as he yelps, before shaking her head and visibly deciding to let it go. "I've been talking with O'Donnell, based on previous experience the ghosts don't appear right away. I'm going to help Bennett grab supplies from the galley, want to help?"

"I need Mabel with me." The Doctor shakes his head. "We're going to go back to command center."

She nods, letting that go and taking off down the hallway.

Watching her go, I smile over at the Doctor. "I really do like her."

"Yes, I do as well." He admits, gesturing for me to go first.

It doesn't take long for us to reach center command, though the only person still there is O'Donnell.

"Pritchard, you are unaccounted for." O'Donnell is speaking into an intercom system. "Contact the bridge or get to the Faraday cage immediately. Pritchard, contact the bridge or get to the Faraday cage!"

"Pritchard is missing?" I purse my lips in disapproval.

"He hasn't checked in." O'Donnell tells us, flitting from console to console.

'O'Donnell, it's okay.' Comes Bennett's voice from over the speaker. 'Pritchard's in here!'

O'Donnell sighs, pressing the button so she can speak. "Pritchard, you moron. Grab your stuff, we're locking down early. In case I can't get this back into day mode."

There is a pause, then Bennett's frantic voice can be heard once again over the speaker. 'Man overboard. Man overboard! We need a rescue team in the water now!'

'Bennett, wait!' Clara cautions him. 'It's Pritchard.'

Well, that's all I need to hear. Sprinting from the room, I take the shortest route to the mess hall that I can remember, the Doctor hot on my heels. At some point Tim and Cass join us.

The door whooshes open, and the four of us slide in.

"He's a ghost. He's another ghost." Clara states.

Pritchard's ghost picks up a chair by it's metal legs and advances on us. But before he can swing it, the light flicker then brightens. The ghost dissolves instantly, chair falling to the floor.

"Good morning." The computer chimes. "Entering day mode."

I blow out a large breath in relief, mentally thanking O'Donnell. Bennett makes a noise, looking out the window at Pritchard's body.

At that, I work at clearing the room. Bustling people away from the sight of Pritchard's body and back in the direction of command center.

"How did this even happen?" Bennett demands, running a hand over his mouth.

O'Donnell purses her lips, typing frantically on the keyboard to bring up the footage.

It shows Pritchard leaving the base shortly after our talk. It shows him coming back right after the night mode had been prematurely triggered. And most distressingly, it shows the ghost of Moran pressing the button that flooded the chamber Pritchard had been in. Which killed him.

"They're working out how to use the base against us." The Doctor murmurs. "Altering the time settings so they can go about uninhibited, opening the airlocks. They're learning."

"And now there's three of them." Clara states, looking over at the Doctor.

Bennett waves a hand to get Cass's attention. "Cass, what do we do?"

Cass bites her lip. "We abandon the base." Tim translates. "Topside can send down a whole team of marines or ghost-busters or whatever."

The Doctor steps forward. "Wait, wait."

"I can't force you to leave." Cass signs violently, getting into his face, while Time translates. "So you can stay and do the whole cabin in the woods thing and get killed or drowned, if you want. But my first priority is to protect my crew."

Bowing his head, the Doctor defers to her judgement. I nudge his shoulder with mine, pleased that he took my lecture to heart earlier.

Clara takes a step closer, lowering her voice. "But we're coming back, aren't we?"

The Doctor glances up at the crew, then back down at her. "Yes, we're coming back."

Cass instructs O'Donnell to contact topside.

O'Donnell grabs something that grabs that looks like a field telephone. "Topside, Topside, this is Lance Corporal Alice O'Donnell from Drum Control. Over."

The radio scratches, then a voice responds. 'Drum Control, this is Topside. We have received your message. Submarine on its way. Over.'

A ripple of confusion goes over the group. "Repeat, Topside. Over."

'We've received your request for a rescue sub.' Topside reiterates. 'It's two minutes away. Over.'

O'Donnell shakes her head. "Topside, who did you speak to and when was this request made? Over."

'Drum Control, it was in Morse code and arrived maybe half an hour ago. Said it was urgent, comms were down, two crew members critically ill, full paramedic team requested. Over.' Topside explains, starting to sound confused as well.

The Doctor reaches over and grabs the phone from O'Donnell. "Topside, this is the Doctor, UNIT security visa seven one zero Apple zero zero. You may be familiar with my work. Call back the sub."

'Doctor, why would-' Topside begins to ask, but the Doctor cuts him off.

"Call it back! We have a hazardous and undefined contagion on board. This base is now under quarantine." He says into the phone, hanging up before Topside has a chance to ask any more questions.

"What did you do that for?" Bennett asks, taken aback.

"Well, none of us sent the message, did we?" The Doctor states, raising his eyebrows. "So that means that the ghosts sent it, which means they want that crew down here."

"Why would they do that?" Tim shakes his head.

"Well, I don't know, but I'm pretty certain it's not so they can all form a boy band. Okay. We solve this on our own. The ghosts can only come out at night so they change the base's time settings." The Doctor pauses, mind whirling. "Why? What's different at night?"

"It's mainly atmospheric." O'Donnell states. "The lights are dim, the noise from the engines is muffled."

The Doctor shakes his head. "No, something else."

Cass signs, and Tim translates. "The diagnostic sweep. When the systems are checked, that stops at night to save power."

"What systems specifically?" The Doctor narrows his eyes at Cass.

"Life support, the locks." O'Donnell chimes in. "They're electromagnetic. They have to be secured in case of flooding, so throughout the day, they're checked, one by one, every few seconds."

Spinning to me, the Doctor runs a hand through his hair making it stand up more it had been before. "The answer is in there somewhere, I can smell it."

Clara looks impatient. "Doctor, what do we do?"

The Doctor smiles at me, manic energy filling him, before turning to O'Donnell. "O'Donnell. Excellent work, returning the base to day mode."

"Shut up. It was nothing." She automatically responds, then blushes and looks away. "You really think so?"

His smile gains more teeth somehow. "Now put it back into night mode."

O'Donnell's blush fades instantly. "What!"

"We know nothing. We don't know what they want. That's what's getting us killed. Well, I won't run. Not anymore." The Doctor states. "So, O'Donnell, kindly put the base back into night mode. We want to know what these ghosts are after? We ask them. We're going to do the impossible. We're going to capture a ghost."

xxxx

What follows is a scene strangely reminiscent of an old scooby do episode. Each person takes a turn directing the ghost closer to the Faraday cage while the Doctor and O'Donnell directs us. The only hiccup is when Tim gets cornered, but for some reason they don't hurt him.

