Thanks to all who have reviewed so far!
Welcome to a new original arc! (It was only meant to be one or two chapters initially but has wound up being three, oops!) Lots of fun to be had within, and I'm still running one chapter ahead which is why this chapter and the last one have taken so long because this arc gave me a lot of trouble initially.
Enjoy!
(Also, someone wanted more Daliya fluff and I can promise that this arc will deliver. Also some more feels-inducing and angsty stuff, there will be a bit of everything.)
"You know, when I said the thing about running from Utah, I meant it in a more metaphorical sense!"
Aliya's words were ragged as she and the Doctor sprinted down the corridor of the space station. They had come from the complete other side and were therefore getting incredibly out of breath with still a fair way to go.
"Cardio is important, Aliya!" The Doctor told her, definitely coping with the strain on their lungs better, but then he had had more practice when it came to building endurance.
"Sod your fucking cardio, this is insanity!"
"Well, if you like, we could take a break and give that Vortisaur a chance to catch up and tear us limb from limb!"
"Let me handle this, Aliya, before I met you I used to ride Vortisaurs bareback in my temporally sensitive wildlife class," Aliya repeated with a roll of her eyes, mimicking his voice. "That went well, didn't it?"
"How was I supposed to know that giving him a drop of my blood to feed on would make him want more?!"
"I don't know, maybe the fact that you apparently studied them and dealt with one in your Eighth body?!"
He ignored that, and they ran in silence for a bit longer.
"I'm fairly sure it was your accidentally wounding it that made it go ballistic," the Doctor pointed out, "But as it is we should focus on finding whoever else is on this ship and getting them off it."
"We're almost at the bridge."
Sure enough, a few moments later they were bursting through the doors to the bridge. The room was large, with a high level at the entrance, and curved stairs on either side that lead to a lower level with a semicircle of control panels at the front. The circular style almost made it look Gallifreyan. Almost.
To their surprise, when they came to the edge of the higher platform, they could only see three people blinking up at them.
"What, is that it?" The Doctor exclaimed, his face falling. "Where's the rest of you?"
"We're a crew of six," a person with short and shaggy electric blue hair replied, frowning at him, "And the other three were in the section that apparently got detached about fifteen minutes ago."
"Oh," the Doctor said, frowning, "I'm sorry."
"Who are you, anyway? Were you the ones that brought whatever is destroying our station?"
"No, no, we didn't bring it, we found it! Detected traces of the temporal energy - it's a Vortisaur, you see, a creature that lives in the time vortex - and came to see what it was."
"The Time Vortex?" One of the three, an elderly black man with an American accent, repeated the term with great confusion.
"What century are we in again?" Aliya asked the Doctor.
"36th," he replied, frowning, "They're over a millennia away from any realistic hold on the basic theories of temporal science."
"Oh."
"If you two could stop speaking nonsense, that would be fantastic," the third member said irritably. She was of Chinese descent and looked to be in her thirties.
"It's not nonsense just because you don't understand it," Aliya retorted, earning a glare and a drawn gun pointed at her.
"Your names and identification, now."
"Yori-" The young blue haired person tried to protest, but was quickly shushed.
"The Doctor."
"Aliya."
"Your full, proper names," the woman (Yori?) said, narrowing her eyes at them. The Doctor's eyes dropped to her chest, where a golden star badge gleamed on her tunic.
"You're the Captain of this station," he noted.
"Yes, and you're trespassing. Names."
"What exactly does this station do?"
"We're the emergency service station for this quadrant."
"Carly!"
"Sorry, Captain."
The black man eyed them with more curiosity than suspicion. "Well, they certainly don't look like pirates." He lifted an eyebrow at them. "Are you armed?"
"Only with a screwdriver," the Doctor said cheerfully, taking the sonic out of his pocket to show them. "And the Doctor is my full name, I promise."
"Aliya is short for Aliyanadevoralundar," his companion mentioned, "But I didn't think you needed to be bothered with so many syllables."
The one called Carly looked like they wanted to chuckle at that, but one look from Yori sobered them.
