Chapter Twelve: Blink
Disclaimer: I do not own Psych or Doctor Who.
"I feel like Robin Hood," Shawn complained as he stepped out of a British taxi (it was still so weird how nondescript they were compared to American ones) with a quiver of arrows on his back.
"Well, we're in London. It really won't stand out all that much," the Doctor reasoned.
"You think you two have got it bad?" Gus demanded. "In this scenario, I'm Ahchoo!"
"Bless you," the Doctor said automatically.
"Doctor! Doctor!" a woman cried out frantically as she ran out of one of the stores. She was very pretty with long light brown hair and an excited gleam in her eye.
The Doctor automatically stopped and turned back to her. "Hello! Sorry, bit of a rush, there's a sort of thing happening, fairly important we stop it."
"I'm sure we have time for this," Shawn argued. "I mean, clearly something very important involves our attention."
"Yes," Gus said pointedly. "The migration's started, remember? And we're already running late. Again. What the point is in having a time machine if we're never going to show up anywhere on time is beyond me…"
The woman laughed. "You two don't ever change, do you?" She shook her head. "My God, it's you, it really is you. Oh, you don't remember me, do you?"
"Look, sorry, I've got a bit of a complex life. Things don't always happen to me in order. Gets confusing, especially at weddings, I'm rubbish at weddings, especially my own," the Doctor confided, shuddering at the memory.
"Mine was fantastic," Shawn said, grinning. "And I thought Jules looks hot now…"
"You realize that it'll be years before she agrees to go out with you, right?" Gus asked him rhetorically. "And treating it like it's a done deal will only make it take longer before she says yes."
The woman looked confused for a moment before it all clicked. "Oh, my God! Of course, you're a time traveler. It hasn't happened yet! None of it, it's still in your future!"
"What hasn't happened?" the Doctor asked blankly.
"Meeting her, obviously," Shawn said, grinning at her. "Speaking of, we should go out sometime. You look nice."
The woman returned his grin. "We did, Shawn, and it was bloody fantastic. The details are in the folder."
"This sounds promising," Shawn said happily.
"I can't be the only one still concerned about the fact that red hatching is in twenty minutes, can I?" Gus demanded.
"It was me. Oh, for God's sake, it was me all along. You got it all from me!" the woman realized. "But it isn't my fault, Shawn. It really isn't."
"Um…sure," Shawn said uncertainly. "It's not your fault."
"Oh, you say that now," the woman said, rolling her eyes.
"Got what?" the Doctor asked, not having the slightest clue what was going on.
The woman nodded. "Okay. Listen. One day you're going to get stuck in 1969. Make sure you've got this with you. You're going to need it."
"Doctor!" Gus cried out.
"Hey, give us a second," Shawn told him. "Apparently we're going to need this and you wouldn't want us to get ourselves killed because we weren't prepared, now would you?"
"No and I don't want us to get ourselves killed because this is taking too long and we can't deal with this either," Gus said pointedly. "Hint hint."
"I'm almost finished, I promise," the woman assured him. "Actually…I think I'm done now."
"That's good because I've got to dash...things happening. Well, four things," the Doctor corrected himself. "Well, four things and a lizard."
"I would like to state for the record that this is all Shawn's fault," Gus declared.
"You always blame me!" Shawn complained.
"Well, you are the one who wouldn't leave that park bench alone," the Doctor pointed out.
"That could have happened to anyone!" Shawn objected.
"Don't you three have some migration to stop?" the woman reminded them.
Gus stopped. "Oh, right."
"I'll see you all around someday, okay?" the woman said, smiling brightly at them.
"What's your name?" the Doctor asked her.
The woman's smile widened. "Sally Sparrow."
The Doctor grinned at her. "Good to meet you, Sally Sparrow."
It was four months before Sally's little folder was needed and they had almost completely forgotten about it. Well…except for when Shawn had insisted on using the TARDIS to go on that date Sally had written about in the folder because it was apparently part of history and they couldn't change it for risk of causing giant monsters to tear a hole in all of reality.
One day, the TARDIS took them to Wester Drumlins to deal with a nasty parasitic alien that had been luring people to the house and then devouring them completely. It had taken some doing but they had finally dispatched of it.
That was when those four creepy angel statues that Gus hadn't been able to take his eyes off of the whole time they were there made their move. Gus had just turned back to the TARDIS as they were about to leave when he completely vanished and Shawn followed moments later. The Doctor realized what had happened when he saw that the statues had moved but he hadn't quite been able to make it to the TARDIS before he had to blink and was transported as well.
