Hey, do you remember that poll from back in September where I posted an emoji poll with no further context and said you'd know what it was about in April?

Well, it's April.

Their group was crowded around the table as the group started to draw circles in the blueprints. Well most of them, Edison was standing off to the side seeing as neither Tesla nor Dorothy had been willing to let him get close.

The Doctor was standing next to the Tesla looking over his shoulder.

"The tower works by harnessing the electric field of the Earth itself. Here, my magnifying transformer pumps millions of volts into this tunnel. The current races down through the Earth until it reaches the other side of the planet, and then bounces back." he continued to doodle on the blueprints, "Then it's channeled into the tower, wave after wave after wave, and up into the air. My intention was to build a series of these towers, transmitting energy throughout the ether. A world wireless system."

Ryan stared down at the blueprint in shock for a few moments. "That's Wi-Fi." he stared at Yaz and Marion, "Did Tesla have the idea for Wi-Fi?"

"Sounds like it."

The Doctor tapped on the paper, "But with enough power, it could be used to send a single bolt of lightning high up into the sky."

"Yeah, well, if we generate one large enough, it could strike the ship, like so."

The Doctor nodded and drew a lightning bolt emerging from the top of the tower.

"Yes! High five." The Doctor held up her hand. The Doctor looked from her, to the hand, and then back to her. His smile didn't leave his face, but he looked confused. "Too early." the Doctor finally said, lowering her hand.

"In a pig's eye." Edison scoffed. His arms were crossed.

"Oh, I'm sorry Thomas. I wasn't aware that you had any ideas of your own. Seemed to me like you were just standing around not doing much."

"You want to bet our lives on a contraption like this, huh? Some fantastical idea no sane man would ever invest in?"

Tesla's eyes shut tighter for a moment, and then he turned around to glare at the other man. He stepped closer and when he spoke, it was in a harsh tone only just barely above a whisper.

"At least I have ideas. You have filled a factory full of men to do your thinking for you. Half of your inventions were thought up by other people."

"Anyone can have ideas," Edison shot back, "I make them happen. All those men, all those inventions, I turn them from a sketch into real things people can buy. That's how you change the world. You're too blind to see that my factory is the best idea either one of us ever had."

"And you are too narrow-minded to grasp the genius of my work, and that is why you will never achieve real greatness. You're not a man of vision, you're a man of... parts."

"Oi! AC/DC."Graham shouted over at the two men, "You two might be the greatest minds of the age, but is there any chance you can stop squabbling while we try and save the planet?"

"We need to move quickly." the Doctor added in, "We have to prepare the tower. Here's what we're going to do." She pointed at Tesla. "You and me will finish the tower. I can extend the Tardis shields within the boundaries of Wardenclyffe. That should keep us safe... for now. Edison, Yaz, I need you to get people off the streets. The Skithra are on their way. Marion, those two won't be within range of the shields. So I need you to look after them. Make sure they get back to Wardenclyffe safely." Marion nodded sharply, "Dorothy, Graham, Ryan, find anything we can use to defend Wardenclyffe. And be fast. For all we know, they've already found us."

So, an issue with early 20th century America was that while she was sure that there was some identity or role that she could claim to possess as a woman, that would cause people to automatically agree that she had some kind of authority that should be listened to, she couldn't possibly guess what that could be.

But then again, getting people inside was mostly Edison and Yaz's job. Marion was mainly looking out for the men with the glowing red eyes and the scorpion beings.

Yaz ran from person to person telling them to go inside. None of them listened. No one seemed to care one way or the other until Edison ran towards one of those anti-Tesla newsstands, held up a paper, and started shouting.

"That fool Tesla is still experimenting with his deadly tower!" he waved the paper around, "We're as good as fried if we stay outside. He's firing it up right now! Spread the word!"

Immediately people began screaming and running and hurling their way into the nearest open door, be it a house or a business.

"No one is safe!"

