Z3-50

Nios

She knocked on the wall of Undercoll's morgue because the automatic doors slid open so quietly she didn't think her arrival had been noticed. She was correct in that assumption, because the knocking made Dr Cohen, who was sitting at her desk poring over a bulky computer terminal, jump. Nios flinched when she saw the fright she had given the poor girl, who looked towards the door and grew puzzled.

"Uh… hi. Sorry for scaring you," Nios said awkwardly. She was still touching her arm where she had been grabbed hours ago. When everything seemed to have been turned upside down for her, oddly enough it felt to her like Cohen's ghostly touch was the sole connection she had to her life that morning. She had gone from an idle life on the TARDIS to a wealth of possibilities and options for her future, to squandering it all by being too aggressive with a pipe. She could still feel the sensation of the Charade's head crushing underneath her strength, and the memory made her sick and ashamed.

"…Did ye want somethin?" Cohen asked her, perplexed. She tapped her fingers on her desk, like she was itching to get back to whatever she had doing. Nios didn't want to disturb her.

"I, um. Oswin's just debriefing Darling on the day we had, with the tip-off we got from the dead synthetic," Nios had to focus quite hard in order to remember Oswin's cleverly devised cover story. Yes, she was with Darling, against everybody else's better advice, all as some kind of crude favour to Nios. And because she fancied herself as a futuristic Cupid. "I thought you might want to know, since you, uh, let us see the synth. And stuff."

"Ye mumble a lot," Cohen commented.

"Right. I suppose I do, at the moment. I normally just… sit quietly," Nios said. This was, she was sure, the most awkward situation she had ever been in in her entire, short life.

"Listen, ah'm busy, so if yer gunnae talk ye'd better come down and talk while ah do this," Cohen said, looking back at her screen. She certainly was frosty, Nios thought, but it was a different kind of frostiness to when she had been speaking to Oswin that morning. A morning that felt like an age ago to Nios.

"What are you doing?" Nios asked, not quite sure if that was a genuine invitation to come down or if Cohen was just being polite and wanted her to leave. But she did as she was told and came down the stairs, albeit very slowly and stiffly. Cohen was glued to her computer again.

"Filling out a requisition form fae paint," she answered. She was fixed to the screen, but she must actually be listening and paying Nios at least some level of attention.

"Paint?" Nios looked around to see if there was a second chair. She didn't need to sit down, strictly speaking, but it sometimes made people uneasy if she stood for so long. She finally saw one stuck in a corner and went to wheel it over, Cohen not paying her much mind.

"Aye."

"What do you need paint for in a morgue?" she pulled the chair up next to Cohen – but not too close – and sat down, which didn't really make her more relaxed at all, but at least they were eye-level now. Not that Cohen was looking at her eyes, that had been the morning's excitement and the morning's only.

"Fae dissecting the bodies of invisible aliens. It's this semi-translucent paint that makes anythin ye put it oan reflect a great deal of light, like a mirror. The dead alien cloaks with a gland an when rigor mortis sets in it gets stuck like tha. Makes cuttin it up tricky. So ah need the paint, tae see'm. It's no invisible on the inside," Cohen explained. As interesting as that was, when Nios spied the requisition form on the computer, it didn't look like much, and had a lot of words she didn't understand. "So what did happen today?"

"Oh. We found a colony of synthetics living on an off-shore rig for extracting uranium from sea water, and there was a government replication trying to sabotage it so Oswin triggered the reactor to explode. After we relocated the synths to a terraformed moon in the future. More in the future than the synths are from already," Nios gave her a quick run-down of the day's events, which did not take as long as she thought they would. She thought she would have a million fascinating quips about the nature of existence and intelligent life to bestow upon Dr Cohen, but in the actual company of the girl herself she was rendered almost immobile.

"But… ye did no go with them?" Cohen asked, frowning, but not looking at Nios.

"No."

"Why?" Why? She had just been asked why she didn't go with them? "If ah could choose tae live in a whole commune of people like me, ah think ah might. Dae ye no think it would make things easier?" Nios wondered what she meant by 'people like her.' Other doctors? A whole village of doctors?

