Thanks for all the feedback so far! This is definitely one of my favourite chapters, so I hope you guys like it too.

When my time comes around

Lay me gently in the cold dark earth

No grave can hold my body down

I'll crawl home to her

Work Song - Hozier

If all we are is where we've been,

Then I know where I want to be.

No matter how far I drift again,

You keep a light on for me -

Out here, so I can find my way back home...

I didn't have a reason, for when I stopped believing,

But I needed you to know that I'm right where I belong now, with you

Right Where I Belong - Good Charlotte

Aliya woke up in the TARDIS, handcuffed and alone. Her mind was a flurry of disorientation at first, but things began to slot into place. Everything from the alternative timeline. Being sick in a Parisian alley, being thrown into a car, finding Mari wearing an eyepatch, arguing...getting her nose broken.

Her hand automatically went to said nose. Of course, it was undamaged given that it had been broken in a timeline that now had never existed.

Seeing the Doctor again, with his goodbye still fresh in her mind and knowing that he had knocked her out in order to leave for Silencio...her pleas with him atop the pyramid that were fruitless. Mari's surprisingly emotional continued refusal to kill him. Him somehow convincing her, kissing her forehead as they burned white…

He was gone. The Doctor was gone. Or at least, on his way to his death with nothing to prevent it. Short of breaking her wrist to get out of the handcuffs - and assuming that would work in the first place - there was nothing she could do. And even if there was, she couldn't in her sane mind do it anyway.

For the very first time, acceptance of the imminence of the Doctor's death truly hit her.

There were no tears left to cry; she had already exhausted them all. This meant that the sobs that escaped her were dry, loud, and incredibly ugly, and the awful sounds echoed through the otherwise empty console room. Her entire body shook while her head hung, her mind playing the memory of him being shot at the lakeside over and over and over. It may have been a memory from long ago but it was also the present and it burned something fierce now that she knew it was the horribly certain truth.

Finally, the sobbing stopped, simply because Aliya had run out of energy. But there was also something else weighing on her. The mental connection. She knew the Doctor wasn't dead yet because it was still there, but when he died, that connection was going to sever.

And it was going to hurt. There were actually tales of the remaining Time Lord dying when death destroyed the link, but it was a very rare occurrence in a circumstance that was uncommon enough on its own. Time Lords weren't usually sentimental enough or trusting enough to make the connections in the first place.

Aliya had no wish to die, as bleak as her future without the Doctor seemed right now. But she considered herself to be a Time Lady of considerable mental strength (these days, anyway), and was fairly certain she would survive the impending agonising ordeal.

So she waited. She waited so quietly, so still, all her energy completely exhausted. She'd have slept if not for anticipating her mind to start tearing apart any second. Her head rested on the side of the jumpseat, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't bring herself to close her eyes, instead staring blankly ahead.

For a long time she kept thinking, any minute now. But those minutes stretched out and eventually became hours. Hours of just nothing. Surely it had to have happened now? How much earlier had the Doctor have landed in Utah for hours to have passed and him not be dead yet? She only remembered spending about two hours with him before the events at the lake.

She had been able to sense that she had been unconscious for about an hour, but had now been waiting for many more and was unable to bear it. She was a Time Lord. She hated waiting. And as much as she dreaded what was coming, she almost wished it would hurry up. The waiting was worse.

Aliya jumped a mile when after twelve hours (thirteen if counting the one she had been unconscious for) the TARDIS door creaked open.

"What? Who-" She croaked, confused. Who could possibly be coming in?

When the person who had entered came into her view, she went completely still. What she was seeing was impossible, which was why she was fairly sure it was a hallucination brought on by her heightened emotional state and sheer exhaustion.

The Doctor gave her a tiny, apologetic smile, and a quick burst from his sonic undid the handcuffs. Her arm dropped to the floor at her side after being elevated for over ten hours (Time Lord circulation was fairly efficient, so it wasn't completely dead, but already it was receiving the more ideal amount of blood now and it felt so good). She glanced down at it, confused. A hallucination shouldn't have been able to do that.

"Look at you," he breathed, his eyes shining with guilt and something akin to horror, "I'm so sorry."

Aliya frowned at him as he came closer and lifted her from the floor. Her feet took a second to steady themselves and in that time she felt the warmth of the Doctor's hands on her arms through the fabric of her shirt.

In a sort of daze, her hand lifted to graze the side of his face, moving to his temple where a tiny burst of mental energy - a simple greeting - flared.

It hit her like an avalanche. He was alive. He was really here. She felt her eyes widen and her whole body start shaking as a dozen different emotions flooded every inch of her being and fought for dominance.

"You're alive," she meanwhile managed to say, her voice barely audible.

"Yes. I fixed it. It's all okay."

Something in her snapped. The emotion that had won the battle inside her, at least initially, was apparently fury.

"What the hell is wrong with you!" Aliya shouted, her hands balling into fists so that she could hit his chest. "How could you knock me out and leave me here to wake up thinking that any second you were going to die and my brain was going to all but rip in half?!"

