Mrs Lees can't believe her luck. She had thought, after their previous encounter, that Jessica Apple would be the most difficult of all the Doctor's friends to deal with. She watched as he handed the girl that all-important vial, as she put it away inside her clothes somewhere. Mrs Lees was there. She was in the hall, outside the glass which, because she didn't want it to be, was no longer soundproof. She was gathering intelligence, formulating a plan. She could have taken Clara Oswald then and there, without the Doctor to protect her. But she didn't like the idea of possibly tangling with the witch again, and Apple seemed more important. Apple was the only thing she couldn't plan for, didn't know how to get to. Toffee followed the Doctor and his charge instead. She watched, with her hope draining, the way they behaved toward each other. The soldier and her superior officer. She'd never get close enough to that girl again. She'd never be near enough to speak, or to guide, without coming under attack. Toffee was panicking.

Now… Now she is once more comfortable to think of herself as Mrs Lees. Telling herself that soon, soon she will be again. Soon she'll be in possession of the most important part of that puzzle.

She couldn't have planned it better. The fact that things have fallen into place without her intervention for once just makes her feel like this is meant to be. She's doing the right thing, or it wouldn't happen like that. And of course, she only wants to do right by Jessica too. That sweet girl, she almost did so much for Toffee. She tried. In a way, she's made all of this possible. Toffee wants to do anything she possibly can for Jessica Apple.

Things began to go well, really for the first time since her injury, when the Doctor left the Tardis, and left Jessica behind him. At least the girl was alone.

First Toffee tried thinking herself inside. Nothing happened. The Tardis has her defences and knows well how to use them. Toffee felt it like bumping off a shelf and touched her forehead. But sometimes all it takes a knock to the head; it wasn't as though the Doctor had locked his little friend in, now, was it? Carefully, she pushed the door, and felt it give. Watching at the edge, Toffee opened it enough to slip inside, and she clung to the shadowy places around the dark walls.

She was surprised, looking down at herself, to find that she was visible. That clever machine again, stripping back her psychic abilities. Toffee couldn't deaden the sound of her footsteps, or amplify the conversation happening up around the console.

It was almost fun, you know. Having to work in the physical world, having to tiptoe and creep and duck out of sight. She found she had forgotten, over time, the precise colour of her natural skin. It is a little peachier than she paints it on. Her hair is not quite so pinkish as she pretends. For the first time in long, long years, she looks how she did when she was with him, and forgot to pretend to anything.

Her dress is the same. The rust-coloured cloud of silk she reverts to when stunned or in pain, it is identical. She's not surprised. Her husband gave her that dress.

This is more than she's allowed herself to think of him since he was taken. It's because he's close to her again. She looked up through the console rails at Jessica and knew she could probably reach him, if only she was willing to attack. Just raid the girl's pockets until she found him. Outside, where she could think herself strong, where she could make her skin hard and impervious, Toffee might even have tried it.

Or maybe Jessica's face might still have stopped her. She can't be sure.

She was caught in the glow from the monitor screen. And it was very clear that the look on her face had started out as a real, genuine smile. Toffee couldn't see who she was looking at, but it was clear she liked him. The intruder couldn't help it; she held back, heart swollen, breaking with pity, because that smile had hardened. It had turned false to cover up everything in behind. It just wasn't covering up very well. It was stiff and frozen, and the eyes still brimmed with desperation, while a young man's voice read out words and numbers.

"Diplomacy," he was saying, "thirty-two… Do… Do you want me to stop, love?"

"Not does. Only having Appropriate Plany-tary Responsing and Practikal Negotiations goes through."

"…Twenty-two and seventeen." The girl hugged herself, turning her face away against her shoulder. "But-but-but," her friend was trying, "no one got near your scores on the thesis and the written paper, so, y'know, you'll easily get back in on that alone, right?"

Without knowing, Jessica was looking more at Toffee than at her friend. Toffee was the one who watched her flatten all the pain and hurt off her face, putting the smile back where it belonged, before she looked up. Nodded, "Being much-likely. After is finishing with Doctor, soon comes back, and to be talking to professor-persons."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll let them know that. Nobody's letting go of you, Jess. Alright?"

"Right-yes. Must now goes, Liam-person. Doctor am still needing much-big-Jessica-helps today."

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Most totally being okay. Was not expects much-good results. Bye-bye now." Jessica got up. He was saying something else when she cut the call short. The moment the screen went dark the smile dropped away from her again.

She turned her back on Toffee, and went swiftly, silently, up the stairs, through a small door at the very top. Toffee wasn't sure it had been there when she came in. She sat on the bottom stair and counted to two-hundred, every second thinking that Jessica would have gotten whatever she went up for and would come barrelling back down to finish what she started at the hotel and just end her. And as every second passed, she dared more and more to hope that wasn't going to happen.

At two-hundred, Jessica hadn't appeared, hadn't made a sound. Toffee got up and climbed softly to the door, and that's where she stands right at this second, with her ear pressed to it, listening to the soft, heart-broken little sobs bubbling up one after the other, barely a breath between them.

Finally, things are starting to go right around here.

Now if she can just keep out of reach of those stakes until Jessica knows she isn't a threat, Toffee's going to be just fine.

She knocks, tender and sympathetic, at the door. Jessica clears her throat, tries to pick herself up, "Doctor?"

"Not quite…" Toffee steps in, and immediately puts up her hands to show them empty. "Before you say anything, I can't change anything in here. Can't use my physical powers. Can't turn you to stone or make you quiet or even change my own clothes."

Jessica can still use what she's got. Those swords of hers shoot out long and lethal and she wears them with pride. "How gets in?"