"I thought it might, but it didn't. Synths are harder to understand than humans. I couldn't work out who to trust. And then their leader… their leader was the government replication, but none of them knew, and she tried to kill Oswin, so I…" She did not want to tell Cohen what she had done. "What I did means I can't live with them now. And anyway, I think a lot of them didn't like me, more than the few that did."

"Why would they no like ye?" She was still typing things in on her paint requisition form.

"One of them didn't like me because they thought I acted too human. Another one didn't like me because I think too much and ask questions," said Nios, "But humans don't like me for the same reasons, because I act too synthetic, and because I just sit around thinking and reading."

"Reading Nietzsche?"

"Yes."

Cohen glanced at her for a moment before returning to the computer once more, "Is that all ye wanted, likesay? Tae tell us tha? Where's yer pal?"

"Telling Darling mostly the same stuff I told you, but probably with some added weirdness," Nios sighed. Oswin was probably raving about how much she wanted to screw the uranium extractor, or something. Then Cohen did look at her, but seemed to be looking everywhere except her eyes, and not focusing. Maybe it was something to do with the glasses.

"She's with Darling? Ye know Darling is obsessed with her? Ah wisnae lyin when ah told ye that this morning."

"I didn't think you were lying. Oswin's a big girl, she can look after herself. And if she can't she has an emergency teleporter."

"She's gunnae need it."

"Do you really think so?"

"Ah wouldnae say it otherwise. Why did ye no go with her tae see Darling? Ah'm sure Darling could have jist told us all what happened," Cohen went back to the computer again. There were a range of human idioms that had made very little sense to her until that moment, one of them being the feeling of one's heart being in their mouth. But at that moment, in spite of that being physically impossible for a human, let alone a synthetic who did not even have a heart, Nios felt like her heart was in her mouth. Cohen wasn't even looking at her.

"I just wanted to talk to you," she said stiffly.

"Why?" Cohen asked, picking up a biro and chewing on the end of it. It looked like it had been chewed a lot already, and since Nios couldn't see any paper she thought perhaps that pen was kept around just for chewing.

"Because… I…" she faltered. She did not know what to say. She didn't even know anything about Dr Cohen, didn't know her first name, where she lived, if she even liked girls, or if she liked anybody at all. What was the reason for all this? Maybe it was all ridiculous. She was sure it was, all of a sudden, completely ridiculous. A stupid idea of Oswin's, Oswin the Lunatic, Oswin who was clinically insane and really ought to be institutionalised. She should probably just run away and rest after the day she had had, and forget all about this Cohen business.

And then Cohen looked at her again when she couldn't manage to speak.

"I think you're really pretty." Cohen dropped her pen on the table, but did not appear to notice. "Um. Sorry. I, uh, don't really…"

"You don't really think I'm pretty?"

"No! I mean, yes. I mean – I do think that, I just don't know what to say," Nios said. She was very glad that synths could not blush, but feared that her stiffness and jerky movements might give her terror at the whole situation away. "I like you. I think."

"Are ye joking?"

"Joking?"

"Ah can't tell when people are joking."

"I'm not joking."

"Right… are ye sure?"

"No. I've never liked anybody before."

"What about Oswin?"

"What about Oswin?"

"Ye jist talk about her a lot. An she says those things about ye."

"She says things about everyone, she's deranged, I promise. She's completely devoted to her boyfriend, too, I don't know why she pretends not to be. The thing about Oswin is she's, um, ill. Clara always says she's ill."

"How can someone dead be ill?"

"Mentally ill. It's personal, though, not really my business, so I shouldn't talk about it," Nios said.

"Look, ah mean this in a nice way, but ye willnae like us if ye get tae know us," Cohen said, "In fact, ah dinnae understand how ye like us now. Have Elliott and Christina been saying things about me? Did they tell you something?"

"They haven't told me anything. I don't really know anything about you, except that you're easier to talk to than anyone else I know and I only met you this morning. I don't even know your name."

"Ye think I'm easy tae talk to? Me?" Cohen evaded Nios's attempt to learn her name.

"I'm sorry – are you straight?"

"No." Like when her heart had been in her mouth, now she felt her non-existent heart leap.