He winced. "I-"

"I've been sitting here for twelve hours, waiting for the worst agony of my life but almost being glad that it was coming because at least it would feel like another way to mourn you," she continued, her chest bursting with anger so powerful that every part of her trembled, especially her raised voice. "And now you just waltz in here and smile at me like you didn't just put me through hell and say that it's all okay?!"

Salt stung her eyes as her apparently now refilled tear ducts wasted no time in getting back to work. Her fists kept hammering on his chest, over and over while his hands just grasped the top of her arms, keeping a tight hold on her but making no attempts to stop the violence directed at him. All the while those eyes of his just stared into hers, full of silent apology.

"Stop just standing there!" She yelled. "Say something!" He opened his mouth to speak, but she got in again before he could. "No, don't, shut up! I hate you! You're the worst, the absolute worst and I hate you!" Her words dissolved into sobs.

"I know," the Doctor said softly, pulling her into a hug that forced her hands to still because they were crushed between his torso and hers. As his arms wrapped around her, she went still and let out a long, shuddering breath against his shirt, her trapped hands continuing to shake a little.

Oh god, his shirt. The smell of it, the mild warmth of his skin through it. The tiniest things that Aliya had been so sure she would never experience again. Thoughts of anger briefly gone, she nuzzled into him, unable to quite believe that he was standing there and had her in his arms.

He's here. By the Other, he's actually here. He's alive. I'm not going to lose him.

"You're really here," she whispered.

"I really am."

"You found a way."

"I did. Pretty obvious one, actually, not sure how we-" He was cut off when she managed to get hands free enough to grab him by the collar and kiss him hard.

"Shut up," she told him firmly, "Just shut up, you infuriating, horrible idiot." She kissed him again, only to abruptly pull away. "Wait, no, don't shut up. I want to hear your voice - say something, anything-"

The Doctor didn't say anything, though. Instead he had started laughing, a big proper laugh that made his eyes crinkle at the edges and lips spread across his teeth.

"What? Why are you laughing?" She asked, frowning deeply. He didn't answer, only continued to laugh at her, his eyes alight with some kind of mirth she didn't understand. "Oh, forget it, I changed my mind again. Shut up."

She tried to kiss him only for him to hold her at bay by her shoulders.

"Do you - do you even realise-" He said between laughs, "How utterly mad you are?" While Aliya stared at him, his hands moved to cup her face instead. "You are the most impossible, indecisive, frighteningly passionate person I've ever met. It's like there's a fire in you that half the time you don't even know what to do with, because you go with your gut but even that can change its mind in two bloody seconds!"

Aliya started to laugh too, only embarrassedly. "I'm sorry-"

"Don't be," he told her, still grinning but speaking more softly, "That fire, however volatile, is what makes you shine. It's one of the reasons I'm so stupidly in love with you."

She blinked, sure she had misheard him. "What?"

The Doctor brushed his thumb across her cheek and held her eyes with his, which were filled with so much warmth and adoration that it staggered her. "I love you."

It was the first time he had ever said it aloud.

Rather than being floored by it, she just found herself grinning at him. "I know."

He laughed, and so did she, and then they were kissing while they were laughing without really knowing who had initiated it. Aliya's arm hooked around his neck while she lifted herself onto her tiptoes in order to get that extra bit of leverage, and his arm was around her waist, holding her to him like a vice. They were both crying too and it was a stupid mess of laughter and tears and kisses that tasted of salt and Aliya couldn't remember the last time she had experienced such euphoria.

In a desperate mess of tugging hands, clothing was yanked off or out of the way and the Doctor lifted and turned Aliya so that she was sitting on top of the console and he could finish tugging her jeans off before stepping between her legs.

"To be clear, you do anything like that again and I'll be the one to cause your next regeneration," she managed to gasp in between urgent kisses.

"Be cross with me later, Ali - not now," he said with fond exasperation, silencing her with a more insistent kiss of teeth and tongues.

They came together with movements rougher than their usual but tiny affections throughout: a kiss to her temple at the same time that a soft gasp escaped her lips and her fingers tightened in the hair at the nape of his neck; a brush of her nose across his jaw as the intensity of it all made him shudder.

The physical side of it might have been a desperate clinging to each other for fear of being torn apart, but their minds were simply basking in the needed sensation of true joining and blurring the edges of their separate selves for a brief, blissful pocket of time.

In the wake of it all, Aliya's legs remained around the Doctor's hips. They stayed wrapped in a close embrace, seeing no need to have even an inch between them when they had nearly lost each other forever.

Aliya murmured his name against his cheek, and she could feel him smile against hers before speaking her true name right back. Hearing them together, in all their soul baring honesty of what complex and flawed people they were, was a relief of sorts. They were still who they were. And they had made it to the other side of an impossible, looming doom.

It was a short way into the lovely, comfortable silence that settled that the Doctor had to speak and ruin it.

"Mari," he said, pulling away just enough to frown at her intensely, "Aliya, we forgot about Mari."

"What about her?" She asked, frowning back.

"She's still in the lake!"

That make her blink several times with surprise. "Are you sure?"

