Hey everyone! I meant to finish this sooner, but I made it extra long to make up for its lateness. Hope you enjoy! Reviews are always appreciated.

14: Sauna

A Bill and 12 story (pre 10.5 Oxygen)

"I've been in a situation like this before."

"We're stuck on a spaceship heading straight towards a sun!"

"It happens."

Bill turned from the window with one of the looks the Doctor had grown almost afraid of; usually she followed that look up with a smack on his arm, or his head when he was being especially frustrating.

To his relief, she looked back out the window and leaned on its frame, sweat rolling in beads down her forehead. Her denim jacket was tied around her waist, jeans rolled up to her knees, but still she could hardly catch her breath with how hot it was getting. Even her hair seemed to be feeling the heat, a few curls loosened and hanging limply beside her face from the alien rubber band she'd fastened into a makeshift hair tie.

"The crew isn't even here."

"Maybe they just skipped out for lunch."

Suddenly, a mechanical voice from the ship's inner workings stated matter-of-factly, "Impact in thirty minutes."

From the floor where he was sat against the deadlocked door, the Doctor joked "Thirty minutes is loads of time."

Bill's expression shut him up again.

The Doctor leaned his head back against the metal door, glad that at least it still retained some of its coolness. He worked off his sticky, heavy jacket and threw it carelessly onto the floor of the ship. Even that small exertion forced him to close his eyes for a second and try to regain some strength.

Bill came and sat beside him, keeping a good distance so they wouldn't accidentally share body heat. The sun streaming in from the opposite wall of windows made both of their faces glow in its light, as if taunting them. The Doctor's eyes were still closed, but his student knew that he was thinking instead of resting. She couldn't help interrupting him anyway. "It's like a sauna in here."

Bill leaned her arms on her knees and folded into herself, brushing some of the sweat off her brow with her arm before dropping her head onto her knees. The Doctor shifted over to the perpendicular wall and gestured to the place he had just been sitting. "The door's still cool."

Bill slowly lifted her head and tested the temperature of the door with the back of her hand. Her eyebrows furrowed. "Doctor...how is that possible?"

The Doctor shrugged, lost in a different thought. He replied half-wittingly, "It's probably the kind of metal it is. Maybe it retains its temperature better, like a thermos."

Bill felt around the door, always coming back to the same area a half a meter or so off the ground. "It's only this one spot that's cool. The rest of the door is just as hot as the wall."

The Doctor looked at her curiously and examined the door himself, finding new energy. "You're right. But how…"

A hissing sound emitted from the other side of the door and the Doctor jerked his hand and face away just before a large circle of metal was shot clear across the room, crashing into the opposite wall with such force that the Doctor and Bill felt the reverberations run through their arms and legs. On the opposite side of the door, a man in a spacesuit peaked his head down by the new hole.

"Wash, there really are people in there!"

A voice chimed in from behind the driller. "Well get them out, then. Sealy, get the bigger drill."

Bill and the Doctor got to their feet as a third crewmember, the man called Sealy, muttered, "What difference will it make?"

Wash reacted with a barking direction to follow her orders, and something about leaving no one behind. Bill and the Doctor heard Sealy's footsteps track down the corridor as he hurried off.

The driller bent down to the hole in the door again, worry etched across his face. "Are you two alright?"

Bill chuckled. "Just a bit sweaty, I think."

The man reached a hand awkwardly through the hole. "My name's Brent. Well, Lieutenant Walker here, I suppose." His expression turned solemn. "I'm sorry we deadlocked the door on you. We blocked off this whole section so we could keep the air conditioning where we were. No one else was onboard."

The Doctor turned towards the window with a lopsided grin. "That's the problem with stowing away. No one ever knows you stowed away, if you do it right. You always miss out on appetizers and magic shows."

Bill looked at him curiously, but shook her head. "Anyway, we just gotta get everyone to the TARDIS, yeah? Simple enough. Right, Doctor?"

The Doctor was still staring out the window, eyes wide. "Bill."

"Yeah?"

"Look."

Bill looked out the window and her heart sank. The blue box was drifting calmly just outside, too far to get to but close enough to taunt them as the sun glowed eerily behind it. "You've got to be kidding me."

The Doctor was just about to reply when Bill pulled him roughly towards herself, away from the door. A second later, the drill let out a loud hiss and an even larger chunk of the metal door shot clear across the room, almost cracking the window.