Yaz glared at Edison and then ran off to warn more people. Marion ran after her.

Marion felt worried, but it was a normal level of worry. She didn't feel overly anxious, and she didn't feel dizzy. But she could tell that something was wrong. She could feel it.

"They're here," Marion whispered to Yaz.

"Where?"

"I don't know. Somewhere? Close by. They're already he-," Marion's steps stuttered for a moment.

"Marion?" Yaz looked at her in concern.

The growing sensation of nausea had peaked into arm pain and then it just stopped.

"I think The Doctor and Tesla got the shields working."

"Are you sure?"

Marion shrugged. "Somewhat? I mean I suddenly-OI!"

Marion looked out into the square. One of the NotPeople, with the glowing red eyes. The one with the bowler hat was leaning over a young boy with the newsboy cap. The boy's expression was about what you could imagine would be on the face of a small child who'd been taught about stranger danger upon being accosted by a strange man with glowing red eyes.

Marion saw the boy point up at the tower with shaking hands.

The thing that wasn't a man looked at where the boy was pointing. Marion wasn't close enough to hear the crack of electricity, but she could see the red light and when she saw it, she started running.

"HEY!" She shouted. "GET AWAY FROM HIM RIGHT NOW."

The man-shaped-being lowered his hand and turned to look at her. The kid took that time to get some distance between him and the threat.

"Get down, kid!" Edison shouted. He fired a gun at the man. Right before the bullet would have hit him, it was like he folded in on himself and disappeared.

"Where the hell did he go?" Edison exclaimed.

"Not far!" Marion said quickly. "And also, more will be coming." Marion moved swiftly towards the young boy and started pushing him toward the house that he kept glancing at. "So you need to go inside, alright kiddo? And stay away from the windows."

The moment the kid rushed inside, Marion turned back to look at Edison and Yaz.

"Right, we gotta go." Marion started grabbing ahold of their forearms and pulling them along. "Yaz, you can wonder why Edison has a gun later. Although, you shouldn't really be wondering that much because this is, you know, America and he is, you know American."

"You're American, and you don't carry a gun."

"I also have terrible hand-eye coordination. If there's a gun in my hand the safest person in the room is whomever I'm pointing at. Also, the Doctor doesn't like them. Now. Let's GO-"

As Marion said this, a giant scorpion suddenly appeared on the wall of a grocery store in a flash of red. It almost took Marion a moment to realize it was there because its appearance wasn't accompanied by the swell of nausea such things were associated with.

"Oh, my dear Lord, what is that?"

"A reason to run that's what!"

Marion grabbed Yaz's and Edison's hands and started to run. It was tricky running along with them. Neither of them could sprint for as long as she could, and she didn't want to tug too hard and cause any of them to fall over. Or alternatively, grip too hard and injure their wrists.

Not that that had happened before. And she wasn't sure if that was even a thing that could happen. But she would rather not find out the hard way.

They ran down the streets of New York. Tesla had told them there was a door that led to a tunnel that led back to Wardenclyffe and that was where they were heading. More and more scorpions appeared on the streets and on the roofs and along the walls.

Marion could hear the way they displaced the air as the and teleported in from the ship and she could hear the pitter-patter of their many feet getting closer and the screeching noises that got louder and louder.

They ran around a corner, and Marion could hear the sound of a scorpion in pursuit sliding into another scorpion.

A man who had seemingly not gotten the memo walked outside of his shop, got one look at the scorpions, and quickly ran inside his business to hide.

Smart, she was glad that he didn't die.

The three humans ran past a fruit cart that blessedly managed to not get smashed and then past a bread cart that did not. Mostly due to Yaz throwing in to block the way.

"Are you sure this is right?" Edison asked as they ran further into a dark alley.

"Tesla said it should be just... Here!" Yaz turned and pointed to a black metal door in a brick wall. It looked kind of like a place where someone would have someone else put firewood for the stove. Like one of those boxes, the milkman delivers to milk so they don't have to go inside each house. "This tunnel leads us back to Wardenclyffe."