"Well, no, but the suit was on automatic, so she couldn't have just walked off with it," he said quickly, "And they have no reason to keep her alive now that they think she's killed me, far easier to leave her at the bottom of the lake and be done with her."

Aliya pushed him lightly away so that she could slide off the console and start yanking her clothes back on. "Well, then you need to get her out, right now."

"Me?" The Doctor shook his head. "Aliya, I can't go back there, I just successfully faked my own death, I'm dead as far as they're concerned, and we both know Kovarian is watching the lake."

"Yeah, and very soon we're goingto be talking about exactly how you managed that," Aliya told him, "But-"

"There's no buts, Aliya, you have to go there and pull her out of that lake on your own. I'm sorry."

"I can't even swim!"

"You can too."

"Not well."

"Detail."

"Important detail!"

He ignored that and she huffed and headed for the door, reluctant to leave his side just yet but telling herself that the sooner she left, the sooner she could be back.

"This is going to be a disaster. If I'm not drowned, I'll be back in...actually I've no idea. Just sit tight and stay fake dead, I suppose."

With that, she marched out of the police box and onto the orange terrain of Utah. She realised she was about twenty minute's walk from Silencio and set off while muttering under her breath about women with eyepatches and idiots in bowties - before considering that if she was being monitored she should assume more of a mourning lover's mantle.

It was hard to look somber after everything that had just happened, but bringing up memories from before the Doctor's return to the TARDIS did the trick. As did thinking about Mari being stuck under the lake for hours in that astronaut suit.

Finally, she could see the lake, starting to be lit by the rising sun. She quickened her pace and came to a stop a metre from the water's edge before slipping off her shoes and jeans. Swallowing hard, she began to wade in. The water was cold against her bare legs and she winced but kept going until she was up to her chin.

Worrying thoughts were shut out by determination. She was the only one who could get Mari out. So she had to suck it up and deal with it.

A deep breath later, she was under the surface of the water and forcing her eyes open (even that wasn't something she'd tried before). Luckily, the white of the astronaut suit was visible, and she pushed down deeper until she was directly in front of it. Mari was inside, but unconscious. It made sense - it was easier to leave a person for dead if they weren't awake to try and escape. The suit might sedated her itself.

Aliya wrapped an arm around the waist of the suit and kicked hard to send them upwards. They barely moved. Why do I have to be such a weak swimmer? It was all she could do not to panic. Even then, she only managed it by knowing that she could not fail. Sheer willpower could win in dire circumstances such as these. It had to.

She kicked again, heaving the suit up as best she could. This she repeated over and over, and when she had pushed her oxygen supply to its limit, she switched to her respiratory bypass and kept going. But even that wouldn't last forever, and she wasn't convinced of her progress to the surface.

Her legs ached with the effort and her whole respiratory system was in protest, and for a second she was sure she wasn't going to make it. But then her face broke the surface. It was only for a moment, and the weight of the astronaut suit immediately dragged her back under, but a few gasps of air was enough for her to tug the suit along the surface until her feet finally touched bottom and she began to rise from the water.

Of course, that meant dragging the suit through air instead of water, which wasn't any easier. Especially when she was so out of breath. But then they were out of the lake and on the orange sand, and Aliya could collapse on the terrain and pant as long as she liked.

At least until screaming started coming from inside the astronaut suit.

Aliya hurried to open the visor, and Mari's screams echoed around the empty landscape, making the blonde wince.

"Get me out!" Mari was saying over and over again, her eyes squeezed shut.

Aliya lifted the helmet off her entirely and started tearing the material of the suit. It required all of her strength, but if Mari had done it in her juvenile first body, then surely a fully grown Gallifreyan could do it now. Finally enough of it was torn that Aliya could yank out its prisoner from inside it.

The redhead seemed to be in a daze. Or, more likely, a state of shock. Her hazel were squeezed shut and her body trembled, while hot tears poured down her face.

"Get me out," she was still shouting, "Get me out get me out get me out!"

"Mari, you're out of the suit, and out of the lake," Aliya told her quickly, trying to touch her arm to calm her down only for Mari to shake her head and shove her away. "It's okay-"

Mari just let out another scream, her head frantically shaking from side to side. "Frozen, unable to move," she stammered, "No possible way out, only water. Water everywhere, all around-" Her eyes opened just enough to spot the shimmering surface of the lake near them. A strangled scream sounded in her throat. "No! No escape, not ever-"

"Mari," Aliya said firmly, grabbing her shoulders and not letting go no matter how much the other woman tried to throw her off, "Mari, look at me. Not at the water, at me. Just focus on me."

It took a few seconds, but the redhead did as she was told, hazel eyes coming to meet blue-green ones even though panic still ruled them. Her whole body shook.

"You're safe," Aliya assured her, her voice even, "You're not trapped anymore. You're free. You're free and you're safe."

"No," Mari breathed, her eyes losing focus, "Never safe, never free, always watching, always waiting - stolen time, all of it, all of this-"

The Time Lady's hearts lurched at the sight of the woman she had always known to be so stoic reduced to an obviously traumatised mess. It made her feel sick to her stomach. It also made her loathe Kovarian even more than she already did, which she hadn't thought was possible.