While Wash and Walker berated Sealy and called out a series of both protocols and obscenities, the Doctor looked at Bill with a smile. "This door is pretty cross at me today, isn't it?"

Bill kept her hold on his sleeve and pulled him back with her deeper into the room. "Okay, tell me what's on your mind."

"What do you mean?"

"You only make jokes like this when you're trying to distract us, or you know something bad and you don't want to tell me yet."

The Doctor furrowed his eyebrows. "I don't do that."

Bill tilted her head at him. "Yes, and you're doing it right now." She let go of his sleeve and sighed. "Just tell me."

The Doctor took a moment before answering her, eyes turning to stare blankly at the wall. "I don't know what to do."

Bill hooked her thumbs into the belt loops of her jeans. "Well, that's alright. We'll think of something. What did you do last time? You said you were in a situation like this before."

"Last time?" A cringe played at the Doctor's lips. "Last time I ended up with a sun entity inside me."

Bill's eyes widened in horror as the Doctor looked over her shoulder at the crew. "You aren't harnessing that sun's power, are you?"

Wash replied simply, "That's banned by almost every law in the galaxy."

The Doctor nodded. "Finally, someone gets it."

The voice from the ship filled the space again, it's light voice cold and vacant. "Impact in fifteen minutes. Temperatures reaching critical levels. Air conditioning shut down to retain energy reserves."

Bill fanned herself with her hand, wiping her brow with the shirt tied around her waist. "Doctor, we need a plan."

But his eyes were already lit up. As the space filled with even more heat, forcing Bill and the crew to their knees from a simple lack of energy, the Doctor seemed to gain more strength and power. "It's automatically rerouting the power. So that means there is still energy, and the ship is still working. Oh, this is easy. We've just gotta get to the engine room, turn on the carbonic resistor, and then re-calibrate the network in the main hub."

Wash, leaned on her knees, muttered, "Where were you half an hour ago when we were trying to think of something like that?"

"Well, you deadlocked me in here. No, nevermind, forget that. No time for me to be an arse. Let's go, Bill."

Bill looked up at him, breathing heavily. "I can hardly move."

The Doctor glanced at the crew, two of whom were in the same position as Bill. Sealy was lying on the floor, practically panting for breath. The Timelord knelt down beside his companion, even he wiping at his brow, breathing deeper than usual. "I know. I know. But I need someone I can trust."

Bill ignored the comments made by the crew after that statement and got to her feet. "You're scared."

"I know it's not the same situation as last time, but...if it goes similarly…I can't do it on my own."

Bill took his hand in her own. "Okay. Let's go."

They hurried past the exhausted crew and into the corridor beyond, where the air was just a fraction thinner. Bill breathed in the cooler air with thankful lungs just before the Doctor pulled her down the corridor, his long legs carrying him quickly towards the engine room.

The further down the halls they went, the more the temperature seemed to climb; the ship tilt back and forth. By the time they reached the enormous engine room, every alarm was going off and the whole ship was vibrating. The Doctor dashed up a flight of steps to the control deck, where he pulled a panel off of its hinges with his fingers. Inside was a tangle of wires and plugs.

"Bill, can you come up here?"

She followed him up the steps quickly; a bit too quickly. Suddenly lightheaded, she staggered into the control panel and leaned on it with both arms. The Doctor gave her an owlish look with wide eyes. "You okay?"

Bill waved him off. "Carbonic regulator, right? Where's that?"

The Doctor took out a plug and hooked it onto a different plug. "Well, we have to make one."

Bill's eyes widened. "What?"

The Doctor forced two wires together, generating bright white sparks that lit up his face like a mad scientist. "Do you see a hole with a blue rim?"

Bill looked over the controls, feeling almost ill. "Yeah, yeah."

The Doctor handed her one of the wires. "Put this in it."

Bill took it but gave him a skeptical look. "Is it safe?"

"As safe as anything on a ship eight minutes from a sun."

Bill shrugged and plugged in the wire. Suddenly another alarm started going off in her ear. Before she could work out what they had accomplished, the Doctor was pulling her by the hand back down the steps.

"Now comes the tricky part. We have to get to the main hub, rework the controls, and steer the ship away from the sun."

The computer's icy voice echoed through the corridor they were tiringly sprinting down. "Five minutes until impact."

Bill's legs moved just a bit faster. "And we have five minutes to do it."

Between breaths, the Doctor muttered, "Just a day in the life."

