Now, this chapter starts off with some really sudden angst but gets gradually happier it continues, so don't get too worried or anything, alright?
Thanks to all who have reviewed so far, you guys are amazing!
Someone VERY special makes an appearance at the end of this chapter, and you can thank someone I met who inspired me to get back into watching Classic Who, because the last bit of the chapter might not have happened had I not delved back into the Pertwee era with new gusto.
Enjoy!
As much as he was enjoying himself at Paternoster Road, something was causing the Doctor a considerable amount of stress. A something which was a secret he had kept to himself for a long time and had been meaning to tell Aliya for months, if not years or centuries. She deserved to know now, more than anything, even if really she had deserved to know from the beginning.
Telling her here was far from ideal, but she was holding two conversations with Vastra at once and one of them was about Aliya's Academy days. The fact that she still didn't know a crucial detail to do with that time in her life had finally pushed the Doctor to the point where he knew he couldn't listen to her talk about it for another second when she didn't know the truth. He couldn't put off telling her anymore.
"Aliya, can I talk to you?" He asked her. She glanced up from her conversation with Vastra, which had briefly flicked back to Silurian methods of transport.
"Of course," she said, sounding understandably puzzled.
"In…in private."
Aliya's confusion visibly deepened, but she excused herself and followed him out of the sitting room and into the entrance hall. "What's going on?"
"Aliya, I'm sorry, there's something I've been meaning to tell you, and I should have done it months ago, years really," the Doctor began, his hands nervously ghosting over her shoulders, "Don't ask me why now because I don't know, I really don't, but maybe it's just that I can't let you go on not knowing everything."
"You're scaring me," she said, frowning at him, "What is it?"
"It's about the Master. Something I never told you that I really should have," he said seriously. She just blinked and waited, but with an understandable amount of worry in her eyes. "Aliya, before you met us, the two of us were best friends, you know that much. But it was more than that. He was my whole world, the person I could talk to about all my crazy ideas and know that he wouldn't think they were crazy. And I know I was the same to him."
Her eyes widened. "What - Oh." Her entire body was stiff with shock. "But why didn't you two ever say anything, why did-"
"You arrived the day after he kissed me for the first time," the Doctor whispered, shutting his eyes because he couldn't bear to see the turmoil currently in hers. "We weren't – we weren't sure about any of it back then. No matter how important he was to me, even then I had seen glimpses of the darkness that took over him later. It had scared me and I was keeping my distance while trying to work out what I wanted to do. And then you came."
Aliya bit her lip and regarded him with a wary expression. "And then what?"
"I liked you right away, you know I did," he said, "What you didn't know was how much. Everything I wasn't sure about with Koschei was so easy with you. And when he realised…" This was the part he had been dreading telling her the most. "Aliya, he pursued you so that I couldn't. He didn't want you to 'have me' if he couldn't."
Her horror had her winding her shaking arms around herself. "But then why did he toy with me later? If it was all about you all along?"
He swallowed slowly, trying to keep down the bile that always seemed to want to rise in his throat just thinking about that time in their lives. "He did come to consider you his. His plaything of sorts, like we always thought. That just wasn't how it started." Silent tears had started to roll down her cheeks and he planted his hands on her shoulders as his own eyes became watery. "I never told you because I never wanted you to know that it was my fault. My fault that he hurt you."
"How could you keep this from me?!" She demanded, so loudly and abruptly that it had him letting go of her and stumbling back. "For what, a thousand years? Why didn't you tell me the moment he started courting me? You could have saved me from all of that!"
"I didn't think you would believe me-"
"Of course I would have!" She yelled. "But if not then, why not later? I had a right to know!"
"I know," he said quietly, hardly able to look at her because she hadn't been this angry at him since before Greywall and given everything that had happened since he wasn't entirely sure how to handle the way she was looking at him.
Aliya's narrowed eyes, accusing and still shining with hurt, regarded him without wavering. "Why didn't you tell me after? Any time after, there were hundreds of chances." When he didn't answer, and could feel his shame showing on his face, she pursed her lips and spoke in a deliberately cool tone. "Was it because things had happened with him since? I know you saw him countless times during and after your exile." When he didn't answer, she just held his gaze. "You know I wouldn't ask, what you got up to when I wasn't around is entirely your own business, only this is him. I think I deserve the truth."
He glanced away. "When you have a connection with someone, it doesn't just disappear. With him it was like, I dunno, magnetism."
"Did you ever-"
"No," he said sharply, "It didn't matter how drawn to him I was. No matter what I felt, I could never forget the things he had done. To thousands of innocent people. To you. If you – if we'd never met you, then maybe, but as it was…no. But it was enough that I was ashamed. How could I begin to tell you?"
"This is more important than your bloody pride," Aliya snapped, glaring at him. "This changes the way I see an entire period of my life, one of the most formative ones. You had no right to keep this from me!"
"Aliya-" He reached for her and felt his hearts pang painfully when she flinched away from him.
