The adventure referenced at the beginning of this chapter comes from The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier. The Doctor summarised the setup in chapter 25:
"Hmmm…" He pressed his tongue against the back of his teeth. "Well, there's the spaceship Brilliant," he said after a moment. "Famous passenger ship that just… disappeared. No one knows what happened to it."
[…]
"That's just the thing," he said slowly. "No one really knows. There are theories, of course," he added. "But each theory is more outrageous than the one before. The ship just vanished on its maiden voyage." The Doctor scratched at his neck. "Of course, the one thing people tend to forget is that it vanished on the eve of a huge galactic war. Suspicious timing, that is."
Chapter 31
For a week after they left Farringham, the TARDIS and her passengers took life easy, avoiding the trouble the Doctor liked to claim was just "the bits in between" and sticking to nice, relaxing destinations. The Doctor was anxious to get back to their regular life and the running, but Rose insisted he let Martha set the pace, since she was the one who'd been most affected while they were in 1913.
So when Martha joined them in the media room after lunch one day and said she had a destination in mind that was more his style of fun, he bounced to his feet and set off for the console room without even asking her where she wanted to go.
"You want to go where?" he asked five minutes later.
"The Brilliant," Martha repeated. "You remember, the spaceship that disappeared? I want to find out what happened to it."
The urge to run in the other direction was almost as strong as the lure of adventure—almost. The Doctor set the coordinates, giving Martha a lecture on fixed points as he went.
"We can't do anything to stop it," he warned her. "No matter what we discover, the Brilliant has to stay lost. Which means the less we get involved in the lives of the passengers, the better. The closer to you feel to them, the harder it'll be to leave them to their fate."
He flipped the dematerialisation lever, and as the time rotor moved up and down he said, "And finally…" He paused and looked at Rose, then at Martha, then heaved a sigh. "Oh, what's the use? You'll go wandering off no matter what I say."
Rose patted his arm. "You see Doctor, you're learning!"
He stuck out his tongue at her as they landed, hard.
oOoOoOoOo
The Doctor knew there was a reason he'd been wary of setting foot on the Brilliant. The ship wasn't lost—it was caught in a malfunctioning time loop. Unfortunately, he hadn't realised that until it was almost impossible for them to escape. The engine room and the TARDIS were cut off from the rest of the ship by a time distortion that only allowed you to pass through it in one direction, away from the TARDIS.
That was only the beginning of the mess. When Martha went through the time distortion first on her own, she got caught in a different time stream than the Doctor and Rose. Thankfully, their habit of holding hands kept them from being separated.
And of course, before the time loop began, the Brilliant had been boarded by pirates. Badger pirates. Badger pirates with an unexpected love of canapés. Thankfully, only three of them had reached the ship before the Brilliant was cut off from the rest of reality by its time loop.
At least the time loop meant anyone the badger pirates killed—a fair amount of the Brilliant's passengers, and Martha—simply came back to life. But instead of resetting everything periodically the way a time loop should, the Brilliant was in a sort of… time horseshoe, with a gap between the two ends of the loop. Every time the ship reached the end of the horseshoe, the experimental engines forced it to jump the gap, taking enormous amounts of fuel that the ship would soon run out of.
It had seemed like a simple thing, when he was on the bridge with Rose and Martha and the Brilliant's crew: take the ship's teleport back to the engine room, and use the TARDIS to repair the time loop. Easy peasy, for anyone with an advanced understanding of temporal mechanics.
And then he'd gotten another idea. A great idea. Brilliant, you might even say. They still needed to deal with the rest of the pirates, which was easier said than done as long as the Brilliant was separated from the rest of reality. So why not expand the bubble of space caught in the time loop? A little bit of jiggering with the TARDIS' circuits, and the bubble doubled in size.
But when he stepped out of the TARDIS and back into the Brilliant's engine room, he immediately suspected things had not gone to plan. The room was silent. No engine humming, no workers banging away. And then he turned a corner and saw the gaping hole where the engine had been. The engine the pirates had likely been after. The pirates who, thanks to his brilliant plan, were now inside the time loop, making it possible for them to board the ship.
Rose, where are you? he asked as soon as he grasped the situation.
On the pirate ship with Martha. The pirates came through…
He stepped back into the TARDIS and set the coordinates. Yes, I know, he told Rose as he sent the ship into flight. My fault, I didn't think of that.