"Look at me!" She shouted, and Mari flinched fractionally and focused her gaze on her. Aliya knew it was likely that the raw redness around her eyes was something they currently had in common. "The Doctor and I are never going to let anything happen to you. You. Are. Safe."

"No," Mari whispered.

"Yes," Aliya said, holding her gaze. "Keep looking at me. Shutting your eyes is like being unconscious and you've been sedated enough that that isn't going to help. Looking at the water seems to be triggering something, so you're left with me. You have to keep looking at me."

For a few seconds Mari did as she was told, and even that short period was strange for them, staring at each other intently with no disdain or reservations for the first time in their lives. But then Mari's head dropped and her hands came up to clutch Aliya's upper arms.

"No. No, no, no, no, no. Never free, never safe, never free-"

"You're safe," the blonde told her, moving her own hands to mirror what Mari had done and holding onto her with a vice grip. When she spoke again, to the bowed head of red hair attached to a shivering body, her voice was softer. "You're safe, Mari. You're safe. You're safe."

She repeated it over and over, so many times that a human would have lost count easily. Mari never replied - she had gone completely silent. The only evidence of her being aware at all was the strength of her hold on Aliya's arms.

After several minutes, Mari's body went stiff, and she finally looked up. Hysteria had left her eyes and for the first time she looked like herself again. This was solidified by how she let go of Aliya the moment she realised she was touching her and brought her hands to her lap, though she made no movement to forcibly dislodge where Aliya was touching her.

She swallowed thickly. "I'd like to go home," she murmured, her voice slightly hoarse from the screaming.

"Of course," Aliya replied, and they got to their feet. "The TARDIS is this way."

"The Doctor, he-"

"He's dead, yes," she lied.

She was surprised to see an odd look in Mari's eyes, one that instantly made her realise - with no small amount of shock - that the other woman knew the Doctor was alive. While she had every intention of pressing that matter, they couldn't currently discuss it. She could only give her a pointed look.

"Thanks to you. The timeline is, for better or worse, in tact."

Mari just nodded, likely remembering their conversation about Kovarian's surveillance of the lake from the alternative timeline. Her eyes flicked downward only for her eyebrow to go up.

"You may wish to put your trousers back on. And grab your shoes."

Aliya had completely forgotten that she had half stripped to jump in the lake and was standing there in her sodden blouse and underwear. Her cheeks burned. "Right."

Once she had pulled her jeans back on - which wasn't half a mission - and laced her shoes up, they made to leave. She didn't fail to notice how Mari seemed to be very pointedly looking away from the lake, keeping it out of her line of sight at all times.

The walk back to the police box seemed much longer than the walk from it, but uncomfortable silence tended to have that effect. Although this silence was considerably less uncomfortable than some of their previous ones. There had been many awkward lapses in the alternate timeline when they had been struggling to work together.

"I'm sorry for breaking your nose," Mari said finally.

Aliya looked at her with shock. "Really?"

"...possibly. Either way, I apologise."

That made Aliya snort. "Well, that's more than I ever expected to get. I'm possibly sorry for calling you an idiot."

She thought she saw Mari smiling a little, but her face was turned away and it was impossible to be sure. They had almost reached the TARDIS at that point, and entered the box without another word having passed between them.

The Doctor beamed as they came in. "There you are. I was starting to get worried," he said, hurrying down the steps of the console platform and coming to an abrupt halt a few feet away from them. "But...here you are."

He was standing in front of Mari, and they were staring at each other tentatively, both with an open vulnerability in their eyes.

"Father," she said softly, sounding fifteen years younger than she looked.

He swallowed hard and came forward to wrap his arms around her in a gentle hug, one that she surprised them and likely herself by returning. Nose buried in his shoulder and arms hesitantly snaking around his waist, Mari's eyes fell shut, and a look of peace graced her face.

Before Silencio and the century and a half of running from it, Aliya might have called the sight in front of her impossible. Possibly even have been unnerved by it. But time could go a long way to ease petty hatred and so could the trying things the three of them had been through.

She could only smile minutely at the long overdue embrace of father and daughter. The Doctor's hand stroked over Mari's hair lightly, and while Mari couldn't see them, Aliya definitely could see the tears that had taken up in the corners of his eyes. He only held her tighter, and her fingers curled in tweed of his jacket, a shuddering breath leaving her body.

A sudden recollection broke Aliya from the beauty of the moment.

"You knew," she said to Mari, looking between her and the Doctor, "You knew he wasn't dead when you agreed to mend the timeline."

Mari opened her eyes only to abruptly step out of the Doctor's arms, her face flushed and gaze downcast. "Of course I did."

"How?"

The Doctor shook himself a little, wiping at his eyes embarrassedly. "The Teselector. The same one from Daheer's capital. They offered to help me. I gave Mari a good old wave from inside the eyeball after telling her to take a closer look, and barely got singed in that boat. Nice gesture that, though. Thanks."

Aliya whacked him on the arm. "And you couldn't have told me?!"

