There were men and women and children hanging on chains.

It was the first thing Clara noticed when she woke up from being knocked unconscious. Her head was throbbing and she rubbed her temple. The room she was in was warm, she could feel the sweat already building up on her brow; the floor that kissed her skin was made of steel. There were a lot of them in that barely lit room – the lights coming from the same crystal chandeliers she had seen from the main tearoom. Only these chandeliers were a soft, diffused pearly white and cast a soft glow on the room – or floor, wherever they were. It took her a few seconds to figure out what had happened. The last thing she remembered was the tea bar and she was just about to stand to follow The Doctor.

The bar keep had come back with their food and she turned around at the sound of the tray. When she turned her head back to The Doctor, she couldn't even scream when a hand with a cloth came to her nose and she felt herself go limp at first breath. The next thing she knew, she was falling asleep as she was dragged and carried silently by the bar keep.

The darkness soon came – then the cold.

"Wha's goin' on? Where am I?" she muttered, still rubbing at her temples. When she opened her eyes and looked up – she could think of only one person. "Doctor?"

When she looked up, she saw two children looking down at her. When she looked at them, their eyes widened and they ran away from her. She got up immediately, drowsiness gone.

"Hey," she called to them, her voice the gentle tone her mother used to have. "Are you two alright?"

The children had run away from her but not very far. They just hid behind a woman with a pale face – similar to the look of the other people around her. All of others in the room had that same bleak pallor, that same open stare, and the same unmoving stance. The woman had an open mouth, drool slightly dripping out. The look on the woman's eyes felt distant, as if she were asleep with open eyes. One of the children, a little boy with cracked skin as dark as night and through the cracks looked like small gems embedded into his skin, tugged at the hem of the skirt of the woman. The woman gave no response.

Clara walked to the children slowly now, not wanting to frighten them. She moved cautiously, not wanting to touch any of the others or move them. She looked at the little boy who was still tugging at the woman's skirt and the little girl – who looked so much like the little boy that she was probably his sister – who was stealing peeks at her behind the woman's legs. Clara tilted her head at the woman then but the woman would not meet her gaze. She tried waving her hand in front of the woman's face but the woman did not even blink.

"Hello?" Clara asked, still waving. No response. Clara looked at the boy then, who was staring up at her. "Is this your mum?"

The boy stopped shaking the woman's skirts, looked at Clara, and nodded. That took Clara aback. She glanced back and forth from the children and the woman and tried to decipher how they could be related. Were they adopted, then? Were they an interspecies family? It took Clara a moment to remember that it was 2502 and maybe it was just what happened with her people after a few hundred years from what she considered her present. Considering her travelling and her strange alien companion, it didn't seem too far off.

"She's been like this since we woke up," said the little girl. "Please," the girl added. "Can you help us?"

The little girl went to Clara and took her hand when she asked for help. Clara looked at the little girl and at back at the woman. The little boy had taken a step forward, held his sister's hand, and looked up at Clara too, pleading just as much as his sister.

"I can try," Clara promised.

Still holding the girl's hand, Clara leaned in to the woman closer and stared at the woman's face and skin. Pale, murky, smooth, and a little grey – the same colour of tea with a splash of milk. When Clara breathed, the woman smelled a bit like peppermint.

"Hello?" she tried again.

With her free hand, Clara tried to shake the woman's arm in order to make the woman pay attention but Clara only jumped back in surprise at the contact. The woman straightened up then and her eyes nearly bulged out the sockets. The woman shook Clara by the shoulders and was desperately close to her face. The woman sniffed all over Clara's person and then looked her straight in the eye and said, in an eerie, drawn out voice, "TEA?"

"N-n-no. No. No tea." Clara swallowed and remained as still as possible, not even daring to breathe. The woman held her gaze for a few seconds longer and then dropped her arms. Her expression was blank again, the same drowsy eyes and the same open, drooling mouth.

Clara stood there for a moment in shock, the children now hiding behind her as if they were afraid of their mother's sudden movement. Clara let out the breath she had been holding and looked behind her to see the frightened children.

"What's happened to her?" the boy asked.