The belly of the pirate ship was dark and smelled like manky gym socks. The Doctor was heading for Rose when he was stopped by two gruff-looking badgers. "Oh, hello!" he said cheerfully. "I'm here to see your captain. Believe me when I tell you she'll want to see what I've got." He patted his pocket and raised his eyebrows.
The pirates looked at each other, then back at the Doctor. "Right then," one of them said, jabbing his ray gun at him. "To the bridge with you!"
oOoOoOoOo
Captain Florence of the badger pirates was not pleased to see the Doctor. In fact, she was understandably upset when he was escorted onto the bridge, considering she'd just blown up the Brilliant to avoid any unwanted visitors.
Rose and Martha had rolled their eyes and exchanged a knowing look when he swaggered around and attempted to insult the captain into leaving piracy behind. Martha elbowed Rose when the Doctor deftly lifted the pirate's gun from her belt, something Captain Florence didn't notice until a few minutes later when she reached for it so she could shoot the Doctor.
She rocked back on her heels and sneered at the Doctor. "You gonna shoot me?"
"Nah," said the Doctor. "You've got to have some other way for resolving disputes like this. Haven't you?"
"We duel." She withdrew a short, dangerous-looking dagger from her belt. "Can you duel?"
"I expect so." Rose was surprised when the Doctor produced a matching weapon, then she remembered he'd taken it from one of the pirates earlier.
The Doctor dodged a few strikes, then lunged at the pirate captain, dagger in hand, and Rose shook her head. She had not expected a reenactment of Westley fighting an ROUS when they'd left the TARDIS this morning.
The Doctor chuckled as he rolled around on the floor with Captain Florence. "No flame spurts at least," he told her. "I'll agree with Westley on one thing though—I'm not sure I'd like to build a summer home here."
"Stop. Chattering," Captain Florence grunted. Then her breath escaped her in a loud gasp, and when the Doctor leapt to his feet, everyone could see the Captain's own dagger protruding from her chest.
"I can help," the Doctor offered, taking a step towards her.
The captain got to her feet unsteadily and pushed the Doctor back. Then, in a move entirely too agile for someone bleeding out through her chest, she whirled around and grabbed a ray gun from another badger.
"Thanks, Isobel." She listed to the side, but managed to keep herself upright and hold the weapon remarkably steady.
"You can live," she told the Doctor, "if you come 'ere an' kiss my boots."
The Doctor arched an eyebrow, then straightened his tie. Rose suddenly realised why he'd made such a point of telling her the time loop had been enlarged.
"What time is it, Rose?" he asked.
"4:28," she told him.
"Right." He rocked back on his heels and smirked at the pirate captain. "You can't win," he told her. "Your pirates have had a glimpse of another life, and that'll never go away. Your clients are going to kill you if you go back to them. And you seem to have a dagger sticking out your front."
"Can," she growled. "Can. Still. Kill. You."
"Yes, you can," the Doctor agreed. "But didn't I say? If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine."
Rose rolled her eyes. Only the Doctor would quote Star Wars while being held at gunpoint. He winked at her, and she shook her head.
"I can help you," he offered the captain again. "Show you a better way of living. What do you say?"
Rose knew what she was going to say, knew what was going to happen, but it was still a shock when she shot the Doctor in the chest with the ray gun. Pink light engulfed him briefly, then his body disappeared.
As much as she wished the entire thing were some kind of parlour trick—the Doctor had hooked up a teleport to the guns, maybe?—the quick burst of pain from the shot followed by the bond twisting painfully as he first began to regenerate and then came back to life told her it was nothing of the sort.
Rose stared blankly at the place where the Doctor had stood, only a minute before. He was gone… but he wasn't… and her head was killing her.
"Rose!"
Martha's sharp voice broke into her daze, and she forced herself to look at her. "I'm… I'm fine. I—the Doctor… I mean, he's…" Her gaze drifted back to the spot he'd disappeared from.
And then the time loop reset, and the uncomfortable dissonance in the bond resolved itself. Rose took a deep breath and drew herself up straight, then looked around at the badger pirates who watched her warily.
Cries of surprise when the Brilliant reappeared on the view screen distracted them momentarily. "Now that just ain't right," one of them muttered. "Back when I started as a pirate, things you blew up stayed blown up."
