Apologies! My teachers decided to make every assignment due in at the same time, so have been flat out with work for two weeks. But I'm holiday for two weeks now so intend to make some much better progress!

Thanks to everyone who has reviewed so far, you're all great!

This chapter sees the beginning of a smallish adventure arc in affiliation with Torchwood. It's incredibly important in terms of the emotional turmoil and the grudges being held in the Doctor and Aliya's relationship. Enjoy!

Note: For a not necessary but preferable more in-depth understanding of where this particular brand of emotional turmoil and grudge came from, I recommend reading Chapter 11 of the prequel, Before It Turns to Dust, first. Just because its events have in fact resulted in the underlying bitterness we still see between them all the time, and that really comes to a head in this chapter.

We get older by the hour

Watch the changes from afar

Keep forgetting to remember

Where we've been is who we are

Now all I do is wonder

Why we ever set the scene

Oh, calamity

It's such a shame that we play strangers

No act to change what we've become

Damn, it's such a shame that we've built a wreck out of me

Oh, calamity

Oh, calamity

Oh, Calamity! by All Time Low

The Doctor and Aliya were in the middle of attempting to play badminton across the console room when the phone rang. She had gotten the hang of it enough that she could hit most of the shots back, while he managed to miss the easiest ones and yet perform impressive maneuvers to return the most difficult shots.

He also managed to move and answer the phone while continuing to play against Aliya who hadn't stopped.

"Hello? This is the Doctor, you've reached the TARDIS."

"You sound like an answering machine, Doctor."

"Jack!" The Doctor grinned and so did Aliya when she heard who was on the other end. "How's it hanging?" Seeing Aliya's face, he frowned. "Okay, add that to the list of things I should never say."

Jack laughed. "Actually, that's why I'm calling. Routine case has gone a bit weird. Thinking we might need your help."

"Why do you need my help?"

"You'll understand when you get here."

"Alright, we'll be there soon. Just have to finish our badminton game."

"Badminton? Can't it wait?" Jack asked sceptically.

"She's beating me, Jack," the Doctor whispered into the phone worriedly, "It's extremely not good."

"Just get here soon!"

"Date, time, coordinates. Then we'll be there."

Jack listed them off and then the Doctor hung up just in time to whirl around and hit back a particularly difficult shot from Aliya.

"What did he want?"

He just shrugged. "Didn't say. But we're going to Cardiff after this."

Aliya's eyes lit up. "Should be interesting. Seeing Jenny and Jack and the others will be nice." She made a face. "Mostly."

"Is that because of the scowly one? With the dark hair?" He asked her with an innocent curiosity. "You two didn't seem to get on. But Jenny liked her."

"Marion Narke is an example of the worst of humanity. She's horrible, knows it, and doesn't care. Worse, I think she likes it."

He lifted his eyebrows. "Harsh. For you."

"And would I say it if it wasn't true?"

"No, probably not. But Jenny vouched for her."

Aliya sighed heavily and swung her racket far more forcefully than necessary. "Jenny likes to believe the best in people. Usually, so do I. But even I have a limit. If you-" She trailed off, looking as though she wanted to say more, but just pursed her lips and prepared herself to receive his next hit.

"Don't hold it against me if I wait to form my own opinion."

"I'd hold it against you if you didn't." The thing slammed to the glass floor and she grinned. "My point. I win." She threw her racket on the jump seat and fetched her tan leather jacket from the railing. She pulled it on over her tank top. "Let's go."

The TARDIS landed and the two of them emerged out onto the Welsh countryside. And standing spread out around the damp long grass was Torchwood.

"One team TARDIS for Torchwood?" The Doctor asked, sounding like a fast food order.

Jack approached them and clasped the Doctor's hand. "Actually, it's a Doctor we need. Ours is on leave."

"What a shame," Aliya said rather sarcastically, looking like she was trying to stop herself from beaming.

"Maybe if she were here, we wouldn't have needed you," Rex said from a few metres away.

"I should have known it would be good to be true for you to be somewhere else too," She retorted just as antagonistically.

"We've had enough of your self-pity for a lifetime, why don't you leave?"

"Lord, you're even starting to sound like her," Aliya laughed without humour, "Get your own tune, Matheson." The look on her face surprised the Doctor for two reasons. The first was because it was the look he recognised as the one she got when she secretly agreed with the person she was deflecting. She didn't disagree that they had had too much of her self-pity? He wasn't sure what to think of that. But the second thing that surprised him was simply her tone.