"Why don't you believe what I'm telling you?"

"It's no that I don't want to, it's jist ah have tae be careful. Ah dunno if I can trust ye. Ah cannae tell when humans are lying tae us, let alone a synthetic, when ah've never even met one before," Cohen said, "So ah jist have tae trust that people are telling the truth because ah find it hard tae even think about lies."

"What do you mean?"

"It's jist, how are ye supposed to think of lying? The truth is stagnant and singular and fact, and ye cannae dispute the truth, but as soon as someone brings up lying the possibilities are so infinite ah cannot make sense of them. It's hard enough not being able tae read anyone's faces," she said.

"I don't get it."

"Did they really not tell you anythin?"

"No."

Cohen sighed, "Ah'm autistic."

"Oh," Nios realised, "Okay. That makes sense."

"Is that all yer gunnae say?"

"What else should I say?"

"It usually scares people oaf. But then, so does the bit where ah collect an preserve dead things," Cohen said, frowning, "Ye ken ah'm no joking about that? It's no jist a few, it's a lot of creatures."

"Are they all organic, biological creatures?"

"…Aye."

"Well, then. Maybe I'm the only thing whose death you aren't fascinated by. I'm just a bunch of metal and cables on the inside," Nios said.

"Yer a machine… and a machine… likes me?"

"I'm a machine with emotions."

"Ah didnae say ye weren't, yer just… fascinating."

"Fascinating in a you-want-to-dissect-me-on-a-slab kind of way, or in a you-might-be-willing-to-date-me kind of way?" she asked carefully. Cohen didn't look at her again, she looked away at her keyboard and tapped her fingers again, thinking.

"…The second one."

"That was my favourite one. So, um, a date, then? Maybe? If you don't mind? You don't have to say yes, obviously – just because I'm here don't think that you have to say yes if you don't want to-"

"Yes."

Nios faltered, "What did you say?"

"Ah said yes."

"But I said you don't have to say yes."

"Dae ye want us tae say no?"

"Of course not! It's just…" she could hardly believe her ears. Had Oswin been right? Really? She knew what she was talking about? It seemed much too good to be true, but at least it was putting her murder of the Charade out of her mind; she would rather pretend that hadn't happened, and try her best not to think about it. "It's just that I'm nervous. And I still don't know your first name!" she protested, "I don't know what to do after this bit. I don't know where to go. You know I'm from a hundred and fifty years in the future and I've lived in captivity more or less my whole life?"

"Ah can think of somewhere," Cohen said, "Somewhere guaranteed tae see if the stuff in mah flat will scare ye oaf without ye actually havin tae go intae the flat. Ah dinnae like people in there in case they move things." So Cohen was actively going to try and spook her on their first date. She did not know if she liked that or not. Nios was just glad she hadn't suggested flying off somewhere in the TARDIS. "When are ye free?"

"That's not important. I'm always free. I haven't got a job or a hobby and only two friends and I live in a time machine."

"Okay…" Cohen said, and then she looked around for something. She picked up the pen she had been chewing that she had dropped in front of her, and then ripped the cardboard sleeve from an empty coffee cup, and began to write on the back of it. "Ye do have a phone, don't ye?"

"Yes." She scrawled something, taking time to be quite neat with it to the level that when she finally gave the sleeve to Nios it looked like it had been typed in a computer font. It was an eleven-digit phone number and then the name: Dr Hayley E. Cohen.

"Do not call us that name, though."

"Okay," said Nios. She thought it was pretty. "What does the 'E' stand for?"

"Somethin ah'm no telling ye before we've even had one date. But, ye had really better go and rescue yer friend from Darling. Seriously, likesay."

Oswin

"Babe. I am literally Cupid," she declared after throwing herself down onto the unoccupied sofa in their rooms. She had never been more grateful to collapse back on the TARDIS after escaping from a six-foot-tall lunatic of a woman who fancied herself a gender-bent Nelson and ought to go back to Trafalgar and drown. Adam Mitchell was lying with his feet up on their other sofa. He was playing games, but he stopped when she came in and made her presence very known. "Also, Undercoll's leader is like, obsessed with me."