Rose laughed, and the crew slowly turned back to look at her. "Are you all right, Rose?" Martha muttered. "Is it the loop? Did…" Rose nodded, and her friend let out a long breath. "Oh, thank god."
The smile on her face unsettled the pirates further and finally, Stanley, a belligerent badger who'd hassled her and Martha from the moment they'd stepped on board, asked what they were all thinking.
"Why're you smiling? Captain Florence, she killed your mate."
Rose's grin stretched even wider when the TARDIS engines echoed through the bridge. "Because I know something you don't know."
oOoOoOoOo
In the end, the Doctor's resurrection proved to be the last bit of convincing the pirates needed to leave their old ways behind them. They couldn't get out of the time loop to deliver the stolen engine anyway, so why not enjoy the good life—and the canapés—on the Brilliant instead.
There was still one more matter to be resolved: the passengers of the Brilliant.
"I thought you said we couldn't interfere," Martha said when the Doctor pointed that out.
"I also told you not to wander off, and look how that turned out," the Doctor retorted. He gestured to the Brilliant's ballroom, where former badger pirates danced alongside the Balumin passengers. "Most of them will choose to stay in the time loop," he told her. "It's an easy life, and either they've never had that, or it's all they've ever known. The few that come with us won't be enough to damage the timelines."
So he made his offer, giving pirates, crew, and passengers alike a chance to leave the loop and go back to the real world. "Because once we leave," he warned, "we won't be coming back. This is your last chance to go somewhere else, to do something else. We leave in one hour."
In the end, most of the crew and a handful of the pirates and passengers chose to leave. They dropped them off on Balum Prime, the Brilliant's planet of embarkation, and then returned to their own life in the vortex.
Rose still had a slight headache when they were finally alone again. Although she'd felt the physical sensation of the Doctor being shot, the way a partial regeneration had twisted the bond had been far more uncomfortable. At least I'll never actually feel the bond break.
Martha was the first to break the silence in the console room. "I'm sorry. Going to the Brilliant was my idea, but I never thought…" She gestured helplessly at them.
"Martha, it's not your fault," Rose said, feeling like she needed to get that printed on cards to hand out. "None of us had any idea what we were walking into. That's how it almost always is, but it never stops us."
"Yeah, but…"
"Really, it's okay," Rose promised.
Martha looked at them for a long moment and finally shrugged. "I'm tired, but there's no way I could sleep yet. I think I'll sit in the library and read for a bit."
"Good night, Martha, and thank you," the Doctor said.
As soon as Martha left, Rose turned to the Doctor. "Can we maybe spend the evening in the study tonight?" she asked. She needed to be with him, to be reassured that he was fine.
A swell of negative emotion over the bond caught her by surprise. "I've got some repairs to do," he said without looking up from the console. "You and Martha should do something. Watch some telly or… paint your nails, or something."
Rose narrowed her eyes. This was the closest the Doctor had come to lying to her since they'd formed their provisional bond. Oh, he had repairs to do, but she knew they weren't urgent. He was choosing to do them, rather than spend time with her.
And if he hadn't been projecting enough guilt to drown a planet, she would have argued. She still wanted to, because no matter how guilty he felt, she needed him right now.
But he finally looked at her, and the unspoken plea in his eyes stopped her. She nodded slowly. "Yeah, all right. Just remember to stop before the old girl gets irritated and shocks you, all right?"
The ghost of a smile crossed his face. "I will," he promised.
Rose hesitated for a moment, but she finally decided to do what she needed, instead of what she could tell he wanted. Before leaving the console room, she walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek.
oOoOoOoOo
As soon as he was alone in the console room, the Doctor shucked his suit jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He knew Rose could tell he was avoiding her, but there truly were repairs that ought to be done. He'd harnessed the TARDIS' power in an unconventional way in order to repair the time loop, and if he didn't set things to rights, their next trip could easily land them centuries off course.
And he always did a better job puzzling over difficult issues while he had something to do with his hands. The TARDIS hummed unhappily, but she didn't argue when he slid under the console and started rewiring the circuits he'd had to reroute earlier in the day.
He was more than aware that both Rose and his ship thought he was ridiculous to feel guilty over what had happened on the Brilliant. After all, he certainly hadn't asked Captain Florence to shoot him with her ray gun.
