"Are you going to throw me out, Doctor?" it grins.
"Quite literally."
"You can't even lift this shell."
"That is Jessica you're hijacking, and I'd rather you didn't refer to her as a shell."
"What are you going to do about it, Doctor? I really can't tell you how nice it is to see you defenceless. It suits you."
"Wait, you said this was the first time we'd met. You said that, when you came in, that I would have dressed for the occasion if I'd known." It lies. I knew that. And I knew eighty-one was an impossible number. The only thing that still baffles me is that Soul seemed to think it would get away with lying about something like that. Like that was a good idea. Like I said before, I pity it.
"Oh, for you it is."
And just like that my argument crumbles. Bloody time travel. More trouble than its worth, sometimes.
"Now you have questions, but it's my turn. Forget all that nonsense about forcibly ejecting me. Answer two and I'll tell you all about it."
"I'll live, I think."
It sighs and pouts. Then starts, strange to relate, to unlace Jessica's boots. Notices me watching and mutters, "And what? I miss my feet, I want to see these ones. Amy, out there, she has beautiful white little feet. I used to have feet like that, when I had legs to put them on the ends of, before you took all that away and-"
"I took?"
It rages, forward, slamming Jessica's hands down on the coffee table, "It's my question now!"
"Fine."
"Favourite pet!"
"K-9."
"Now ask me again what you took from me!" For a truly unsettling moment, it looks right at me. The dark mist shifting in Jessica's eyes is thick and forward. And they're damp, the eyes themselves, glistening. It hits harder, I think, because I've never seen that before. When I think about her life I wonder why. "I'm sorry," Soul croaks, clearing the stolen throat. "It must be this mind, I never used to get this emotional myself."
It moves to dry Jessica's eyes on its forearm, and yelps.
The stakes, you see, are starting to show.
"Ah. It am having to have been gets angry or scared and makes them grow." It starts, one small cautious step at a time, coming around the coffee table. Towards me. "Let's think now. What gets it all shivery?"
"Her," I correct, "What gets her all shivery." Oh, look at me, being all calm, like it's not contemplating my murder in the short-to-mid-term future. You know, if I wasn't me, and I knew me, and I was looking in on this from the outside, I would be just glowing with pride. As a matter of fact, I'm probably just going to go on ahead with that.
It sits down next to me, eyeing and stroking that vicious little spike. Only halfway down her forearm now, but if Soul wanted to, it could still do some damage with it. "Whatever. I have an idea. Let me listen to your hearts." And before I can quite stop it, it's got Jessica's arm around my shoulders and her little head pressed to my chest.
"I have to say, Soul, you're awfully forward."
"They're not my bodies; I can do whatever I want. I tell you, you'd blush if you could feel this one's little cardiac right now, it's doing four-to-the-floor." And the stake is growing, entirely of its own accord. I dread to think what might happen if Soul decided to concentrate, to focus energy on that growth. If it could target River's endorphins it could almost certainly target Jessica's protein chemistry.
That's why, when the stake gets down to the hand, when the fingers start to flex, ready to seize up and strike, I grab hold of it first. Metal cold, textured and irregular like wood. Thankfully, breakable like wood too.
I've done this before, though usually with the arm chained down. The blades are surprisingly brittle when bent.
The snap itself is quick and easy. What's never happened before is the scream that follows. Soul rolls Jessica's body away from me and scrambles until it reaches the wall, where it stands, swearing and clutching the stump.
"What?" I cry out to it. "Don't be a drama queen. Jessica has never screamed at that before."
With barely any voice left at all, it whispers, "There's a reason for that. I mean, God, Doctor!" Holding up the arm, to show the jagged stump of the blade, and the fine, clear something oozing from it. When I look at the piece in my hand, it's doing the same. "It's part of her, of course it hurts! Christ Jesus, does it bloody well hurt!"
It has sunken against the wall. I ease along to the end of the couch nearest to it. With the stake as my extension, I can just about tickle the base of its throat. Suddenly the pain doesn't seem to be quite so all-consuming. It's happy to look at me again, and it doesn't pout, doesn't quip, doesn't talk and trick and inveigle. It may, in fact, be listening for once.