"I don't mean to sound like you're not someone worth being obsessed with," he began, "But you do have a habit of thinking everyone is obsessed with you at some point or another." She pulled herself to the arm of the sofa and put her elbows on it and her head on those, so that she could stay lying down but watch him.

"Do you not believe me? Christina had to come and tell her to leave me alone."

"What did she do?" he asked more seriously.

"Was generally creepy. Slapped by arse, which was awful."

"Do you want me to go beat her up for you?" he asked. She tried her best not to laugh at the poor boy's sentiment, but she could not manage it. "Hey! I've got superpowers. I could beat her up. I have to… protect you, or something."

"I think she'd be more scared of Clara. Or Christina."

"Why were you at Undercoll?"

And then she sighed and told him, somewhat slowly, the events of her day, everything about the synth colony and relocation and Nios freaking out about killing another synth – and the especially attractive uranium extractor and her old skill for turning any mechanical item she came across into a bomb.

"So last week you create a city full of sentient Cybermen and this week it's a planet full of rescued synths?" he asked.

"…I guess when you put it that way it sounds like I'm some sort of hero," she said disdainfully, "Like I go around doing good things."

"You do," he said. She glared at him.

"You think too highly of me."

"No, you don't think highly enough of yourself. I think you're an angel."

"And I think you've had too many beers," Oswin said, nodding at the can in his hand.

"…It's fruit cider," he answered meekly, "I don't really like beer."

"Fruit cider? You're such a pansy. Anyway, as I was saying, I'm literally Cupid. I got Nios a girlfriend. Well, not quite, I convinced Nios to get a girl's phone number, but she wouldn't tell me much else of what happened. I don't know why not."

"Probably because you'll make fun of her and say really gross things," Adam said, "She's entitled to have privacy, you know."

"I just think it's cute…" she mumbled.

"Nios probably thinks you're being patronising, just like we did when people kept saying we were cute months ago. You should know better than anyone that people don't like their relationships being pried into." She scowled.

"I don't like you when you go being all voice-of-reason-y."

"You don't like me because you love me."

"Gross." He laughed. She watched him for a few seconds. "Come over to this side of the sofa," she entreated, considering he was in the furthest corner away from her, "I don't want to move; my leg hurts." Complaining that her leg hurt was a sure-fire way to make him do what she wanted, but it did hurt and she did want him to come closer without having to move. He shuffled over the short distance, still two leather arm-rests between them. "We haven't spent much time together recently."

"No, we've both been busy, haven't we?" he said, "I've been doing all that charity stuff and the orphanage and I had to visit Ellie because she got into trouble at school again, something to do with putting glue in a boy's hair gel." She laughed, but he looked at her seriously so she cleared her throat. "It's not funny."

"It's a bit funny."

"He had to have his head shaved, Oswin," Adam said, and she laughed again, and he kept looking at her like he was going to tell her off.

"Well he probably did something to deserve it! Ellie wouldn't put glue in a boy's hair gel unless he did something to deserve it. I should put glue in your hair gel," Oswin said.

"I don't use hair gel, I use cryokinesis."

"Then I'll put thermite in your toothpaste, how about that? I know how to make thermite with only household appliances," she said knowingly. And then he laughed, which meant she had won. "Go on a date with me."

"Just because Nios has a date you need to have a date too, now?" he jibed.

"Oh, come on," she reached over and prodded his arm, "We never go on dates."

"Because you hate them," he reminded her.

"I just want to spend time with you somewhere different," she said, "Plus, we need to be better friends, because all my other friends keep getting girlfriends and not having time to do anything anymore."

"You're the one who keeps setting them up with people."

"What can I say? I'm selfless. I've barely been spending time with you, and I've been spending even less time with Clara, I miss you both. Mainly Clara because I don't sleep next to her every night, but you as well."

"You can hang out with both of us, we could all do something," Adam said, "Well, not all of us, but you know what I mean."

"I asked you for a date! I didn't ask you to invite my little sister along to third-wheel," Oswin grumbled.

"We could go bowling."

"Bowling? With my leg?"