"Doesn't change the fact that she got a taste of what it feels like when outside forces tamper with our bond," he muttered.
The TARDIS pushed harder against his consciousness than usual, trying to use words instead of just emotions. That's why she wants you now, Thief.
oOoOoOoOo
Martha stalked down the corridor, angrier with the Doctor than she had ever been. When she reached the console room, she thought it was empty at first glance—until she spotted his ratty Chucks sticking out from underneath the console.
"Oh, so there you are," she said, feeling a surge of vengeful satisfaction when he jumped at her voice and hit his head on something.
"Ow!" He climbed out from underneath the console, rubbing a bump on his forehead. "Did you need something, Martha?"
She shook her head. "I'm fine. Your wife, on the other hand…"
"What do you mean?" He reached for Rose over the bond and sensed nothing more wrong with her than the same general anxiety she'd been projecting since he'd been shot. "What's wrong with Rose?"
Martha snorted. "Nothing really, except she has the misfortune to be married to a complete wanker." She crossed her arms over her chest. "You're telling me that you've got that bond, and you can't tell that she's upset and wants you?"
He had the decency to wince, but he still didn't move from where he was leaning against the console.
"Seriously, Doctor? I told her she should come talk to you, but do you know what she said? 'I'm too tired for a fight.'"
"Martha…"
"Nope. I don't want to hear it." Martha shifted her weight to one foot and glared down at him. "I don't know why you're being such an arse, but Rose needs you, and I'm betting you need her right now too. For whatever reason, though, you've decided to deny the both of you. Frankly, that has got to be one of the most selfish things I've ever heard of."
The Doctor sighed and scrubbed his hands over his face. "I know," he said, the words muffled by his palms.
"Then what are you still doing here?"
He pressed his tongue against the back of his front teeth, and for a moment, Martha thought she was going to have to physically drag him to Rose. Then he nodded once and started towards the corridor.
After he'd taken a few steps, she added, "I left her in the library; dunno if she's still there, though."
The Doctor paused at the top of the ramp. "Thank you, Martha," he said. He still didn't feel like he deserved Rose's company, but Martha was right—he did know she wanted him, and he'd been ignoring that awareness ever since they returned from the Brilliant.
Rose was still in the library, as Martha had told him, curled up in an armchair reading. She didn't put the book down as soon as she heard him enter the room, instead finishing the chapter she was on first.
"Hi," she said after she closed the book.
The Doctor shifted his weight from one foot to the other. To anyone else, her neutral voice might have sounded welcoming, but between that and the way she'd made him wait before she even looked at him, he knew exactly how upset she was with him.
"Hi."
"Finished with your repairs?"
"Er… yeah." He tugged on his ear. "Well, I made some progress anyway."
"Good."
He glanced at the couch where they would typically sit together, and knew her seating choice was purposeful. If you're going to withdraw, then so will I, she was telling him. There was a matching arm chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, but he bravely sat alone on the couch instead, as an opening olive branch.
"Rose…" He paused and stared at her helplessly. He really didn't know what to say, especially since he knew she didn't agree with his guilt. "I'm sorry," he said finally.
"What for?"
He ran a hand through his hair. "For… Because… On the ship…" Finally, he tapped his finger against his temple. "For this."
Her recoil took him by surprise. "Don't you dare apologise for the bond," she ordered fiercely.
"What? No, that's not what I… Ah, bollocks," he muttered.
Some of the fire disappeared from her eyes, and she stared at him for a long moment. "Then what exactly are you apologising for, Doctor?"
"I know that the way the bond twisted when I started to regenerate hurt you, Rose." It had hurt him, too, and the tension between them wasn't helping his lingering headache. Your own fault, he reminded himself.
"Well, yeah," she agreed, "but that's not your fault."
"How is it not?" he countered. "We wouldn't have been on that ship if I hadn't let Martha convince me to go to the Brilliant. No trip, no badger pirates, no duel, no momentary death."
"Doctor, not everything bad that happens in the universe can be blamed on you." Rose shook her head; the Doctor's guilt complex had always been large enough to need its own postcode, but there was more here than just guilt. The same unworthiness she'd picked up on after they'd run into the Daleks was there underneath it. He felt guilty for the danger she'd faced when she was with him because he didn't think he deserved to have her in his life in the first place.