He frowned. "Weird," He said quietly, almost to himself. Only Jack heard him.

"What? Her being angry at someone?"

"No," The Doctor said, watching Rex roll his eyes and move to join Gwen by a piece of equipment, and Aliya shut her mouth in the way that meant she was annoyed but didn't want to show it. "Her being angry at someone that isn't me."

Jack laughed. As they watched Jenny run and give Aliya a very enthusiastic hug, the immortal man glanced sideways at his old friend, curiously. "Question."

"Sure."

"You had every reason not to come back. To not want to see her after what she did and said. I know, because she told me."

"You want to know why I did." The Doctor wasn't surprised, hence why it wasn't a question.

"Can't blame a guy for being curious."

"I don't need to tell you how easily loneliness can find a person. But space can be the loneliest place of all." He gave Jack a tiny, sad smile before his eyes shifted so that they were again looking straight ahead, at the others. "And sometimes the right smile or laugh or...funny scowly face...it can make all the difference."

Aliya, who had been the object of his gaze, caught him staring and lifted an eyebrow at him, unable to hear what he was saying. He just poked his tongue out at her. Her eyes danced and she immediately poked hers out right back.

"She reminds me of her first self when she does that," The Doctor said with a hint of nostalgia.

"The one that looked like Esther?"

That had the Time Lord frowning again. "Yes. That's never not going to be weird."

"But, Doctor...why was it that her scowling face was the right one? How can you be sure that you couldn't have just found a different one that was even better?" Jack asked him, turning to face him. He got a shrug in reply.

"People are just like that. Stupid people no different to any of the others just walk into your life and turn it upside down. You never know why. You just know who."

One moment later, he was on the receiving end of a suffocating hug from his daughter. "Dad!"

"Jenny," He said, grinning into her shoulder, "Good to know you're not getting tired of your old dad."

"As if," Jenny scoffed. "Come on, it's over here. As a warning..." Her face turned serious. "It's not nice."

The group walked over to the edge of the hill they were standing on. As they looked down at the lower land, the Doctor felt his stomach turn and his hearts pang. Several dozen dead bodies filled the ditch. Reduced to fleshy skeletons. Next to him, Aliya gasped and covered her mouth as tears pricked at her eyes.

"We think that based off the clothing fragments and decomposition, they've been here about thirty years," Gwen told them.

"Did you work out a cause of death?"

"No."

"How were these found, if they've been here for so long? What changed?" Aliya asked her.

"String of disappearances around Cardiff these past weeks," Jack answered. "About twenty. Yesterday, a body turns up. One of the missing people. Dead, pale skin and hair. Like, weirdly pale. Found a strange chemical on the body, and a search of the area led us to this. They all have traces, and similar amounts to each other and the new body."

"Thirty years, though, why the big gap?" The Doctor asked. "Same chemical suggests a link in the cause of death. It can't be a chemical that results in some sort of contagious sickness because it'd have spread either back then and now."

"If it's not a sickness, what the hell is it?" Rex looked angry, but a glint in his eyes suggested that it was because he cared. "If all those people went missing and one turned up dead, that just means more of them will."

"I know, but we'll do our best figure this out before it happens. Torchwood plus two Time Lords, we're unstoppable," The Doctor assured him.

Aliya eyed the corpses. "Do you think you could pinpoint a more exact time window for their deaths, Doctor?" She asked suddenly, a thoughtful frown resting on her brow. "Because if you could...we have the TARDIS. We can go back to whenever this all happened, while these guys keep investigating here. You gave my phone that sonic upgrade, so we can keep contact across the different times, relative to each other."

The Doctor looked at her abruptly. She stared back, with wide eyes that seemed like they were waiting for him to criticise. "That's a very good plan," He said, and she smiled widely. "And yes, exact time window is easy."

"Well, you show off all the time by doing it with air," She reasoned as he lowered himself down into the ditch alongside the dead bodies, "The bodies must have a scent too. Just less pleasant."

He nodded. It only took a few whiffs before he had what he needed. "1984. June 24th."

"Then that's where we're going."

When the Doctor returned to the TARDIS with Aliya, he immediately noticed her lack of enthusiasm to help him operate the controls. She'd pressed a button or two but had ended up just lingering, eyes much further away than he could follow.