In the end, a simple hologram projection of Clara is the final nail, and we manage to trap the ghosts in the Faraday cage.

Then the Doctor and I are heading down the hall towards the ghosts. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a pair of sunglasses which he proceeds to put on his face.

"Why are you putting sunglasses on while it's night mode?" I ask in confusion.

He smirks, pushing a button on the side. An electronic noise rings out. "Sonic sunglasses."

I scoff. "No way."

"Yes, way." The Doctor replies, tapping me on the nose. "I've connected them to the base's wifi. O'Donnell, can you see what I see?"

'Yeah, but all this moving about is giving me motion sickness.' O'Donnell teases, voice coming from somewhere on the glasses themselves.

He rolls his eyes, grumbling. And then we are at our destination, in front of the ghosts. "We need to talk. Sorry, chaps. Just a hologram. You play a little bit too rough."

The ghosts don't respond, they just continue their constant mouthing.

"Cass, are you seeing this?" The Doctor asks.

'She says she can't see them properly.' Tim responds. 'The glass is too thick and they're too far away.'

He looks at me, and though I purse my lips in disapproval, I nod back. "Open the door."

'What?' O'Donnell exclaims.

'Doctor, you can't go in there.' Clara states, panic in her voice. 'They will kill you!'

"They don't have any weapons or access to any of the controls." The Doctor replies. "They can't hurt me, so open the door."

The door clicks, indicating that it's unlocked. When I try to go inside with the Doctor, he shakes his head at me. "I'm the only one that needs to go in." He murmurs.

"Doctor." I scold him, voice low.

"Please." The Doctor asks, grasping my hand in his.

His genuine desire for me to stay out here comes through the connection clearly, in the face of that how can I say no? I open the door for him, closing it immediately after he's in the room. Activating the speaker system on the computer nest to the door so I can hear what's going on inside, I settle in to watch what's happening.

One of the ghosts, Moran, reaches a hand out that goes through the Doctor's body. He shivers. "Cold, isn't it? Take away your weapons and you're not so scary, are you?" Leaning in, he presses a button on the side of his glasses. "Is that better, Cass?"

'She says they're saying the same thing, the same phrase, over and over.' Tim responds, his words coming out slowly as Cass tries to figure out what the ghosts are saying. 'They're saying the dark. The score. No, the sword. The for sale? No, the forsaken. The temple.'

The Doctor clearly wasn't expecting that. "What?"

There is a pause, before Tim's voice comes back. This time it's more confident. 'Yes, she's sure. The dark, the sword, the forsaken, the temple. Just that. Over and over.'

"Dark, sword, forsaken, temple. What does that mean? What are you telling me, big man?" A jolt of realization arcs across our connection. Looks like the Doctor has an idea. "Bennett! I need maps. I think I just worked out what our friend here is telling us."

I open the door for him, making sure it's closed and locked afterwards, before turning and following him down the hallway.

The Doctor leads us back to command center, where Bennett has indeed gathered several maps. He fiddles with them for several minutes, arranging them on the central table.

Placing his hands down, the Doctor smiles up at us. "They're coordinates."

Bennett shakes his head. "How can they be coordinates?"

The Doctor falls into his lecturing voice. "The dark? Space. So, whoever's following the coordinates knows they're going to another planet. The sword?" He pulls an apple out of somewhere and hands it to Bennett, positioning his hand just so. Then, he gives what looks like a dog toy ball to O'Donnell and positions her hand slight lower than Bennett's. Clara gets a tennis ball, and once again she gets positioned lower then the others. The end result is a somewhat straight line the slopes down.

"Orion's sword. The sword, the three stars, although one isn't actually a star but the Orion Nebula, hanging down from Orion's belt. But if viewed from back here, the Earth becomes the fourth bit of the sword. So, narrowed it down to a planet now. Getting closer." The Doctor explains, gathering all of the items back from everyone and placing them on the table next to the maps. "The forsaken. The forsaken or abandoned or empty town. See, it's a location, beaming out to someone or something across the universe, over and over. And every time they kill one of us-"

"It strengthens the signal." Clara states, interrupting the Doctor. "Another ghost, another transmitter."

O'Donnell frowns. "Which is why they sent for that rescue sub."

The Doctor nods. "Get more people down here, kill them, make even more ghosts to beam out the coordinates."

"But why are they beaming out the coordinates?" Tim asks, translating for Cass. "Is it a distress call?"

"It could be." The Doctor allows. "Or a warning. Might even be a call to arms. It could mean, come here, they're vulnerable, help yourself." I get a burst of anger from him. "Wait a minute, though. Wait a minuet. Do you know what this means? It means that they're not a natural phenomenon. It means that someone is deliberately getting people killed, hijacking their souls and turning them into transmitters."

"But what do the coordinates lead to, though?" O'Donnell asks, looking at the Doctor. "To us? To the ghosts? What?"

"Ah! What the coordinates are for. That is part of the answer to the other question you're all thinking." The crew just give him blank looks. "Really? Come on. None of you? Surely just being around me makes you cleverer by osmosis? What is the other question?"

Cass starts signing, the Doctor turns in her direction, turning his attention to her. "The temple." Tim translates. "The fourth part of the directions. What's the temple?"

"Finally." The Doctor mutters. "It's like pulling teeth." He turns back to an aerial overview map, "This is the flooded military town. Shops, houses, town square, and this."

I frown down at the map. "Is that a church?"

The Doctor nods. "Whatever the coordinates are for, it's in that church. Find that and you're a hop, skip and a jump to stopping them."

"Wait, you're not suggesting that?" Bennett hesitates, frowning at the Doctor. "But we're safe now. The ghosts are in the cage. We can get out of here."

"No one has to stay. In fact, I would prefer it if you went." The Doctor tells him, sincere. "You'll all get in the way and ask ridiculous questions. But, you know." He gestures to Cass, O'Donnell and Tim. "You have chosen to protect and serve." Then he gestures to Bennett. "You have given yourself to science and the pursuit of knowledge. None of you have chosen anonymous or selfish lives. Go, and a part of you will always wonder, what would have happened if I'd stayed? How could I have helped? What would I have learned?" The Doctor shrugs. "I want you to go. But you should know what it is that you're leaving."

Cass heaves a sign, looking reluctant even as she signs that she's going to stay.

"Cass says we should go." Tim translates. "But everything that happens here is her responsibility now, so she's going to stay." He looks uncomfortable, shifting. "So I, er, guess I should too."

