Peri and Marion had been walking through the TARDIS corridor when Marion had suddenly stopped, fallen, and then disappeared moments before she would have hit the ground face first.

This had been shocking the first time this had happened, but Peri was growing used to it.

That had been a few hours ago. And that meant that it had been long enough that a future or past Marion could appear back in the TARDIS at any moment.

In fact, she might've appeared already come to think of it. Marion might've appeared in her room and gone straight to sleep.

That wasn't too unusual.

Peri considered peeking inside of Marion's room to check, but it occurred to her that she wasn't sure where Marion's room was. The TARDIS's hallways changed all of the time, and despite what the Doctor might claim, Marion was the only one who seemed to be able to get to the room she was trying to get to when she wanted to get to it on the first try.

Then she heard the whip crack of displaced air, a thud, and a low, pained groan and realized that she didn't need to find Marion's room at all when the woman was right there.

Peri crouched down to help Marion to her feet.

She was either the same age or older than the Marion she'd just met. Peri couldn't tell Marion's different marks apart as well as the Doctor could. She hadn't been there for most of them. And Marion didn't wear shirts that were low cut enough for her to check for the ones she had.

Peri wondered if Marion had always dressed that way, but she was certain that Marion wouldn't answer if she asked.

Well, no she'd answer. But she doubted that whatever answer she got would be truthful.

"Peri, you're a peach!" the woman thanked her. "Now, where were you just?"

"Varos,"

"Ah." Marion nodded. "Weird dystopian reality TV bullshit." And Peri couldn't tell if it was because she was remembering or if it was because she simply knew.

"Yes."

She thought the Doctor might be able to tell, but, even before the Caves, it was difficult at first to tell when the man knew what he was talking about and when he was pretending to know what he was talking about unless you knew the truth for yourself.

The pair were a lot alike that way.

"Sounds to me like my timing is perfect then!"

"Perfect? For what? Please don't tell me you're going to ask the Doctor to pilot the TARDIS somewhere."

"What?" Marion shook her head, "Oh, absolutely not. You've been through a long day. I wouldn't want to risk dragging you somewhere and making the day even longer. No no no, I was thinking that now would be a great time for a movie night!"

"A movie night?"

"Yeah, a movie night. A cartoon obviously. Nothing live-action. You deserve it! Where's the Doctor? Is he in the console room?" Marion shook her head and brought her right hand to the TARDIS wall, "Don't worry. I'll find him. There should be a room with couches and a TV-" Marion paused for a moment, "two lefts and a right from here. I'll meet you there!"

And then Marion took off.

The room was right where Marion had said it would be.

Peri wasn't sure how Marion seemed to always find the room that she was looking for. She also wasn't sure if those rooms even existed before Marion decided that she was looking for them and if they had always existed, if they had been in that spot before she had gone looking for them.

Marion would simply look up and smile and ask the TARDIS (or Honey as she called the ship often) where she could find one room or another and then she would touch a hand to a wall and start to walk carefully and confidently through the corridors until she got to her destination at which point she would profoundly thank "Honey" for showing her it before entering the room.

The room in question was about the size of a typical living room. It wouldn't have looked out of place in someone's house if not for the lack of windows. There was a purple couch with two overstuffed chairs of a similar style on either side. Peri sat down on one of the smaller chairs as Marion walked in after her and put the movie on. Once it was playing, Marion sat down on the couch leaning against the arm of the couch resting her elbow on a throw pillow.

"The Doctor said he needed to finish up one thing. But he'll be here,"

Peri grimaced. "He's not going to talk all throughout the movie is he?"

"Not this time at least. Don't think he'll be talking much at all."

Marion reached into her blue hip bag. The one that Peri knew on some level, Marion carried around constantly but always seemed to slip her notice whenever Marion wasn't actively rummaging through it.

The woman's arm reached down practically past her elbow and she pulled out a flat case box. Peri caught a glimpse of a woman in a green dress holding hands with a blonde man and the two of them floating in the sky.