"Loving Koschei of Oakdown is something I would have understood, I went through it myself," she said flatly, "But at least I only got myself hurt. I always told you that what he did to me wasn't your fault, but maybe all this time I've been wrong."
Her words had the Doctor wanting to drop to his knees in front of her and weep while begging her forgiveness. As it was, he remained perfectly still. "I couldn't dismiss the chance that he might have actually cared for you," he said, "The chance that the two of you could be happy together. You were the two people I cared about most. I had no idea what kind of…what kind of monster he was turning into. By the time I knew, it was too late, you certainly wouldn't have believed me with the way he was messing with your mind. I'm sorry, Aliya, I'm so sorry, I failed you and I will have always failed you and I know there's nothing I can do to fix it."
Her face twisted with hurt and anger and everything between. "You know, I think Ushas dropped hints. But I was so self-absorbed that I never paid them a second thought. For the Other's sake, this is so fuckedup!" She headed for the stairs and he tried to stop her only to get shoved backward. "Don't, alright? I need time to think about this, on my own. You owe me that much."
"I'm sorry," he repeated, watching her run up the stairs as quickly as she was able in her gown. He felt like someone was squeezing one of his hearts with the intention of bursting it.
Half a minute later, Vastra and Jenny joined him in the hallway with worried looks on their faces.
"How much did you hear?" The Doctor asked them, glumly.
"Enough, I think," Vastra answered, "I can't pretend to have understood it all, but…enough perhaps to know the severity of the issue."
"I haven't made a mistake this big in a long time," he said, sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose, "And I haven't got a clue how to make it better."
"It may help her to have someone to talk to who isn't you," Vastra suggested, "Would you object to me offering my company?"
He blinked. "No, not at all. On the contrary, I hate to think how this might fester if she's left alone."
"Jenny, make the Doctor some tea, won't you? I think he needs it," the Silurian told her maid, giving her a quick pat on the arm before heading upstairs in pursuit of Aliya.
Aliya was numb. To have one's world shaken by one left out detail…before now she would have said it wasn't possible. But here she was. Fighting back ugly sobs and barely able to keep herself on her feet as she stood in the bedroom that had been the only logical place to go in her flight from the Doctor's presence.
How could he?
The question repeated itself in her head countless times until it blurred into something that didn't require words.
A knock at the door broke her out of her thoughts momentarily.
"Fuck off!" She shouted through her tears. When the door opened anyway, she was surprised and relieved to see Vastra coming through it as opposed to the Doctor. "Oh. I'm sorry."
"Given the circumstances, I would say it was an adequate response," the lizard woman said calmly, shutting the door behind her.
"You heard." It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
"Then you should know I want to be alone."
"Do you really? After hearing something so drastic from the person you trust the most, I'm not sure that anyone would want to be alone."
"I don't know what I think about any of this anymore," Aliya whispered, and found her legs gave out on her. She hit the floor with a thump. "What I thought I knew was a twisted version of the truth. Why did he take so long to tell me this? How did I not see it all the times I've been in his mind?"
Vastra came to sit on the floor opposite her and took her hands in hers. "Surely you have things you've locked away, things you don't even want him to see?"
Aliya knew that of course she did, it's not like either of them wanted a detailed look into the romantic history of the other – that was taking a policy of honesty and mental intimacy too far. Some things had to remain private.
"But all the people he's cared about," she said, "I knew about them, I could sense his feelings for them even if I couldn't see them exactly. But not with the Master. Which means he kept that locked away on purpose, he made the choice to keep the secret for even longer!"
"If you don't mind my asking, what exactly is the issue?" Vastra asked delicately.
Aliya frowned and tried to think of a way to concisely explain it. "The Doctor just told me that he was near enough in love with the man who-" She found the words didn't want to leave her mouth.
"Who what?"
It's private, she doesn't need to know, he's a mass murderer, that's enough to mention, a part of brain insisted. But she knew it was wrong. She wasn't ignoring the fact that he had been a mass murderer, not by a long shot, but that wasn't the part that made it so confusing.
"A man who made me his toy," she said finally, "Our supposed best friend who played with my mind and changed it to suit himself."
"You're a touch telepath species," Vastra said, her eyes widening, "That would be violation on the highest level."
Aliya's head dropped as she let out a long breath. "Yeah. And now I'm finding out that the whole reason I ended up in that relationship was because he was jealous of me, and wanted to keep me from the Doctor, because the Doctor was the one he really cared about. Except then he decided that I was…fun, apparently, and it all went to shit from there."
"…I believe I understand now."
"Their history has been such an integral part of his life," Aliya added, knowing this was the final thing that was bothering her, "And I've been seeing it the wrong way. They're not just old friends turned worst enemies, it was some screwed up romance and all this time I never knew and I think the worst part is that I just feel so fucking stupid."