"Well, count me in." O'Donnell states with a smirk, stepping back to brush shoulders with Cass. "Who wants to live forever, anyway?"

Bennett closes his eyes briefly, looking like a man at the end of their limit for bullshit. "Sorry, er, have you gone insane? We can go home." O'Donnell shrugs, grinning at him. "They're ghosts, though. How can they be ghosts?" No one says anything. "Well, at least if I die, you know I really will come back and haunt you all."

How very British indeed. I bite back a smile, pressing my face against the Doctor's shoulder briefly.

He nudges me back, smile on his own face.

"Well." Clara breaks the silence. "After what happened to Pritchard, I'm not very keen on throwing a diving suit on and leaving the base to look for anything."

"We have something for that." Bennet states, looking somewhat excited for the first time of the night.

O'Donnell rolls her eyes. "You're just excited because you get to use your toy."

"It's not a toy." Bennett replies, annoyed. He's digging through the cupboards for something, pulling out a box that has what looks to be a VR headset inside.

The Doctor makes a noise of understanding. "Remote controlled drone."

"Basically." Bennet states, suiting up. "Left hand for power, right hand for steering. The googles let me see what the drone sees."

"And I can tap into that and put it on the screen for us." O'Donnell continues, pressing a couple of buttons on the console in front of her.

The drone moves surprisingly fast, and it seems like almost no time as passed when Bennett announces he's approaching the town square. "Which way is the church?"

O'Donnell consults the map once more. "North-north-west, one hundred and fifty yards." Bennett adjusts the trajectory. "That's it. Starboard two degrees."

"What are we looking for, exactly?" Clara asks.

"Something that has the power to raise the dead and turn them into transmitters." The Doctor answers. "I expect we'll know it when we see it."

"Yes, because that's not vague at all." I deadpan, giving him an unimpressed look.

"Wait, I've found the church." Bennett states, interrupting our conversation.

"That's it, keep going." The Doctor murmurs. There is something to the right that sticks out. It's large and white, looks almost like a casket. "Wait. What's that? Move closer."

"It's a casket?" I frown at the poor quality image.

The Doctor looks at Bennett, even though Bennett can't see him. "Can we bring this in?"

Bennett's lips twitch into a smile. "That's easy."

Somehow, he gets the casket to stick to the bottom of the drone, then carefully maneuvers it back to the base.

The six of us hurry to the hanger, where the drone has placed the casket. The sight of it causes a strange shiver to crawl up my spine.

The Doctor is the first to approach it, hand touching the top. "It's the suspended-animation chamber from the spaceship."

"So." Clara looks at the box. "The pilot could be in there."

"There's something inside there. But it's deadlock sealed. I can't open it." The Doctor states, frowning at the suspended-animation chamber. "It should be the pilot, it should be. So why do I think it isn't? More questions. Everything I solve, just more questions. I have to go back to the beginning. We arrive, we see the ghosts. They don't kill us. They lead us here, they show us the spaceship. Then they try to kill us."

The Doctor whirls around and runs into the ship that's at our backs. "Not translated by the Tardis. Why?" He uses his sunglasses to scan the words, then comes back down the steps towards us.

"Tim, translate for me." The Doctor demands, before turning to Cass. "Whenever I step outside, you are the second smartest person in the room. So, tell me, what's weird about this? I know that it's all bonkers but, you know, when you think about it, one thing keeps snagging in your mind. What is it?"

Cass looks taken aback, responding slowly. "The markings on the inside of the spaceship." Tim translates.

The Doctor nods, snapping his fingers. "The markings on the inside of the spaceship. Yes! Why?"

Tim translates once more. "I don't think they're just words."

"They're not." The Doctor reveals, smile sharp enough to cut. "They're magnets."

"Magnets?" Bennett frowns at the Doctor. "How?"

"Well, a localized and manufactured electromagnetic field, to be precise." The Doctor explains. "The dark. The sword. The forsaken. The temple. When we heard the coordinates for the first time, did anyone expect them not to be that? No, exactly. Me neither. It's like we already knew, somehow. Like the words were already in us."

"Wait a minute." I cut in, finally understanding what's going on. "It would make perfect sense. The ghosts never tried to hurt us until we came here and looked at the coordinates. And earlier, they didn't hurt Tim. Cass never let Tim come in to see the coordinates."

"Exactly!" The Doctor exclaims. "Those words actually rewrite the synaptic connections in your brain. They literally change the way you are wired."

"Okay, so, the spaceship lands here." Clara starts piecing it together as well. "The pilot leaves the writing on the wall so whoever sees it, when they die, they become a beacon of the coordinates, while he slash she slash it snoozes in the suspended-animation chamber-"

"Waiting for his slash her slash its mates to pick the message up." The Doctor continues, turning to face the suspended-animation chamber. "My God. Every time I think it couldn't get more extraordinary, it surprises me. It's impossible. I hate it. It's evil. It's astonishing. I want to kiss it to death."

"Down boy." I murmur, giving him an amused look.

He grimaces comically at me in response.

At that moment an alarm goes off. "Attention, all crew. Evacuate base immediately. Emergency protocols have been initiated. This safety message was brought to you by Vector Petroleum. Fuel for our futures."

O'Donnell runs to the nearest computer on the wall. "Oh no." She states, pressing a couple of buttons. "The ghosts tampering with the day-night settings caused a computer malfunction. Its-It's first priority is to keep the reactor cool, so it's opening the hull doors and it's flooding the base."

Cass goes over and signs something rapidly.

"Cass says, close the internal flood doors. That'll contain the water in the central corridor." Tim calls out. O'Donnell nods, typing rapidly.

"Where's the Tardis?" The Doctor asks.

"On the other side." O'Donnell answers him.

"We need to get there." The Doctor states. "It's our only way out."

"Okay." O'Donnell takes a deep breath as she straightens from the computer screen. "We've got thirty seconds before the flood doors close."

"Time to run!" I exclaim, pulling her along with me, Bennett hot on our heels. The Doctor falls back to stay with Clara, Cass and Tim. Unfortunately, they aren't fast enough.

The door comes down between me and the Doctor and I have about a millisecond to look through the door at his panicked face before the sound of the other door starting to close catches my attention. I lunge towards it, managing to roll into the other section just before it closes, and I'm stuck on the wrong side.

Looking through the window, I can see the Doctor on the other side of the corridor. He reaches down to activate the intercom on his side. "Mabel, you need to take the Tardis back to when this all started. Figure out what's going on."

"Why can't she just come and get us now?" Clara asks, looking irritated.