"The door was open." This space appears to be a small bedroom, with an even smaller bathroom en suite. Clothes are heaped under the bed, and books stacked in one corner, an odd collection of textbooks and children's novels. The walls have been written on, in black and blue marker pens, marked with everything from shopping lists to drawings of the box they're standing in. From a tiny square desk, Toffee pulls out the chair and sits down. "You've been crying, Jessica."

"MissusToffee leaves now. Jessica not to be hurting."

"I'm guessing you're not really in the mood to deal with me. And I understand that, I really do." But you've got something which belongs to me and I'm not leaving without it, honey. "I'm… I don't know if you even want to hear this, but I'm sorry you failed."

Toffee hasn't gotten up, so now Jessica does, creeps toward her with an extra foot of sheer, impaling spike between them, "How am her knowing?!"

"I overheard, that's all-!"

"-Why is even to be speaks with her? Gets out!"

"Hey! Hey, sweetie, really! I…" With her hands in the air again, not even knowing what she's about to say and what it'll mean to this girl. "I come in peace."

Jessica's face falls. She drops limply back down to sit on the edge of the bed. Just flaps her hand toward the door again. "Gets out. Just goes. Jessica not even tells Doctor. Her am please just leaves now."

"Oh. Oh, sweetheart, I'm so sorry; that wasn't something from your Practical Negotiation exam, was it?"

"Gets out!"

This time she lunges. Neither of them really knows what's happening until the tip of the stake scratches Toffee's neck. A second too late, Toffee screams. Jessica falls away. There is the merest trickle of blood from the tiny little scuff but it transfixes her like rivers of the stuff. In a panic, Jessica snaps off the stakes and throws them into the corner near the books. She scrabbles back to her feet, picks Toffee up by the shoulders and shoves her toward the door. "Gets out! To be getting away from her, MissusToffee, then is not gets hurt, and-"

"Jessica, wait."

"Not waits! Why am MissusToffee even coming here?"

"I came to apologize," she says, with as much genuine feeling as she can redirect from other parts of her life. Jessica doesn't exactly melt. But she stops pushing. "I'm sorry for what I did to you. I'm sorry for leaving you alone with Louis. I'm sorry he got to you. I don't want to work for him, Jessica. You know that, don't you? He terrifies me. But he's got… He's got a hold over me. I don't have a choice." Sighing, oh, with all the pain and suffering of someone who could never hope to be understood, "But you don't know what that's like. How could you?"

"…Jessica am having knowings, yes."

"Please, don't patronize me. I said what I came to say, so I'll go." Toffee turns, walking out of the room. Muttering, as she goes to the top of the stairs, "Pretending like you know anything. Having somebody control your whole life? Making you do things you don't want to do? Changing you until you ain't a chance anymore? How in hell could you know…"

A steely little hand claps tight around her wrist. Toffee looks down at it, smiles to herself before she allows herself to be turned. By then she looks Jessica in the eyes, her face a mask of desperation and shame in admitting, "I just want to be normal again, y'know?"

All but crying again, Jessica nods, not trusting herself to speak. When she sits down on the top stair, Toffee sits down next to her. She doesn't have much choice; Jessica has yet to let go of her arm. "Jessica is to be having talks with Doctor. Doctor can be helps her."

Toffee's first instinct is to cry out against that and start to get out of here. Instead she says, "Really?"

"Has been much helps Jessica, ever since meets."

"A… are you sure?"

"Was takes her away from Owner and breaks bad-mask and fixes hearing-ears and-"

"Oh, yeah, I guess but… But with the 'normal' part? Can he help with that? I just mean… No offence, hon, but you still ain't exactly what we'd call… I mean, even your speech is-" -Is a sore point, from the way she flinches. And now that Toffee thinks about it, those test scores she heard… The written papers were exceptional. The ones that didn't go so good had names like Diplomacy, and Responses, and Negotiation. She failed all the oral portions. "Tell me what you would give, Jessica, to be able to talk like a real person."

Another flinch, and a little hardness of tone, "Is being real person, MissusToffee."

"Oh, I ain't meaning to say that you ain't, hon. But there's nobody in the world you open your mouth to who doesn't say to themselves, 'what's the matter with her?' Nobody will ever know how nice, and charming and intelligent you are, because you sound stupid. Y'dig?" Jessica hugs herself again. But she nods. These are all the things she was already thinking. Hearing them from Toffee is just confirmation. "I know the Doctor probably says it doesn't matter. But he says that 'cause he loves you, kid. He doesn't want you to feel bad."

"Her am knows that…"

"Hey… I just had a stellar idea, Jessica."

Still depressed, still distant, "What idea, MissusToffee?"

"Really, the least I can do. I came here to thank you and this would do that. And I'd owe it to you if you're gonna talk to the Doctor for me, wouldn't I? Oh, this is good, this is too good…"

"What am being good, MissusToffee?

"If you'll help me be normal, Jessica, why, it's the least I could do to help you back. I could do that for you. Outside, where my powers'll work, obviously, but I could do that. If it's really what you want, Jessica, I could. I could make you normal. You've been bad to the bone your whole life, right? But somebody forced you into that. I could help. I could do that. Make you normal again. Give you the shot I don't have. If you want…"

Jessica slowly lets go of Toffee's wrist. "Being trap," she says darkly. Sounding sure, but disappointed.

Toffee takes the girl's arm in the same place, and with her other fingers strokes the back of Jessica's hand. "No. Not if you really think your Doctor will help me get out from under Louis Sieverts. If this was a trap, I could have baited you outside where my abilities work, and changed your mind for you. In here, you're safe. In here, it's your decision. I can fix you in the ways he can't. You could walk and talk like any other girl. Flirt with guys? Like your friend Liam, for instance?

"What do you say, Miss Apple? You want to help each other out?"