Vastra pulled her into a tight embrace and just let the Time Lady sob into the shoulder of her gown. Downstairs, the phone was ringing only to stop a moment later. By the time a minute or two had past, Aliya had fallen silent and simply resigned herself to leaning on Vastra because it was comforting in the simplest of ways. The lizard woman's scaled fingers gently ran across her hair in a way that somehow made her feel better amongst all of it.
"You mentioned this man to me, I think, this Master," Vastra eventually said, "And you told me he was dead."
"He is."
"Which means that he's not around to cause trouble, the only power he has over the two of you is what you give him. And I know that it might be easy to say that what happened to you was the Doctor's fault, but he wasn't the one that did it. You can only truly blame the person who did the hurting, even if there was someone who could have perhaps prevented it."
The truth, as somewhat obvious as it was, couldn't have come at a better time. Somehow Aliya had known it all along, but hearing it out loud was crucial to her being able to lift her head and look Vastra in the eye.
"I know," she said, somewhat dumbly, "Thank you."
"Anytime."
The Doctor finished off his tea with a single gulp the moment he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the stairs. Sure enough, Vastra and Aliya had just arrived back on the ground floor by the time he made it out into the entrance hall. Aliya's eyes were red rimmed but now dry, and when she saw him she didn't give him a look of accusation or anything similar. She just gave him a miniscule and tight smile, the sort he had seen before. The sort that said it's not okay, but we're okay. He smiled back at her, making sure his relief and constant apology were still in his eyes.
That was when Jenny came hurrying back in. "That was Inspector Abberline of the Yard, Ma'am. He says the station's being attacked!"
"By whom?" Vastra asked, alarmed.
"Men in masks and uniform, Ma'am, but 'e reckons we could 'elp and maybe find out what they're after."
"We'll take the TARDIS, it's quicker," the Doctor said quickly.
By the time the group of four emerged from the TARDIS outside Scotland Yard and hurried inside, the place was already in complete chaos. Vastra immediately drew her sword when a police officer stumbled towards them, but the Doctor stayed her hand.
"Do you have something to report?" He mumbled, not quite looking at them. "This isn't the hospital…nothing wrong here…"
"What's wrong with him?" Aliya asked, staring at him. The Doctor gave him a quick scan with the sonic and peered at the results.
"He's been hit with a neuron scrambler," he told the group. They lifted their eyes to the stairs near them where an officer and a masked figure were wrestling and in danger of falling down the stairs. The only thing the masked figure carried was a small metal device that resembled an old version of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. "See, there. Is that what they're all attacking with? I suppose it's easier and neater than killing people, just turn them all into blithering idiots for a while and you can get away with whatever you like."
"But what is it that they want to get away with?" Vastra wondered. "This whole thing has come from nowhere, what could be in Scotland Yard that is so important it warrants all of this?"
"We need to find out," the Doctor said, "Because this technology is obviously completely out of its time, so either they're aliens, or they're from the future, and either way that means they shouldn't be here."
That was when a group of five masked assailants dropped from the first floor balcony. Vastra was quick to engage them and injure one immediately with a quick swipe of her sword, but the rest of the group had to resort to dodging the others. Jenny managed to deal an elegant kick to one of the remaining four that sent his neuron scrambler flying from his hand. What followed was chaotic enough that the Doctor could only be sure of the need to keep moving as several neuron scramblers were continuously pointed in his direction and he came less than an inch away from being hit by the projected rays on more than one occasion.
Aliya's hand ended up in his when he yanked her out of harm's way. She had enough time to give his hand a thankful squeeze before reinforcements arrived and she was forced to let go of him so that she could dodge out of the path of an incoming ray.
When he looked back in her direction ten seconds later, he saw her bolting off down a side corridor to escape an attacker who was pursuing her.
"Aliya!"
"It's alright, I'll catch up with you guys later, we've got to find what they're after!"
"Be careful!"
"You know I will!"
It took a good ten minutes for the remaining three to triumph over the mysterious group of fighters. The Doctor used the sonic to disable their weapons if he could get a direct signal through, Vastra simply slew the ones she was able, and Jenny disarmed where possible. All in all, they made a rather good team.
"I'm going to head upstairs and see where they've caused the most mess, it might tell us what they were looking for or at least where it was," Vastra told the Doctor while she was putting away her sword.
"I'm going to look for Aliya, make sure she's alright. She might have found something."
So the Doctor headed off on his own while Vastra and Jenny went upstairs together. He walked briskly through the corridors full of bumbling police officers that were harmlessly wandering around spouting nonsense and the small number of bodies where the masked attackers had actually fallen. It took him a good five minutes to come across a familiar figure in a maroon dress sprawled across the floor at the end of the corridor he had turned into.
"Aliya!"
He ran towards her and knelt at her side, sighing with relief when he saw that she was breathing and starting to come to.
"Aliya, can you hear me?"
"My parents said it wasn't proper to change one's name," she murmured, her eyes not quite open yet but her body stirring. "I won't go. I've never wanted to and you should have known that."