Marion grabbed the door's handle and yanked it open.

"Get in. I'll go after you."

Marion could hear the sound of their footsteps getting louder and louder.

Edison ran in first. Then Yaz. Marion saw the three of the scorpions try to slide around the corner to them and crash into each other.

Marion decided that she didn't need to see anymore. She ducked in after Yaz and Edison and closed the door behind her with a dull click.

Marion had expected that the tunnel would be dark, but the more that she thought about it, the more that she realized that she really shouldn't have. It was a tunnel commonly used by a man whose whole thing was electricity and its uses. She should have expected the electric lights that shone brightly every few feet.

The tunnel wasn't that far. At the very least, it didn't feel far to her. She was thankful the claustrophobia wasn't something that she suffered from. The tunnel had been designed for someone a foot or so taller than her. But it was still a small space.

Edison pushed the door in front of them open and they were back in Tesla's lab. Golder hour had ended the sun was going down and the skyline looked red.

The Doctor slid through the door the moment that they came in.

"Just in time." the Doctor greeted, "We need to barricade the door now. Marion, how are you feeling?"

"How am I…fine? I'm feeling fine."

"Good." the Doctor nodded, "Great, that's just what I wanted to hear."

"Good God," Edison exclaimed.

"There's too many of them," Yaz added.

Marion ran towards the nearest table and pushed it against a nearby door. She walked back and forth, grabbing anything that seemed heavy enough to make her hands feel tingly when she picked it up and piled it on top of the table.

"Well, they may have superior numbers," Tesla nodded, he sounded out of breath. Probably because he'd just been running. "but we have superior minds." He nodded.

It finally clicked in Marion's brain that the little intents in the door were for a long piece of wood to go in between. Marion picked and Dorothy went to pick it up at the same time and slid it into place.

"We just have to hold them off." the Doctor's hands moved around quickly as she explained, "They're a hive species, so if we take out the Queen..."

"We take out all of 'em."

"Shame I didn't think to take her out when I had a clear shot," Marion mumbled under her breath.

"Yes!" the Doctor nodded at Yaz, "She's still on the ship, and hopefully we're about to zap her with a lot of Wardenclyffe electricity."

"There's a but." Graham joined in.

"Small detail." the Doctor nodded, "Once we power up the Tower, the TARDIS shields will drop, but it will be about thirty seconds before we can blast the ship. There's not enough juice for both."

"What? What's going to keep them out, then?"

Ryan who had been leaning against the wall, stood up straight.

"We are."

"Don't worry. This ain't our first rodeo." Graham assured.

"We've never been to a rodeo."

"Ryan, my man," Marion said with a smile. She spotted an axe against the wall. A decently sized one. Probably for chopping firewood or something like that. She hefted it in her hand, "The rodeo is a state of mind!"

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I have an axe."

"That's comforting,"

"Graham, I'm choosing to believe that that was genuine!"

The sun had set. All that was left of the sunlight was a bit of red over the horizon.

The Doctor and Tesla were inside of the TARDIS. Blue light traveled along a pair of wires out of the TARDIS and the lights inside of the lab flickered wildly and then shut off.

"Get ready out there!" Marion could hear the Doctor's voice, "Shields are about to drop."

Marion could feel the moment that they did. There had been a crackling in the air. A smell of ozone. A presence. And then it was gone. She took a step closer to the door the axe felt light in her hand. It hadn't been heavy when she she picked it up, but now, she had to keep gripping it lest she forget it was there.

"Shields down. A few more seconds."

"We ain't got a few seconds, Doc." Graham shouted back.

She found herself stepping forward ahead of the rest of the group and close to the door. The axe hung lightly in her hand by her side and her left arm was held out, discouraging anyone else from stepping forward enough for them to be between her and the scorpions that she knew were on the other side.