"The ghosts, the Tardis won't come near them." He reminds her.

Activating the intercom on my side, I blow out a stream of air. "I'll be back soon, I promise."

The Doctor nods, eyes intent even as the water floods the corridor to the point we are looking at each other though it. "I know."

"Wait, you're going to go back in time?" Bennett asks. He's one of the two people on this side of the corridor with me. "How do you do that?"

"Very carefully." I respond, ignoring the look he shares with O'Donnell. "Have you two ever heard of the Tardis?"

O'Donnell's face lights up. "We are going to get to fly in the Tardis?" She clears her throat. "I mean.."

I raise an eyebrow at her, amused despite myself. As we round the corner, I gesture at the box. "It's called the Tardis, and it stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

"It's just a box." Bennett says, unamused.

"Is it?" I ask, pulling out my key and opening the door. "Feel free to stay out here if you want, but I have a job to do so make your decision quickly."

Leaving the door open behind me, I rush up to the console. Nerves rise up, almost choking me. I don't know if I can do this by myself. I've never driven the Tardis before, in fact, I've never done anything more than monitor individual sections of the console.

The Tardis burbles, a section of her console flashing. It looks like it has some sort of organic material that's open to the air.

"Telepathic circuits." I breath to myself, the words popping into my mind.

"What's a telepathic circuit?" O'Donnell asks, startling me. It seems both of them have chosen to follow me in.

I smile at her, confident now that I know I can do this. "It's what's going to get us to the past to figure out what's going on."

The Tardis shuts her doors, handbrake flipping itself off as I stick my hands into the circuits. It's a strange, wet feeling, but I do my best to block that out as I concentrate on where we need to go. The rotor spins as we take off.

Bennett curses, and O'Donnell whoops in laughter. And then it's over. We land.

"Do, do you have a bathroom on this thing?" Bennett asks, looking grey.

I send a look at the ceiling and the Tardis groans, a door materializing on the upper deck. "Through there."

Bennett takes off, hand over his mouth. I wince, hoping that he makes it in time.

"I'm gonna go check on him, yeah." O'Donnell tells me, looking up the stairs after Bennett.

I nod. "Don't be long, I'll be waiting outside."

Once I'm outside, I finally get a good look at what the town used to look like, and it's not a town at all. There are buildings yes, but it's clear that nobody has lived here for a long time, if they ever had in the first place. That, and the Russian signs with cardboard cutouts of people kind of give it away.

O'Donnell is the first one out, lips pursed in displeasure.

"How's Bennett?" I ask her.

"Oh, he's still throwing up." She tells me. "One small step for man, one giant bleaurgh."

I can't help the way my lips tilt up at that. "Ah, I've seen that happen before. The vortez can make the stomach a little wibbly." Arnold Schwarzenegger was a puker, never had I been more disappointed.

"Somehow I doubt that Rose or Martha or Amy lost their breakfast on their first trip." O'Donnell says, offhand, as she looks around.

"That's an awlful lot of information you have." I tell her, casually calm.

O'Donnell smiles, just slightly. "I used to be in military intelligence. I was demoted for dangling a colleague out of a window."

Taking that in, I tilt my head in her direction. "What did they do for you to have to dangle them out of the window?"

"He was a sexist pig." She tells me, lips curling in disgust. "Didn't like the fact that women were allowed in the military. Enjoyed seducing, or even strong arming, women who were a lower rank into bed. Then he would rat them out to the higher ups and destroy their reputation."

And reputation was everything when it came to the military. "I'm surprised you didn't drop him out the window, instead of just dangling him."

"Yeah, well. It was a close one." O'Donnell mutters, shaking her head. "So what year are we in?"

Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath. Expanding my senses like bow tie had taught me. The physical world falls away and I can feel the earth itself spinning through space. It's amazing.

Reeling it back in, pulling myself back together, I open my eyes. Not a second has passed in real time. "1980. The year is 1980."

O'Donnell nods. "So, pre-Harold Saxon. Pre-the Minister of War. Pre-the moon exploding and a big bat coming out."

I cover her mouth, glaring lightly. "Spoilers."

"Wait." It's muffled through my hand, so she pulls her face back. "Are you saying that you haven't lived any of that yet?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying." I scold her. "Try and keep the spoilers to a minimum."

The Tardis door opening distracts her from replying. Bennett walks up, stiff, and puts his glasses back on. "Sorry about that. Had a prawn sandwich. Might have been off."

How very British. "No problem at all." I tell him, gesturing towards the steps. "Let's go."

I start to walk, but O'Donnell begins hopping on one foot. "Just one sec, I've just got something in my boot."

"Ah, okay." Giving her a strange look, I allow them to have their privacy.

I may not be able to see them, but I can hear them just fine.

"It's bigger on the inside, it's bigger on the inside, it's bigger on the inside." O'Donnell quietly squeals, so very excited. "How can it be bigger on the inside, Bennett?" It sounds as if she takes a deep breath. "Okay, let's roll."

That woman. I bite back a smile as the catch up to me. Maybe I could convince the Doctor to give her a trip when we figured everything out. She'd certainly appreciate it.

"Why have we gone to Russia?" Bennett asks, looking around at the carboard cutouts.

"We haven't." Gesturing around at the landscape, I continue. "We're still in Scotland. My guess is that this was used as a training site. It's 1980, that puts us in the middle of the Cold War, explains the Soviet paraphernalia. The Tardis has brought us to when the spaceship first got here."

Rounding the corner, the spaceship is parked right in front of the Orthodox church that we found the suspended-animation in. I glance back at my companions. "Shall we?"

Bennett looks unimpressed, but O'Donnell smiles at me so I'm going to call it a win.

The first step that we take into the spaceship already shows differences. The suspended-animation is still in the ship for one, and there seems to be a wrapped corpse on top of the other platform.

"Oh, is that the pilot?" O'Donnell asks, incredulous. "My God, look at size of it."

I shake my head, clues coalescing into coherent theories. "No, I don't think that's the pilot."

"What do you mean, you don't think it's the pilot?" She frowns at me over the mummy.

"If they were the pilot, why would they be all wrapped up like that? Wouldn't they be in the suspended-animation chamber? No, I think this is a transport ship for the dead." I tilt my head to the side. "Kind of like a hearse."

Bennett kneels down and fiddles with the power cell hatch. "The suspended animation chamber's still here, and the power cells for the engine."

"And there are no markings on the wall." O'Donnell continues.

"Not yet, at least." I mutter.