Another memory came to her, and Rose took a stab in the dark. "John thought you were dangerous for me to be around. Is that what you think too, Doctor?"
His hand clenched into a fist. "How can I think anything else when I was proven right not an hour later?" he finally said, his voice hoarse. "The Family abducted you to get to me."
"The Family wanted to kill us both. Abducting me was only step one of their plan."
The Doctor's eyebrows rose. "Oh, and that reminder makes me feel so much better. Your life would have been so much better if you'd never met me, Rose."
Though she'd known he was labouring under some serious misconceptions, Rose had no idea where that ridiculous notion came from. "Why do you think my life would have been better if I'd never met you?" she asked.
The Doctor finally looked at her then, incredulity in his eyes. "Well, you wouldn't come close to be killed by various alien races on a monthly basis for a start," he said sarcastically. "In the first month after we met, you nearly died three times. Once on Platform One, when Cassandra trapped you in the room without sun filters, once in Cardiff when I decided I knew better than you and allowed a malevolent alien race to possess a young woman, and once in Utah when we found the Dalek." He raised an eyebrow at her. "We won't mention Downing Street, since you ordered me to have Mickey fire that rocket at us."
"You're bloody right I did," Rose retorted, her simmering anger boiling over. "I'm surprised your ego can stand not taking credit for that one, too."
"What do you mean, my ego? This isn't about ego, Rose."
"Isn't it?" she countered. "You mean the fact that you're claiming responsibility for all the major events in my life since we met isn't a sign of ego?"
He slouched back onto the couch. "Not all of them," he muttered. "Just the ones where you were in danger."
Rose rolled her eyes. "So your ego has a skewed perception of how much good you've done versus the bad you haven't been able to stop. No surprise there." He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted, and she sighed. "Plus, you're really missing the point, Doctor. You're confusing quality of life with safety."
Confusion pulsed over the bond. "Of course your life would be better if you were safe," he stated.
"Really?" That single sentence brought her anger back to full boil. How dare he just disregard how much better my life has been since we met?
"Do you know what my life was like before I met you, Doctor?" Rose jumped to her feet and started pacing. "You said it, actually, the morning after we met. 'Eat chips, go to bed, and watch telly.' You were right. That was my life. It was all I'd ever been told I could expect, but there you were, saying there was something more out there, something better than a boyfriend who was more concerned with catching the last five minutes of a football match than talking to his girlfriend when her work got blown up."
He slumped onto the couch and refused to meet her eyes. "But I pulled you into this life without really explaining what it was like… I just wanted you with me so badly…"
"Without explaining?" Rose put her hands on her hips and glared at him. "I asked you, straight out, if travelling with you was always that dangerous. You told me yes, and I still chose to come with you. What part of that leaves me as the ignorant girl you think you took advantage of?"
The Doctor jumped to his feet. "And you said no!" he exclaimed. "It wasn't until I came back and told you I could travel in time that you agreed. The adventure outweighed the danger, and I should have…"
Rose blinked in surprise. "You think I said no because you told me it was dangerous?" Some things were finally starting to make sense. "Doctor, you were offering me so much more than I'd ever been told I could expect out of life. Everyone I knew said I could never have more than beans on toast and a mediocre relationship, and there was Mickey, hanging on me and reminding me of it. I wasn't afraid of the danger; I was afraid to reach for more."
Rose could feel him trying to make sense of what she was saying, and her voice softened. "You tried to send me back to that life once, remember?"
"Hard to forget."
"And it never occurred to you that I came back partly because I didn't want that life anymore?"
Confusion blossomed on his face. "But it was… I mean, your mum was there. Why wouldn't you…"
Rose sighed. Fighting against his ingrained belief that he had somehow ruined her life was like walking through treacle. "Well first off, you daft alien, I was already in love with you. Of course I could still have a fantastic life, even if you weren't in it, but that wasn't what I wanted. I wanted you."
He was utterly baffled by that statement, and Rose decided words clearly weren't going to convince him. Instead, she reached for the bond and let him see himself the way her twenty-year-old self had when she'd been falling in love with him.
When a hint of a smile finally crossed his face, she sensed victory. "You believed in me, Doctor, and you made me believe in myself. When I was with you, I wasn't just a girl from the Estates with no A-levels. I was someone valuable. I'd never had that before."