Something slammed against the door. Once, twice, and again. The desks that she had shoved against the door bought them a few seconds, but they still went flying as the door burst open. The fog combined with the blue from the tower and produced an eerie blue light.

Dozens of scorpions stood outside of the door staring at them with their red little eyes. Marion stared back.

"What are they doing?" Yaz asked, "Why aren't they attacking?"

Two of the not people emerged from either side of the doorway, lumbering slowly. However much they had cared about moving the way a human being moved they quite clearly no longer cared at all. There wasn't a significant change, but it was just enough to be unsettling. They walked slowly into the room.

"Let's see what this thing can do," Graham said, holding up Tesla's prototype deathray. "Stay out of our lab!"

The gun sparked a couple of times but otherwise did nothing.

"Oh?"

"Everyone step back," Marion said softly, but firmly, as the two not-men got closer and closer. "I mean it." she raised her voice, "Step back."

The not-men stopped. Not because of anything Marion had said. Their motives became clear as some of the scorpions moved out of the way and the Queen began to step forward. Marion gripped the axe tightly.

"This was not the plan," Edison said softly.

"It'll be fine," Marion said cooly, "Plan A never works. This is normal."

"Was this meant to be your fortress, and you its defenders?" the Queen said as she stalked forward?" Marion kept moving as she did, so as to keep her body in between her and the far less mortally challenged bystanders. "What was the plan? To shiver in the dark until we went away?"

"Oh, is that an option? That'd be lovely!" Marion shot back.

Edison raised his gun to fire at the Queen and before he could even aim it at all, her tail raised and she shot it out of his hand with a snarl.

"Oh, you really are fragile creatures, aren't you?" The Queen stalked closer to them. Marion didn't move. "It's a shame. I had such high hopes after I had heard about this one," The Queen's tail pointed toward Marion, "A miracle your world has spun on so long undisturbed. Now, tell me. Where is he?" No one responded. "No? Then which of you would like the privilege of dying first?"

Graham was closest to the Queen. Marion pushed the man back away from her claws.

"Y'know" Marion said to the Queen conversationally, "If you would just die right now, you'd save us all an awful lot of trouble."

The Queen stepped towards her. Marion felt a claw on her throat. She raised her head lightly but otherwise didn't flinch. She stared at the Queen. Her neck stung and felt wet.

And then she heard the sound of a door opening and all at once felt worried-dizzy-pain-pain-pain. Her left arm burned.

"Stop!" the Doctor suddenly yelled. Not from safe inside the TARDIS, but from outside of it, "If you want Tesla, you have to go through me."

Marion felt foolish. She had known that the Doctor was going to step outside of the TARDIS eventually. She should have tried to shift their group so that she would end up facing away from the TARDIS so that when the Doctor came out of the ship, they'd be standing in between the Queen and the Doctor. As it was, the Queen was standing in between Marion and the Doctor. She looked down at the woman and sneered.

"Doctor, did you really think I'd let you hide away down here, hatching your little plans?"

"If I'd known we were going to have a royal visit, I'd have put the kettle on."

The Queen circled the Doctor. Marion found herself creeping closer. Not quickly. She didn't want to be noticed. But she was in fact moving closer.

"As queen, I grant myself the pleasure of killing you in person."

Marion hoped that she was the only one who heard that cracking noise. Marion relaxed her hands. Her fingers brushed against splinters.

"And what are you Queen of, exactly?" the Doctor demanded, "A stolen ship and second-hand guns? A Queen of shreds and patches. You're not a ruler, you're a parasite."

"And what are you? So clever, stealing onto my ship, taking what I claimed as mine. But where has it got you? No weapons. No armour. No escape. Just the desperate hope you might change my mind."

"No, we're way past that. I gave you your chance."

"A chance to be like you?"

The Queen's back was to Marion and she was talking forward towards the Doctor.