"Aliya," He said quietly, "The helmic regulator."

She snapped to attention. "Right." She took a second, seeming to need to actually think about it, before leaning over a panel of the console to reach it. "Sorry."

"What's wrong?" He asked. For a moment it looked like she might try and deny that anything was wrong, but then her face fell.

"There were so many people back there," She whispered, suddenly near tears. "You might be used to it, but I don't think I ever will be." When tears actually did fall - though only in minimal numbers - he wordlessly strode across the room to her and hugged her tightly.

"I know," He murmured into her hair, "And it's not something that is even possible to get used to. But sometimes you have to focus on what there is to do instead of what's already been done. But we're doing this for them, to stop anyone sharing their fate."

"I know, I just-" She moved out of his arms and sniffed. "Each life has so many others tied to it. The amount of people who probably don't even know what happened to their son or friend or person they talked to at work once. And if it's starting again then that means they never caught the culprit…" Her breathing got heavier as she started to get worked up again. "And never knowing who did it...never knowing...it's the worst..."

Something nagged at the back of the Doctor's brain. Unsolved murders...oh. "Aliya," He said quietly, holding her gaze with his, "You're never going to know. They did everything they could, but aspirin is easy to make. Time Lords aren't difficult to poison. And Gallifrey's gone. Whoever killed Heta is gone with it."

Aliya's face crumbled upon realising that he had figured it out. "I thought I was okay," She said earnestly, rubbing her eye and clutching a clump of her hair, "That I'd moved on. But how can I, if I never know? It's not...fair." Her shoulders were slumped and her eyes protesting against the universe. She so resembled a child in appearance and voice that the Doctor instantly gathered her into his arms again, this time pressing a kiss to her forehead.

"Life never is. I'd have thought you'd have worked that out by now."

She made a noise in her throat and looked at him with melancholic resignation. "I can be a really slow learner."

He chuckled even though it wasn't funny at all and she gave him a tiny watery smile. "Me too. Come on. 1984 awaits."

They headed towards the TARDIS doors, and had just stepped out into bright sunlight when Aliya suddenly said, "The Defender too."

"What?"

She frowned at him. "It wasn't just Heta who died. The Defender died too. On the same day."

"Yes. I know." The Doctor glanced at her, not sure what she was getting at.

"Well..." She was having trouble getting her words out straight. "I lost him too. I didn't just lose my son, I lost my husband too."

"Of course you did," He said, "But it was an arranged marriage, so-"

"So what? You think that means he wasn't important?" She demanded, visibly angry, abruptly spinning to look at him directly.

"No, but you didn't, you know, love him-"

She lifted an eyebrow. "Oh, sorry, I forgot that you're an expert on my marriage. Naturally, the man who was nowhere to be seen throughout it knows so much more than the woman who was in it."

He sighed. As usual, she was taking things the wrong way, and far too quickly. "Aliya, I didn't mean-"

"I did love him," She said simply, making his brain momentarily stand still.

"Hang on," He said with confusion, "Did I hear that right?"

She crossed her arms and looked up to him, her eyes daring him to challenge her. "I loved him as a companion. Surely you of all people must understand that."

"Yes, except I don't...do things...with my companions!"

She snorted. "Debatable."

"Oi!"

"Bernice. Summerfield."

He simultaneously blushed and gaped. "I...but...you...I never...how…?"

"Doesn't matter. Point proved. I may not have planned to be in that marriage but it was not a bad one just because you were against it," She told him firmly.

"I had my reasons," He said sulkily, "And we both planned for you to not be in it, if you recall."

"Of course I do."

"And whose fault was it that the plan failed?"

"Yours."

The Doctor stared at her for a moment before his anger and indignation bubbled to the surface. "Mine?! I asked you to run away with me! I offered you the universe and you said no! It was completely your fault!"

Danger flashed in her eyes. "You assumed that I was going to be okay with just skipping planet, when I had made it very clear that I had no intentions to leave Gallifrey multiple times before!" Her face twisted. "I gave you my complete and utter trust-"

"I offered you my entire self!" He shouted at her, making her go still and her mouth drop open. He instantly deflated, no longer having the energy for it, but needing to finish what they had started. "And you threw it back in my face."

Tears pricked at her eyes again. "Oh big deal," She said in a soft but fierce whisper, "You offered. I didn't, I couldn't have even if I had wanted to, because you already had me, without even trying. I gave you my entire self long before you offered, because I never thought for a moment that it could fail! That you could fail." Her hands shook and she balled them into fists. "Well I learned from that mistake."