"I didn't know you were going to give me a fancy sendoff," he said indignantly, "I thought you were going to haul me back to the TARDIS, where I'd be able to hop out and explain everything. You were never meant to be stuck here completely out of the know for hours, but sneaking back to the TARDIS was tricky!"

"But that wasn't me who would have hauled you back, it would have been my younger self and River!" She said incredulously. "How could that possibly have worked? And what would they have said if they came into the TARDIS only to see me in here, handcuffed?"

His face fell. "You know, I never thought of that."

"You're a moron."

"It's been a trying day," he said defensively, "I thought I was going to die until the helpful shapeshifting robot came along."

"That's not an excuse for a sheer lack of thinking anything through. Besides, the destroying the body thing was River's idea." She frowned. "It's so wrong to think about how something your dead wife did over two hundred years ago for me was something that altered things for you just now. Crisscrossing timelines like this are not ideal. The Time Lords wouldn't approve."

"I suppose it's convenient that they're all dead then," Mari remarked, and only shrugged when Aliya shot her an unamused look. "No point in getting tetchy just because I-"

She stopped short as her eyes glazed over.

"Mari?"

"I - I don't-"

The redhead's legs gave out under her and the only reason she didn't hit the floor was because the Doctor was quick enough to grab her under her arms to keep her standing.

"This doesn't feel particularly good," Mari murmured drowsily, seeming to be struggling to keep her eyes open, "No, definitely not."

"Mari, are you in any pain? Does anywhere hurt-" The Doctor's urgent questions were met by silence. She had lost consciousness in his arms. He quickly shifted so that he was carrying her bridal style. "We need to get her to the infirmary."

Aliya followed him up the steps and through the corridors until they got to their destination. The Doctor lay his daughter on the bed and pressed the back of his hand to her cheek.

"She's burning up, feels even warmer than the average human, but not by a lot," he said, frowning and turning around to activate the full body scanner.

Aliya moved to lightly touch Mari's forehead, wanting to feel the heat for herself. As it seeped into her fingers, she winced and quickly retracted them. "What could be wrong with her?" Then she stopped. "Wait. No. It might be - she was unconscious in the suit when I found her. I think it might have used some kind of sedative on her. Don't a lot of non-Gallifreyan sedatives from after the 30th century use a drug that originated from-"

"Aspirin," he breathed, eyes wide with horror. The scanner beeped a moment later, and he nodded. "Well, it's obviously not aspirin, or she'd have been dead hours ago, but there's enough shared compound that now that it's been fully absorbed into her system-"

"Don't explain, just fix it and tell me if there's anything I can do to help!" Aliya snapped.

"There isn't, all I can do is inject her with the triglyceride solution I made a while back and hope it works even though it's designed to counteract aspirin and not whatever's in her," the Doctor said, rushing to his cupboards and pulling out a bottle filled with a clear solution. He found a syringe and filled it up before approaching Mari and injecting it into her arm.

Her body jerked slightly as the solution filtered through her system, and the scanner stopped registering her heartbeats.

"Doctor," Aliya said, panicked.

He rushed to Mari's head and brushed his fingertips against her temple, relaxing instantly. "No, it's okay, she's alive. Healing coma. We're lucky that it's not something our bodies ever had to be taught."

Aliya exhaled slowly. Her hand reached out to touch Mari's arm out of curiosity, and sure enough the younger woman's temperature had plummeted to below freezing.

"She's going to be okay," the Doctor told her quietly. "It's nice that you're worried about her, though."

She pulled her fingers away from Mari and took a step back, crossing her arms defensively. "Of course I'm worried. I never wanted her dead, not even when she was Marion."

"Worrying about someone isn't the same as just not wanting them dead."

Aliya pursed her lips, knowing he was right and knowing that he knew that she knew, but not wanting to say so. "Can we...not?"

"...sorry."

"Don't apologise."

"Sorry."

She glanced at him, and saw a cheeky smile on his face. "Shut up," she muttered, but fondly and with a tiny grin of her own blooming.

He put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. She leaned against his body, shutting her eyes and basking in the feeling of his chin on top of her head. I almost lost him today, she remembered, having briefly forgot with the Mari scare.

"Thank you for not dying," she said, and thought she could feel him smile against her hair.

"You're very welcome. I can even try and do the same tomorrow."

"You're such a tosser."

"Always. Multiple lifetimes guaranteed."

"It would have been far too easy for me to fall in love with someone who wasn't a complete dork, wouldn't it?" Aliya lamented. "I couldn't have fallen in love with some handsome fellow mechanic with muscular arms and a nice smile, or some pretty Time Lady in engineering, because that would only be normal-"

"And boring," the Doctor continued mildly, "And pointlessly consistent, and practical, not at all actually interesting, not to mention possibly fatal for you if being otherwise attached would have stopped my mother from helping Romana rescue you-"

"Ah yeah, true, you might have to do," she said with a sigh.

They started giggling and she let herself enjoy the feeling of being enveloped by him for a few more moments before leaning away.

"You should probably get us out of here, Kovarian might find our lingering here suspicious," Aliya told the Doctor, who nodded.