"Doctor, that Vortisaur is going to be here any second, we need to shut the door and barricade it," Aliya said urgently, realising they had spent far too much time talking, and didn't let Yori have time to protest. "You can argue once we're all safe for the time being."
So the Time Lords shut the door, and only half a minute after they did so and had started finding nearby things to drag up the stairs and make a barricade with, the Vortisaur could be heard and felt ramming against the sealed doors.
"That thing sounds nasty," Carly said, making a face at the pounding noises.
"It is," the Doctor replied, "Or at least this one is."
"You called it a Vortisaur. I've never heard of such a creature."
The Doctor smiled. "I'd be very impressed if you had." Then he launched into his explanation mode. "Extradimensional birds of prey, feeding off wrecked ships that end up in the Time Vortex. It shouldn't be here."
"Then how do we get it back to where it should be? That Time Vortex place?" The other man asked.
"What was your name?"
He gave him a friendly smile. "Lex."
The Doctor came down the stairs to shake his hand enthusiastically. "Nice to meet you, Lex. As I said, I'm the Doctor, and this is Aliya." He turned to the youngest person in the room. "Now, Carly, isn't it?"
"When I'm a girl, yeah," she replied, "Caleb when I'm a boy."
"Ah, genderfluid, lovely," he said, his face lighting up, "Which pronouns do you use?"
"She when Carly and he with Caleb."
"Brilliant. Carly right now?"
"Yeah."
The Doctor nodded and then moved onto the captain of the station, who was eyeing him stonily. "Now, do you prefer Yori or Captain?"
"You may call me Captain," Yori said. That made him giggle with delight.
"Does that make me a singing governess?" He asked, ever the innocent flirt. "Because I'll have you know, I tried the nunnery gig, and it worked out even less well for me than it did for Julie Andrews."
Carly's eyes widened and she laughed as well, even while Lex, Aliya and Yori were all utterly confused.
"What on earth are you talking about now?" The latter asked.
"It's an old Earth musical, from the 20th century," the blue haired girl said, grinning, "My grandma loved it. Don't get many people around these days who know about that sort of thing, though."
"Well, we're not from around here," Aliya told her, which got her a curious look.
Lex just shook his head. "I think we need to be worrying about the thing still banging on the door. Are we sure it isn't going to get in? If it keeps trying, it might eventually."
"Thank you, Lex," Yori said, nodding, "If we could cut the chat about musicals and deal with the problem at hand, Doctor?"
"Sorry, yeah, probably should do that," he agreed, clapping his hands together. "Problem is, taking down this Vortisaur isn't going to be easy. Really what we want is a way to get it back into my TARDIS, because then we can put it back in the Vortex where it belongs."
"Could we tranquilise it somehow?" Carly asked.
"No, it wouldn't work, I'm afraid."
"But we just sealed and barricaded our way back to the TARDIS," Aliya pointed out to him, and he froze as he realised she was right, "So first we would have to find a way to get there and then, what, try and coax it inside? That won't work!"
"TARDIS? You're speaking nonsense again," Yori said, frowning at them.
"Time And Relative Dimension In Space," the Doctor replied without missing a beat, "It's my ship, my time machine that travels in the vortex just like the Vortisaur. Making Aliya and I the most qualified people to deal with your Vortisaur problem by a mile."
"The 36th century comment makes more sense now," Carly realised, staring at them, "You really didn't know where - well, when - you were."
"Where is accurate enough because it's just a where in time as opposed to space," Aliya said helpfully, "Well, in your somewhat limited language, anyway."
"Oh, okay, neat."
"You're time travellers," Yori remarked, her voice flat.
"Yes." Aliya put her hands on her hips and held her gaze calmly. "Problem with that?"
Yori's mouth set in a firm line, like she wanted to argue, but apparently something in Aliya's eyes made her think better of it. "No. Sure. Why the hell not."
