A/N! Happy Memorial Day all! It's a holiday, and you know what that usually means... extra chapter!

The Doctor was perched on a counter in the cast lounge, watching the director pace back and forth, pulling his hair and shaking his head dramatically. The Doctor calmly munched on an apple he'd nabbed from a nearby fruit bowl. The actors all sat around a long table staring at each other glumly.

Quinn stood off to the side, arms folded in front of her chest. See the wonders of the universe, she thought. Yeah right. I can't believe I'm back in a theater with a bunch of divas. Again. She watched the director continue to pace back and forth, still muttering to himself. Nobody had said a word for three or four minutes now. She reached out and nudged the Doctor on his knee. When he looked at her, confused, she inclined her head towards the actors and director. He shrugged his shoulders at her so she rolled her eyes and mouthed the words, 'say something!'

"Aha. Right." He said quietly, so quietly that she could barely hear. Then he cleared his throat and, much louder, said, "Excuse me?" The others turned towards him, shooting him glares ranging from resignation to barely contained rage. "Ooh," he said taking in the reaction. The director had stopped pacing, thankfully enough, though he was now making a sort of whimpering sound in the back of his throat. "Um, hello. I'm the Doctor and this is Quinn. I just thought I'd say that we didn't mean to land in the middle of things back there. I mean, well, we meant to land, of course, it's just we didn't know what you'd be doing out there. It's funny when you think about it because actually my ship's supposed to do its best not to cause a stir and, well, patron of the arts that I am..."

"What my friend here is trying to say," Quinn said, "is that we're really sorry we screwed up your play."

"Hah!" Robert said, throwing his hands up in the air exasperatedly and looking around madly at the cast. "Did you hear that? They're sorry. Well that makes it okay, then, doesn't it gang?"

"Can't you just start it over again?" the Doctor asked. "Give people their money back?"

"Oh, yes, let's do that," the director said, slumping down into a seat and putting his forehead down on the table. "You've ruined us, you realize that? You ruined us."

"It can't be as bad as all that," the Doctor said. "After all, your troupe's doing quite well, what with the new theater and all. Who builds a brand new theater if they're not doing well?"

"We do," Clegg growled, eyes narrowed at the newcomers.

"It was an accident," Quinn said. "We're sorry."

"Sorry. Sure. You're sorry," he replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

She felt her temper start to flare, just slightly. Didn't these people know better than to mess with an especially hormonal teenager? They were rapidly losing the moral high ground, she thought. "Look, we didn't mean to do anything, okay? It happened, it was an accident, we said we're sorry. But when it comes down to it, it's just a play."

"Shut up," Josh growled.

"Excuse me?"

"Just.. stop talking."

"It's a play! It's entertainment! It's not a matter of life or death, and-"

"I said, Shut up. Shut the hell up about things you don't understand! You don't have any idea what you're talking about, you good for nothing moron!" Josh said, slamming his fist on the table.

The Doctor's expression turned dark. "I'll thank you not to talk to my friend that way," he said in a tone the assembled crowd might consider emotionless, but which Quinn knew from experience meant that the man who had spoken was treading dangerous water. She put a hand on the Doctor's shoulder to, hopefully, calm him down a bit.

Callie hadn't said a word this whole time. Now she reached out and entwined a hand in Robert's. She seemed like she was on the verge of tears. "What are we going to do?" she whispered to the director.

"I don't know. I'll think of something. Just give me a minute."

"Do you think... do you think the Travelers could help? If we got word to them, I mean?"

"You know what they think of what we're doing," Robert replied, and Callie nodded in sad resignation.

The Doctor didn't seem to notice the fear in her eyes, but Quinn did. His patience with the situation had clearly gone out the window when Josh insulted her, but Quinn was picking up on something... something more than the cast and crew were saying.

She had been in the 'green room' before, under worse circumstances than this. During sectionals, the glee club had been sure they were about to crash and burn when all their songs were stolen right out from under them. But even so, with a huge opportunity on the line and everything to play for, they hadn't been like this - not even Rachel, and that was saying something. This was beyond the fear of a botched play, a bad review, or a missed opportunity. It was more even than facing the reality of not having a lifelong dream come true.

The other actors had started whispering amongst themselves about what they could do, how they could still pull off a successful evening. Mostly, though, it was a lot of ideas being tossed out and immediately rejected as being untenable. Josh occasionally looked up at the Doctor sourly. Every time, he found the Time Lord glaring at him, seeming like he hadn't moved and had scarcely blinked the whole time.

This wasn't problem solving at its best. It wasn't even close. These people looked like they'd had their will to live sapped from them, like they were trudging onward only as a last resort because they didn't dare sit there and do nothing.

"How long have we got now?" Howard asked the director.

Robert glanced at his watch and sighed. "About twenty-one minutes now," he replied. "Intermission's almost over and they'll be expecting act 2."

"We can just go on from here, though," Howard said.

"With you still alive? How? The whole second act is predicated on your character being dead."

"Yeah..." Howard said dejectedly. "I guess so."

"What's going on?" She asked, as kindly as she could, trying to stifle her irritation. Everyone stared at her, but none said anything. Sensing that she wasn't getting anywhere with the group as a whole, she locked eyes with Callie. "What are you so afraid of?" she asked.

The Doctor perked up, seeming to snap out of his staring contest with Josh at the mention of someone being in trouble. Now he focused on Callie as well, still wearing a stoic expression, but at least interested and engaged.

Callie shed a single tear as she took a deep, ragged breath, trying to contain herself. "The play's ruined," she said.

"Why's it so important?" the Doctor asked quietly.

"Because if the play doesn't go well, then the people we love most in the whole world will almost certainly die."