"Good point. What are-"

"I'm going to stay with her." She moved to sit down on the long cushioned seat that was built into an alcove in the wall.

"Oh," he replied, visibly surprised but soon smiling far too widely for her liking, "Alright."

"Don't look at me like that," she said sharply, "Just go."

He nodded and hurried out of the room. She let out another sigh and stretched her legs out across the rest of the seat, resting her back against the wall of the alcove.

As it was always going to, her gaze finally fixed back on the (seemingly) lifeless form of Mari. The deceiving appearance wanted to coax more concern out of her, and it did. Despite knowing that Mari was in a healing coma, that didn't necessarily guarantee that it was going to work and that she was going to wake unharmed. The compound in the sedative which had reacted badly with Gallifreyan physiology could have damaged multiple parts of her system. It was highly possible she could wake up and be irreversibly injured or disabled.

Aliya bit her lip. She had no idea how she felt about Mari or their relationship, but even she couldn't imagine a physically hindered Mari and not think it a tragedy.

But Mari was strong. She always had been. If anyone could get through this she could.

The Doctor didn't return. This wasn't strange at first, but as the hours passed, Aliya began to wonder why he hadn't come back to check on Mari. Unless he felt that leaving Aliya with her was fine? He might have started tinkering or making repairs on the TARDIS and lost track of time. Or popped out of the TARDIS for milk and been distracted by a butterfly. It was impossible to know with him.

Eight hours, forty three minutes and twelve seconds after going dead, the scanner reading Mari's life signs picked up again. Both heartbeats - slow but picking up, a temperature rising back to the fifteen degrees Celsius norm.

A part of Aliya knew that she should get up from her perch to check on her more closely - and her stiff muscles were certainly begging her to - but she couldn't bring herself to move. Instead she waited anxiously for the minute it took for Mari to stir.

"What happened?" The redhead had sat up abruptly and wasted no time in fixing her demanding gaze on the only other person in the room.

"The sedative from the suit reacted badly with your biology," Aliya explained, "Frankly, you're lucky to be alive. Hopefully it didn't mess anything in your body up too badly."

"Could we find out sooner rather than later whether it did?"

"Of course. Or at least, I can run a scan." Aliya slowly started to get up.

"How long was I unconscious?"

"Eight hours, forty five minutes and twenty two seconds," the Time Lady recited automatically, finally getting onto her feet and wincing as her whole body protested. It didn't go unnoticed.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," the blonde said as she slowly crossed to the scanner next to the bed, "I was just sitting there too long." With a human, she would probably have gotten away with that statement. But Mari had the same physiology. She knew their muscles took much longer to seize.

"How long?" Her eyes were narrowed with suspicion and a tentative curiosity.

Aliya hesitated. It would be so easy to lie, and dear lord she wanted to. But she didn't. "...eight hours, forty minutes and two seconds."

Mari's eyebrow twitched a fraction, but otherwise she remained perfectly still with shock (and likely a complete lack of idea of how to respond). For a second they just stared at each other, before Aliya coughed and turned to the scanner to initiate a full body scan.

"...where's the Doctor?"

"I've no idea. He went to check on something and didn't come back."

"Does that not worry you?"

"No. He'll materialise when he wants to, it's his way."

They fell into a silence that lasted until the scan was complete and a loud beep rang out to inform of just that. Aliya examined the results, and let out a sigh of relief.

"What?"

"You're going to be fine," she told the other woman, "Your body's weakened, but a few days of intensive rest and then a few weeks of taking it easy, and you'll be back to prime condition."

Something in Mari's eyes suggested that 'taking it easy' and 'rest' in the face of injury wasn't something she was particularly familiar with. Aliya just shot her a look that plainly asked if she was going to argue. While it was obvious that she was considering it, she lay back down on the bed without another word but made a displeased face as she did so.

It didn't stop her from cuddling up to her pillow or shutting her eyes, though.

Aliya briefly considered going to find the Doctor, but instead opted for sitting down on the edge of the seat she had been stretched out on for so long, facing the bed.

When curled up, hair half covering her face and dressed in just a tank top and jeans with no scary stilettos, Mari didn't look like much of a walking weapon. With the way her nose scrunched up as she adjusted her position, her eyes still closed, she almost looked...cute.

Aliya frowned at that particular thought. Cute psychopathic murderers were still psychopathic murderers, and the one in question would be the first one to agree. And this psychopathic murderer and herself had traded so many harsh words that were difficult to forget, one lot in the wake of a mass slaughter that they had both thought had been a genocide at the time. And Marion - Mari - hadn't cared. She had sneered and gone on with her chin held high.

But there had always been more. The way she and Jenny had laughed together then, and were all the closer now. The look of utter peace Aliya had glimpsed on Marion's face when playing the violin at the Torchwood Christmas Eve party. How Marion had shielded Jenny in Daheer's palace without conscious thought. How Mari had smiled - truly smiled - upon being reunited with Esther at the bar in Cardiff after less than a day of being away from her.

That was just the problem. Aliya didn't hate Mari. Or fear her more than the tiny bit that was sensible. She didn't even necessarily dislike her these days. Two hundred mellowing years of near separation, on Aliya's side of things, had ensured that if their actual journey to vague civility hadn't already.