"Don't mind her, she's just grumpy because our caf machine broke this morning," Carly told them, laughing, "Well, I mean, she's always grumpy, but without her caf she's-" A glare from Yori had her gulping and hurriedly saying, "Still a great person to have around and my absolute favourite captain ever without any sort of competition."
Yori just rolled her eyes. "I'm your only captain ever, this is your first posting."
"Details," Carly retorted, grinning.
"Actually, if we could get it close enough to the TARDIS, the artron energy would probably be enough to entice it inside," Aliya considered, and the Doctor grinned at her.
"Exactly. The TARDIS can throw up a containment vortex and then we're sorted."
"Still leaves the big problem of how to get it and us back to the TARDIS before it tears us or this station apart."
"Details," the Doctor remarked, echoing Carly. "Now, what we need at this point would be maps of the station, I think. No, not maps, schematics. Our way out could be anything, but it's going to be on those schematics and we're going to find it."
Lex and Yori both looked to Carly, who blinked at them.
"What?"
"You're the mechanic," Yori said, "So you're the only one who uses the schematics."
"I memorised all the bits I needed to know ages ago so I wouldn't have to lug them around," Carly said, sticking her hands in the pocket of her grey jumpsuit, "Have you seen those things? They're massive."
"You have hard copies? I'd have thought most of your systems would be digital by this century," Aliya asked, frowning, and the young woman just gave her a funny look.
"Most of them are, yeah, but not a lot of point having the schematics on the system when they're what you're gonna need when it's broken."
The Time Lady considered that. "Fair point. Can I help you fetch them, then, if they're big and hard to carry around?"
Carly snorted. "We've got to find them first, but sure. I think I put them in the big supply cupboard over there."
Yori shot her a look. "You mean the one you haven't cleaned in six months?"
"Yep," the girl said cheerfully, "Should be fun." She turned to Aliya. "What was your name again?"
"Aliya."
"Cool, you can help me find them, if you think you'll know them when you see them."
"Aliya's a mechanic too, she's more than qualified to help you out," the Doctor said helpfully, almost sounding like he was bragging of his companion's skills.
Carly's face lit up upon hearing that. "Really? Awesome! Come on, the cupboard's over here." She grabbed Aliya's hand and pulled her over to a large door the same circular shape as the one they had barricaded up on the bridge's entrance platform. When she hit the button that made the door slide open, the true devastation of the cupboard was revealed.
"How does this happen in six months?" Aliya asked as she stared at the cupboard that she couldn't see to the end of due to the sheer amount of supplies and the lack of organisation. It really did look like a bomb had gone off inside, just with less scorch marks.
"I get excited and don't clean up," Carly said, making a face that was slightly sheepish but entirely unapologetic.
"You sound like the Doctor," the blonde said, shaking her head and biting back a grin. "Come on then, I guess we've got to get to work. You know, this cupboard is so wrecked it almost seems bigger on the inside. How big actually is it?"
"Fairly big," Carly told her as she cautiously began to make her way past the nearest junk to get inside, "But not bigger on the inside. That'd be cool though, don't you think?"
"Definitely." Aliya had to glance over her shoulder to give the Doctor an amused look, and he just smirked back. Then she turned her attention back to the horrendous task at hand, though could just make out him continuing to chat to Lex and Yori.
An hour later, the pair of mechanics hadn't managed to find any schematics and had gained only bruises for their troubles from the various times they had shifted something only to have something else fall on them.
"How are things going over here?" The Doctor asked, coming to lean on the frame of the door in a way that made him look unfairly attractive and had Aliya all the more annoyed about their entire situation.
"As I said the last time you asked, I'll let you know, and until then, unless you're going to help, let us get on with it," she told him irritably. "What the hell have you been doing, anyway?"
He just shrugged. "I've been trying to talk to the Vortisaur."
She let out a sarcastic laugh. "Oh? And how's that been going?"
"Yeah, uh, not well," he admitted, scratching his cheek, "Not sure if it's that he can't understand me or if he's just not in the mood for talking."
Aliya rolled her eyes and shook her head with exasperation, but couldn't keep the tiny smile that stretched the corner of her lips. "Right."