A noise from the direction of the church draws my attention. The alien from Tivoli is running towards us, carrying a briefcase and waving a large white handkerchief. "Greetings!"

"It's him." O'Donnell states, as we walk down the ramp to greet him in return. "That's the ghost from the Drum."

The alien gets right up in my face, studying me closely. "Remarkable." He turns to Bennet, reaching out to touch his face. "Oh, and humans, too." Backing off, he hands out some sort of business card. "Albar Prentis, Funeral Director."

'Albar Prentis Universal Funeral Director. May the remorse be with you.' The card says, huh. Still making money off of death in the future I see.

"You're from Tivoli, aren't you?" Bennett asks, looking up from his own card.

"The most invaded planet in the galaxy!" Prentis exclaims, giggling. "Our capital city has a sign saying, if you occupied us, you'd be home by now."

"What are you doing here?" I ask him, deciding not to comment of his statement.

"Ah, yes. Of course." He runs up the ramp, turning serious for the first time. "This is the Fisher King. He and his armies invaded Tivoli and enslaved us for ten glorious years! Until we were liberated by the Arcateenians. But, thank the Gods, soon we'd irritated them so much, they enslaved us, too!" Prentis exclaims, giggling once more.

"My first proper alien, and he's an idiot." Bennet states, still looking unimpressed.

"And now, in accordance with Arcateenian custom, I've come to bury him on a barren, savage outpost." Prentis continues.

O'Donnell's eyes furrow in confusion. "You mean the town?"

I shake my head. "I'm fairly certain he means the planet."

Prentis smiles. "Although, at the risk of starting a bidding war, you could enslave me. In the ship I have directions to my planet and a selection of items that you can oppress me with."

Down boy. "Look, we've come from the future. There's a signal that's going to be sent out, fairly soon I'd think. How do you do it? And could you possibly not do it?"

"What are you talking about?" Prentis asks, looking confused for the first time.

"The technology that you use to make the dead come back and repeat your coordinates. I want you to destroy it." I say to him, completely serious.

"We don't have anything like that." Prentis laughs nervously. "Even this ships belongs to the glorious Arcateenians."

I narrow my eyes at him. "So who sends the message?"

Prentis doesn't answer, just sniffs.

Glancing over at Bennett and O'Donnell, I make a decision. "Let's go back to the Tardis, see if the Doctor has found out any new information."

I could have called him here, but to be honest I just wanted to get away from Prentis. His personal space issues were starting to annoy me.

So, as soon as we get back to the Tardis, I dial the Doctor. Hopefully he has his phone on him. Two rings in, and the monitor fritzes, call being transferred to the big screen there.

Huh, handy that.

I set the phone down on the console, waiting for him to pick up.

When he does, the Doctor's face is white, the corner of his eyes tight with stress.

"What is it?" I ask him, hating that I can't feel him from the distance time has put between us. "What's wrong."

"Um, well." He hesitates.

The video tilts and Clara's face comes into view. She smiles, but it's just a stressed as the look on the Doctors face. "Mabel…another ghost has appeared."

I frown, not understanding that reaction. "Who? Has someone died?"

"It's yours." Clara murmurs.

A chill runs down my spine. Mine? The Doctor's expression suddenly makes sense.

"-bel, are you okay?" Clara's voice breaks through my panic, bringing me back to the situation at hand.

"I'm okay for now." I respond, straightening my back.

Her eyes flicker to something behind the phone, then back to me. "What does it mean?"

Shaking my head, I raise an eyebrow at her. "I'm sure the Doctor has already explained exactly what it means."

"I don't believe that!" Clara explodes. "You two are always meddling somewhere. There has to be a way to change it!"

"Clara." I make an effort to soften my voice. "We can only change things when we don't know it's coming. You've already seen my ghost, that means it's already happened. It's fixed now."

The phone tilts again, image spinning before coalescing into the Doctor's face. "No."

I frown at him. "What do you mean no?"

"It can't end this way." The Doctor states. "You have so much more ahead of you. I'm seen you do that already. You can't die here."

"Doctor, you know as well as I do, that particular future is always in flux." I murmur, touching the monitor.

"Take me off the monitor." He demands. I can see the rush of movement that means he's moving away from the others.

I do as he says, gesturing to Bennett and O'Donnell that I'll be right back. Once I'm far enough away, I look down at the phone in concern. "What is it?"

"This isn't something that you can just go and decide for yourself!" His voice whips through the phone, mirroring the harshness of his face. "You can't just give up, say you are done and that's it."

"What can I do? You saw my ghost, it's fixed now." I reply, fear making my voice come out harsher than I intended it to.

"So what? We break the rules all the time, why can't we just break a few more?" He asks, desperation shining through.

My heart twinges at the sight of his face. "I can't save the people who have already died, Doctor."

"No." He agrees. "However, if you figure out what's happening, and why, then you might be able to stop anyone else from dying." 'Including yourself' are the unspoken words behind what he's just said.

I sigh, wiping my hand across my face. "Okay. Okay, I'll try. We just met the undertaker and he's still alive for now."

The Doctor breaths out in relief, looking so very thankful.

"Hey now, stop that. I said I'd try. It's not certain." I scold him, not wanting him to get his hopes up only to have them crushed if I fail.

"In my experience, when Mabel makes a promise, it generally works out." He tells me, eyes fond.

I roll my own eyes in response, connecting it back to the monitor so everyone can see what's going on. "Okay, what else can you tell me?"

The Doctor's forehead furrows in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean about my ghost." Try to keep up Doctor. "Any signs of how I died?"

"Ah." He murmurs. "You scarf is missing, and you are saying something different than the other ghosts were."

I hum in understanding. "What am I saying?"

"A list of names. Moran, Pritchard, Prentis, O'Donnell, Doctor, Mabel, Clara, Bennett, Cass." The Doctor pauses. "Who's Prentis?"

"The alien from Tivoli." I reply. The image on the monitor jerks. "What's going on, are you okay?"

"Your ghost is in the room with us now. But you're not doing anything, why aren't you trying to kill us like the others?" The Doctor asks me like I would know.

I raise an eyebrow, not that he can see it while he's focusing on ghost me, but the thought still counts. "Isn't it a good thing that I'm not trying to kill you?"

"Ah, well. It looks like you are trying to kill us. You just released the other ghosts from the Faraday cage." He murmurs. "And now you've just stopped."

'The message has changed. She's saying something different. She's saying-' Tim cuts off.

"What am I saying now?" I ask.

'She's saying the chamber will open tonight.' Tim continues, finally.