It took Gus a moment to find his voice. "…What the hell just happened?"
"Unless I very much missed my guess, we just got stuck in 1969," the Doctor replied grimly. "It's a good thing I still have that folder Sally gave me."
"You do?" Shawn asked, surprised. "But that was ages ago! Have you really been carrying it with you all this time?"
"Of course I have," the Doctor answered, nodding. "I never knew exactly when we'd got stuck here."
"Doctor…those statues just sent us back in time. Those angel statues," Gus said, his voice a bit panicked. "And I seem to recall back when we were dealing with those alien witches you said something about how it wasn't weird after all I didn't like creepy angel statues because of the Weeping Angels. Would you care to elaborate on that at all?"
The Doctor thought it over. "I really wouldn't."
"Well do it anyway!" Gus ordered.
The Doctor sighed and closed his eyes. "Very well. The Weeping Angels date back to the early universe. They resemble angel statues, when you can see them, at least. There was some speculation that they had a different form when they were unseen but there's no real way to tell, of course. I've actually always been curious about what would happen if you held up a mirror in front of an Angel but not enough to actually test it."
"Why?" Gus demanded. "What happens when you look at it?"
"It quantum locks," the Doctor explained. "It literally turns to stone. It's the perfect defense mechanism and, in a way, the perfect prison because, see, they can't control it. I don't even know why it's necessary for them to have this defense as they're already extremely strong and fast. Are their true unseen selves more vulnerable? They turn to stone even when they're looking at each other. The lonely assassins, they're called."
"Well that's just silly," Shawn announced. "A stone might be harder to kill than a person but it's not impossible. What would happen if I were to have a sledgehammer with me and pound the statue into dust? No more Weeping Angel."
"You wouldn't have killed it," the Doctor pointed out. "Because the stone wasn't alive. And when you looked away, it would just reform. Reform and be very very angry. Assuming it had enough energy to do so, of course, though your method might work on a starving angel."
"It seems like Angels would just never move if nothing could be staring at them because surely there's always going to be some bird or insect glancing their way. Do only sentient species count?" Shawn wondered.
"To be honest, I've no idea," the Doctor confessed. "When there are no sentient beings around to report what happened then who can say if the Angels have ever been trapped by a dog or a bird or something? It seems a far too dangerous thing to test just for the sake of idle curiosity."
"How do they feed? On what? And does this have anything to do with them randomly sending us back in time?" Gus demanded. "I mean, it's really annoying since we don't have the TARDIS and normal people would be stranded forever but it's not like we landed anywhere particularly violent. We're just where we had been nearly forty years into the future and that's not going to kill us anytime soon."
"The Angels send you back in time and let you live yourself to death," the Doctor explained. "They feed off of the energy from the potential days you might have had."
"That makes no sense!" Shawn complained. "What energy is that? You're still living a life, even if it's in the past. The Angels can feed on the road-not-taken now? Why bother sending people into the past at all then? Just go up and feed on high school seniors and their energy if they hadn't gone to college or if they had gone to a different one or something like that."
"Maybe it doesn't make the most sense," the Doctor admitted. "But this is a strange and wondrous universe and I'm just telling you how it is. Just because you might not think that it should work like that doesn't mean that it doesn't. In our case, the Angels wanted to both feed on us and the TARDIS which should keep them fed forever. Normally, I'd suggest we hitch a ride to UNIT and meet up with one of my past selves there to get a lift home but we do have the folder Sally gave us and everything appeared to work out so why mess with success?"
"What's first on our agenda?" Gus asked.
The Doctor searched through the folder until he found the photos he was looking for. "Does anybody know anything about wall-papering?"
Unsurprisingly, Shawn raised his hand.
They had been in 1969 for two weeks when it was time to go meet Billy Shipton. Gus had gotten a job at a shop, Shawn had gotten a job with the US Embassy (thanks to the psychic paper, of course), and the Doctor contributed by using the psychic paper to get them a decent place to live and then promptly leaving all bread-winning to them while he attempted to plot out the logistics of what they had apparently done to save themselves since Sally herself didn't have all the details. He also tried to build things out of the material available to them which didn't always work out the way it was supposed to. Still, it helped them find Billy.
"Welcome!" the Doctor greeted the black man lying against a brick wall that he sincerely hoped was Billy. Sally hadn't snapped a picture of him, after all, so he wasn't positive.
"Where am I?" Billy groaned.