"Haven't seen that face in a while," the Doctor commented, his eyes amused and warm, "I always forget how much I like it until I see it."
"I'm surprised you ever have time to forget, given how ridiculous you are on a consistent basis," she said, and it was meant to sound critical but unfortunately just came out fond.
The Doctor grinned. "Well, when I said a while, I meant a good couple of hours. It's probably your default face these days. I don't forget it as much as miss it, I suppose."
Aliya bit her lip to smother the grin she automatically sent back at him, even as she felt her cheeks warm just a little. "Is this really the time for flirting?"
"I'd just like to point out that I'm still actually here," Carly's muffled voice said, making them break their eye contact and instead look to where her feet were poking out from underneath an extra backup generator that she was in the process of trying to get past.
Aliya laughed. "Sorry. Go on, Doctor, I'll let you know when we find anything."
"Okay," he agreed, giving her one last boyish grin before turning away and heading in a direction that made her think he was going to keep trying to talk to the Vortisaur.
Another hour later, after managing to make a half viable path through some of the supply cupboard which enabled them to finally get proper access to all the shelves, Carly let out a whoop of triumph.
"I found them!" She cried. "Finally! Aliya, make sure there's a clear path to the door and then you can grab the first one."
Aliya did as she was told before coming over to be handed a huge scroll of laminated schematics that came up to her hip, was about as wide as her neck, and as heavy as if the whole thing was filled with water.
"You weren't kidding about them being heavy," she said as she slowly dragged it out of the cupboard, getting assistance from the Doctor when he spotted her.
"No, I really wasn't," Carly laughed as she somehow managed to drag out two more, "But hey, we did it. Nice job."
"I just moved things out of the way and found things that weren't these."
"It all helps. Now for the fun part. Laying it all out. It used to take me about twenty minutes once I got good at it, but I haven't done it in a while and you guys might make it harder."
They got to work unrolling all the pieces of the schematics and then arranging them on the floor in the correct places. The Doctor and Carly got into arguments several times about the placement of some sections, with the Time Lord convinced he was more likely to be correct and the human mechanic insisting on her own personal experience being more important.
Aliya had chosen to ignore them and instead quietly keep working on her own.
It took them a bit over half an hour, and would have taken longer if Yori hadn't demanded they stop bickering and focus on cooperating.
"Okay, so we're looking for any kind of passage that might get us out of the bridge, right?" Carly asked the Doctor, who nodded. Despite their strong disagreements earlier, the two had apparently not held any grudges.
"Anything," the Doctor said, kneeling at the edge of the schematics that showed the bridge and what was around it. "The smallest detail could be all we need."
Lex, from his seat nearby, eyed the covered floor and shook his head. "How you can make any sense of all those lines and dots, I'll never know."
"It's not so different from a human body, Lex," Carly told him, smiling at him as she crouched beside the Doctor. "It just requires a lot more surgery than medicine a lot of the time."
"I'll stick to medicine, I think," Lex replied, smiling at her.
"This is harder than I thought it would be," Aliya muttered as she too leant over the schematics, "I mean, the level of detail on these things is astounding, but it's almost too good. The simple things don't look simple."
"Why do you think I found it easier to learn the important bits by memory?" Carly asked.
"It's definitely seeming like a smart move. Actually, maybe I could do that."
"It took me a few weeks."
"Then it'll probably take me twenty minutes to learn the bridge section and some of the surroundings. That's workable."
"Yeah, right."
When Aliya didn't respond to the sarcastic comment and instead started to focus on the complex diagrams in front of her, she was vaguely aware of Carly's gaping and saying something to the Doctor but tuned them out completely.
The station's design was rather beautiful. Once she employed her full concentration, the overlapping layers of lines of cables and wiring and fluid lines along with all the electrical points began to come together into a more cohesive whole.
She finished learning the bridge's makeup and had just started on what lay below when her vision flared white in the space of a nanosecond.
"We're almost at the bridge."
The Doctor and Aliya, running through the corridor, pushed harder until they came through the doors out onto the higher platform that overlooked the lower level. The three crewmembers of the station blinked up at them.