The chamber will open tonight. What?

"Doctor." I put all the urgency I'm feeling into my voice so he will focus on me. "Now that the ghosts are out, you all can go to the Faraday cage."

The Doctor purses his lips. "If I do that, then the signal won't go through to the phone."

I shake my head. "Figure it out, I'm going to need a way to keep in touch. If the message changes-"

"I'll let you know." He cuts me off. "See you soon."

The phone call disconnects before I can respond.

I bend over the console, closing my eyes while letting out a sigh. How am I supposed to do this?

C'mon Mabel, put everything together. The missing power cell, the moved suspended-animation, the names.

The fact that this valley is under water.

And the fact that my ghost has been the only one to say something different than the others.

"Mabel." O'Donnell calls out, voice soft.

I open my eyes, manic energy filling me. "I might be able to do this."

She looks taken aback. "Do what?"

"Save the people who haven't died yet." Baring my teeth at her, I pay no attention to how her face goes slack in shock.

The Tardis chimes behind me, panel opening and a slim device sliding out. I pick it up, examining it. It's more streamlined than the one the Doctor uses, but it is unmistakably a screwdriver.

"Did you just give me a sonic screwdriver?" I ask her. She burbles, and I get the impression that she's saying something along the lines of 'you're going to need it'.

Thanks dear.

"Let's go." I tell them, striding towards the door. But, maybe I should.. "Not you O'Donnell."

"Why not?" She asks, instantly pissed off.

I bite back a sarcastic response. "I need someone to stay here in case the Doctor calls again."

"The last person to say something like that to me got kick in the balls." O'Donnell says, narrowing her eyes at me.

"Maybe Mabel's right." Bennett states, ignoring the warning glare O'Donnell gives him. "Maybe it's best if you stay here."

"Never going to happen." She responds, walking out of the doors. "Seriously, have you two met me?"

Well, that didn't work out the way I wanted it to. I exchange a displeased look with Bennett, before the two of us hurry after her.

Unfortunately, by the time we get back to the spaceship, the body that had been lying on the table is no longer there and Prentis is lying dead in its place.

"Guess that dead body wasn't so dead after all." O'Donnell mutters.

Bennett gestures at the wall behind us. "And now we've got the writing."

I take in the words with dread, things are getting that much closer to how we found them in the future and I'm running out of time to fix it.

"And it looks as though the Fisher King has taken the suspended-animation with him into the church." I add, seeing the drag marks. "We need to get out of here. Now."

Nobody moves. "I mean RUN!" That gets them moving.

Before we can get very far, a loud, very vicious roar cuts us off. It's coming from the direction of the Tardis.

O'Donnell looks around. "What was that?"

"In here." I hiss, making sure the two of them go first. "It's cut us off, we won't be able to get back to the Tardis that way." In here being a dilapidated building, but at least it was better than being in the open.

As we run, O'Donnell starts to fall back. I can tell It's difficult for her to keep up with the speed we are attempting. Bennett slows down as well to help her, but she brushes him off. "Let's split up. Go on, Bennett!"

"No!" I order. "We need to stay together right now."

"There's no time!" O'Donnell hisses back, lowering her voice in response to the audible footsteps coming our way. She ducks into a side corridor as I watch in horror.

Bennett grabs me around the waist, pulling me around the corner and into a bathroom. Our breathing is loud in the sudden silence, and I attempt to regulate mine.

The footsteps get louder, passing our hiding spot and not stopping. I almost breathe a sigh of relief when there is another loud roar coming from the direction that O'Donnell is hidden. Bennett immediately opens the door and runs from the room, and I let him. He's in no danger now. The next person on the list is the Doctor.

Walking around the corner slowly, I find Bennett kneeling next to O'Donnell. He has a tight hold of her hand, pulling the rest of her body into his arms. "Why did you come? You shouldn't have come. I mean, you never listen to anyone. It drives me mad."

It's a struggle for her to get the words out. "To keep an eye on you, idiot. So, don't die."

"No." Bennett refuses, shaking O'Donnell when she goes still. He lowers his head over her body.

I just look on in shame. The list said she was next, I should have tried harder to fix it.

"Who's next on the list?" Bennett asks me, almost no emotion in his voice. He lowers O'Donnell to the ground softly, then stands up and removes his glasses, staring me straight in the eyes. "That list your ghost was saying, that's the order in which people are going to die, isn't it? I mean, I've only just figured that out. But you knew that all along, didn't you?" His stare bores into me as he ticks off the names. "Moran, Pritchard, Prentis, O'Donnell."

"Her ghost hadn't been there, in the future. I thought I might be able to help.." I trail off, knowing my words are a cold comfort.

"Yeah, but you didn't try very hard to stop her, though, did you?" Bennett states, voice getting colder. "So who's next?"

I swallow hard. There is nothing I can say to refute that. I could have tried harder. "The Doctor."

He narrows his eyes at me. "Yeah. Yeah. Except now you're going to do something about it, aren't you? Yeah, because it's getting closer to you. You change history to save yourself but not to save O'Donnell. You wouldn't save her."

"No, I don't particularly care about my own life in this instance." I tell him, seeing him do a double take at the sincerity in my voice. "But I do care about the Doctor's. I'm going to change history to save his life."

Bennett walks away in disgust. I can't exactly blame him. Here I was, getting angry with the Doctor earlier when I wasn't any better. I really was the worst sort of hypocrite.

Kneeling down next to O'Donnell, I pull her coat tighter around her body.

"So what's next?" Bennett asks, startling me.

"We are going to screw the rules, and I am going to save the Doctor." I tell him, decisiveness straightening my spine. "We need the Tardis."

Predictably, the path to the Tardis is now clear, and we make it there in minutes.

Bennet keeps pace with me, looking confused. "How are you going to do that?"

"I'm going to go back and pick the Doctor up" I clarify, going over to the telepathic circuits once more and sticking my fingers in. "Ghosts and timelines be damned."

The Tardis takes off in flight, but this time something is bothering her. Her cloister bell rings once and then we materialize.

A quick peak outside of the Tardis shows that we are in the same area that we first traveled to. "Why are we still here?"

I walk a few steps away, then have to backtrack quickly as I see myself standing next to the Tardis. My heart pounds even as I throw an arm out to stop Bennett from walking into view. "Shit."

"What?" He asks, looking at my arm like it's poison.

I release him, cursing once more. "The Tardis has taken us back to when we first got here. We traveled to about thirty minutes before we just were."

Bennet shakes his head. "So what do we do now?"

