When the clock struck 4 AM, everyone had already dropped their wine glasses in the sink, ground their cigarettes into the ash trays, and hopped into their beds and by 4:35 AM and two seconds, they were possibly snoring already.
Well except for, of course, the Doctor.
He was lounging in the TARDIS control room staring at its glowing ceiling. Even though he and Tristan had a good laugh at Clive and Linda Étrange giggling like farm animals in the hallway, it could not wipe out the fact that their Brainwave Synthesis Machine was up and running and their plan to brainwash royals in order to take over the world was actually plausible. Closing his eyes, he thought of almost a million ways to stop them and soon all his thoughts just clumped up into one big mess.
He decided to tell himself to shut up.
Unfortunately one of the side effects of telling yourself to shut up if you're the Doctor is that your mind totally wanders off.
Thinking of what Martha might have been doing at that very moment, he smiled and laughed a silent laugh, one of those ones that make your chest bounce and wind fly out your nostrils. He wondered how she was coping at 4 AM because nobody really liked to sleep around him, well now except for Tristan who could probably sleep through Daleks shooting at the TARDIS door.
Then his mind wandered off to blonde bobs and rosy cheeks.
"Ugh!" He sighed and leaned forward to pinch the bridge of his nose.
He instantly went back to the Étranges. He had absolutely no clue how to stop a Brainwave Synthesis Machine let alone destroy it. There was a huge chance that during his usual plan of peaceful, private, negotiation, one of them would point the thing at his brain and mold it right then and there and all of history would be changed. Earth would become a new planet for the Hypnotics.
He shuddered at the thought.
Meanwhile, Tristan was metres away from the ship's door and fast asleep. All her sobbing and complaining had made her exhausted to the point where she fell asleep seconds before her head sank into the pillow.
A strange dream made her slumber a little deeper and she moved her arms under her pillow and turned to the side. She was walking alone in the dark, no TARDIS, no Doctor, no foreign planet or time. It was just Earth as she knew it. She was walking in the shadow of a big bronze building and her pace was slow and her eyes were focused forward. To anyone, her posture was showing complete confidence, but her chest was sinking. Tristan's dream-self was unhappy, very unhappy; unhappy to the point where unhappy was probably not the best word to describe the way she was feeling.
Furious, maybe?
It was quite mixed.
Once she stepped to the end of the building and out of its shadow, the tall streetlights were illuminating the stone ground, revealing the emptiness of the place. So it was dark, and very late at night. She stopped her feet and swinging arms, but her legs were shaking like mad. Her hands slid up her thighs and rested on her pockets: one was empty and one had what felt like a really smooth stick in it. She didn't look down, but she kept her right hand on the stick and felt herself sigh deeply and look up at the sky hopefully.
But what was she hoping for?
Well she wouldn't know. It was only a dream after all.
Letting out a shaky breath, she let her hands fall back down limp at her side and started to walk automatically. She knew exactly where she was going and her body didn't listen to her mind when it objected. She walked so quickly it became a light jog. Her left arm was swinging while her right was clamped onto the front pocket of her trousers. She leaped to a level higher than the ground and felt herself smile as tiny droplets of water sprinkled against her eyelids and the ground fall down slowly.
She didn't have time to wake up at the feeling of heat on her forehead.
"Yes!" Clive slightly pumped his fist in the air, watching the green glow that was reflecting off his face, "I can't believe he can't hear us! This is completely brilliant!"
He instantly shut up once Linda shot him a glare.
"Well if you keep talking he's going to hear us." She hissed.
"Oh come on Linda," His head tipped to the side, "You think he'll hear me? He probably couldn't feel a fleet of Daleks shooting at those doors, let alone hear me."
The two aliens had been having a good time that night since their mind-controlling machine had started working again. They were strolling down the hallways and peering into the rooms of their guests who were quietly sleeping, and they would walk beside their beds and test their new toy.
They didn't have a good reason though, for controlling all these innocent people's actions, they were just testing on them for a good laugh and for practice of course. But they both knew, without saying, that if they were to come across someone who would be of use to them, they would control his or her mind for more than thirty seconds.
Like the Queen maybe?
Yes, the Queen.
Or anyone who got in their way.
And that's when they stopped their fun and created a spontaneous plan that they thought needed an award of some sort after it was finished.
The family of Hypnotics had desperately shot a transmat beam at the one man who they thought would gladly help them control minds of the royal family to create a new planet for a dying race. After all, he knew what it was like to lose in the Time War and be the only one left of his kind and he was probably one of the most brilliant beings in the entire universe so they kind of assumed he would help them and since he wouldn't, they were quite stuck with their broken machine and very upset.
But now, that machine was working, and the Doctor was the only person standing in the way of their plan for total world domination. And their Brainwave Synthesis Machine was working. Since they decided to take out anyone who got in their way, there was only one thing to do:
Get that machine to Tristan.
"All right, I think we're nearly there." She grinned, backing away towards the open doors.
"Wait until it's completely done!" He growled, "Remember, if you're too far away from her, the connection will be broken!"