"What the hell just happened?" Yori demanded. "Weren't we just looking over the station schematics?"
The blue haired mechanic nodded quickly. "We were, and then I was back to arguing with Lex like I had been doing before they came in."
"It's a time loop," the Doctor and Aliya said in perfect unison, their heads snapping to look at each other.
"A what loop?" Lex asked.
"A time loop, where we relive the same period of time over and over again," the Doctor explained before starting to come down the stairs to the lower level, "An incomplete one, it would seem, since we're not being forced to do the same things within the repetition. Which would be frightfully boring, so thank goodness for that."
Aliya followed him down the stairs. "Also known as a chronic hysteresis," she said, "But I've never been in one before."
"What? Not ever?" The Doctor looked to her with great surprise. "How can you have lived a thousand years and never ended up in a time loop?"
"I don't go looking for trouble," she said flatly, crossing her arms, "So it's honestly not very surprising." Then she perked up. "It's interesting, though, isn't it? Makes my tongue tingle. Like a temporal displacement but on a massive scale."
"It might feel fun now, but it'll bug you after the first few loops," he told her.
"You're back to not making any sense whatsoever," Yori interrupted, glaring at them, "My tongue certainly isn't tingling and there's no such thing as loops in time."
"And naturally as a human from a still fairly primitive time period who possesses no physics qualifications as far as I know, you're an expert in matters of time travel," the Doctor said, surface pleasantness masking the snark.
The youngest member of the group was staring at Aliya. "Did you say something about living a thousand years? Are you a thousand years old?"
"Yes, I am," the blonde replied, "The Doctor's a got a few hundred years on top of that. Now, are you still Carly, or-"
"Caleb."
"Right."
"A thousand years? How is that possible?" Lex asked them.
"We already told you that we're time travellers, but we didn't just pick up the habit, our race were the ones who invented the most sophisticated method and vessels for doing so," the Doctor explained, smiling at them, "We're Time Lords."
To their surprise, Yori started laughing. "Oh. Wow. I should have seen this coming. I wasn't sure if you were just lying, but now it's fairly clear that you're both just insane. Delusional."
The Doctor and Aliya exchanged confused looks.
"I don't get it," Caleb said, shifting his weight and looking between them all unsurely, "What's a Time Lord?"
"A myth," Yori said flatly before anyone else could speak, narrowing her eyes at the travellers, "Some great race who had dominion over time itself. They're not real. The coordinates of the planet they were supposed to reside in are home to nothing but empty space."
"And if a race that existed in its own point in time was suddenly wiped out, then of course somehow you lower species in all your infinite wisdom would notice," Aliya snapped, not at all happy to be hearing of her people and home as myth. It had been a long time since they had encountered this problem.
"You've really got the snobby alien demeanour down, I'll give you that," Yori replied, scowling at her, "As I say, I'm fairly sure you actually believe it's true. But there's no such thing as a Time Lord."
Aliya, with a huff of frustration, grabbed the other woman's hand and brought it to her wrist, pressing her fingers into the groove next to the tendon.
"What are you-"
"Shut up and pay attention."
Yori fell silent, and a moment later frowned only to shift her fingers into a more optimal position. She remained still, visibly calculating, and then blinked with great surprise.
"Time Lords have two hearts, Yori," Aliya told her, her voice deliberately calm because it wasn't necessarily Yori's fault she had been fed lies, "What you're feeling right now is a double pulse beat. You'd feel the same on the Doctor."
"You could just have put something into your system to make it erratic," the captain said, but didn't sound like she believed it, "It doesn't-"
"The Doctor probably has a stethoscope in his pockets, you could listen to our hearts if you wanted to." Aliya studied the other woman's face and smiled ever so slightly. "But that's not necessary, is it? You believe me."
"But it's not there, the planet-"
"There was a war, which I'm sure you probably heard whispers about too. It destroyed everything," the Doctor said gravely, "The Time Lords are, essentially, gone. Aliya and I are all that's left."
