Updated for Mrs. 11th's birthday. Sorry for the slow progress, BBC Class owns me atm.

The Time Lord - Time Lady? - spreads her arms and looks around the room with pride. "So this is the console room. The main event. All that jazz. For now I'm gonna say….don't touch anything. Because pressing the wrong button could result in an implosion of this ship and half a galaxy with it so let's, uh, avoid that."

"Couldn't you just...label those buttons? With little warnings?" Erin asks weakly.

Holtz snorts. "Warning labels are for dudes. And humans."

"...right."

"And now, the pole," Abby says to Holtz, who grabs Erin by the hand to pull her to a spot near the console where a pole disappears into a hole in the floor.

"Is that…a fireman's pole?"

"Yep."

"How did you even get that in here? Did you steal it?"

Holtz chuckles. "Surprisingly, no," she says, pointing her finger upwards. "Good old Bob here can make almost anything for the rooms, with the right specs. Now follow me."

She slides down the pole, and after a glance at Abby, who nods, Erin follows her. They are now standing in a rectangular room even larger than the one upstairs, the back of which is the exact kind of crazy science lab that the décor upstairs had led Erin to half expect, and the front of which is the comfiest looking living space Erin has ever seen. Squishy couches and cushions and beanbags and an outrageously large television screen on the wall.

"This is amazing," Erin says, awed.

"Damn right it is, and just through this door here is basically anything else you could possibly want. Bathroom, bedrooms, pool, exercise room-"

"You deleted the exercise room to give us some extra thrust when we were running away from those Rutans last week," Abby says without looking up from her phone.

"Oh yeah," Holtz says, snorting, "Well, what would we use an exercise room for, anyway? Like we don't do enough running as it is."

"I noticed that actually," Erin says to Abby, "You can run now."

"Job requirement," Abby replies, sighing, "You'll get there too, if you're gonna be staying. So what do you think?"

"Stay here? And be, what did you call it? A companion?"

"I mean, the title isn't super important, I totally stole it from this other guy," Holtz says, flapping her hand. "Travelling companion just more or less covers the basic job description. I always thought 'assistant' sounded kind of patronising."

"So I could be an alien's travelling companion, with my best friend, and all I have to do is stay in this time travelling spaceship?"

"Pretty much," Holtz says. "Interested?"

"Oh, and before you say anything about your course, remember that it's a time machine, so she can get you back for ten minutes after you left," Abby points out.

Erin lets out a long breath. "Well then, I guess…how could I say no?"

"Yes!" Holtz punches the air. "Two companions. This is like Christmas." She hugs Erin, tightly, much to the human's alarm. It's stiff and awkward, like Holtz doesn't quite know how to do it but is doing it because she feels like she should.

Erin gives her a tentative smile when she pulls away, and Holtz looks reassured, her grin back as her hands go to her pockets and she rocks back on her heels.

"Okay, well, you go and find yourself a room, Abby can help you. Should be something workable that you don't hate. I'll get to recalibrating the atom accelerator, and then you guys can let me know where you wanna go next."

The Time Lord runs off towards the ladder on the other side of the room which goes up through the ceiling and back to the console room, leaving Erin and Abby alone.

"Where did you meet her?" Erin asks, after several seconds of silence.

Abby grins. "Spotted a spaceship coming down one night, about a year ago. Went out to have a look at the wreckage, and there was Holtz, digging around and licking things and talking to herself. I started asking questions and she just kind of answered them without looking up, without really thinking." She cackles. "Took her a full two and a half minutes to realise I was there and that she'd been talking to someone."

"And then, what, you two just teamed up?"

"Well, she said it never hurt to have another pair of hands when dealing with an alien lizard with seven, and that kind of logic is...difficult to argue with," Abby says, shrugging.

"Well, uh, yeah, I suppose it is," Erin replies, smiling uncertainly. "And then what?"

"Then when the lizard stuff was over and done with, she asked if I wanted to come with her. See more planets and aliens, help her out with all the crazy stuff she gets up to."

"And you, being Abby Yates, the girl who has seen every episode of The X Files four times and who got sent home from school five times for yelling about aliens to the teachers, didn't even hesitate," Erin guesses, grinning.

Abby grins back. "Not even for a second. It's like a dream come true, Erin, it really is." She clasps Erin's shoulder. "But something was always missing. I tried to ignore it, but… I guess I always knew… it was you. All of this is great, Holtz is great, but you're my best friend, Erin. Doing this without you always felt a bit wrong."