"There's always an arcade," he said, "And I'm sure you can still bowl with one bad leg. I've got one bad foot and it was my idea. Plus, bowling alleys always have the grossest food and I love it. I could get a slush puppy – you know I can't get brain-freeze anymore?"

"…Do you really want to go bowling with my sister and the Doctor?"

"Well, I don't know, but it'd be better with more than two people," he said, "It'd last longer."

"And getting you to last longer is something we always struggle with," she sighed. He was aghast.

"Oswin!" he protested.

"I'm kidding!" She wasn't. "Look, bench the bowling, we can do that some other time, I really do mean just the two of us somewhere. But not tonight, I'm too tired tonight. Tomorrow – are you busy tomorrow?"

"Not if you want me around I'm not," he said, "Let's go to an aquarium."

"An aquarium? Are you crazy? I hate the sea."

"You don't have to go in the sea, babe," he said, "The fish are in tanks, and they won't have a squid big enough to eat you."

"I am not going to an aquarium."

"What about a museum?"

"You mean like when we broke into that museum to chase a reanimated skeleton all the way to a zoo that time and Clara got all mopey about Thirteen again?" she challenged.

"…A different museum. Let's go to the Air and Space Museum, in Washington. Esther could come."

"Esther's not coming! Not on a date with us and especially not to Washington D.C., she'll go all weird and make us take her to Arlington National Cemetery to see her own grave," Oswin said, "Plus, what if she runs into someone she knows? She's dead. Just because you fancy Esther-"

"Which I don't."

"Which you definitely do and you're only denying it because you know that in her asexual, aromantic world you haven't got a single chance-"

"Not to mention the fact I already have a girlfriend who is making my life incredibly difficult by refusing to tell me where she wants to go on a date, even though she's the one who asked me out," he complained. She stopped talking.

"Are there any fish in the Air and Space Museum?"

"Oh yeah, they've got all kinds of freaky moon fish Buzz Aldrin found in 1969 preserved in petroleum jelly."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but Nios's new crush preserves dead things and keeps them in jars of formaldehyde," Oswin informed him curtly. He stared at her.

"…Is that true?"

"She said it," Oswin shrugged, "I think so. Elliott calls her 'Dr Death.' She's cute but I think she hates me. They were bonding about Nietzsche, and then she told me to shut up in German, which was pretty hot. And she was totally unresponsive to me flirting with her."

"Let me guess, is she obsessed with you as well?"

"No. And I'm serious about Darling, she's weird. She's like female Jack but instead of being camp she's, like, aggressive. And she has a massive navy hat and her name is Admiral Aurelia Darling. I think she's a nut-job, and that's me saying that. I don't even know if she's human." He did seem unnerved by her constant insisting that Darling was obsessed with her, which he should be, because he was her boyfriend and Darling was obsessed with her. Maybe she should order him to go try to beat her up. In fact, she definitely would, were she not so worried about Darling injuring him severely just because he was Oswin's boyfriend. He wasn't exactly good in a fight. Maybe she could convince Jenny to go teach Darling a lesson or two about consent. "…I'll go to the Air and Space Museum. Since air and space is like, the opposite of the sea."

"Do you not like the sea?" Adam asked innocently, "You never mention about how you hate the sea, that's all."

"It's big and I can't swim! Leave me alone. I hate you."

"Tomorrow, then," he smiled, "But as for right now, it's nearly eight o'clock and I haven't had anything to eat, so I thought I might go see if your sister wants to come with me to get pizza."

"Stop trying to invite my sister to do things or I'll think you fancy her as well as Esther."

"You said you missed her!"

"I do!"

"So do you not want me to ask if she wants to have pizza?" he questioned, standing up from the sofa. "And Clara's okay."

"You do fancy her."

"Alright, fine, I'm in love with Clara, are you happy now?"

"It's alright, babe," she said warmly, "I think I'm in love with Clara as well."

"Ew."

AN: I'm meant to be really briefly doing the Eleven/Thirteen regeneration in a flash-forward epilogue, but I was wondering if any of you want me to do it as an actual storyline instead? Let me know if you do or don't because I very easily could.

Also don't get your hopes up because I'm not going to write Adam and Oswin going to the Air and Space Museum, there are more pressing things going on in fic than them having a date.