"If you're so special, why are you here with people like us?" Lex asked, frowning at them.
The Doctor just smiled at him, softly. "What's wrong with people like you?"
Caleb meanwhile eyed them both with curiosity, hands in the pockets of his jumpsuit. "Do you have special powers or anything like that?"
"No, not really," Aliya said, smiling and shaking her head, "Other than our intellect."
"Damn, that would've been cool," he replied, sighing, "So this time loop thing, does that mean we'll keep going around and around, you guys running back into this room again?"
"Wait, shit, the creature, we need to barricade the door again!" Yori exclaimed with alarm, and they quickly ran to do just that, barely managing it in time.
"Good call, Yori," the Doctor complimented once it was done and they could hear the creature ramming against the door fruitlessly, "Yeah, getting me talking can be a great distraction or a way to make a plan but not such a great way to keep track of time."
"I'm getting that."
"Wait, but that means we'll have to dig through the cupboard again to get to the plans," Aliya realised, and from beside her, Caleb let out a long groan.
"That's so unfair."
"Hey, we know where it is now, so it won't take us nearly as long. The Doctor can help us this time."
It still took them almost half an hour to retrieve the plans from the cupboard again, but it was a considerable cut down on the time from before. To make it better, it only took them fifteen minutes to lay the schematics out on the floor.
"I guess what you said about being able to memorise this in twenty minutes makes sense now that I know you're an alien with a superbrain," Caleb said to Aliya, who just chuckled.
"I wouldn't discount the century and a half I spent in school learning how to be a mechanic for very complicated time machines and the centuries after that I put it into practice," she said while looking for the section she had been working on, "How old are you, anyway?"
"Nineteen," the boy replied, smiling almost to himself, "Which I guess does make me like a baby compared to you."
"A bit," she said, grinning, "But our daughter acts about the same as you, looks a little older, and she's only four."
Caleb's dark eyebrow went up. "How the hell does that work?"
"If we're looping and are going to have to keep getting these plans out of the cupboard and laying them out every time, can we cut the chat and make sure we use the time we have?" Yori asked them, clicking her tongue irritably.
"Right, sorry," Aliya said, "I'll get on finishing memorising this section." Again, she focused on the patterns in front of her, and about five minutes later she was done. "Alright. I'm good."
"Ventilation shafts," Caleb was saying to the Doctor from nearby, having gotten up to stand by him, "I think that could be our best bet. They're big enough for all of us to fit through, which is more than what can be said for basically anything else here."
"Ventilation shafts," the Doctor exclaimed with delight, clapping his hands, "Marvelous things, always. Remember, Aliya? One of our first adventures together in these regenerations, with Sarah Jane and the gang."
Aliya got to her feet and put her hands on her hips. "I remember being cramped and hot from nearly being boiled alive and you spinning some bullshit to Clyde about having 507 lives."
"You're impossible to please, you know that?"
She ignored him. "Besides, I just got this area memorised and these ventilation shafts are for carbon dioxide emissions from the engines. We wouldn't be able to breathe."
"Again, impossible to please," the Doctor said, shaking his head.
Caleb, however, was frowning. "Crap, she's right. They're not oxygenated."
"Okay, so new challenge: we figure out how to make them oxygenated," the Time Lord told him, clapping him on the shoulder, "Come on, Caleb, chin up. We're not beaten yet. This room is filled with very clever people, and so long as we have very clever people, there's always the chance of pulling off something incredibly difficult."
"Okay," the blue haired mechanic said, starting to grin, "Yeah, alright, let's do it."
The Doctor beamed and pointed at him excitedly. "That's my boy. Come on, point me to where the air filter is so we can find those vents and work from there. You too, Aliya, together the three of us can do this."
"I hate feeling useless," Yori said quietly as they began to move, making them stop, "I can't just watch you three geniuses do all this while Lex and I just sit here."
"Actually, I'm fine with just sitting here," the old man said, his white teeth glinting in contrast to his dark skin when he chuckled at the glare his captain turned on him. "But that's just me."