Erin feels herself tearing up. "I'm sorry for being such a - I don't know-"

"Asshat?" Abby supplies helpfully, making Erin laugh and nod.

"Yeah, asshat, let's go with that. I'm so sorry, I just couldn't take it anymore, the way they all laughed at me-"

"Don't worry about it. Think about it, if we hadn't had that fight, who knows where we would have ended up? I might never have seen that spaceship, and never met Holtz, and then where would we be?" Abby smiles at her. "Now, you get to be here and know that they were all wrong."

Erin wipes at her eyes and nods again. "This place is… incredible. It shouldn't even be possible."

"She calls it transdimensional engineering. I'm sure if you asked, she could try and explain it to you. I don't know if you'd understand, but you'd have a better shot than me. Now come on, let's find you a room."

Abby pulls her into the corridor, and they pass rooms marked 'Holtz' and 'Abby' until they come across one that says 'Erin'.

"Oh hey, he's already made you one," Abby says, clapping her hands together. "Nice."

"But… how?"

"The ship's kinda alive," Abby explains, and laughs at the alarmed look on Erin's face. "I know, bit freaky, but you get used to it. He's telepathic, so this room will be you down to a T, I bet."

Sure enough, Erin pushes the door open and walks into a room that couldn't be more her if she had designed it herself. The bed and its linen are basic, the duvet cover a nice calming yellow against the plain white walls. There's a fireplace with a bookshelf of physics books on the mantle, and a comfy armchair next to it. An ugly knitted blanket rests on the end of the bed, identical to the one that her grandmother knitted her for her tenth birthday, the one she has kept with her all her life but now sits in her little apartment.

Erin feels herself tearing up. "This is...I don't even have words."

"I know," Abby says, rubbing her back, "Look, I'll leave you to get settled, give you some time to get your head around all this, cause I know it's a lot. I'll just be out in the living space, okay?"

"Okay, thanks," Erin says, and she takes deep breaths as Abby shuts the door behind her.

She sits on the bed and tries to let everything wash over her. She's in a spaceship. With an alien, and Abby Yates, who is now her best friend again like nothing ever happened because aliens are real and they've always been real and Erin was always, always right. She was never crazy. Her parents and the therapists were wrong.

Her hands reach out for the knitted blanket and instantly she can feel herself calming down, her heart rate slowing. It even smells the same. How is that possible?

"Abby said you were telepathic," Erin says, looking at the ceiling which is covered in glow-in-the-dark stars like her childhood bedroom. "So I guess that means you pulled the smell from my memories, huh?"

The room lets out a tiny hum which sounds oddly like a 'yes', making Erin jump a mile.

"Okay, sentient spaceship, that's gonna take a while to get used to," she mutters to herself, "but uh, thanks, I guess. For the room. It's perfect."

The fire roars to life out of nowhere, and Erin takes that to mean 'you're welcome'. She leafs through a few of the physics books and takes comfort in the familiar formulas. Some of the ones to the right don't look like they're from Earth, and that's intriguing, but she thinks it's been a big enough day without looking into alien physics. There will be time.

She has all the time in the world. It's….. an incredibly comforting thought, actually. The idea that she currently exists in a space that is outside of her usual world and time. So long as she can go back for five minutes after she left, the TARDIS is a safe haven away from the life that has brought her nothing but anxiety. (Sure, it has its joys, like physics and ice cream and cats, but those only go so far.)

Finally, she feels calm enough to leave the room and the blanket behind and go to find Abby.

Problem is, that when she comes out into the living space, Abby is slumped on the sofa, glasses skewed and fast asleep. Erin feels put out for a moment, her one familiar element currently unavailable to her, but Abby looks so sweet and so exhausted that she grabs a blanket from the large pile nearby - Holtz really knows how to stock a living space - and drapes it over Abby, removing her glasses and putting them on the coffee table.

"Oh, so that's what I should be doing when I find her like this," a voice says from behind Erin, making her jump, "I knew I was missing something really obvious."

Erin whips around to see Holtz standing there with her hands in her pockets and a sheepish look on her face.

"Does this...happen a lot?"

"Yeah…" Holtz shakes her head. "She tries to keep up with me, no matter how much I tell her she can't. You know what she's like, stubborn as a three headed mule. But she's only human, and eventually the batteries need recharging."

Erin tries to work out what she means. "So your batteries need… less recharging?"