But she just couldn't reconcile the woman who had killed all those Kalgarians without so much as blinking, who had laughed while explaining how good it would feel to finally kill Aliya after months of waiting, with the origins they all knew she had.

And despite being somehow able to accept the link between Mari and the Doctor, Aliya didn't think she would ever be able to accept the one between Mari and herself. It was so stupid, but she just couldn't. She couldn't think those words even now, the ones that named that link, without wanting to be sick. And then the guilt surrounding that inability mixed with her anger at Kovarian for doing this to them in the first place and her anger at Mari for being so awful in the past and her anger at herself for being so damned impossible-

It was good that Mari's eyes were shut because Aliya knew her nausea was showing on her face. How had this mess happened? How was this fair? Was it her fault? Was it Mari's? Blaming Kovarian was so easy, but she hadn't made them hate each other. That had been all them. They had caused this themselves.

Aliya released a shaky breath and leaned down so that her forehead could rest on the tops of her knees and she could shut her eyes. Not now. We're all safe, and more or less unharmed. Focus on that. That's a damn good start.

She knew she should get up and find the Doctor. Or find something else to focus on. Something that was a reason to not be here, with the person who made her the most conflicted in the whole universe. But like before, she just couldn't move. She was stuck, bent over herself on the edge of the infirmary seat, her mind unable to move from the person opposite her who seemed to have fallen asleep.

The person who, the more she thought about it, wasn't entirely unlike herself.

"Raised from infancy to be something she didn't necessarily want to be, had her mind invaded and twisted to suit someone else's desires, had to fight for every piece of autonomy she ever gained," Aliya whispered, frowning thoughtfully, "Now that sounds familiar."

The realisation was a startling one that dominated her thoughts until the suffocating silence in the room was broken about a minute later. The sound that broke it was humming, and Aliya was surprised to realise that Mari was actually awake, only to become faintly amused by the idea of her doing something as whimsical as humming in what she could only assume was an effort to send herself to sleep.

But then Aliya's whole body jerked - the blonde's head snapping up to stare at the drowsy redhead with a shock so powerful that she felt her hearts briefly slip into irregular timing.

She knew the melody of the song that was being hummed.

This wouldn't have been odd if it hadn't belonged to a Gallifreyan lullaby - the one Aliya had always loved the most. The one she had sung to Heta, and Anna, and taught to Jenny. The one she had sung to her baby at Demon's Run.

Everything she had just been thinking evaporated in the face of the six note tune. It was almost like she could feel a barrier around her hearts cracking.

A strangled noise escaped her throat and the humming immediately died as Mari cracked an eye open. When she saw the stricken look on Aliya's face, she frowned at her and sat up.

"What? What is it?"

"That song."

"What about it?"

"It's Gallifreyan."

"Oh."

"Did you even know that?"

"No."

Aliya bit her lip, not quite able to look her in the eye and wishing her hearts weren't pounding so brutally against her ribs. "You were humming it once, in the Hub, back when I was working there. Do you remember that?"

Mari blinked. "Possibly."

"We assumed you'd heard Jenny singing it," Aliya said, quickly, "Even you thought that must have been the reason behind it, because you didn't know, you couldn't consciously remember with what they'd done to you."

"Remember what?" Her refined voice conveyed her uncertainty over whether she wanted to know the answer.

Aliya couldn't quite hold in the tears that had filled her eyes. "That song is buried in your subconscious because I sang it to you. It's my favourite lullaby and I have without fail sung it to every single one of my children. I sang it to my baby at Demon's Run, every day. "

Mari had gone stiff, her eyes guarded as she eyed the emotional blonde who had just broken their careful avoidance of the truth. Then, warily, like an experiment, the redhead began to sing a few notes of the melody, in a voice that carried the tune but was neither bad nor anything special.

After swallowing hard, Aliya joined in, the simple song filling air between them. Mari's half was wordless, but Aliya's had the Gallifreyan lyrics. They stopped singing after a few lines but that was all they needed.

"I never knew it had words," Mari said softly, "What do they mean?"

Aliya had to look at the ground as she spoke them. "Sleep safe until the sunrises come." The whole line was sleep safe my child, sleep safe until the sunrises come, but she couldn't bring herself to speak the first part.

When she brought her eyes back up, Mari was holding the pillow to her chest and looking about as overwhelmed and lost as Aliya felt.

"Did I really break your pelvis?"

That wasn't the question Aliya had been expecting. It made her laugh, even if only for a second. "Yes. You did."

They ended up just staring at each other, a matching pair in their mess of emotions and total loss at what to do next. After everything she had just been thinking, Aliya had no idea how they had gotten to this point.

Her next move came with a jolt, a strange clarity, one that had Aliya reaching behind her neck and unclasping the nautical star necklace that had been hanging around it for over two centuries. With a deep breath, she crossed the small space and held it by its cord in front of Mari, who with wide eyes cupped her palms so that it could be dropped into them.