"You're not useless, Yori," the Doctor assured her, "It's just Caleb's time to shine right now. I have no doubt yours will come. We might be geniuses, but you're dead clever, I can tell."
Yori sighed and just shook her head. "Get on with it, then."
They did, but much to their dismay, there didn't seem to be any plausible way to connect one of the air filter shafts to the ventilation shafts. They were too far apart in the system with too many crucial things in between them.
"There has to be something," the Doctor said determinedly, after over an hour of deliberating, but Aliya and Caleb had begun to lose hope.
Another hour passed. Still, they had achieved nothing. Both mechanics had searched for every solution their training had taught them to consider, and now they could only watch the Doctor continue to pour over the schematics on the floor for the hundredth time as if he didn't know them by heart now.
"Doctor, there isn't a way to oxygenate those vents," Aliya told him from where she and Caleb were sitting against the wall. "I really, really admire your trying so hard, but we need to think of something else."
"Fine, think of something else, and when you do, then maybe I'll stop," he snapped.
"Don't snap at me," she said, blinking at him, "I haven't done anything wrong."
"You need a better attitude."
"You like me for my attitude."
"Not right now, I don't."
"You just can't handle having something you can't fix."
"No, that's you."
"I know when to admit defeat, you can't do that unless there are lives at stake and even then you can barely manage it."
"Don't try and act all superior, Aliya, it doesn't suit you-"
"But it's fine for you because you still think you're the smartest person in the room, don't you?"
"Guys, stop it!" Caleb told them, staring at them with horror, but they paid him no attention and just kept getting more and more agitated. Thankfully, because it could get truly heated and ascend to yelling, everything went white again.
"We're almost at the bridge."
They were running again. Sure enough, they came through the doors into the bridge only to find that the others were already coming up the stairs and moving to barricade the door.
"Caleb, or Carly?" The Doctor asked as the two Time Lords rushed to help.
"Still Caleb," the boy told him with a grin as they finished up the job and all came down the stairs. "Also, I started my watch going, I thought we could time how long the loop is-"
"Three hours exactly," the Doctor and Aliya said without missing a beat, startling the three humans.
Caleb tilted his head at them. "That's a weird Time King thing, isn't it?"
"Time Lord," Aliya corrected, "But yes. Time sense. We just needed a full loop where we knew it was a loop."
"Well, if we've only got three hours, then we need to hurry up and get the schematics out again," Yori pointed out, and this time she joined in the effort, meaning within half an hour the schematics were out on the floor and being reviewed.
"What about the maintenance ducts?" Aliya wondered. "Surely by definition, you need to be able to move through them?"
"Um, actually, we use an oxygen pack for that, but I left it in my bunk at the other end of the ship," Caleb said sheepishly, and winced when Yori glared at him while the Doctor and Aliya just exchanged looks of supreme disbelief at being so unlucky. "Hey! I didn't think I'd be barred from being able to reach it by a weird alien that lives in the corridor of Time or whatever, did I?"
"It's okay, Caleb, none of us could have seen this coming," Lex told him, clapping him on the shoulder, "We're just gonna have to think of something else."
"I mean, if we could call Jack, or even Mari, a vortex manipulator could get us out of this," Aliya mused, glancing at the Doctor, who shook his head.
"Jack's busy and Mari probably wouldn't want to help," he said with a sigh, his hands spreading out in a gesture that plainly said he had no idea what to do, "Besides, a vortex manipulator might just short out if it tried to break through the loop. We don't know what exactly how much energy is going into sustaining it."
"What is sustaining it?"
"At a guess, I'd say that the Vortisaur came through a tear in the vortex and it's still open."
Her eyes widened. "Oh. Shit. So this loop is the only thing keeping the energy pouring out of it from going haywire, because it's absorbing it."
"Which means if we want to break the loop-"
"We have to shut the tear-"
"In the same instant-"
"Or risk a potential disaster, but the TARDIS can do it if we can get back there because-"
"She's the one who put us in the loop in the first place-"
"To avoid said potential disaster and keep us all safe at the same time, yeah. Have I mentioned how brilliant my ship is? Tough, dependable sexy."