"It's called Howl's Moving Castle. It'll come out 20 or so years after you left Earth. You'll love it I think.

Ten or so minutes into the movie, the Doctor joined the minus his coat as the girl on screen, Sophie, worked in her hat shop.

The Doctor looked around for a moment and then instead of walking towards the empty chair, wordlessly walked to the couch Marion was on, and then sprawled across it with his head resting on her leg and his long legs barely not spilling over the side.

Instead of telling him off, or shoving him, Marion leaned down and whispered something in his ear Peri couldn't hear over the swelling music of the movie. Whatever Marion said, had the Doctor lifting his head for just a moment, and Marion moving the pillow from under her elbow to under the Doctor's head. The Doctor moved around a bit more and then remained still. Marion looked intently at the TV and started playing with the Doctor's hair. The Doctor didn't say anything in response. He just closed his eyes.

Peri, not for the first time, wondered what exactly the two of them were to each other.

She knew that whatever relationship they had had to be strong.

Peri couldn't forget how angry Marion had been in those Caves when the Doctor had been hurt and Peri and the Doctor's lives had been threatened and the only reason the expression on her face and the tone of her voice hadn't appeared in her nightmares was that no matter how furious and tense she got, (and Peri could tell that she had been wound like a spring ready to snap), whenever Marion looked at her or spoke to her directly, her eyes softened and her posture calmed.

How those hands Peri had learned were capable of bending metal and breaking bones and bruising skin only held her just firm enough that she couldn't be taken away.

The thought "Marion might hurt me" had never occurred to her. And outside of accidentally gripping her arm too tight, something Marion had seemed to fret about, she doubted it occurred to Marion either.

And if Marion would do all that to keep a person she had to have only known for a fraction of the time she'd known the Doctor, well. It made some things make a whole lot of sense.

When the Doctor's face had changed, his blonde hair had curled and he'd gone from charming and polite to erratic and angry and seemed to rapidly vacillate between being violent and aggressive (with Marion determined to keep herself in between Peri and the new Doctor and within grabbing distance of the latter) and neurotic and terrified (with the Doctor determined to cower behind Marion), she'd for a moment considered than two of them might be siblings.

The thought hadn't occurred to her before she'd watched the Doctor change. But afterward, suddenly there were possibilities.

The Doctor had a fair complexion with straight blond hair and blue eyes while Marion had a strong natural tan, curly thick dark brown hair and brown eyes (at least, they'd been brown most of the time she'd seen them. She'd seen her right eye be a light brown and she'd seen it be orange. But she was fairly certain that the consistent brown of her left eye was the color she was born with).

But after watching the Doctor change, it occurred to her that if his appearance could change then perhaps at some point, the two of them had looked more alike.

Had Marion long ago been blonde and pale? Had the Doctor once had deep tan skin and thick dark hair?

Having thought she solved the mystery, she'd naturally asked the two of them the one part she wasn't sure about. She'd made her guess that Marion would be the older one of the two and then asked if they had any other siblings the two of them stared at her for a moment and then each other before Marion told her with a sort of quiet and stunned tone that they weren't siblings and the Doctor told her that they weren't even of the same species.

She had been assured by Marion that she wasn't the first person to assume she was a Time Lord and that a certain someone had refused to believe she wasn't a Time Lord even though her body worked nothing like the way a Time Lord's did and she had repeatedly said she wasn't a Time Lord.

The expression on her face as she said this suggested that the person in question might've been the Doctor, who quickly added that he was the older one.

Marion being human was hard to believe, but she'd seen plenty of strange things as she traveled in the TARDIS. And maybe the turn of the millennium had resulted in things getting stranger. For all she knew, Marion was a perfectly normal 21st-century individual.

There was a moment when she thought she had solved the mystery and that the two of them had been married this whole time.

In her defense, she wouldn't have had that theory in the first place, if not for the time they had landed on a certain planet (it might've been a moon, Peri couldn't recall) and the two of them had gotten off the ship and began holding hands, leaning on each other, and calling each other things like Darling and Dear and Love.