"Hush up," She barked, "I know what I'm doing, and I think I've used this more than you have."
The beam of light that was just pointed to Tristan's forehead was now being sucked back into the machine. The two Étranges smiled in victory and quietly slipped out the door.
"Come on, time to wake up," the Doctor said loudly, pushing Tristan's shoulder, "Tristan, wake up."
He leaned in, preparing to shout and potentially spray saliva on her face, but once he took a deep breath in, both of her eyelids opened at great speeds.
"Gah!" He jumped back, "Hurry up now, we haven't got all day. I want to talk to you about creating a plan to stop the Étranges. Come on, into the TARDIS."
His forehead immediately wrinkled when she sat up instantly with one swift motion of her upper body. Her right hand grabbed the left side of the blanket and pulled it away. At the same time, her lower body twisted to the side and she stood up like a robot.
"Are you all right?" He asked.
"Fine." She replied, unblinking, "TARDIS." She walked to the wardrobe with smooth strides.
"Actually," He practically ran to the TARDIS and stopped her, "I change my mind, let's go eat something, you don't look very well."
Her eyes snapped towards him, "I'm fine," then a smile popped up out of nowhere, "Let's go eat."
"…Yes." He said slowly, taking her elbow and leading her out the door. His eyes trailed from her stiff arm that his hand held up to her eyes that were still wide, "I didn't think your eyes were that dry."
It was the same all morning. He kept glancing at her from the corner of his eye and every time he did, she hadn't moved an inch and her eyes never blinked and they never away from one spot.
"What? Do you see a statue of a weeping angel?" He joked and nudged her.
Her head immediately turned to him and her face was as blank as a white wall. She stared at him for a moment before turning back.
He sighed, did he do something wrong? She was a young female so anything could have bent her out of shape. Maybe he should have stayed with her last night instead of sulking in the TARDIS. After all, she was pretty upset at being lost in translation. He bent over and rested his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand.
It was like he was an old man trying hard to impress his adolescent daughter.
At the other side of the table, every single member of the alien family was smiling knowingly because their plan had worked out perfectly: getting Tristan meant that the Time Lord would be so pre-occupied with trying to snap her out of her state that he would forget about their awful plan. The royals were coming from Britain soon, and so far; everything was going to be flawless until the end.
"You were right about those Étranges," the Doctor smiled, trying to cheer his companion up, "they are pretty creepy. Perhaps one of the creepiest aliens I've come across. It's quite obvious they like to stare. Ugh, I don't even like humans who like to stare. Look, they're staring right now."
He looked over at the family and then back to her. Nothing.
"Look at me." Clive whispered and the machine bent her brainwaves.
Bad idea.
Her head swung to the side and looked at Clive straight in the eyes. A burning sensation started to flow through his body and his hands felt weak. He dropped the precious machine under the table, breaking the bond, and her forehead dropped onto the surface of the table.
When the machine had broken the connection between it and Tristan, she had gone back to her previous state: slumber.
Luckily, nobody else had noticed.
The Doctors hands were quickly under her forehead and pushing her back up, "I shouldn't have woken you up this morning, I'm so sorry. I didn't know you were that tired. "
"Huh?" She moaned and opened her eyes. Her fist gently tapped the wooden surface in front of her and she looked up at him, confused, "Am I in the dining room?"
He nodded, "And now I'm going to take you back to bed."
"This is completely unnecessary."
"You almost fell asleep walking down the hallway, of course this is necessary."
"Well I've exercised now so I'm awake, put me down."
Right after the little incident in the dining room, the Doctor politely excused the two from the table. He took the drowsy and confused girl by the hand and led her down the hallway. Still half asleep she did, indeed, trip due to "her eyes stinging because of the lights."
He placed her on the seat of the TARDIS control room and she instantly put her feet up on the console just like he did.
"I don't even remember getting out of bed." She yawned.
"Really?" He leaned against the console across from her.
"Maybe I was sleep walking." She joked and wiggled her fingers in the air.
He smiled, and then cleared his throat signaling the transition from nice to serious, "Their machine works."
"Yeah." She whispered.
"And surprisingly," he continued, sitting beside her, "I don't have a plan! Me! Not having a plan! We are what, two? Three days in? And I don't have a plan! Can you believe that? We have like, 48 hours to make a plan!"
"You of all people don't need that many hours to make a plan," she at him with a raised eyebrow, "You need like, two seconds. Two seconds and a lot of running down hallways from bad guys. That's when your plans pop up. I mean, we could, I don't know, steal it or something and destroy it."
"The Étranges are probably protecting it like their third child." He exhaled loudly, "We've got to find a way to take it from them when it's…I don't know, a little bit unprotected."
"Well the Queen's coming in a couple of days. So we've got a couple of days to get it," She shrugged, "It's not like they have any use for it right now, but when the royal family comes, they'll be more overprotective don't you think?"
"Well a day does have 24 hours." He grinned slowly.
Nothing more needed to be said before they both jumped off the seat and ran towards the exit.