"Exactly the same place that you were two minutes ago," the Doctor told him.
"It doesn't look like the same place," Billy pointed out.
"Well, it is," the Doctor assured him. "Course, it's also 1969. Not bad as time goes. You've missed all the assassinations and now you've got the moon landing to look forward to!"
"The moon landing's sweet," Shawn raved. "We went four times back when we still had transportation."
The Doctor held up his hands defensively. "Hey, I'm working on it!"
"Of course, I still don't get why I keep writing 'WTF' on my hand every time I see it…" Shawn said, shaking his head. "I mean, it's in my handwriting so I know it has to be me but I just don't remember doing it…"
"Personally, I blame aliens," Gus opined.
"You always blame aliens," the Doctor protested.
Shawn raised a pointed eyebrow at him.
"Well…when you're not blaming Shawn," the Doctor amended.
"That's because whenever it isn't Shawn's fault, it's always the fault of an alien," Gus replied matter-of-factly.
"You know, Billy, I'm sure that all of this is very upsetting but think of it this way: if you've got even a passing knowledge of history then you can make a fortune in betting for the next thirty-eight years," Shawn said, trying to cheer the clearly-stricken Billy up.
"1969?" Billy repeated faintly. "I can't be in 1969. I wasn't even born in 1969! How in the world would I have gotten to 1969?"
"Remember those creepy Angel statues?" Shawn asked rhetorically. "Well…turns out that they were evil. Big surprise, huh? One of them touched you and sent you back here."
"Don't feel bad about it; the same thing happened to us," the Doctor consoled him. "It might have even been the same one since we ended up in the same year and that Kathy ended up in 1920. I wouldn't get up if I were you. Time travel without a capsule or even one of those shoddy vortex manipulators is going to leave a mark."
"I don't. I can't," Billy shook his head, trying to process what was happening to him.
"Fascinating race, the Weeping Angels. The only psychopaths in the universe to kill you nicely. No mess, no fuss, they just zap you into the past and let you live to death. The rest of your life used up and blown away in the blink of an eye. You die in the past, and in the present they consume the energy of all the days you might have had, all your stolen moments. They're creatures of the abstract. They live off potential energy," the Doctor rambled.
"That still doesn't make any sense," Shawn grumbled.
"What the hell are you even talking about?" Billy demanded, angry and scared.
"Just go with it," Gus advised. "These things are creepy and your involvement with them is mostly over. You're never going to see one again. You're going to be much happier not knowing. I know I was…" With that, he shuddered.
"We tracked you down with this. This is my timey-wimey detector. It goes ding when there's stuff. Also, it can boil an egg at 30 paces, whether you want it to or not, actually, so I've learned to stay away from hens. It's not pretty when they blow," the Doctor confided.
"No, but it does make for a convenient snack and a lot of angry farmers," Shawn added.
"I don't understand," Billy said hollowly.
"Yes you do," Gus said gently. "You're trapped in 1969 and you're never going to be able to go home."
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," the Doctor told him earnestly. "Normally I'd offer you a ride home but somebody stole my transportation so I need you to take a message back to Sally Sparrow."
"That gorgeous girl?" Billy asked incredulously. "What could she possibly have to do with this?"
"Everything," Shawn replied. "Technically it's her fault we have to leave you here. If her folder of what we have to do to fix this didn't specify that she meets you again about twenty minutes after she left you but this time you're dying in the hospital in your sixties because we just sort of left you in the past then we would've taken you home with us and gotten someone else to leave those Easter Eggs."
"That's not her fault," Gus protested. "She was just writing down what happened."
Shawn nodded. "Exactly. And because she wrote down that we're major assholes here, we have no choice but to do that or else things won't go the way they're supposed to and we might not get home."
"It's a stable time loop, Shawn," the Doctor explained. "Technically, it's already happened and we're just doing what we're doing because we've already done it and it worked." He made a face. "How very boring. I hate stable time loops. Still, what can you do?"
"But I don't understand," Billy objected. "Why are we recording the DVD extra now? DVDs won't be around for years."
"Because we really have better things to do than to sit here waiting years until they're invented and these movies come out," Shawn explained.
"And I don't?" Billy demanded.
"Since you have no way to get home and we will…I'm going to go with 'no'," Shawn told him.
The Doctor smiled. "You know, Rose would have had a heart attack if she'd ever met you…"
"I still can't believe that you guys aren't going to tell me how you know what's going on and why we have to do this," Billy complained.