"You were always valuable, Rose," the Doctor stated firmly.
She smiled at him. "Yeah, but until someone really treats you like you are, it's hard to believe."
The Doctor reached for their bond and offered an apology, and Rose felt her anger fade. But before they closed the conversation, there was one more point she wanted to make.
"Doctor, you're so caught up in this belief that you don't deserve me, or that I deserve better than you, that you've forgotten the most important thing I deserve."
"What's that?"
"I deserve to be allowed to make my own choices about my life. I deserve to have those choices respected, not disregarded as if I didn't know any better when I made them."
The Doctor stared down at his hands. He knew what she was telling him—not everything was about him. Rose's constant assertion that, beyond being misplaced, his guilt was also egotistical was hard to swallow. His guilt was over his own actions, wasn't it?
But doubts eroded at that belief. He had felt guilty for what had happened to Rose when she opened the heart of the TARDIS, until they'd fully understood the gift that had been. Looking into the time vortex had been her own choice, though—why did he take responsibility for the results?
And when she'd first grieved for Jackie, he'd felt guilty that she would never see her mother again, even though Rose had chosen to stay with him knowing full well what the cost would be.
Those examples were enough to convince him that Rose was right. And the guilt I'm feeling right now over being an arse is completely deserved. He shook his head, then got up to stand with her in front of the fireplace.
Her blonde hair gleamed in the firelight, and the flickering of the flames was reflected in her eyes. The Doctor looked at her for a moment, fiercely proud of the confident way she held herself. She was his partner in every sense of the word—not only standing beside him, but standing up to him.
It was time he accepted everything that meant.
"You're right," he told her, his voice low. At the same time, he let his pride shine over the bond, and was rewarded when her eyes lit up. "You are an amazing, brilliant woman, capable of making your own choices. No one is responsible for your actions but you."
"Thank you," she breathed.
He tilted his head and considered her. There had been something in the raw quality of her voice when she talked about who she was when they met…
"Rose, you know I never saw you as just an Estates girl, don't you?"
She blinked, and even though she tried to hide it, he caught a hint of insecurity. "How could you not? When you met me, I was dressed exactly like a chav—ratty jeans, worn hoodie, dyed blonde hair…"
The Doctor reached out and pushed a strand of that hair back over her ear. "When I met you, I saw a human in danger. I didn't take time to analyse your wardrobe. I just grabbed your hand and told you to run."
"Yeah, but when I opened my mouth—"
"When you opened your mouth, I almost immediately adjusted my impression to 'clever human.' Rose, you'd just been moments from dying at the hands of shop window dummies, and despite that, practically the first thing you said to me was a very logical assumption about what was happening. I was impressed with you right away."
Rose rolled her eyes. "Right, that's why you were always calling humans stupid apes—because I was so clever and impressive."
The Doctor winced. "It's possible I've always been rude and not ginger."
Instead of laughing, she bit her lip.
The lingering self-doubt made his hearts ache. "Right, Rose. You need to listen, because this might be the most important thing I've ever told you. You did not become valuable when you stepped into the TARDIS. Travelling with me didn't make you clever or interesting. You have always been those things."
Her laugh was self-deprecating. "Doctor, you can't tell me I haven't changed since I met you."
"Well of course you've changed. Four years have passed, almost. You've grown and matured, and you've learned things. But you always had that potential."
She worried her bottom lip between her teeth while she wrestled with the idea, just like he'd struggled to accept her perspective on his guilt complex. Finally, she nodded slowly and looked up at him.
"So, I guess we both need to remember this conversation, yeah? You need to remember that you're not always to blame for what happens, and I need to remember that meeting you didn't suddenly give me value I didn't have before."
Their bond relaxed for the first time since the Doctor's near death experience as the charged emotions passing back and forth between them settled down. They sighed simultaneously as their mutual headache faded, and then they stepped into each other's arms.
Rose rested her head on his chest, right over his hearts, and the Doctor stroked his hand lightly through her hair. "I am sorry that happened," he said in a soft voice. "Not because I feel responsible for getting shot, but because I love you and I will always be upset when something hurts you."
She hummed an agreement and traced random patterns on his back with her fingers. "Well, in that sense, I'm sorry it happened too." An echo of remembered discomfort rippled over the bond. "We'll just have to avoid situations like this in the future."