For an immeasurable time, the two Time Lords just stared at each other without wavering. In that moment they were open and bare, each one trying to understand the thoughts behind the other's eyes while trying and failing to hide their own.

Surprisingly, it was Aliya who broke the stasis first. She turned on her heel so that she was facing away from him. "You scan for traces of alien tech or DNA. Meet back here in two hours." She started to walk away.

"Where are you going?" He called after her.

"To try your technique. I'm going to talk to people," She replied with a hint of mocking before turning her head back around and heading off away from him. He sighed and rubbed his face tiredly before getting out his sonic and beginning a scan.

After a few minutes, the sonic bleeped and gave him a very faint signal to follow. He strode down the street after street of the younger Cardiff - which looked similar enough to its older self. Hopefully enough so that his companion didn't find herself lost. That would not help the already difficult situation.

His sonic eventually told him that he had almost reached the source of the signal. He continued down the street full of shops and shoppers only to come to a halt outside a counselling practice.

"Well. That is the absolute opposite of helpful," He said, sighing and glancing around. As he stood still and tried to reconsider his options, he was surprised to see Aliya coming around the corner from the opposite side of the street. She spotted him too and began making her way towards him, looking surprised but not entirely happy.

When she finally reached him, she looked at him expectantly. He gave her an identical look back, almost sarcastically.

"What did people say?" He asked.

"The people have been disappearing. Like we thought. Can't get an exact number because they all knew different people. But almost everyone I asked had heard of at least one person. This one guy mentioned that he thought the police had said the total was up to about 25 missing people."

"At least we know we're in the right time and place."

She just nodded. "What about the sonic? Find anything?" She eyed the screwdriver in his hand for a moment before her gaze flicked back up to him.

"Yeah. Trace of alien tech. Or DNA. Reading wasn't very specific."

"And?"

The Doctor nodded towards the business they were standing outside of. "Reading brought me here. Counselling office. Must have glitched or something."

She half smiled, which was a miracle in itself considering their less than friendly words exchanged not long before. "Unless a therapist is murdering people," She joked. For a moment they let the joke stand before both of them glanced sideways at the office, this time with wariness.

"Worth a look?" He asked mildly.

"Yeah," She agreed, and they ducked inside. The secretary in the reception looked up and smiled when she saw them.

"Hello, how can I help you?"

The Doctor smiled. "We need to speak to-" He quickly ran his eyes around the office until he found the name of the practising therapist, "Doctor Reyna Fell." He held up the psychic paper to show her while having the sonic run a scan from where he was holding it down below the desk, out of her sight.

The secretary's eyebrows went up. "Oh! I'm sorry, but she's with a client right now. But she only has five minutes to go and then she'd be more than happy to answer your questions for the evaluation."

"Absolutely fine, just standard procedure," He replied, smiling and take a seat in the waiting room. He patted the chair next to him and Aliya sat in it with a heavy sigh.

"Performance evaluators?"

"Something like that."

The Doctor flicked through a magazine and Aliya leaned in to get a look at it, only to apparently decide that it wasn't interesting. Unless she'd realised that she had involuntarily come near him and tried to go back on it. Quietly amused either way, he went back to focussing on the column he was reading.

A few minutes later, he noticed over the top of the magazine someone emerging from the practising room and the secretary hurrying in. Ten seconds later, the therapist appeared in the doorway. A petite woman in her thirties, she had chestnut hair pulled up in a messy bun and doe eyes framed by thick rimmed square glasses. She stared at the two people in her waiting room. Probably wondering why she's about to get evaluated, the Doctor thought as he put down his magazine and got to his feet. Doctor Fell smoothed her shoulder-padded suit jacket before taking a few steps forward.

"Doctor Reyna Fell," She greeted cordially, holding her hand out to the Doctor, who shook it and beamed.

"John Smith. And this is Alison Parker."

"If you and your associate could join me in my office, we can get started." She turned around. "No interruptions, please, Margaret." They followed her into the office and she shut the door behind them. She indicated for them to sit and she went to her desk and did the same. "Now, before we start, I have one question."

"What?" The Doctor asked.