Marion had been at the cafe in Cardiff all that time ago. They both knew that she understood the significance of the necklace. The necklace intended for a miracle child - if Aliya were to ever have one against all odds.

It had never been Jenny, even if it easily could have been.

"I-" Mari breathed. She was at a loss for words. "I don't - are you absolutely sure?"

Aliya, after a moment's hesitation, sat on the bed next to her. "Somehow, and I would not have believed this five minutes ago, I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."

Mari - Mariaka, her daughter, her baby - turned the pendant over in her hands, her thumb scraping across the engraving. "I have no idea what to say."

"Good, because I probably wouldn't have any idea what to say in return," Aliya said, letting out an odd laugh even though nothing about their current situation was funny. "I think we've established that talking about this isn't our forte. It won't be for a long while yet, I shouldn't think."

Something flashed through Mari's eyes, and she put the pendant on her lap so that she could unclasp the silver locket that had hung at her neck for longer than the two of them had known each other. Just as Mari knew the significance of Aliya's necklace, Aliya clearly remembered the story and meaning behind Mari's even though it had been much longer for her since the stories had been shared.

The boy who had been her one real friend in her adolescence.

"He told me to never let anyone else tell me who I was."

Mari bit her lip as she regarded the necklace that had been her constant for years. "I no longer require the reminder. I know who I am now, for better or for worse, and it is someone of my own making."

When it was held out to her, Aliya tentatively took it and ignored how her hands shook as she opened the locket. The picture of Marion, adolescent and laughing in a near singular moment of pure joy, made her throat tighten.

This was hard enough without seeing the face - however much younger - that had made this all so complicated in the first place.

"That version of me wasn't entirely heartless, and even she was a child once. Perhaps you'd like to be able to keep the one part of her that wasn't what you hated," Mari said slowly, and when Aliya didn't answer, added, "Though I would understand completely if you had no desire to look upon it."

A manicured hand reached out to take it back, only to have to moved out of her grasp.

"No," Aliya said quietly, "I do want it, if you're offering. This is a side of you that I never got to see. And now I really wish I had."

She put the locket on, and Mari did the same with Laura's necklace. Aliya absently wondered how long it would take for the Doctor to notice the swap.

They sat there in silence for about twenty seconds until Mari spoke.

"Was a few notes of a lullaby all it took to give you a complete change of hearts?" She asked, curiously, sounding as unsure about where they had ended up as Aliya felt.

Aliya let out a strange noise that was a mix between a tearful hiccup and a snort. "My hearts aren't known for being particularly rational," she said, sighing, "But my mind refused for so long to make the link between you and my baby. Until you just gave me one."

"Oh."

"Was a few words in a language you don't understand all it took to give you yours?"

Mari looked down at her hands. "Possibly. But it may have started from the moment you looked at me in a way you never had before. A way I had seen you look at Jenny." Her fingers lifted to touch her new necklace again. "I honestly never thought we-"

"Neither did I. But I'm glad to have been wrong. It doesn't mean I still won't hurt Kovarian the first chance I get."

"Oh," Mari said, perking up a little from their solemn manner, "I never said, but while in that alternative timeline, I convinced Kovarian that you didn't know the Doctor's name. It took weeks of some very subtle and clever acting on my part, but she shouldn't try to come looking for you."

Surprised and more than a little touched, Aliya stared at her. "Why would you waste your time doing that?"

The redhead licked her lips. "Because...you're my mother, and even then I knew that it was the right thing to do."

Hearing it, finally, had Aliya's hearts racing at speeds that felt downright unsafe. Tears pricked her eyes and she got up from the bed, embarrassed at crying in front of Mari, which made no sense at all because it certainly wasn't the first time that it had happened.

"I'm sorry, I need to, er, shower," she stammered, knowing it didn't sound convincing at all, "I smell like seaweed even after nearly nine hours. Go back to resting."

With that she hurried out of the room, waiting until she was in the safety of the nearest bathroom before leaning over the sink and taking very deep breaths to try and steady herself.

If a part of her had ever expected to reach this point with Mari, it had been picturing many more months and years of gradual warming to the idea. But now she realised it was never going to have been like that. Her hearts didn't do things by halves, and neither did Mari's. Besides, they might have accepted who they were to each other, but it's not like all the awkwardness was gone. The thought of doing something like hugging Mari was still completely bizarre and just wrong. That would take time, which was a relief of sorts.

She tried to get her breathing to even out and jumped in the shower to rid herself of any trace of Silencio. The only thing left to do was to try and move forward, however strange that was going to be.

The dynamic between these three is SO interesting to write. I mean, in what other situation could you possibly get this level of awkward?

We're getting close to the end of the story which is incredibly exciting because the next one is going to be so much fun and I've made the cover and written the prologue already. It's also exciting because it's going to feature Jenny a lot more which is good because poor Jenny's been more of a backbender (albeit a very important one) for the majority of this story and deserves better.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!

-MayFairy :)

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EvenEth13 - "Semi" getting along is the right word for it, but yeah, they're getting there and certainly make more progress here which I hope you liked! Can't wait to see what you think of this chapter, thanks so much!