Clara raised the hand that she had shaken the woman with and saw that it was wet. The moisture was the same colour as the woman's skin and when she looked back, the woman's skin was rippling like slightly disturbed still water. Her palm still had the residue from the woman's skin. She held it to her face and smelled it. Clara's eyes widened and she stared at her own palm.

"Tea," she whispered.

X X X

"Where is she?" The Doctor demanded as he strutted towards the bar keep who was polishing the countertop now. The Doctor's voice was calm, controlled – cold. His hands kept rubbing together in front of him, as if trying to hold himself back.

"Sir?"

The bar keep was barely paying him attention. The tea and pastries were still there and The Doctor could not bear to look at them. He could feel the battle of heartbeats in his chest; four rhythmic and frantic beats that rung loudly in his ears. He was sucking his stomach in and gritting his teeth together. He cracked the muscles in his neck and glared at the bar keep. The guard he was talking to previously was trailing behind him as if he was waiting for The Doctor to cause a "fracas".

Got to find Clara. Got to find Clara. Got to find Clara. Got to find-

"Clara." Her name tasted bitter in his mouth. He had lost her again. You're making a habit of this - he remembered her saying - getting us lost. "My-" The Doctor paused, licking his lips. "Friend."

The bar keep only looked at him with those blank, black eyes. He was still for a moment and he stared at The Doctor, which made him uneasy. Still, he did not waver, he did not shake – Clara was still missing.

"Was there something else you wished to order, sir?"

The Doctor then put both his hands on the table and lifted himself on it, leaning in to the bar keep – almost nose-to-nose. The bar keep didn't even flinch, didn't even blink.

"Don't play with my patience. Don't think that even for a moment you can frighten me or distract me so make this easier on yourself and tell me where she is. Tell me where she is now." The Doctor's voice was a deadly, hoarse whisper. The guard from behind him then took him by the elbows and shoved him away from the bar.

"This is your second warning, sir," said the guard plainly, no threat in his tone. "Refrain from causing a fracas. Causing a fracas on Space Station Four is punishable by-"

"Expulsion, yes, I know!" The Doctor pulls his arms back and straightened his back. He scowled at the guard but the guard did not flinch either, as if he too was in a perpetual state of unhappiness, like the bar keep. The guard did not respond. He simply went back to his previous uncaring stance.

He turned around and walked towards the spinny stool he was previously sitting on. The guard was still following him like a shadow but his eyes showed disinterest as if he were half asleep. The Doctor looked around the room and saw the same plain gaze on everyone else. They were keeping to themselves, eyes concentrated only on the teas in front of them, drinking over and over again as if stuck in an infinite loop of pouring and drinking, never even waiting for the drink to cool down.

He then looked at the tea he had ordered for Clara and for himself, he watched the lazy spirals of smoke that came from the top of the cups. He took a jammie dodger and sniffed it, taking a piece of the biscuit and rubbing it between his fingers, letting the crumbs fall. He crumbled a bit of it into his tongue and immediately spit it out. He tossed the biscuit over his shoulder. He rested both his hands on the table again, bending down until his head was level with the teacups and pastries. He took a good long sniff at the tea, dipped a finger into it, and let a single drop touch the tip of his tongue. He had the same reaction.

"Hmm, that's new," he muttered to himself. "A loosely attached electronic parasite in the chemical composition of the tea and pastries – atomic in size and very nearly undetectable to anyone who ingests it. Oh-ho-ho! Well, you've got a very special tester today, haven't ya', you beauty? So, what are you then, ey? What do you do?"

The Doctor rose from his crouched position to see that the bar keep was staring at him in a way that made The Doctor somewhat uneasy, only to bump into the guard who was still behind him. He turned and saw that the tea drinkers were now all staring at him as well. They were slowly rising from their seats, as if to advance on him.

"Oh great," he mumbled. "The welcoming committee."

He whipped out his sonic screwdriver and scanned them all as he carefully stepped back towards the table. When he felt the table against his back, the crowd of tea drunks were already quite close, moving at a seemingly glacial pace, some of them with tea drooling out of their gritted teeth. They didn't look too dangerous but then The Doctor did see the man who got pulled into a lift so he knew better.