Doctor Fell adjusted her glasses and took a deep breath before looking at them directly. "What are you, and what are you doing here?" When the two Time Lords exchanged an alarmed look, the therapist made a face. "I'm sorry. That's two questions. But don't try and feed me that evaluator nonsense because I could smell in a second that you're both far from human."

"Impressive nose," Aliya complimented, but the Doctor could see that she was rather alarmed in spite of her calm front.

"Thank you," Doctor Fell said, smiling. "But don't make me ask again."

"Can I ask what you are?" The Doctor tried, only for her to shake her head.

"Not until I get an answer out of you."

"Fair enough. We're Time Lords," He told her, and she blinked, only for a small frown to settle on her face. The meaning couldn't be plainer - the words meant nothing. He tried again. "From Gallifrey." That time, her green eyes widened and the pencil in her hands clattered onto the desk.

"Truly?" She asked, utterly agape. "I thought you were myths. Also, aren't you supposed to be all dead regardless?"

"The Time Lords are dead," Aliya said, "We're the only two left."

"My condolences." She seemed genuine, which only made the situation more puzzling.

"And what are you? No human has a nose that differentiate between species," The blonde inquired curiously, inhaling deeply through her own nose. Unlike the Doctor, she'd never quite mastered the art of processing by smell.

"Oh! I'm a Whifferdill! And you can call me Reyna," Doctor Fell said brightly. "No need for formality among fellow foreigners."

"A Whifferdill? I had a friend who was a Whifferdill. Frobisher. Liked to waddle about as a penguin," The Doctor remarked. Reyna nodded.

"Well, I happen to enjoy the human form. What are your real names? I imagine that John Smith and Alison Parker were falsities."

"The Doctor."

"Aliya."

"A pleasure."

"But why are you a therapist?" Aliya asked.

Reyna smiled sheepishly. "Well, I'm an empath. Not unheard of in my species but certainly not common. It's a practical use of my abilities."

"Of course," the Time Lady considered, grinning, "You'd know what the person you're trying to help is feeling."

"I actually specialise in couples counselling."

"Friendly alien empath using her abilities to help the natives of the world she's decided to live in," The Doctor summarised, "Loving it."

"But why are you here? You're not here for counselling - even though perhaps you should be - but you didn't know I was an alien like yourselves. Please explain."

"Sorry, did you say we should be getting counselling?" The Doctor asked slowly to be sure that he had heard Reyna right. She nodded.

"From the moment you two got in here I've only been able to half concentrate on our conversation because of the turmoiled emotions sitting in both of you."

The two Time Lords exchanged sceptical looks, both of them becoming overly defensive in an instant. "What?" They asked in unison.

Reyna leant back in her chair and stared at them with her large doe eyes. "It's the most curious mix of anger, hurt and caring that I've ever seen, and what's interesting is that you both have incredibly high levels of anger, but at the same time an intense care for each other I haven't seen nearly enough in people here."

"I'm sorry, but I really don't think that this is relevant, we have more pressing issues," Aliya said slowly, very deliberately trying to not let her face betray anything.

The Doctor quickly nodded. "Yes, like the string of disappearances around here. That's why we're here - to investigate."

Reyna's expression suddenly shifted to one of great surprise. "But that's what I'm doing!"

"Really?"

The therapist nodded earnestly. "The distress of the families kept projecting. I felt it so strongly that I decided I wanted to use my abilities to try and find the culprit, as empathic abilities tend to convey whether someone is telling the truth or not."

"Well," the Doctor said slowly, "Aliya and I are very clever, and we have a lot of handy equipment. If you worked with us, we'd be able to crack this, easy."

Reyna blinked, before breaking into a huge smile. "Alright! When do we start?"

Hope you are at least mildly intrigued, because I rather like this storyline. Let me know your thoughts, and what you think of Reyna! Her empathic abilities may or may not be the key to solving the deep seeded issues between these two.

As a random side note, anyone on board the Marion/Esther ship should know that I have a Marion/Esther Beauty and the Beast AU up. I don't really have a good reason other than that the scenario fitted them well and I had overwhelming muse and feels that needed to be expressed. So if you want to see Esther as Belle, Marion as the Beast, Gaston as HIMSELF, Jack as a pervy candlestick, Hart as the broom who flirts with him and makes terrible puns, and the Doctor as the clock, then definitely go to my profile and take a look.

Hopefully see you guys soon for another adventure and emotion filled chapter!

Love you all,

-MayFairy :)