"Try to stay out of sight, at least until we catch up to where we were earlier." I explain, frowning as we round the other side of the building and see Prentis who is still alive and well.

"Prentis, he's still alive." Bennett breathes, as if he's just realized what I told him earlier was real.

"Don't think that way." I shake my head. "He's still dead, he just hasn't died yet."

"Yeah, but he's right there." Bennett says, looking back over at Prentis. "I mean, we can just-"

I cut him off. "Bennett, whatever you are thinking, stop. There are rules that we have to follow. I don't want him to die, but I've already seen it happen. So have you. It's fixed now. If we try to undo that then the universe has its own way of making sure these things happen." I shiver, thinking about the reapers that the Doctor has told me about. It feels as though we are on a precipice, one that can fall either way. "They are dead already. You pretending otherwise is an insult to their memory."

He looks away, nodding.

"Okay then." I gesture for us to get a little closer, hiding behind a couple of barrels labeled toxic waste.

It is quite bizarre to see yourself from the front, it's like looking in the mirror only not. Unfortunately, seeing O'Donnell seems to be too much for Bennett. He stands up, clearly intending to storm over, so I do the first thing that pops into my head. I tackle him to the ground.

It's a short tussle, but one that ends with sore chin for me, and a ripped jacket for him.

In the end, we both watch as the other version of ourselves walk off back towards their Tardis. When I stand up, I have to close my eyes briefly as I notice that my scarf has been torn.

"Not enough time." I mutter, frantically thinking.

"You." I turn to Bennett, ignoring the way his eyes widen at the sight of my face. "Go back to the Tardis, she'll keep you safe. The Fisher King won't be able to get through her doors."

"But, what are you going to do?" Bennet asks as he starts to walk away.

"Hopefully, something clever." I reply, raising my voice only slightly.

I hear him walk away, but I don't pay him much mind. The Fisher King has gotten up from his table, and it is a frightening sight to behold. Standing at over 7 feet tall, it has some type of bone armor overtops of it's chest and arms. The face looks like something out of a predator movie. The Fisher King carves the coordinates into the wall of the ship, then somehow tilts my perception of it. I know it's still there, but my eyes just slide right off of it.

Prentis hurries back from wherever he'd gone, into the spaceship none the wiser.

For all of my big words earlier, when I told Bennett he couldn't change anything, I was incredibly difficult to stay where I was. Here was a man, he wasn't the brightest person in the universe but did that mean he deserved to die?

No. But I couldn't do anything about it.

Prentis turns to look at the words, and the Fisher King uncloaks himself. The noise of a blaster pulse rings out. Prentis is dead.

The Fisher King drags the suspended-animation chamber from the ship into the church. I slip from my hiding spot before the noise has completely disappeared. Quickly running into the ship, I spare a moment of silence for Prentis, then remove the power cell.

There is a reason it was missing in the first place, and that reason was me. I jurry rig it to do what I need to, planting it next to the dam. Then, discarding my useless scarf, I go to confront the Fisher King in the church.

Once inside, I find the suspended-animation in the middle of the room, open. There is heavy breathing coming from the darkness in the outside corners of the room, but I ignore that as I contemplate the chamber.

A quick scan with my screwdriver supports what I've put together so far, compatible technology.

"Are you not going to beg for your life?" The Fisher King asks, voice deeper than I would have thought.

"No." I answer simply. "I've come from the future. I've already seen what you will do."

It doesn't come as a question, it comes as an order. "Tell me what you have seen."

Arrogant alien, I scoff internally. "I've seen ghosts."

There is a pause. "Ghosts?"

"The dead, risen again." I explain. "Repeating coordinates to this very spot."

"How many ghosts do I create?" The Fish King demands to know. "How many!"

"There were four the last I heard, probably five by now." I'm still facing the suspended-animation so the Fisher King doesn't see how much it costs me to keep my temper leashed.

"My ghosts will make more ghosts. Enough to bring an armada. Enough to wake me from my sleep." The Fisher King hisses.

"What will happen when they get here?" I ask, needing to be certain. "What will you have them do?"

The Fisher King laughs, a grating sound. "We will drain the oceans and put the humans in chains."

I turn to face him, calm even though his visage is truly terrifying. "I have a problem with that. You see, this world is protected."

"By you? One woman who is lost in time is hardly a threat" The Fisher King scoffs, so secure in his own superiority. "The seed of their destruction is already sown. They will die. The message will be sent. My people will come, and you will do nothing to stop it, Time Lady."

"Time Lady's, Time Lords. Cowardly, vain curators who suddenly remembered they had teeth and became the most warlike race in the galaxy." Contempt in is his voice as he advances on me, but I hold my ground and don't let him push me off balance. "But you, you! You are curious. You have seen the words, too. I can hear them tick inside you. But you are still locked in your history. Still slavishly protecting Time. Willing to die rather than change a word of the future."

His head tilts to the side. "You will be a strong beacon. How many ghosts can I make of you?"

I bare my teeth at him in an imitation of a smile.

"You called me a Time Lady. It's technically correct, but I grew up as a human." The Fisher King pauses, and bite back a laugh. "Don't mention the rules of time to me, not after you've perverted the sanctity of death itself and turned those people into endless messengers." Pausing for effect, I tilt my head. "The rules don't apply to me, and you'd do well to remember that."

"There is nothing you can do." The Fisher King states, raising his weapon and aiming it at my chest.

I smile, leaning closer to the gun. "Oh honey, I've already done it. Those words? They aren't there anymore. I got rid of them. The future that I talked about will never happen now."

The Fisher King snarls. "You can't do that."

"You threatened people I care for." I respond, just as viciously. "There is nothing that I won't do to protect them."

Pushing me aside roughly, the Fisher King takes the bait. I watch him go.

Once he's outside, I point the screwdriver at the suspended animation chamber. Setting up what needs to happen once the chamber has been brought to the base. Encoding the different messages my hologram needs to say, so I know what to tell it to say. I have no talent at code, but the chamber itself already has the necessary functions. All I have to do is think.

Finished with that, I point the screwdriver back in the general direction of the Tardis. It chimes, and not a moment too soon, as the ground shakes, indicating that the power cell I set to explode had indeed exploded.

Which also means I need to get into the suspended-animation chamber or everything will have been for nothing. Scrambling in, I press the button on the side of my screwdriver, closing the doors.

Two seconds pass where I wonder if it's even going to work, before everything fades to black.

It's as if I've just blinked my eyes. Closed one minute, open the next, as the doors open above me.