"Yep," Holtz says cheerfully, "I can basically survive on ninety minute power naps. Or I'll just go a whole week without sleep and get a solid seven hours and then I'm good to go for another nine days, minimum."

"So your species, you said Time Lord? Is that right?"

"It's complicated, all this stuff to do with titles and academies and Gallifreyan versus Time Lord but yeah, in a nutshell, that's me," Holtz says, shrugging, "Time Lady works too, but I'm not picky."

"Right," Erin says.

"Wanna see something awesome?" Holtz asks with a grin.

"Uh, yes?"

"Jeez, no need to jump on me with all that enthusiasm, Gilbert," Holtz says, whistling.

"I do," Erin says more eagerly, "I do want to see something awesome."

"That's more like it." Holtz looks pleased. "In that case, follow me." She heads for the ladder up to the console room and Erin follows her back up.

It's strange, being alone with Holtz, whose internal energy can be felt even if one is standing several feet away. Which she's not, because Holtz is right up in her personal space. Maybe Gallifrey doesn't have issues with it, but Erin has a sneaking suspicion it's more to do with Holtz herself than her people.

"Okay okay okay," the blonde says excitedly, "Close your eyes."

"Why?"

"Just trust me, okay?"

"You're an alien I met like an hour ago, trusting you would be probably the most illogical thing I could do in my entire life."

Holtz's eyes are amused and knowing. "But… you do. Right?"

Erin is shocked to realise that she does. There's something about this mad, bizarre alien woman that is just so inherently genuine. For all her joking and pranking, there's not a bad bone in her body - of that Erin is certain.

Erin swallows, nods, and shuts her eyes. Holtz takes her hand and leads her forward.

"Okay. Open."

Erin does, and finds herself standing at the open doors of the ship, staring out over the earth from above. The entire world before her, the country she was born in and the land that she has walked laid out like it's tiny and not the only thing she's ever known.

"Oh my god," she breathes.

Holtz is leaning against the doorframe, grinning. "Not a bad view, huh? Makes my top five, easily."

"What are the other four?" She asks, a little absently.

"All in good time, Gilbert, all in good time," she says, patting Erin on the back. "Now, are you hungry?" When Erin looks at her with confusion, she just laughs and pulls a packet out of her overall pocket - again, one just a bit too big to plausibly fit in there.

"Okay, seriously, how do you keep doing that?"

"Doing what?"

"Pulling out things that can't physically fit in there!" Erin awkwardly gestures in the direction of the pocket with her hands.

"Oh," Holtz laughs, "same trick as the spaceship. Transdimensional engineering - bigger on the inside."

Erin stares at her for a second. "Well, obviously!" She says, making Holtz blink at her with surprise. "Even if Abby hadn't mentioned it, I'd have known because I felt that spatial disturbance on my way in, and okay, I was a bit busy freaking out and kind of still am, but interdimensional transference isn't exactly a difficult leap to make, especially since I know you're an alien with obviously more advanced technology. I might not understand exactly how it works, but that's not actually the part I care about right now."

Holtz looks utterly blown away, eyebrows nearly at her hairline. "Okay…. so, what part do you care about?"

"From all of that," Erin says, a little breathlessly, pointing her finger at her, "I have to conclude that you have another dimension, in your pocket."

"Well, yeah. So?"

"So, doesn't that strike you as, well, ridiculous?"

Holtz starts laughing. And doesn't stop. She laughs and laughs and laughs while Erin just watches, bemused and wondering what to do.

Finally, Holtz straightens up, tears in her eyes, and grabs Erin by the shoulder. "I knew I liked you, Gilbert."

"Really?" Erin asks. She's been liked by so few people in her life that it's very difficult to imagine that anyone could take to her so quickly. But then, she's always been called weird, and if Holtz is anything, it's that. "Why?"

"Who cares about why? I don't know why. I just know who. Which is Abby, and you."

Erin feels inexplicably touched, and when Holtz sits down so that her feet dangle out over the edge, Erin only hesitates for a second before following suit. Their legs swing out in the emptiness of space.

"Okay, so I probably should have asked this before, but how are we breathing?" She asks.

"The TARDIS extends the oxygen shell, easy peasy lemon squeezy," Holtz says, before snorting. "Okay seriously, who came up with that phrase? Your species has the most incredible capacity for creating total nonsense, and I love it. I mean, that cat who looks like a poptart shitting a rainbow with the most epically annoying music playing over and over? Amazing."