"We're really sorry about that," the Doctor said apologetically. "We'd love to, really we would, we just can't because it says very clearly that you don't know."
"Why in the world are we being such assholes here?" Shawn wondered aloud. "I mean, now we're doing it because we have to but even in a stable time loop there has to be a reason why we're being so awful."
"We could always tell him as long as he swore that he'd tell Sally that he had no idea," Gus pointed out. "It's like what happened in Back to the Future; the Doc knows that gets shot and killed so he puts on a bullet-proof vest and pretends to be dead so Marty will still see what he's supposed to see."
"That is a very good point," Billy said eagerly. "And I swear to you that I'll tell Sally that I have no idea how you guys know any of this…though you'll have to explain why."
"I'm not sure this is a good idea," the Doctor told them.
"I think it's really the least we can do given that he's enabling us to go home at the expense of being stranded here himself," Shawn disagreed. "Look, one day a few months back we ran into this random girl as we were walking past the store she runs. Well, to us it was a few months back. It's weeks after you were sent to the past and Sally trapped the Angels."
"She gave us a very nice written account of what happened," Gus continued. "Including some pictures of the Angels, which I have since destroyed because they freak me out, and a list of the movies which we gave to you. They have to be those seventeen movies because those are the only seventeen DVDs Sally owns. Sally somehow manages to rescue the TARDIS and trap the Angels forever with our help but we only know what to do because she gave us the instructions after she already did it. It's kind of complicated."
Billy shook his head. "I should say so. So if Sally had written that I got to go home then you would have really found someone else and let me come back with you?"
The Doctor nodded. "Absolutely. But she didn't and we really can't risk changing what happens in case that means that Sally won't succeed and we won't get our TARDIS back."
"Did you hear that?" Shawn gushed. "He said 'our' TARDIS!"
"I did hear that," Gus confirmed.
"And see? I told you it was all her fault," Shawn said triumphantly.
"It was really more the Angels' fault," Gus countered.
Shawn shrugged. "Evenly split, I'd say."
"Alright, I'll read Sally's part to give you a sense of the timing," Billy announced. "Who is going to read Larry's? He does have a few lines and pacing, you know. It wouldn't be nearly as creepy if you started talking before she was done, after all, and threw the timing off."
"I'll do it," Gus volunteered, going over to stand beside Larry so he could keep his eye on the script.
The Doctor, sitting at a table, cleared his throat. "I'm ready."
"Right and….action!" Billy said, pressing record.
"Okay. There he is," Gus read off.
"The Doctor," Billy said.
"Who's the Doctor?" Gus asked.
"He's the Doctor," Billy identified, helpfully gesturing the Doctor's way.
"Yep. That's me," the Doctor agreed. He hadn't needed a script of his own since he'd memorized his lines.
"Okay, that was scary," Billy declared.
"No, it sounds like he's replying, but he always says that," Gus explained.
"Yes, I do," the Doctor confirmed, nodding.
"And that," Gus said.
"Yep, and this," the Doctor told them.
"He can hear us. Oh, my God, you can really hear us!" Billy exclaimed, dramatically placing a hand over his heart for emphasis.
"Of course he can't hear us. Look! I've got a transcript, see, everything he says. 'Yep, that's me'. 'Yes, I do'. 'Yep, and this'. Next it's-" Gus started to say.
"Are you going to read out the whole thing?" Gus and the Doctor asked at the same time.
Gus flushed. "Sorry."
"Who are you?" Billy demanded.
"I'm a time traveler. Or I was. I'm stuck in 1969," the Doctor explained.
"That's hardly an introduction!" Shawn complained. "She didn't ask your occupation or current year! Sally – yes, that's Sally Sparrow. Why did it take you internet people so long to make the connection? Anyway, that's the Doctor. I'm Shawn Spencer and may I say that you look absolutely lovely?"
"Well, when he puts it that way…" Gus said awkwardly.
"What is my ex-boyfriend doing on an Easter Egg from the sixties?" Billy demanded. "I mean, fine, time travel or whatever but it still seems really…unlikely."
"You went out with this guy?" Gus asked.
"Just the once," Billy was quick to qualify. "It was a really nice night, though. I wonder if he looked me up because of this?"
"Damn straight it was," Shawn said, grinning. "And…maybe."
"I've seen this bit before," Billy realized.
"Quite possibly," the Doctor replied.
"1969, that's where you're talking from?" Billy asked slowly, just to make sure.
"I'm afraid so," the Doctor confirmed.