It explained why they had seemed so shocked when she'd guessed that they were siblings and she didn't put it past either of them, especially not the newer Doctor, to drag her with them on a date as a third wheel.

But then as soon as they got back on the TARDIS, they stood up straight, and let go of each other's hand, and Marion when asked for an explanation, had explained to Peri that the place they were visiting had odd laws about how in public adult men were allowed to be unless accompanied by a spouse.

"Then why come here in the first place Marion."

"Because there's a family that's been selling textiles for generations with a texture the Doctor really enjoys the galaxies I've explored, I've literally never found a place with better blackberries."

"And there's an amazing bookstore!"

"Right!"

"You two regularly go to a planet where you have to pretend to be husband and wife over soft clothes and good fruit."

"Yes" "Yes"

"And books!"

"And you two aren't married."

The two of them were quiet for an amount of time.

"Well the two of us have never been married on purpose," Marion said slowly.

Peri decided that she didn't want to know any further than that.

After that, she wondered if the two of them were pining after each other.

Each was unaware that the other was interested. They both seemed capable of being that level of oblivious to each other's feelings.

If so, then the fake marriage thing was even more stupid than she thought and she wasn't even going to consider the implications of "never been married on purpose".

Then she directly confronted them about it and had gotten a firm no from the Doctor and then a somewhat rambling response from Marion involving the word "amatonormativity" that was cut short with an assurance from the Doctor that it was also a "no" and a nod in agreement from Marion.

Whatever the two of them had going on had been firmly labeled by the two of them as platonic. And platonic activities apparently included the Doctor lying with his head on a pillow in Marion's lap while she ran her fingers through his hair.

At first, the man seemed to be watching the movie, and then as Sophie introduced himself to the living fire in Howl's Castle, Calcifer, his eyes slowly closed. And he seemed to still.

Marion continued to absentmindedly card her fingers through his hair as Howl fed Calcifer bits of eggshell. The Doctor's chest rose and fell steadily and his face seemed to soften.

"Is he asleep?" Peri asked.

"Yup." Marion replied, "Out like a light. Figured he might do that it's been a day. Part of why I wanted to do a movie night. This one never gets enough sleep."

"How much sleep do Time Lords need?"

"Not sure. Exactly. Much less than we do, but definitely more than he gets. That's for certain."

"What was the other reason?"

"Hn?"

"You said part of the reason you did a movie night was wanting the Doctor to get some sleep. What was the other reason?"

"Oh, because I thought you might like it."

Peri looked at the TV. "Do we need to turn down the movie?"

Marion seemed to need a moment to recognize what she'd said. Her hand paused in the Doctor's hair. "Oh no," she shook her head, "This one sleeps like the dead. He's properly out."

Peri remembered a time, not too long after she'd started traveling with the two of them, when she'd come across a sleeping Doctor and Marion had said something very different.

"Peri, the Doctor's sleeping right now. You need to be very very very quiet. You can come to another kitchen. I'm sure there's one somewhere." she had whispered.

"Why"

"I think this is the first time he's slept in weeks. I'd try to get him somewhere more comfortable, but he fell asleep by accident and if I wake him to get him at least horizontal, he'll go back to working! And he's a very light sleeper. I think if you move a spoon too fast he'll shoot awake and then he'll keep working until he can't anymore and the TARDIS has to ping me that he's collapsed on top of his work table. Again!"

"I thought you said that he was a light sleeper?"

"That was Five."

"What?"

"I think I remember what you're talking about. The man the Doctor was when you first met him. You know, Straight hair. Cricket uniform, celery corsage. The general demeanor of a young single father. A lot less colorful-"

"A lot less neurotic."

"Every version of the Doctor is neurotic," Marion said quickly. "It just- shows in different ways…" Marion looked down at the man in her lap. "Although, the ways this one shows it are far more visible than most. I'll give you that."

"How many are there?" Peri asked.

Marion's movements paused.