"Aliya, you're not making sense," the Doctor told her, shaking her slightly at the shoulders, but she only became more distressed and frowned more deeply, squeezing her eyes shut.
"Eight out of eleven regenerations – the mutation must be dominant."
"Aliya!"
"Aliya was a child who refused to grow up," she snapped, her eyes opening so quickly that he jumped, but the voice that spoke wasn't hers. Or rather, it was, but hadn't been for a good while.
She's reliving past regenerations, the Doctor realised, she must have been hit with a neuron scrambler. She's got so much more in her brain than humans, of course it would have a more detrimental effect on her. So much more to make a mess with.
"Try to undress me and I'll cut off a certain piece of your anatomy and feed it to wild Zygons," she continued in the same voice, and he found himself blushing and grinning at the same time. He rememberedthat particular incident. Her third self had been so much fun when she was cross, or at least his fourth self had been brave enough to think so.
The Doctor scooped her up into his arms so that he could carry her bridal style back down the corridor. Luckily she didn't fight him, and instead merely stared blankly in front of her while she continued to babble.
"I'm sorry, Anna," she said in the voice of her fourth incarnation, "Doctor!" He glanced down at her, alarmed and ready to respond, before he realised that she was speaking in a memory. "Oh, when I heard something was going on, I had hoped you might be here."
"This is bizarre," the Doctor muttered to himself, thinking about how eerie it was to hear almost perfect replicas of her previous selves' voices coming out of her mouth.
"I want to go back to Gallifrey…I'm sorry but I can't do this anymore…"
Hearing that again wasn't any more pleasant than it had been the first time, but the Doctor managed to ignore it by thinking about how it had worked out in the end, about how her current regeneration was more than able to deal with the life that one hadn't.
The scream she let out then had him nearly dropping her, it caught him so much by surprise. It was so loud he wouldn't be surprised if the entire street had heard it. Likely from her time in the void in the mountain, he told himself rationally, but knowing where it came from didn't make it any less painful to hear.
"It's alright, it's okay," he told her quietly as they approached the main entrance area of the building where Vastra and Jenny were waiting, "You're safe now."
"Earth English," she mumbled before finally falling silent. He felt her consciousness dim as she abruptly fell asleep with her head against his chest.
"What happened?" Vastra asked when the Doctor got close enough.
"She was babbling, so I think the one chasing her must have gotten her with their neuron scrambler," he said, "I can't be sure what the effects are going to be, but I imagine they'll be more severe for her than for the humans."
Once he had changed Aliya into her nightgown and settled her into the upstairs bedroom they had been occupying for the last couple of days, the Doctor went back downstairs to talk with Vastra and Jenny.
"How is she?"
He glanced at the lizard woman and just shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Stable, I think. I don't know what kind of damage this could do. Time Lord minds are so complicated, if something has successfully scrambled it-" He pinched the bridge of his nose tiredly.
"She is strong," Vastra said, with a confidence that surprised the Doctor, if only momentarily.
"Yes," he agreed. "I've got to hope it will be enough."
"Is she sleepin'?" Jenny asked. He just nodded and sat down at the plain kitchen table, where the maid hurried to pour him tea. He thanked her and began to sip at it. Already he wanted to be going upstairs and checking on her, but he wasn't likely to be much use there.
"What did you find? Back at Scotland Yard?" It was something he hadn't time to ask earlier given everything that had happened.
"Nothing," Vastra admitted, with an expression of irritation.
He frowned. "Nothing?" He couldn't quite keep the scepticism out of his voice.
"One of the offices was wrecked somethin' proper," Jenny told him, "But we checked for gaps in the filing system, and nothing was missing."
"So either what they took wasn't a file, or they didn't actually take anything."
Vastra nodded. "Exactly."
"Then what was the point?" Jenny asked, huffing with frustration and crossing her arms.
"We might never know."
A piercing scream from upstairs made them jump and had them running out into the hallway and up the stairs. When they burst into the bedroom, Aliya was sitting up in bed and yelling at the top of her lungs with tears streaming down her face, her entire face twisted with anguish.
"Aliya!" The Doctor sat near her on the bed and turned her to face him. "Aliya, it's okay, you're at Paternoster, you're safe."
A babble of Gallifreyan burst from her lips and he could make out something about the Zero Room but nothing that made sense. When she seemed to see he didn't understand, her frown deepened. "The bed," she said, slowly and as if she had to think every carefully about each word, "It's wrong. The wrong shape."
"Yes, it rather is, isn't it?" The Doctor gave her a smile but spoke in English in hopes she might do the same. "Humans aren't as into circles, they like their rectangles."
She gave him an odd look, like she wasn't sure if she was confused or vaguely amused. "Yes."
"Now, what's wrong, why were you screaming?"
"I don't know," she said, sniffing. "I don't feel right. Not even a little bit."
"You were hit by a neuron scrambler," Vastra told her from where she and Jenny stood in the doorway. "Any amount of confusion or disorientation on your part is completely justified."