"But you're replying to me. You can't know exactly what I'm gonna say, 40 years before I say it!" Billy exclaimed.
"38," the Doctor corrected. "It always pays to be precise."
"I'm getting this down! I'm writing in your bits," Gus said excitedly.
"How? How is this possible? Tell me!" Billy ordered.
"Not so fast," Gus complained.
"People don't understand time. It's not what you think it is," the Doctor began grandly.
"Then what is it?" Billy asked matter-of-factly.
"Complicated," the Doctor said curtly.
"What's this?" Shawn couldn't believe it. "Doctor, you're never at a loss for words. You've explained time to Gus at least a half a dozen times and even once or twice to me even though I assured you that I didn't care."
"Tell me," Billy insisted.
The Doctor winced. "Very complicated."
"I'm clever and I'm listening. And don't patronize me because people have died, and I'm not happy. Tell me," Billy said, his tone steely.
Shawn grinned again. "Now that's hot."
The Doctor sighed and nodded. "Oh, alright. People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint, it's more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff."
"Yeah, I've seen this bit before. You said that sentence got away from you," Billy told them.
"It got away from me, yeah," the Doctor admitted.
"Next thing you're going to say is, 'Well, I can hear you'," Billy predicted.
"Well, I can hear you," the Doctor claimed, shrugging.
"This isn't possible," Billy said flatly.
"No, it's brilliant," Gus disagreed.
"Maybe it's magic," Shawn spoke up.
"Shawn, you know very well that there is no such thing as magic," the Doctor said, rolling his eyes.
"Says the time traveling alien stuck in 1969 by evil Angels who is communicating with someone 38 years in the future," Shawn muttered.
"What does that have to do with anything?" the Doctor demanded.
"The average person is about as likely to believe in one as the other," Shawn pointed out.
"Yes, and?" the Doctor asked. "Just because I fall under the category of 'things most people do not believe in' doesn't mean that everything else under that same category is true as well. This isn't some 'if witches then dragons' kind of thing."
"We met alien witches, though," Shawn pointed out. "Remember? Who sort of did magic. Even if it's not technically magic we could still know what they're saying through something that most people would call magic."
"Most people two centuries ago would have called the telly magic," the Doctor pointed out.
Now it was Shawn's turn to role his eyes. "Oh, you know what I mean."
The Doctor turned back to the camera. "Look, I can't hear you exactly, but I know everything you're going to say."
"Always gives me the shivers, that bit," Gus confessed.
"How can you know what I'm going to say?" Billy demanded, looking around the room suspiciously.
"Look to your left," the Doctor advised, nodding to his right so that when Sally watched it later he would be nodding to her left.
"What does he mean by, 'Look to your left'? I've written tons about that on the forums. I think it's a political statement," Gus theorized.
"It's not but, for the record, the Doctor is a total hippie," Shawn confided. "Between us – and, I guess, anyone else who ever watches this – he's having the time of his life here with all his fellow flower children. If it weren't for his hour-long attention span, he could happily spend the rest of his life here."
"Oh, I could not," the Doctor argued.
"He means you," Billy told Gus. "What are you doing?"
"I'm writing in your bits. So I've got a complete transcript of the whole conversation. Wait until this hits the net. This will explode the egg forums," Gus enthused.
Shawn snorted. " 'Egg forums.' This sounds right up your ally, Gus."
"I've got a copy of the finished transcript. It's on my Autocue," the Doctor revealed.
"How can you have a copy of the finished transcript? It is still being written," Billy pointed out.
"I told you. I'm a time traveler. I got it in the future," the Doctor told her.
Shawn shook his head. "I don't think that's what she's asking. There are two different kinds of time travel: the kind that changes something and the kind that doesn't. Now, I know what you're thinking; I'm psychic, you know. If you're not going to change anything, why bother time traveling? Two reasons: one, it's awesome. Two, you have to time travel and do something in order to cause events to play out the way you know they're supposed to. We got the transcript from the future and the Doctor is reading it because he read it to you by the time we got ahold of the transcript. It's a stable time loop, you see."
"Okay, let me get my head 'round this. You're reading from a transcript of a conversation you're still having? Wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey," Billy said, shaking his head. "All these interruptions by Shawn…is he allowed to do that?"
The Doctor waved his hand. "Oh, don't worry about him. The transcript contains everything he's said so far and it will likely to continue to do so. Like he said, stable time loop."
"Really?" Shawn asked, surprised. "It does? But I never even glanced at it!"
"I guess we have Larry to thank for that," Billy remarked. "And speaking of…You can do shorthand?"
