Disclaimer: As before, except that I can now add that the Twelfth Doctor apparently belongs to The Scarf Warriors.
Hoping somebody reviews at some point. Would be nice.
The Doctor wasn't quite sure how to apologise, or indeed if he should. He had just about opened his mouth to say something – he wasn't quite sure what – when Twitch took a step forward. And another, and another, without breaking stride, until she was rested next to the central console a few metres away from him.
She didn't say anything, just pulled a few levers before circling round the console and pulling a few more, pressing buttons and turning cogs in between. The central column hummed into bright life, though it wasn't yet dancing as it did when the ship moved. The Doctor peered round and saw her hand poised above a small display, fingers hovering in uncertainty. "It's the orb on the left," he said, stepping across to stand beside her. Her hand reached for the button without hesitation. "And if you don't mind me asking, where are you taking us?"
She was the only one of his companions who had actually gone and learned how to operate the TARDIS (he wasn't counting Romana because she'd come onboard already knowing how). The Doctor hadn't even known at first that she'd been doing so, holed up in her room with an instruction manual – and goodness knew how she'd gotten hold of that, either – until she'd wanted to practise. He'd also marvelled at the fact that the TARDIS had let herself be handled by someone so inexperienced, but she had never let Twitch try anything without the Doctor there to supervise. And Twitch was never even allowed to attempt the riskier manoeuvres.
The Doctor had to admit that he quite enjoyed having a second pilot onboard the TARDIS again, despite Twitch's…well, incompetence would be too harsh a word. She was, after all, only human (well, sort of). But her knowledge was mostly learned from books, and the TARDIS was a little trickier to operate than that. She also wasn't Gallifreian, so her understanding paled in comparison to the Doctor's, and her sense of intuition wasn't all that great. She recognised that the TARDIS was, at its heart, a living creature, but she just wasn't able to empathise with it as he was, because there was no psychic connection there whatsoever. She was a lot better as a mechanic than as a pilot, to be perfectly honest. And she still screwed that up sometimes.
"Hello? Incoming call from the Doctor, anybody home? Twitch?" he tried again.
"She isn't responding," Twitch said sullenly. "And I'm sure I did everything right this time." She fingered the console less delicately than usual, like she was pawing at it in a plea for it to work.
"Where were you trying to go? Home?" The Doctor would have understood perfectly if that had been her attempt, especially considering what they had just been through. She wouldn't have been the first companion to leave him after a regeneration. Some of them just never adjusted, and with his rather unfortunate new hair colour, he didn't blame her in the slightest.
But the scathing look she shot him made it clear that, no, she wasn't trying to get home. If home it could be called. The Doctor had picked her up about a year ago from Collyria, one of Earth's colony planets – it had been Molly that had convinced him to let her onboard, actually, but he was glad she'd done so. Twitch was a little bit dull at times, but it was nice to natter on about the Blinovitch limitation effect and know that at least one of his companions was able to follow the conversation. And she and Molly got on well, even if they hadn't always seen eye-to-eye - Molly was too sweet and Twitch was too obstinate for their arguments to ever escalate beyond words alone, and although the latter could be rather foul-mouthed at times, her oaths were beyond Molly's understanding, so the Doctor usually let them slide.
"I was taking us back."
"Which would be why she wouldn't let you." The TARDIS wasn't stupid enough to take them back to a point where they would meet their past selves, let alone a danger zone such as that. They might be killed – in his case, he might be killed again, and that really wouldn't be pleasant. "You of all people ought to know that you can't change fixed events."
"That's theoretical. Have you ever tried?" Her bottom lip was jutting out, and the Doctor could tell she was biting down on the inside.
He rested his chin on her shoulder – quite a stretch now, was he taller? – and placed his hand on top of hers, pressing it to the console. "If I could, I'd go back to save them all. Every last one of them."
"If I'd died, Molly would have gone back to save me," Twitch said, almost to reassure herself.
"I'd have stopped her, too."
There was a long pause. "Why does everyone have to die, Doctor?"
"It's better that way." Twitch snorted with laughter. "No, really. Living forever isn't all it's cracked up to be. Besides, think how overcrowded the universe would be if nobody ever died."
That got a smile and the echo of a laugh from her – not a proper laugh, but laughing wouldn't be proper, given the circumstances. In a while, perhaps, but not for now. Now was a time for mourning – for remembering, and for forgetting.
They had remembered enough for the moment.
With a trailing glance to his companion – grey-blue eyes rimmed with red rimmed with dark grey – the Doctor left her side and returned to his other companion, his constant. He adjusted a few of the dials that Twitch had set, and the TARDIS hummed once more into vibrancy, bathing the room in soft blue-white light. And then she danced.