"Slightly menacing crowd of tea people drooling all over the place – oh, look at the muck you've all left behind! See if you get good marks on this health inspection!" The Doctor tried to side step but there were tea people already there and he stepped away quickly, his arms then fidgeting to the side as he did so. He brandished around his sonic screwdriver at them but no change. "Ah, can't figure out the right setting!"

The Doctor tried tapping his sonic screwdriver against his palm, twisting it around, and still couldn't find the proper frequency. "Oooooh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. Well, I'd love to stay and chat and lecture you lot on the importance of cleanliness in the work station but that would be a lie and you're all quite threateningly walking towards me like I'm in a trap and do you know what happens when you put me in a trap?"

The guard was raising his arms slowly as if to grab The Doctor. "You have been causing a fracas, sir. You must be expelled from this Space Station."

"Ah no, no, no, you still don't get it," said The Doctor, holding his sonic screwdriver near his face. "You see, you've all got me trapped. Or so you'd like to think and when people think that they've got me trapped, you know what happens?"

The Doctor pointed his sonic the chandeliers. The guards and the tea drunk crowd were reaching out to grab him. The Doctor yelled: "This!"

The claw of the sonic opened, the green light turned on, and the beautiful buzzing sound resonated across the room. Small explosions turned the lights in the chandeliers off and the room was completely dark.

When the lights turned back on, a few seconds later, The Doctor had escaped. And the table was one short of a cup of tea.

X X X

Clara and the children were in a dark corner of the prison they were in. She learned that she was in a prison soon enough when she nearly walked into an invisible electric wall. The children had pulled her away and when they told her why, she tried touching the fence, it sent a small shock through her finger and the invisible wall rippled with tiny waves of electricity.

"Okay, this is bad," she muttered to herself. What was going on? There were people who seemed to be made out of tea and mad about it, just looking blankly into nothingness. She took a deep breath, surveyed her surroundings, and nodded once. "Right then. First things first-" Clara knelt down to be level with the children who looked at her with scared crystalline eyes. "You want to tell me what your names are?"

The little girl spoke first. "I'm Amethyst 4-3-9. This is my brother Quartz 5-9-1-2."

"Hello, then. My name's Clara – Clara Oswald," she said, holding both the kids' hands. Quartz swallowed and brushed at one of his eyes. He was trying not to cry. "You want to tell me wha's goin' on? What you know?" Her tone still gentle, mimicking the calming tone her mother used to use when she was telling a story.

"We don't know." Quartz's voice broke in mid-sentence. "Our mum took us with her here to sell some sort of special crystal she's been growing. She's always wanted to go and wanted us to come with her because she likes the human tea they sell here and thought we might like it too."

"What were the crystals for?"

"Those light… things up there, I think."

"Everything was so pretty and it all smelled so nice," Amethyst continued. "Our mum was so excited that right after she sold the crystals, she wanted to try the tea. She'd only had one cup and then wanted another straightaway. I wanted to try it too but she wouldn't let me. She just kept drinking and drinking and I got really scared because soon, she started to change."

"What'd you mean 'change'?"

Amethyst and Quartz held out their arms and showed it to Clara. "Our mum looked like us until… until she started turning into one of them."

Quartz began to cry. Clara gently pulled them to her sides until they were seated down. Their skin was rough and the cracks where the gems for which they were named for were jarred and sharp. Still, she held them and patted their arms. "'S alright now. We'll figure something out. Brave heart, Quartz and Amethyst. That's what The Doctor says."

"Doctor who?" asked Amethyst.

"Search me," she replied. The question made her smile. "But if you're going to count on anyone, count on The Doctor. If anyone can get us out of here, it's him."

"Where is he, then?" Quartz piped.

"On his way," Clara replied a little too quickly. A corner of her lips perked up into a kind of smirk.

"How do you know he's coming to help us?"

"I don't. But I know. I know he is. He's The Doctor and he'll always come and find you. That's what he does."

"But we can't just sit here!"