"So?" Gus asked defensively.
"What matters is we can communicate. We have got big problems now. They've taken the blue box, haven't they? The Angels have the phone box," the Doctor said ominously.
"The Angels have the phone box!" Gus exclaimed. "That's my favorite, I've got it on a tee-shirt!"
"So have I, actually," Shawn revealed. "Hey, is that on-"
"Yes," the Doctor interrupted.
Shawn made a face.
"What do you mean, Angels?" You mean those statue things?" Billy asked anxiously.
"The statues that look like Angels?" Shawn asked rhetorically. "That's a good bet."
"They're creatures from another world," the Doctor announced.
"But they're just statues," Billy protested.
"Statues that kill people," Shawn pointed out. "Hey, Doctor, I've just thought of something and the transcript probably says I have to ask you about it so here goes: if the transcript just says everything that I say then why do you have to read from the transcript? Why not just look at her parts and make up your own answers?"
"Because I've already read my part," the Doctor answered simply. "Now, the Weeping Angels are only statues when you look at them."
"What does that mean?" Billy demanded.
"Really, Sally?" Shawn asked skeptically. "That's an easy one. It means that when you aren't looking at the statues, they aren't statues. Of course, now you're in for it."
"Lonely assassins, they were called. No-one knows where they came from. They're as old as the universe, or very nearly. They've survived this long as they have the most perfect defence system ever evolved," the Doctor explained. "They are quantum-locked. They don't exist when being observed. The moment they're seen by any other living creature they freeze into rock. No choice. It's a fact of their biology. In the sight of any living thing, they literally turn to stone. And you can't kill a stone. Course, a stone can't kill you either. But then you turn your head away, then you blink, and oh, yes it can!"
"Don't take your eyes off that," Billy ordered sharply.
"That's why they cover their eyes. They're not weeping, they can't risk looking at each other. Their greatest asset is their greatest curse. They can never be seen. The loneliest creatures in the universe. And I'm sorry, I am very, very sorry, it's up to you now," the Doctor apologized.
"We believe in you!" Shawn cheered. "Mostly because we already know you succeed, stable time loop and whatnot. But no pressure! It's only all of existence at stake!"
"I thought you said no pressure," Billy muttered.
"I did," Shawn confirmed, looking puzzled. "You really should pay more attention, you know. This is kind of important. And by 'kind of' I mean really important."
"What am I supposed to do?" Billy demanded.
"The blue box, it's my time machine. There is a world of time energy in there they could feast on forever. The damage they can do can switch off the sun. You have got to send it back to me!" the Doctor urged.
"How? How?" Billy asked desperately.
"I'd love to answer your question, Sally Sparrow, I really would but unfortunately, I can't. See, this is where the transcript ends. This is my final line. I don't know what stopped you talking, but I can guess. They're coming. The angels are coming for you. But listen, your life could depend on this. Don't blink! Don't even blink. Blink and you're dead. They are fast, faster than you can believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink! Good luck!"
"I think this will be my last line as well," Shawn decided. "Of course, I can't check the transcript so who knows? I'd just like to say that if you had a problem with us just leaving you hanging without any clear idea of what to do…well, you know who is to blame. Or you will, at least."
Billy pressed stop. "Well, that's that. How soon until you know if it's worked?"
The familiar sound of the TARDIS materializing filled the air and soon the blue box itself appeared right in front of them.
"That was fast," Gus remarked. "Not that I'm complaining, of course. Do you think we should bother to quit our jobs and give up our lease before going?"
"Meh, can't be bothered," the Doctor replied. "The little details always slip my mind. But poor Sally. I really didn't like having to leave her and Larry outside of the TARDIS when it came back to us."
"Not to worry, we would have taken them with us if Sally hadn't told us we didn't," Shawn comforted him. "She has no one to blame but herself."
"And you're sure you can't take me with you?" Billy asked unhappily.
The Doctor smiled sadly at him. "I would if I could, I hope you know that. I just can't because you need to be there to die a few hours after first meeting Sally Sparrow. I really like her name. Sally Sparrow. Not too fond of 'Sally' by itself but together it has a very nice ring to it. Sally Nightingale's not nearly as nice."
"I feel terrible, too," Shawn said apologetically. "But, well…"
Billy nodded. "Yeah, I get it. Blame Sally."
"Poor Sally," Gus said, shaking his head. "She saves the day and keeps getting blamed for it. No wonder that was one of the first things she said to us…"
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