She's lying, honestly. She can't imagine them being in love, hardly star-shattering love, but that's not to say she doesn't appreciate the idea of it. The Doctor was her past-heartthrob, albeit when she was 12. While many years have passed, he's—how to put this delicately—still very much got it.
But. But? Any more of this bullshit and she was actually going to forget all about everything she's come from—her family, her friends, her home.
"You do know that I don't belong here," she says, after a terse moment of silence. "I'm not...from here."
He looks annoyingly pained. "I know you're not from New Earth." His voice is tilted off, inches from bitter sarcasm.
"That's not what—"
"I know."
They stare at each other for a moment, James hugging her knees in an attempt to put some distance between the two of them. She really doesn't know what to say to him. She's starting to understand that he's as lost as she is, and that's even more terrifying to contemplate.
"What about," James swallows. "the Glitch thing? Is that also because of the soulbond?"
The Doctor, weirdly, gets a little squirmy. He coughs a bit.
"Maybe."
"Maybe?"
"It's not-it's not completely unheard of. Through soulbonds and-," he goes red. "other physical means."
She scowls.
"What?"
"It doesn't matter how you obtained your time sensitivity, we need to focus on why you—"
"Hang on, hang on." It took a moment for it to click in her head, but she's left reeling, blubbering. "You think you, like, fucked your time thing into me?" Wow. Actually, wow. Her brain feels like it's glitching. He goes even redder, eyes shying away.
"Don't be so crude," he mutters, and James tries to handle this situation like a grown-up and somewhat succeeds, as she doesn't break out into hysterical laughter.
"It wasn't my theory," she shoots back, and presses at the bridge of her nose, feeling horror bubble up and down her stomach. So in the time that the Doctor had taken away from her, they had done all sorts of...canoodling. How long exactly had she been here? "How do I get my memories back?"
"If I'd removed them, I must have had a reason to."
"Well, you better have had one," she says, feeling a subtle pressure in her head build up, the onset of a throbbing migraine. "But if we'd met in your future, won't you in the future have remembered me?"
The Doctor sits up, shifting his coat to the side. "It depends. I could've erased my own memories to avoid a paradox." He's looking increasingly frustrated. "There's just too many factors I can't count in. There's not enough pieces to the puzzle."
"So," she says, all the timey wimey mumbo jumbo giving her a headache. "To sum up. My past is your future, and we both have no idea what happened."
"Except for the soulbond."
"And the sex."
They sit, again, in terse silence. She swears to god, if she could combust, she would have done so eternities ago.
Cass-Rose returns just as James had been lulled into a false sense of security, fidgeting with the dead phone in her hand. She looks up tense at the echoing footsteps.
"Are you two enjoying your stay?" Cass-Rose snarks through the window, like they're at a five-star hotel instead of a coffin for the eternally-terminally ill. The Doctor stands, tall and incandescent, hands in his pocket.
"Let Rose go, Cassandra. The human brain is a very, very delicate thing—you can't mess with it like that."
"You liked it well enough before," she winks aggressively, her vicious smirk victorious. "Over the years, Doctor, I've thought of a thousand ways to kill you. And now, that's exactly what I've got, one thousand diseases."
James stands, recognizing bits and pieces of the monologue, her heart speeding up. There's not enough room, so she ends up with her side flush against the Doctor's—but he doesn't spare her a glance, too fixated on the woman on the other side of the green glass.
"They pump the patients with a top-up every ten minutes. You've got about three minutes left. Enjoy."
"Come on, Cassandra," James tries. "You must know it won't end well for you."
The Doctor whips his head around and she can feel him glare—NO PARADOXES, he's probably screaming inside. She winces, but Cassandra simply rolls her eyes.
"I don't know who you are, and I simply do not care." She says, her accent sharp and cutting. "It's your bad luck for getting tangled up with him. Now, hushaby. It's showtime."
She strides away, and James slumps against the side of the cell. Well, at least she tried. Now they just had to wait until every eternally-terminally ill artificially grown humans were released from their cage.
The Doctor hurriedly pats his jacket down, almost elbowing her in the process. He digs out the sonic screwdriver, raises it to aim at the door, but she grabs his wrist. "Wait."
"Didn't you hear what Cassandra said?" The Doctor demands, eyes glittering with rage. "We have to get out of here."
"Just." she lowers his arm, gripping with a strength she doesn't recognise. "Just wait." Her heart lurches as she realises that this strength could be the precise evidence of the time that she lost.
The Doctor stands still, looking through her. "You know what's going to happen."
She opens her mouth. Shuts it. "Bits of it, yeah."
"Before you came here," The Doctor starts, voice laden with weight. "I could see the universe. Whether a moment was fixed, whether it was in flux. It was my burden as a Time Lord, and it was ugly, but it was mine. It was my burden to bear." He takes the hand she's gripping him with and squeezes, firm. Firm enough to hurt. "Now, I can't see anything."
James feels so dramaturgic, like her heart's about to explode. "What-what do you mean?"
"I can't read the moments. I don't know if something is in flux, whether I can change it or not. And with you, rewriting time and risking paradoxes with each breath, I'm…blind."
James runs her tongue along the side of her cheek. "Love blinds us all?" She tries, as ridiculous as it sounds. She thinks she sees a flicker of something on his face, fondness or bemusement, she can't tell, and he lets go of her hand.
"I'm not in love with you, James," he says. "not yet."
She might have blushed if not for the door clicking open. The Doctor slips out smoothly, and she makes for a similar exit, ears tipped red. Jesus, he was good. If only she was a bit less frazzled, a bit less awkward with her body—
He closes the door on her face. James recoils, eyes gaping, and he looks back with a wince.
"I'm sorry. I have to get Rose back, I can't risk it,"
"Wait—"
"I'm coming back for you, I promise. I'm sorry." He points the sonic at the door and it locks with a solid clink, and James is left with nothing to say as the Timelord walks away. He shoots flitting glances back at her as he rushes away to Cass-Rose's side, and they disappear out of her view with the lurching horde of sick people. She doesn't even bother to slam her hands against the door, she knows it's useless, but still tears sting her eyes.
"Goddamn it," she says to nothing but thin air.
James stands there, terrified, for what feels like hours. The sick do not bother her much, but in the cage, left alone in the silence, the reality of her situation crashes in like a tidal wave; she's truly got no one but herself in this universe.
In fits of desperation, she tries to Glitch, but she never makes it long enough to return to when the Doctor was still here. She's just left feeling exhausted and bird-brained, and god, she's a fool for thinking whatever this was was even the slightest bit romantic. Even if they have a soul-bond, even if they'd fucked, that's all in the past, wasn't it? Well, the future, for him, but nonetheless.
But—the emptiness she'd felt when his mind touched hers, it was so real, so incredibly palpable. She's stuck musing on that sensation of loss when he and Rose returns, hand-in-hand.
James crosses her arms.
"You locked her up?" Rose is saying, incredulous. "Why on Earth would you—"
"I'm sorry, I had—"
"You're different, you know that? I thought it was because of the new face and new body and everything, but. I think it started when she arrived. Who is she? What aren't you telling me?"
"Rose, I—"
James clears her throat.
They fall quiet, and a swish of a screwdriver later she's stepping out into cold air, shivering from the sudden change in temperature. The Doctor looks at her with trepidation, like she's a time-bomb strapped to his body, merrily ticking away. It's easy enough to feign nonchalance, especially when she feels like she may just burst out crying if she attempts to express her own emotions.
"You're an asshole," she says, and doesn't open her mouth again until they're back on the TARDIS and the air is charged with a tightness that pulls at the inside of her heart.