"What is this stuff? What's it made of?"
It looks away. Asking Jessica, I presume. Then shakes the head. "I don't know."
"Come on, it's part of the body and you're in the body, now what is it? It's not fair if you don't answer the questions when you're asked-"
"No, I mean I literally don't know. She doesn't know. Look at the next rule." It's a bit precarious, me stretching over the coffee table, lifting the notepad, whilst the tip of the stake is still at its throat, but it's a chance which, on reflection, I'm willing to take. It should feel a little touch of pressure there too, so it knows how I feel.
The next rule states that Owner will teach it the words it needs. All other words are bad and must be forgotten.
"That's what got it into all this trouble in the first place," Soul says. "A word. A bad word, but it wouldn't forget it because it was so scared. It was the weirdest thing, Doctor. It taught itself to speak. Moved its lips and tongue and forced the air out through it. Had no idea what it was doing, only that everybody else did it. Said this one word, this bad forbidden word, over and over again. Ask me what it was. Go on, I'll let you have this one for free. Ask me what the word was."
"Your question," I tell it.
More important things, right now. Like getting out of this room. It's getting sickening, this big presence stuck in this little space. And Soul, of course, though that's something rather more kin to a fly buzzing around in the corners. I'm done with Soul, you know. It and I are nothing to each other anymore.
I go to the door and try the lock. The stake is too heavy to pick it, but there's a chance I could jam the bolt open. I try. And as I'm trying to wiggle it home, Soul heaves Jessica up from the corner, and slips up close behind me. Not quite silently. Just enough sound and movement for me to know it's there.
"You know earlier, when I asked you who your favourite former-now-dead Time Lord was? What way did that make your hearts feel?"
"Slow," I tell it. Slow and far away. At a sad, lonely kind of peace and slung low with old, old guilt. All I tell it is, 'slow'.
"I'm sorry for your loss," it hisses at me. The stake breaks off in the lock. It leaves me with a piece stuck there and a long, thin splinter. Soul sighs, "That's another fine mess you've gotten us into."
Which is from Laurel and Hardy which doesn't strike me as a Soul kind of thing to be into, but I like them. That's the second time it's done that. Quoting me things I've never said in front of it. I turn only quick enough to catch half a glimpse of it, and it looks happy with itself. Like it's accomplished something. But it's only a glimpse; Soul is standing at the hatch along the wall from me, testing the size of it against the size of Jessica's shoulders.
"Give me a boost. I can wriggle out here and unlock it." I'm watching, thinking about how to approach that one. It goes on, "What other choice do you have? I don't even really need the boost, I'm just being sociable."
"Off you go then." It pouts at me. Then, with absolute ease and fluidity, hops Jessica's body up into the hatch and slips out.
While it's outside, I take the last splinter of Jessica's stake and put it away in my inside pocket.
To its credit, Soul comes back to open the door.
"You're out now," it smiles, bright, all teeth.
"I am," I tell it, and don't smile back.
"Any point in you being out?" I start down the corridor, and it follows me. "Do you have any idea what it's like being in this mind when you get all stoic? It thinks you're going to kill it again. Give her something."
I turn to it. Stand very square and very straight. Pull my dressing gown straight and lift my chin to make an affirmative statement. "I have no problem whatever with Jessica Apple. Satisfied?"
Soul sighs one more time. Making a point of looking bored. I wouldn't need to make a point, you know, I'd just have to stop humming television theme tunes in my head to stop covering up.
It understands that.
Something falls away between us. You see, it hasn't lied, not really. None of its answers to my questions have been lies. But it's been pretending. That it liked me really. That all of this was just an unfortunate inconvenience to what might have been a beautiful friendship. No, something falls away. Soul gives up humming 'If You're Happy and You Know It' in its nebulous mind and just burns. Without the pretence, a flaming black coal of unadulterated hate.
And I think to myself, 'That's better'.
Well. It's always nice to know where you stand, isn't it?