"That's…a question that has no right to be as complicated as it is."

"What makes it so complicated? Unless that's also complicated."

"It is, unfortunately."

"Well, could you explain it to me anyway?"

"No."

"Why not."

"Because it's personal to the Doctor."

Peri could tell from the expression on Marion's face that she wanted to drop the subject. So she brought up something else.

"If the first Doctor that I met was Five. Is that one Six? Or was Five his nickname for some other reason?"

"No, you're right. If Five was just a nickname, I would've called him something else."

"Like what?"

Marion hummed. "Cricket, on account of his outfit. Or," Marion smiled like she was telling a joke that only she would get. "Peter."

"Peter?" Peri wasn't really focused on the movie anymore. "Why Peter? Is that part of his name? His, you know, real name?"

"And as far as I'm concerned, the Doctor might as well be his real name."

"Surely he wasn't born with the name the Doctor?"

"What's that got to do with anything? Surely you don't think the name you're born with has to be your real name if you don't want it to be."

"Well no." Peri was pretty sure that based on the way she said it, No was the correct answer there. "So why Peter then?"

"I- he just looks like a Peter. I'm not sure what to tell you."

Peri supposed that the previous Doctor hadn't NOT looked like a Peter. But it seemed oddly specific.

"What about this one?" Peri gestured to the Doctor sprawled out on Marion's lap, "What nicknames would you have given him?"

"Something cat-related probably. On account of his collection of pins and also everything about him as a person." She snapped her fingers, "Oh, or maybe Joseph?"

"Why Joseph? Does he look like a Joseph to you?"

"Well, no. He looks like a Colin."

Peri wasn't sure how to reply to that.

"Why Joseph then?"

"His technicolor dreamcoat."

At least the reasoning behind that name made more sense than Colin.

Peri thought of something. "What about Four then? If there's a Five and a Six, what was Four like."

"He's taller than Five or Six. Curly brown hair, like mine. But looser and a bit lighter. He wore the longest scarf you'd ever see. And his eccentric."

"Like Six?"

"You've got to realize that they're all literally the same person. Or, fractals of the same person. But, I suppose I'd say that he was a bit more whimsical with his eccentricity. But Four was kinder. And a bit more willing to admit I was correct without claiming his idea was mine. More- open when he's being nice. Doesn't compulsively try to hide every other kind word by being a bastard. You know?"

Peri did know. And also she'd never heard the word "bastard" be uttered with such affection before.

And then there's Three. Older looking man. Significantly older. Curly grey hair, strong nose. He's a James Bond type of guy. Only he dressed like a dandy stage magician. And he gives good advice. You'd like him I think. I know he'd like you. Especially with your botany knowledge. And then there's One-"

"Did you skip Two?"

"You're going to meet him yourself eventually. Wouldn't want to influence your impressions."

"Is that a spoiler?" Peri asked.

Marion smiled at her cheekily. "Don't tell anyone!"

"Anyway, One, he's the youngest, but he looks and acts like an old man." Marion smiled fondly. "He does this thing where he'd grab his lapels and do this little laugh. And that's when you knew he was about to do something interesting and possibly explosive." Marion let out a soft sigh.

The conversation petered out after that for a bit and Peri managed to get rather invested into the movie until she realized why the wizard Howl seemed so familiar to her.

"Marion, did you pick this movie because Howl reminded you of the Doctor."

The hand that was playing with the Doctor's hair stilled for a moment.

"...perhaps. I think the Doctor might get a LITTLE bit indignant if he heard you making that comparison." she winked, "Good thing the Doctor's asleep right now."

Peri stared at Marion, "You didn't tell me what movie we were watching until AFTER you went and spoke to the Doctor. You wanted to make sure that he'd sleep through it!"

Marion just smiled at her conspiratorially and brought a single finger to her lips.

"Has Marion been to that market with Doctor's other than Six?" Yes. The shopkeepers think that she's got multiple husbands and due to an occasion where Thirteen forgot that they didn't need to do that ruse, a wife.