Aliya's eyes widened, almost comically, and she looked to the Doctor for confirmation. He just nodded. She let her head fall into her hands.
"I was dreaming," she murmured, her voice a bit muffled, "Everything was white. So white it hurt."
"Could be that your brain was too scrambled to form anything coherent for the dream, and so left it blank," the Doctor suggested, "Like white noise."
"There was plenty of noise too."
He grabbed her hand and gave it a squeeze. "It'll be alright, you just need to take it easy for a few days." She reluctantly nodded and let out a long sigh. Then she took another look at her surroundings.
"Why aren't we in the TARDIS?" She asked.
Jenny gave her a supportive smile. "You came to stay with us, remember?"
Aliya frowned. "No. Yes. I don't know." She hit the blankets in front of her with frustration. "Why does nothing make sense?!"
"Because you were hit with a neuron scrambler-"
"I know! But that was just words and hearing it isn't the same as knowing your brain isn't making sense of everything!"
"You'll get it Aliya," Jenny said confidently, "Sometimes you just need to be patient with yourself."
The blonde just fell back onto the pillows and stared up at the ceiling. "I hate feeling stupid. It's- it's -" She trailed off as a lost look took over her face, the right word apparently escaping her.
"Infuriating?" The Doctor asked quietly.
"Yes, that!" Tears of frustration welled up in the corner of her eyes. "Why were they there, what did you find?"
"Nothing," Vastra said.
"Of course not, that would only be comforting," Aliya muttered, with a bitterness the Doctor hadn't heard in her tone in a while. She looked at him a moment later. "Look, I want to talk about this morning, but if I'm not in my right mind at the moment it might not be the best idea."
"You know I'd never blame you for anything you said," the Doctor told her, "I think the sooner we talk the better."
Vastra and Jenny exchanged looks. "We'll leave you two alone."
"Thank you."
Once alone with his companion, the Doctor stretched across the bed so that he was lying next to her, only on top of the covers while she was underneath.
"I'm glad we met those two," Aliya said, before he could say anything, "They're good people."
"They are, and I'm glad too."
They lapsed into a silence. A thousand things the Doctor wanted to say to her sat on his tongue but he couldn't quite get them out. After about thirty seconds, she shifted slightly so that her head was gently resting against the side of his shoulder. He let out a long breath of relief that she at least wasn't as physically repulsed by him as she had seemed during their argument.
"So you remember what I told you this morning."
A pause followed his words but she eventually answered. "I think it's the only thing I'm sure I'm remembering clearly."
"Oh. That's…I want to say good, but I'm not sure I could say it and be telling the truth."
"…I'm glad you did. Tell me the truth, that is. This morning. It can't have been easy, knowing how I was going to react but knowing you had to do it."
"No, but I'm not so sure that this is about me."
"It's as about you just as much as it is about me. And about him."
"Do you understand why I didn't tell you?" It was a dangerous question. It could easily be taken the wrong way and have her thinking that he thought he was in the right, which he most certainly wasn't.
"Yes," Aliya whispered, "But it doesn't mean I condone it or think it was okay."
"It wasn't, it never be will be, but now you know and you know how sorry I am for keeping it from you."
"Yes, I do."
The Doctor let his hand come down to close around hers where it lay between them. "Are we okay?"
She gave it a squeeze and turned her head so that she could smile at him faintly. "Of course we are. I'm done with letting a dead psychopath ruin the good things in my life."
"You said this changed everything."
"It changed everything to do with him, and that's not nice by any means, but it doesn't change this," she said, firmly, "It doesn't change us. Even if he somehow came back-"
"He'd never get between us, even though he would try."
"I'd never let him hurt you."
The Doctor found himself laughing, even though something about the sentence made him almost want to cry. "He's never been as interested in hurting me as he claims, I'd be a lot more worried about you."
"Well, alright, you can protect me from him and I'll protect you from everyone else."
He smiled and let his head rest on top of hers. "I like the sound of that."
"It's good to see you up and about, Aliya."
"Thank you, Vastra."
A day or two onward, and while Aliya was not still quite back to her old self, she was well on her way and not as confused about most things, simply a little slower on the uptake than usual.
"What are the Doctor and Jenny doing?"
Aliya shrugged. "I think he's trying to teach her some bizarre board game, but honestly I couldn't be sure."
"It wasn't one you were familiar with?"
"I don't think so."
The Silurian had been seated in the conservatory when Aliya had wandered in in hopes of finding her, and Vastra indicated for her to sit in the chair opposite her. "I have truly enjoyed having you and the Doctor stay with us."
"We've loved being here," Aliya said honestly, "Thank you for having us for so long and so graciously. With everything that's happened, it's been invaluable."
"You and the Doctor stopped me from losing myself - for that I owe you a debt that could not be repaid by something as simple as playing hostess for less than a week."
"Well, the Doctor isn't one to keep account of debts, so I wouldn't worry if I were you."
Vastra shrugged. "You never know what may happen in the future. One day he might find he needs to collect on some."
