The thing about dealing with Androgums was that they did, in fact, have good cooking instincts, and so, their cellar smelled wonderful. Their problem wasn't with the way they spiced their food or the combinations of foods they made; it was that they didn't seem to care whether or not their food started out sentient.

Normally, the Doctor wouldn't have thought too much about the smell and would have focused on the task at hand, but in the mood he was in lately—and considering the fact that smell was the fastest gateway into memory—he couldn't help but pause and get caught up in the scent of a spicy herb that he knew had come from a leisure moon a few galaxies away from Earth. The locals had specifically set up tourist attractions with food flavored with that herb because it was so well-known.

And he had been there with Rose.

He stopped and closed his eyes, shaking his head as if he could physically shake the memory away, as if he could get rid of her face when he thought too long about the last time he'd seen her. She was happy now. Happy with someone who could live a human life with her. And that was good.

He passed a salt container and tried not to linger too long in the memory of Donna trying to find something salty for him to eat. When he thought too long about Donna, he could only mourn how badly he had failed her.

And he didn't feel much better when he thought of Martha. Martha, who had deserved so much better than him. Who he had asked too much of.

He stopped again in his search of the cellar, took his glasses off, turned them around a few times in his hands, and then put them back on. He was getting lost in the past, and as a rule, he tried not to do that. That was a fundamental rule of being a time traveler: he couldn't dwell too long on regrets or he would drown in them.

And he had plenty of regrets.

This is what happens when someone tells you you're going to die, he thought as he ran his hands over the shelves of spices and vegetables, looking for any sign of a lever or hidden switch. Stop getting lost, Doctor. You've got a problem to solve.

"Aha!" He grinned and stepped back as one of the shelves sank into the floor, revealing a corridor lit by red and yellow lights. Far down the corridor, the Doctor could see something else glowing in the next room - probably the power source for their craft.

"Knew it," he said, smiling. "There's always a hidden-" He paused and glanced to his left and right, realizing that there was no one there to talk to.

Right.

He sighed and took a deep breath, settling his shoulders as he strode into the hallway … and immediately nearly jumped out of his skin when a silent alarm went off, with flashing lights practically screaming at his senses.

"See, this is what happens when you get lost in your own head," he berated himself, belatedly pulling out his sonic screwdriver. And yes, there was the sensor he'd missed, declaring his intrusion to everyone upstairs.

Well, if his position had been announced, there was nothing for it but to run straight into the trouble, right? He rushed forward - and then yelped and jumped back when some kind of security door slammed down in front of him. A laser of some sort fired at him, and he scrambled away, waiting for the firing to die down—and knocking over a few things in the process.

"Whoops," the Doctor said, wincing at the mess of spices and other ingredients now spread out all over the floor.

He righted a jar that was still wobbling and then held his hands out, watching to see if anything else was going to fall. And then, seeing that nothing else was going to fall—and seeing that the laser had stopped firing—he turned his attention back down the hidden hallway.

"Now what have you got hidden in there?" the Doctor asked, tucking his tongue into the corner of his mouth as he played with the frequencies of his sonic screwdriver, looking for the right one to open the door again.

Before he could get too involved, though, he heard a thump.

He paused and held his breath, but now, he could also hear the high-pitched whine of weapons the next floor up as well as the sound of a struggle.

That'd be Dean, he thought to himself, smirking. Can't take him anywhere without him finding a fight.

But he was pretty sure the sound he'd heard wasn't the fight. It had sounded closer, and the sounds of the fight up above him were all muffled. No, something or someone else was down in that cellar with him. He just had to figure out where.

He held his breath, listening, waiting. . . .

There.

He wanted to rush toward the sound, but his first step was into a pile of spices, and he nearly lost his footing. In his flailing, he reached out to grab the top of one of the shelves and ended up knocking over a bag full of flour.

He looked down at himself, spitting flour out in great clouds and shaking it off of his coat. "Well," he said, shaking his head, "that's not good. Definitely shouldn't be flouring myself to make their job easier."

As soon as he voiced that thought out loud, he heard another thump—and this time, he was positively certain that he also heard a muffled sob coming from the far corner of the cellar, behind a rack of dusty wine bottles.

"Hello?" the Doctor called out, making his way through the various food supplies. "Hello, my name is the Doctor. I'm here to help," he promised as he rounded the corner of the rack of wine.

The woman sitting on the floor, tied up hand and foot and with a rag stuffed into her mouth, looked up at the Doctor with tear-stained cheeks, her eyes red from crying and her wrists and ankles raw from her attempts to escape. She was breathing heavily as he approached and closed her eyes, flinching away from him instinctively even though she wasn't trying to push herself away from him.

The Doctor paused. He could hear the fight going on upstairs still, so he didn't want to waste too much time; but he also knew that this woman was terrified and needed a kind hand. So, he forced his shoulders to drop and gave her a gentle smile. "I promise, I'm not here to hurt you," he said in a whisper.

The woman nodded, though she was still obviously terrified, her chest heaving as he came to sit beside her, her eyes closed when he reached out to remove the gag from her mouth.

But then, the second he had finished untying her, she simply fell apart, throwing herself into him so that he had no other option but to catch her as she sobbed onto his shoulder.