They were grinning at each other, rather pleased with themselves and the TARDIS, and it took them a few seconds to realise that the others were staring at them with slack jaws.
"What?" The Doctor asked, straightening his bowtie reflexively.
Caleb gave them a funny look. "Do you do that a lot?"
"Do what?"
"Finish each other's sentences," Yori said with a frown, "Each other's weird time-babble sentences."
"We were?" Aliya asked, blinking. "Oh. We were, weren't we?" She looked to the Doctor, who shrugged and gave her a funny smile. "Um, no, we don't."
"It's new," he agreed, "She's usually too busy being cross with me and criticising my ideas to actually help brainstorm."
"Oi!" She whacked him on the arm and he made a childish face at her.
"What? It's true."
"Still."
"You know, my granddads bickered like you two do," Lex remarked while chuckling, moving to sit down in his favourite chair that was on the right side of the bridge console. "Apparently they once had a fight, back before they had kids, that had them pissed and not talking to each other for a whole six months.
"You don't say," the Doctor said, giving Aliya a tiny smile.
"But, they worked it out and they're the only people I know who never got tired of each other."
"Well, you know what they say," the Doctor replied, giving Aliya a friendly punch on the shoulder, "Once someone gets under your skin, it's hard to get them out."
"You know you don't actually have to flirt with me," the blonde told him, grinning, "It's not really necessary at this point."
He grinned back. "And since when do I do things because they're necessary?"
"Okay, if you two are going to be going at it any time soon, my console is out of bounds," Yori said, glaring at them and stepping in front of the controls protectively, "Actually, the whole bridge is. You can try the supply closet but otherwise, you'll just have to hold out until we're out of this damn loop."
Both Time Lords turned scarlet and started spluttering.
"Ew!" The Doctor remarked. "Why would you even-"
"We're not animals-"
"Just because your race is in a state of constant reproductive frenzy-"
"The presence of anyone else takes away any possible drive-"
"Honestly, we go at it for four months one time due to decades of emotional repression and everyone thinks we're frenzied allosexuals-"
The shrill sound of a whistle shut them up, and they blinked at Yori, who was holding her fingers between her lips and giving them the stinkeye.
"You know, it's so nice having it not be used on me," Caleb mused, putting his hands back in his pockets and grinning contently. "I guess I'm not the only puppy in the room anymore."
"Moving on," Yori said firmly.
"On to what?" The Doctor inquired, lifting an eyebrow at her. "It's not like we've agreed on any course of action yet this time around."
"Exactly, but we need to."
"The only thing I can think of that we haven't tried is maybe pulling apart the console to see if that's got anything in it we can use to oxygenate the ventilation or maintenance shafts," Aliya said, eyeing the controls behind the humans.
Yori and Caleb moved in unison to put themselves more pointedly between her and the console.
"Not a chance," the captain said.
"You're not wrecking my console," Caleb said at the exact same time.
"We're in a loop, remember?" Aliya reminded them. "Any damage I do will be reset, so what does it matter?"
Yori's lips tightened. "...fine."
Caleb turned to her in protest. "Yori! What the hell?! You can't let her just wreck everything, I've made all those modifications, and if it works then it won't reset-"
"If it means we get out of this loop, I'm afraid to say I don't much care," Yori told him firmly, but not without a slightly apologetic look in her eye as she regarded the disheartened teen. "Besides, if all their big talk happens to be true, then it doesn't seem likely that she'll harm anything more than necessary, special modifications or no."
"I just want to look to start off with, Caleb." Aliya put her hand on his shoulder and looked him right in the eye, "And if I do take anything apart I'll be mindful of all your work."
"Okay," he grumbled, and moved to sit in the chair next to Lex, who patted him on the back sympathetically while Aliya got to work.
Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought! (Especially of Lex, Carly/Caleb, and Yori, because I've gotten really attached to them by writing these chapters.)
-MayFairy :)