Aliya frowned and leaned back in her chair. "That sounds rather dire."
"Are you honestly trying to tell me that a man with eyes such as his does not live the sort of life that might indeed be dire at times?" Vastra, as per usual, was far too sharp and observant for Aliya to pretend she didn't speak absolute truth. Not that she would have lied to the woman she now considered a friend regardless.
When Aliya just pursed her lips and frowned at her, Vastra nodded rather smugly.
"As I thought."
"He faces dire circumstances all the time, but I've never seen him go out of his way to bring someone else into it," Aliya explained, "He deals with his own problems with the help of whoever happens to be there. He's not the most selfless person to exist but he doesn't bring people into fights that aren't theirs."
"Which makes me wonder what level of desperation he would need to reach to do so."
"I would hope we never have to find out."
The two women stared at each other, eyes locked, and Aliya couldn't help but think that the Silurian looked like she knew something Aliya didn't or had guessed something Aliya hadn't, but with Vastra it was so hard to be sure.
By the time the next day came around, it was time for the Doctor and Aliya to say farewell.
"Thank you for everything, Jenny," the Doctor said to the maid as he gave her a tight hug, "And I know Vastra's your boss but don't let her boss you around too much, eh? Make sure she remembers you're much more than a maid."
"Ahem," Vastra coughed, giving him a pointed look of mild annoyance, "She is still in the room and perfectly within earshot, thank you."
"Ignore them," Aliya said, chuckling and pulling her in for a tight hug that had the lizard woman stiffening in surprise before relaxing a few moments later. She put her lips to her ear so that she could whisper without being heard by the others. "And remember what we said to you. You're allowed to love her." She pulled away to have Vastra stare at her with an unfathomable expression. "Thank you. Honestly, you've done more than I could ever have asked for."
"It was no trouble," Vastra replied, smiling slightly even though it seemed that her brain was now elsewhere if her glances at Jenny were anything to go by. "Now, Doctor, do try and stay out of trouble for a week or two for Aliya's sake, won't you?"
"I'll try," he said, indignantly, "But honestly, you'd be amazed at how often trouble just lands in my lap the moment we leave the TARDIS…"
"I'm sure." Vastra let the Doctor give her a kiss on each cheek. "Now go on, get that machine of yours out of my garden."
The Doctor gave her a mock salute. "Yes Ma'am." He looped his arm through Aliya's and they left the house in high spirits. After being away so long, it was a relief to both of them to finally return to the TARDIS. Being in a house was all very well, but to them, the ship would always be home.
They went to the console platform, and both touched the controls in greeting to the Doctor's oldest and most constant companion.
"Sorry we were gone so long, dear," he said, and while Aliya didn't say anything out loud, she thought something similar and hoped the ship understood. "Now, Aliya, you're still not at 100%, so I think you should get to pick where we go now. Thoughts?"
Aliya gave it some consideration, and after coming up blank initially, she realised exactly who she wanted to see and who the Doctor needed to meet.
"Doctor, I think it's about time you met Sky Smith," she said, grinning, "Also, it's probably a good idea to tell Sarah Jane that I'm not still abandoned in Earth and busy hating you."
He laughed, a little nervously. "Oh dear. She will still be thinking that, won't she? This is going to be a bit of a surprise."
"Just a bit," Aliya agreed, smirking. "Well, I'm going to get changed while you get us there, because I've had more than enough of corsets for the foreseeable future."
The TARDIS landed on Bannerman Road with its usual wheezing of the brakes. The Doctor watched Aliya step out of the box with a spring in her step she had been missing since her encounter with the neuron scrambler. He smiled to himself and made to follow her out onto the street and up to Sarah Jane's front door. After he knocked once, Sarah Jane opened the door a moment later.
"Doctor!" She exclaimed, her face lighting up before she noticed his companion. "…and Aliya."
"Yeah," Aliya said, rather sheepishly.
"I imagine there's a story here, isn't there?"
"Maybe a bit," the Doctor admitted. Sarah Jane smiled at them.
"One I'm sure I'll enjoy hearing, but I've actually got someone over at the moment, so it might have to wait," she said, giving them a funny smile.
"Oh, well, we can go-"
"No, I think on the contrary-"
"Did I hear you say Doctor, Sarah Jane?"
They all turned to the owner of the new voice. It was an elderly man with a cap, blazer and walking stick standing in the doorway to Sarah Jane's living room. His hair might have been grey and his face covered in stubble and lacking his once characteristic moustache, but the Doctor would never fail to recognise his oldest human friend.
Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.
"Brigadier!" The Doctor said gleefully, feeling his face light up while his hearts instantly warmed at the mere sight of him.
The Brigadier narrowed his eyes at him. "I had forgotten how utterly young you look in this new regeneration, Doctor. It's ridiculous."
"Good to see you again, Brigadier," Aliya said, grinning at him.