Panting and bleary-eyed, the Doctor and Bill clambered into the main hub, where he instantly went to the controls and she instantly dropped to her knees. The Doctor opened the control panel with one frustrated hit and looked at the circuits running their course within. "Bill, do you see these circuits?"

Bill forced herself to the controls. The Doctor pointed out the complicated board and she felt her head ache. "I need you to move these around so all of the ends point to the left."

Bill eyed the circuits and shook her head. "I don't know how to do that!"

The Doctor wiped his face with his hand. "It's okay. It's like a puzzle. You just have to think. It's no harder than any of the exams I've given you. You're an excellent thinker, Bill."

She got to work with a little added energy from that compliment, but her head and her chest were telling her just to have a lie down and make him take care of everything. Throwing caution to the wind, she moved around the circuits, brain firing at maximum speed.

Beside her, the Doctor was pressing nearly every switch, dialing this and cancelling that. Even more alarms sounded off, ringing through Bill's cranium. "What are you doing?"

The Doctor grabbed onto what looked like an arcade game controller with both hands. "Steering."

Bill was just placing the final board when the front window cracked under the pressure of the sun's heat, its tendrils cutting out and spider webbing across the glass. The Doctor's eyes went big, but he muttered, "Ignore it. Fear won't help."

Bill shook her head and placed the final circuit, and the ship finally stopped moving towards the sun. Her lips parted in a big smile as she let out a whoop of laughter. The Doctor grinned only for a moment. "Great job, but we're not out of the woods just-"

One small piece of the window, just between two larger cracks, suddenly fell to the floor, opening up the hub to the vacuum of space. The air filled with chaos, then, as Bill fell to an awkward sitting position and the Doctor struggled to remain upright, turning the wheel sharply to the right.

Air whizzed forward and back, whipping at both of their hair and sending loose parts and untethered objects all across the room. Bill found herself holding tightly onto a railing whispering comforting words to herself as, in front of her, the Doctor slipped suddenly onto the floor, sending the wheel spinning on its own in every direction. The ship followed suit, propelling the Doctor down a steep slope toward the back wall. Bill grabbed onto his arm and helped him up to the railing just before he was sent into free fall.

Trying to find his breath and his voice as he looked at his student in wonder, the Doctor stammered, "You're...a lifesaver today, Bill."

A moment later, someone rushed in and grabbed the wheel, ordering someone else to plug the hole in the window and yet another to make coordinates. The Doctor and Bill soon found themselves both lying on the hub floor, holding onto the bottom rail with a grip so hard it hurt. Both had sweat gleaming on their forehead and were practically gasping for breath, but both were miraculously unscathed. The Doctor closed his eyes and grinned.

"You two alright?"

Bill sat up slowly, finding Walker kneeling in front of her. "Yeah, yeah we're fine. You?"

"Fine." He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. "Hey, ugh, we're sorry. About not going with you."

Bill shook her head. "Don't worry about it. I wouldn't gone either if I wasn't worried what this genius would get himself into."

The Doctor sat up and gave Bill a mock-offended look. "I am still your professor, Bill. You're not supposed to sass a professor."

Bill turned to him with a smile. "Do you ever do what you're supposed to do?"

The Doctor stuttered. "That's...beside the point."

Bill smiled and looked off out the window, where the TARDIS was floating just outside. "Ugh, Doctor?"

The Doctor follow her gaze. "Ah, right, now we've got time…" He turned to Wash, who was still at the controls. "Do you think you can link with my ship?"

"That box?"

"Yes."

The Doctor and Bill shared a knowing smile as Wash shook her head and redirected the ship.

"I'm fine!"

"Just drink the bloody water. You were wearing long sleeves all day. You must've been boiling."

The Doctor took the glass from Bill with the face of a five-year old forced to eat their greens. "You don't have to take care of me."

Bill was stood in front of him, hands resting on her hips. He took a sip and he could've sworn heaven lay in H2O molecules. He downed the glass full in less than ten seconds. Bill smirked, but didn't say anything.

The Doctor set the glass roughly onto the control panel and bursted into action, flipping switches and pulling levers. "So where do you want to go? Spa? Maybe a volcano? Ooh, how about Venus?"

Bill's look shut him up again, and he relented. "JK, as the kids say." Bill groaned. "How about the Northern Lights? I hear they're lovely this time of year."

Bill smiled and nodded her head. "Sounds perfect."

They set off to the North Pole, and Bill felt her body cool off just at the thought.