"We're not," said Clara. "We're going to find out wha's goin' on."

"But they're going to start absorbing soon!" Amethyst hugged Clara by the waist.

"They're going to start to what?"

"The people in chains, over there. They're going to start absorbing soon and turn them into one those- those- those tea people!"

"What're you talking about? What do they do? What do they absorb? What happens to them?"

Suddenly, the crystal chandeliers became blindingly bright that Clara and the children had to cover their eyes from it.

"My, my, she is a curious little flavour!" a woman's voice rung out. The voice vibrated and sounded as if it were what fish sounded like underwater. Clara stood immediately. She had to blink several times to make out a shape that was coming out from the edge of the room. The people hanging on chains had not moved and she noticed that in the light, they still had some colour and some oddity to them.

"Oh and look now, my darling. There is a little tinge of fear mixed in," a man replied in the same timbre. When Clara looked, there was a couple dressed smartly, like they were on their way to a business meeting. Once her eyes adjusted to the light, she saw their faces and swallowed back a gasp. Their faces were long and marked with wrinkles. The eyes were long ovals, taking most of their faces, and their mouths were so much like the mouths of anteaters she'd seen on the telly.

Clara tried pushing the children gently behind her, her arms trying to protect them. "Who are you?" she asked loudly. "Who are you and what are you doing to those people?"

"Bravery's a rare spice, I haven't had that as of late," the woman told the man beside her. "Could I keep this one, darling? As an evening soother?"

"I suppose we can spare one," the man replied.

"WHO ARE YOU?" Clara shouted. "What are you doing to those people? Answer me!"

The man chuckled and snapped his long, tentacle-like fingers twice. "Take the crystallines to the wall but save the human female for later. It's tea time."

From behind them, there were two men who had the same grey tea-skin as the others. They had nozzles on their nose with some odd brown liquid, which Clara assumed was tea, and two small tanks they were on their backs. They grabbed the children from behind Clara and she barely had time to turn around to see them. She tried to yell for them back and nearly hit the electric wall. The children yelled for her but she could do nothing.

"Let them go!" Clara yelled helplessly. "What are you doing to them?"

The two tea-men had strapped the children to a nearby wall and chained them there. The children cried for Clara and called out for help but tea-men did not budge. The woman clapped her hands and long, thin tubes fell from the ceiling – like oxygen masks on airplanes. Immediately, the chained people began to stir and reach for the tubes with their tongues. Some tea-men and women, all with the same nozzles and tea tanks, came from the shadows and put the tubes in the chained people's mouths. Two of them forced the tubes on the crystalline children. At once, brown fluid dripped from the tubes and was fed to the chained people. After a few seconds, even the crystalline children drank willingly. All the while, the crystal chandeliers flickered and glowed brighter.

"No! No, don't drink anything!" Clara tried to yell but to no avail. Oh, Doctor. Where the hell are you?

"You asked who we were, my dear." The couple were now near the border of the invisible electric wall. The only reason Clara knew they were at the border was because a small wave of electricity rippled when they were near it. It was the woman who was speaking. "We are Brewers – the finest Brewers in this galatic vector and soon, the Brewers in the universe."

"And what are we doing?" continued the man, who Clara assumed was the woman's husband. "The answer should be simple enough even for a primitive human mind, no matter how delectable. Why – we're feeding the livestock."

X X X

A/N: Oh my stars, you magnificent people!

The positive response to this fic was overwhelming and quite humbling. Thank you so much for the kind reviews you left and I'm very, very grateful to you all! I hope I do justice to this story and I fervently pray that this is a story that you all can enjoy. In my fantasies, this is a Doctor Who prose thing that I write for the BBC, if they would be so kind to hire little 'ol me.

Honestly, I just have all the muse in the world for this ship and Nightmare in Silver and that stupid, liferuining prequel just sends me over the edge. Expect an update soon enough! This story will be finished before the finale on Saturday, I promise!

Stay tuned! Review, if you would be so kind. I do love getting feedback from you all. I'll get you a gold ticket to the Spacey Zoomer if you do! Free ice cream!

xx, Jonnah.