He offered her a small smile that was soon replaced by a frown. "You know, I'm terribly sorry, but I've forgotten your name. Isn't it something obscenely long?"
"Well-"
"Aliya!" Sky Smith came hurtling down the stairs and Aliya's attention was stolen. She turned towards her young friend and laughed when the girl jumped from the ground into Aliya's arms. With Sky's flung around her neck, the girl dangled above the ground while the they hugged each other fiercely.
"Hey," Aliya said, shutting her eyes contently for a moment, "I've missed you."
"I've missed you too!" Over her shoulder, the girl spotted the Doctor. "Is that the Doctor? Are you not mad at each other anymore?"
"No, not anymore," Aliya said, smiling as she eventually put Sky down. The girl beamed back.
"That's great! Because it was really sad watching you cry all the time because of him, even though I hope he didn't mean for it." Sky looked at the Doctor curiously, and he realised she was expecting him to speak on the matter. Aware of the Brigadier's sharp but confused eyes watching him, he crouched in front of the little girl Aliya had told him so much about.
"No, I didn't, I promise," he told her seriously, glancing at Aliya who gave him a sympathetic smile. "I hate making her cry."
"Only because it makes my face all puffy," Aliya said, to keep it light, and the Doctor's lips twitched.
"Well, yeah." He kept his eyes on Sky. "But Aliya's my best friend in the whole universe and I've made a promise to myself to never hurt her again. Does that sound okay?"
"Of course it does!" Sky said, grinning at him. She then held her hand out to him. "I'm really happy to meet you, Doctor, Sarah Jane's told me a lot about you. I really want to go for a trip in your time machine-"
"But I told her that it's probably best if she keeps getting used to Earth first, and that you don't take children with you," Sarah interrupted, giving the Doctor a pointed look.
"Yes, sorry, Sky," he told her, smiling as he got back to his feet. "Now!" He clapped his hands together excitedly. "How good is this, it's like a mini UNIT reunion! I do miss those days, you know, Brigadier…" He clapped his old friend on the shoulder. "All we're missing is Jo and Benton, really. What's he up to these days, anyway?"
The Brigadier filled him in on what the other people from UNIT were doing now, and he listened intently while also being aware of Sarah Jane pulling Aliya aside and talking to her quietly.
"Doctor, where's that wife of yours?"
The Doctor realised with a jolt that people like the Brigadier still thought he was happily married to River. "Oh, um, she died," he said quietly, dropping his eyes.
For some reason, the Brigadier didn't look entirely surprised, though was certainly sympathetic. "I'm sorry to hear that. But it would explain a great deal."
The Doctor frowned at him. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you've been unable to keep your eyes off your friend for more than a quarter of a minute," his old friend said, lifting an eyebrow, "And you're looking at her in much the same way you were looking at your wife at your wedding. It's also not dissimilar to how you looked at Jo Grant, back in the day. I've known you long enough now to know what it looks like when you're besotted with someone."
The Brigadier's observation made the Doctor's cheeks redden – the love he had felt for Jo Grant was something he had wrestled with at the time due to the inappropriateness of any potential relationship. To this day, just exactly what the nature of those feelings had been, he couldn't be sure. He had been too old for her physically as well as mentally, but that hadn't meant he had been any less crushed when she had become engaged and left him. It had never occurred to him that anyone else at UNIT might have picked up on it, but in retrospect he should have known the Brigadier might have.
Of course, Sarah Jane's voicing of her surprise at something mentioned in her own conversation stopped them from taking the issue any further.
"Really?"
"Really what?" The Brigadier asked. "Not talking about us, I hope."
"Not exactly, I was just learning about some, er, developments since I last saw either of these two," the human woman said sheepishly, glancing at Aliya and the Doctor to convey that she wasn't sure if they wanted her to say anything. It wasn't hard for the Doctor to work out what she had learned.
The Brigadier was a perceptive man, and he clearly knew there was more behind her words than the average person might guess. "Developments?"
The Doctor decided it was time for him to take point, since he had already more or less told the Brigadier anyway and Sarah Jane did deserve to know some more of the details. "Although we don't see one as being more important than the other, Aliya is more than just my friend."
Sarah stared at him incredulously. "Seriously? Is that the best you can do?"
"Sarah Jane, it's fine-" Aliya interrupted, but she was cut off too, by the Brigadier.
"Doctor, in my experience, it never pays to refer to women in a blasé fashion-"
"What do you want me to say?!" The Doctor exclaimed, his voice surprisingly defensive. "That she's the one that got away that I never thought I'd find again, that she's the one person that's had a hold over my hearts through all my lives? That I'll do anything I can to keep from ever hurting her again? What?"
When he stopped talking and properly took in the expressions of those facing him, he realised that he had in fact just said almost everything that they had wanted him too.
"Well, yes," Sarah Jane said, with a triumphant smile. The Brigadier looked taken aback more than anything else, but also had a small smirk of his own.
It was Aliya's face that had the Doctor truly stopping and staring. Her eyes were shining and she was smiling so widely that there was no way it wasn't hurting her face, but she plainly didn't care.