Sitting up abruptly, I beam at the stunned faces of those around me. Even the Doctors. "Haha! Hello there!"

"Mabel?" The Doctor asks, voice shocked.

I ignore him, hurrying out of the chamber. "Follow me!" Taking off towards the headquarters room, I can hear the sound of footsteps scrambling to follow me. As soon as I get there, I shove the end of my new screwdriver into the console.

The sound of the Fisher King snarling fills the air.

"What is that noise?" Clara asks, eyes intent on my face.

"That is the sound of the Fisher King." I tell her, smile sharp enough to cut. "It's something that should be able to control them."

On the security feed we can see the ghosts turn around and head through the wall.

"Where are you leading them?" The Doctor asks. Ha, that man probably knew what was going on the second I attached the sonic to the console.

I click a button, changing cameras so we can watch as the ghosts walk down the corridor and into the Faraday cage.

The Doctor makes a noise of understanding, reaching over and remotely closing the door. The noise of the Fisher King cuts off abruptly.

I let out an almost inaudible breath of relief, which gets me a sharp look from the Doctor in response. "A hologram then?"

"Yeah." I reply. "Like the one we made of Clara earlier."

Scooping me up, the Doctor holds me tight to his chest. His relief is permeating the air around us.

I clutch him back, taking the comfort where I can get it, finally able to breathe properly for the first time in what feels like an age.

The Doctor pulls back, only to kiss me as if his life depends on it. Which, to be fair, his life had depended on me there for a bit.

Pulling back, giddy at the feeling of success, I laugh. "We did it."

"No." The Doctor pushes a lock of hair behind my ear. "You did it." His eyes flicker over to the console and a smile forms on his lips. "And it looks like you got a new accessory out of it as well."

I turn, pulling my screwdriver from the console now that it's not needed. "I know right? The Tardis gave it to me, and it was exactly what I needed to figure out how to fix as much as I could." Looking down, my mask of happiness falls. "I couldn't save O'Donnell, or Prentis."

"I know." The Doctor murmurs, understanding coming through our connection. It doesn't make me feel any better. He turns away and faces everyone else. "First things first, Mabel may have taken care of the threat in the past, but those ghosts can still kill us if they get free. So. We need to delete those coordinates from out minds just in case."

"And how are we supposed to do that?" Tim asks.

"Well, now that we know what it really was, I can delete it." The Doctor states, pulling his sonic sunglasses from his jacket pocket and placing them on his face.

"You can do that?" I narrow my eyes at him. "No way."

"Yes way." The Doctor replies, taking them from his face and putting them on mine instead. I can feel them, a gentle probe, cleansing the coordinates from my mind.

Letting them finish, I give him a wan smile. He frowns, but continues the deletion, placing the glasses on Clara's face. She smiles at him. "So what was it? Mabel's ghost."

"I'm assuming it was a hologram." The Doctor glances at me to confirm, and I nod.

"The suspended-animation already had the program for one in it." I explain. "All I had to do was send it an image of my body, set it to show up after the chamber got pulled back into proximity to the spaceship, and incorporate the phrases you saw me mouth."

Clara hums as the Doctor pulls the glasses from her face and puts them on Cass. "And why did the ghosts only come out during night mode?"

"That's because they're electromagnetic projections that were out of phase with the base's day mode." The Doctor says, pulling the glasses from Cass. "Right, I've erased the memory of the writing. Though you might find you've lost a couple of other memories too. You know, like people you went to school with, or previous addresses or how to drink liquids." He looks around. "Where's Bennett?"

"I sent him back with the Tardis, did they not show up?" I frown, going up to the console and bringing up an image of the Tardis in the last spot I saw it. It's there, but where is Bennett-

Oh.

The image flickers, but ultimately stays on the screen. He's in front of the Faraday cage, watching the ghosts inside.

The Doctor clasps my shoulder, turning to leave the room. Clara and the others follow him, leaving me to my thoughts.

I don't really feel like facing Bennett again. So, feeling like a coward but ultimately unable to help myself, I slip away to the Tardis while they are busy in front of the Faraday cage.

Instead of going to our room, which I know will be the first place the Doctor will look for me, I go deeper into the Tardis than normal.

The corridors become sparser, until there is only one door left to go through, which I begrudgingly do. It's the edge of a mountain, with fog so thick you can't see any farther than 20 feet in front of your face.

Perfect place for introspection.

At some point, my internal clock tells me that it's several hours later, the Doctor walks through the door.

His joints creak as he lowers himself to sit on the ground next to me. "So, are you done brooding yet?"

Annoyance sparks, and I send him a look.

"I could hear you thinking all the way across the Tardis." The Doctor says, ignoring my look. "It was like a storm cloud in the back of my mind."

I sigh heavily. Now that he's here, I know that he's not going to leave me in peace. So, best to bite the bullet. "I'm a hypocrite."

He hums, encouraging, but doesn't say anything.

"I got angry with you earlier, for being careless with your words. And then I turn around and let two people die. Prentis, I couldn't do anything for. His death was fixed from the first moment I saw his body, but I could have tried harder to save O'Donnell and I didn't" I admit, looking up at the ceiling so I won't have to see the look on his face.

Because of that, the resulting scoff takes me off guard. "I have a hard time believing that you did anything of the sort." He raises a hand, stopping me when I try to respond. "How many times did you try to get her to stay back?"

I frown, wondering where he's going with this. "Twice."

"And I'm assuming that she didn't listen to you either time." He continues.

"No." Narrowing my eyes at him, I feel myself start to get angry. "Are you trying to say that it was her fault?"

"No. I'm trying to say that it's nobodies fault. You tried to keep her from getting hurt, and she decided to not listen to you. It's life." The Doctor turns his head to look at me, eyes fond. "You can't save everyone, Mabel."

I know that. This was just…the first person who was my responsibility that I'd let down.

"I know." He murmurs, arm coming around my shoulder and pulling me into his side.

And so we sit here, watching the fog swirl by as I contemplate life choices.

---

Rosealyn – The Doctor dances is one of my favorites as well. The child in the gas mask was one of the 'baddies of the day' that truly terrified me when I first watched Doctor Who.

Almadynis Rayne - :D Yeah, the third wheel thing is something that I'm going to attempt to address later on.

Deathb4beauty – Glad you are enjoying the fic!

HannaWinchester89 – I'm glad you like it enough to keep coming back! Also, unless specifically stated in the future, I do plan to continue these stories. It might take a bit before I update as I have two stories running at the same time that I alternate updates on, but I do plan to continue writing.