"Uh, thanks?" Erin asks, finding herself laughing a little.

Holtz opens the packet she's been holding and holds it out to Erin. "Chocolate?"

Neither the packet or the round thing Holtz pulls out looks like anything that Erin has ever seen before, but it seems rude to say no, so Erin takes two and puts them in her mouth.

It's not like any chocolate she's had before, it's richer and filled with something a bit like jam with a flavour somewhere between orange and strawberry.

"Oh my god," Erin says, with her mouth full, covering her mouth when she realises she has done so.

Holtz beams. "Oh yeah, there you go. They're from this tiny human colony about three galaxies over and four centuries ahead of your time."

"They're amazing."

"Well, have as many as you like."

They sit there in silence for a while, eating the chocolates and gazing out at the earth below them. Erin's head has quietened, the numerous questions blurring together into a white noise she can ignore for the moment.

Instead she looks at Holtz, who is leaning back on her palms which are planted behind her, legs still swinging in the open space. It's the first time Erin has seen her quiet - still is something she seems to be incapable of, but quiet… perhaps sometimes.

She still looks so human.

"Wait, so is this what you actually look like?" Erin asks suddenly. "Or is that like a suit or a hologram or something so that you can move around Earth without freaking humans out?"

Holtz laughs. "Nope, this is what I look like. Convergent evolution, you know."

"Oh, right."

"My insides would give your sciences a migraine, though," she says, grinning. "The binary vascular system is the least crazy thing I've got going."

"Binary vascular - you've got two hearts?"

"Yep. You wanna listen?"

"No, I'll believe you. Maybe another time, though." Erin thinks about how she ended up here, having this conversation. "So, how you said Trien got caught up in a rift storm, and that's how he ended up in New York. Could you….explain that?"

Holtz nods eagerly. "Basically, all through the universe you get these little rifts in time and space. Like tears, where things can fall through from one place and time to another. New York has a little one, easily managed so I tend to keep an eye on it. Old Bob's got a permanent subroutine monitoring it so I get told if anything big pops through it. Now Cardiff, that's a huge one, I stay well away from that."

"Why? Wouldn't that need even more help? Be even more dangerous?"

Holtz's grin is fixed in place. "They got a guy. It's fine."

"A guy? What, someone like you?"

"Baby, there's no one like me," Holtz says, winking, and Erin has to laugh at that. "But uh, yeah, same species. Saving worlds and fighting monsters is kind of his thing, so I let him do that. I'll help out people if I can but mostly I'm in it for the thrills and the fun and the pretty girls. Besides, if I get too involved in anything I might run into him, and we really don't want that."

"Why not?" Erin asks.

"Well, then he'd know I was alive. And then he'd want to like, hang out."

"Why?"

"Well like I said, our planet's gone. Last of our species. So if he found out that he isn't the only one left, he'd get all clingy and want to hang out all the time. Or worse, travel together. Who knows."

"What would be wrong with that?"

Holtz pulls a face. "He's a total downer. And king of melodrama. And I'm so not about that. Nope, he can hang out with his human friends, and I'll hang out with mine. No need for him to ever know I'm alive."

"That seems kinda harsh. Not letting him know you're alive."

"I mean, I'm like 80% sure he's the reason our planet doesn't exist anymore, so my guilt level is pretty much zero," Holtz says, shrugging.

"Oh. What happened?"

"There was a war. Everyone lost, I guess. I dunno," Holtz says quietly, not quite looking Erin in the eye. "My mentor, Gorin, she got me out just before shit really hit the fan. I wanted to stay and kick some more Dalek ass, but she wouldn't take no for an answer. I guess she saved my life."

There's a deep sadness in Holtz's eyes now, and Erin shifts her hand so it's resting over Holtz's, and the blonde blinks and then smiles at her in that uncertain but soft way of hers.

"Yeah, well, anyway," she says awkwardly, "point is that I'm alive and still rocking, and the Doc would kill my vibe, so I'm keeping well out of his way. I just want to kick back with my gals and have some fun, you know?"

"Sounds fair to me," Erin says.

"Exactly. Now, what do you say to helping me me make some repairs to Bob while we wait for Abby to wake up from her nap? And then - alien planet time."

It sounds incredible, and so Erin says as much. Holtz grins and gets to her feet, offering her a hand up, and they get to work.

Thanks for reading, let me know what you thought!