"You're so ridiculous," she said, and he smiled because he'd worked out a good while ago that it had been her subconscious way of saying 'I love you', back before she would ever have allowed herself to say it properly. It was a nice way of her privately conveying the same sentiment now.
"I know," he replied, like he always did. "Frankly, I'm surprised you noticed it, Brigadier. But I suppose you always were a lot smarter than you let on."
The Brigadier shot him a not-so-pleased look for that particular comment.
"Well, I certainly can't say I expected this," Sarah Jane said, looking between the two Time Lords, "Given how you were talking to each other when I last saw you."
"Things were complicated," Aliya said simply, shrugging, "And we were idiots. But in the end our friendship was more important."
Sarah gave them a funny smile. "And the rest of it?"
"Some things are inevitable," the Doctor replied, "And sometimes certain people are too."
Sky, who up until that point had just been hugging Aliya's side and listening very intently, now spoke up. "Do we need to keep talking about this, or could we play Pictionary?"
The adults laughed and agreed that they indeed could, and Sky ran across the road to grab Rani to be her partner so that Sarah Jane could team up with the Brigadier and the Time Lords could go together.
"No telepathy," Aliya told the Doctor firmly while they were setting up, "We're going to win this fair and square." They got a few odd looks from the others for that, but continued on otherwise. Rani got a huge hug from Aliya when she arrived, and Rani was delighted to see that the pair were no longer estranged.
Then the game started. The thing that had to be drawn was a rollerblade, and the Doctor along with Sarah Jane and Sky were the ones who had to draw it. The tiny hourglass was flipped and they got drawing frantically, with their partners yelling suggestions animatedly.
After Aliya guessing 'space train' and 'boot enhancement', and Rani guessing 'car', the Brigadier correctly guessed 'rollerblade' after a few close guesses of his own.
Aliya wasn't happy. "What the flying f-" She abruptly changed her language after a sharp look from Sarah Jane, "- slitheen fart is a rollerblade?" Everyone looked at her with disbelief.
"It's like a shoe, with wheels on the bottom so you can skate down the street and go way faster," Rani explained.
"Oh. How was I meant to know about that?"
No one gave that question the dignity of an answer and they just continued into the next round. The word was 'blind', something considerably trickier than rollerblade. The Brigadier got to work drawing a figure with sunglasses, while Rani attempted something similar. What the Doctor was drawing was not something the humans would understand by a longshot, but something that he knew that Aliya would recognise instantly.
"Blind!" Aliya shouted, and the others groaned at how she had gotten it in a matter of seconds. When they saw the Doctor's drawing, they all voiced their confusion.
"What is that?"
"How did you know from something so small?"
The Doctor chuckled. "It's a tattoo design common around the Horsehead Nebula, they use different tattoos on the cheek to label people with disabilities so you know how to help them, and this one is-"
"A wonky fish," Sky chimed.
"Well, yes, it is a bit, but it's the design that marks blindness."
"We had to do a project on the designs once," Aliya said, nodding towards the drawing, "It was really interesting, but there was a huge ethical debate amongst the class as to whether such markings were actually helpful for those who wore them, or whether it was just another way to set them apart. Our professor could barely get us all to shut up."
"Borusa wasn't one for creative discussion," the Doctor agreed, "He preferred thinking that there was one definite right way of going about everything. Typical boring Time Lord in every way, that one."
The others took their word for it and the game continued. Due to the Doctor and Aliya either being uncannily good partners or in complete and constant disagreement ("How could you think that looks like a cow?!" – "No, Aliya, unicorn horns go on the forehead, not on their backside…"), they began to fall behind but were almost able to keep up with Rani and Sky. It was, however, Sarah Jane and the Brigadier who ultimately won. The latter seemed to find this immensely amusing, if only because of how much of a bad loser the Doctor was about the entire thing.
"We should go and see Clyde!" Sky said excitedly as they packed the game up. "He'd love to see Aliya again."
"And the Doctor and the Brigadier, definitely, so why don't we call him together and get him over here instead?" Rani suggested, and she went with Sky and Aliya out into the hallway to call Clyde on speaker.
The Doctor's eyes followed them out, resting on Aliya, whose arm was around Sky's shoulders.
"I like her, I think," the Brigadier said, coming to stand next to him and also watching Aliya with the child and teenager. "I never told you, but I always found your constantly changing stream of companions a little concerning."
"It's just how my life is, Brigadier. Humans don't have my lifespan, they can't stay with me forever."
"But she could," his old friend said, "But even if she weren't as long lived as you, I would be telling you that I think you seem to bring out good sides of each other. God knows you need someone who won't just be handing you your test tubes and telling you how brilliant you are."
The Doctor's mouth quirked at his quoting of Liz Shaw's parting statement to the two of them. "I don't really have test tubes these days."
The Brigadier rolled his eyes, but he was smiling too.
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-MayFairy :)