"A chance to evolve," The Doctor said slowly and sharply, "but you were too stupid to take it. When you die, there'll be nothing left behind. Just a trail of blood and other people's brilliance. No one will even know you existed."

"It's important you understand, Doctor, that we would have only taken the engineer. Now, because of you, I will take everything. We will overrun this world and pick the bones clean. Have you ever seen a dead planet?"

Blood and static rushed into Marion's ears. She felt like someone was pressing down on her chest.

"I've seen more than you can possibly imagine." the Doctor replied.

"And yet you still think I can be fooled by the same trick twice."

The Doctor darted forward towards the table with the teleporting bracelet.

here was screaming.

Naturally, some things happened in between these events. Some that were obvious to everyone, and some that were only obvious to one, maybe two.

From the outside, the way Marion was standing still with her muscles taut swaying on her feet one moment, and then launching herself at the Queen and burying an axe right where a human might've had shoulder blades and then pulling it out and then swinging again and again until her tail dropped might have seemed like an instant snap decision of rage.

An impulsive act of protective violence. The sort that would leave a person shaking and staring down at their hands in shock wondering if they had really done that, and swearing that it had all happened so fast and they didn't realize what they had done until they had done it.

That's just from the outside.

From Marion's point of view, what happened happened like this

The pain in Marion's arm had turned to pressure in her chest and that was lessening and shifting into spotty vision.

As Marion looked just past the Queen at the two not-men holding onto the Doctor's arms.

She went from being panicked to feeling oddly calm. A sort of calm that wasn't real, but was real enough for her to at least believe that she was thinking clearly. And in this calmed state she was suddenly aware of three simple things.

The first was that the Queen's tail was rising to strike.

The second was that if she didn't do something soon, the Doctor was going to die in front of her. And if didn't matter that time would reset and no one would remember but Marion. Because she would remember. And she would remember it every time that the Doctor told her they trusted her.

And then the third was that she was holding an ax.

Admittedly, the next couple of moments did feel like a blur. Mostly because as far as she was concerned, point A (her choosing to rush towards the Queen) and point B (her swinging her arms and burying the ax as far into her back as she could with a cracking sound that Marion felt in her wrists) mattered, but what happened in between didn't.

The Queen's tail froze as she shrieked in pain and the shrieks were amplified as every other Skithra shrieked in the same tone at the same time. A terrible noise that had her shoulders hunched because she couldn't cover her ears without letting go of the ax. She hands shook as she pulled the ax again and slammed it into the Queen's tail with, just to make she that she wouldn't lift it again.

The two not-men let the Doctor go, or at the very least, let go of their grip long enough for the Doctor to pull herself away. The Queen dropped to one knee. But Marion's chest still felt heavy.

"How dare you-"

Marion was silent when she yanked the ax up and out and slammed the back end of the ax the same side where she'd slammed the front end and the Queen fully collapsed. Blood rushed loudly in her lowered the axe, and held it loosely in her hand. She stared at the Queen or more importantly, at her tail. She didn't think the Queen could lift it again, but she couldn't be sure.

The Doctor seeing the opportunity raced towards the teleportation bracelet and hurled it at the queen without another word and she disappeared.

The moment the bracelet made contact with the Queen's body, Marion heard the whirring of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver and in a flash of light the Queen was gone, leaving behind an odd blue stain. Marion wanted to ask the Doctor if she was okay, but the words were stuck in her throat, so she just stared at the other woman.

The two not-men didn't disappear. Marion grabbed the Doctor's arm and tugged her further away from them. And then turned to gently shove the woman behind her with the rest of the group. Still staring straight ahead, still her ax tightly.

The Doctor was behind her and danger was in front of her and that was how it was supposed to be.

Her hands felt sticky.

She heard a voice from behind her, and even though she was admittedly, a little bit out of it, she still knew that it was the Doctor's voice.

"TESLA! NOW!"

A sound like a dozen lightning strikes at once rung through her ears and the sky outside of the lab lit up like it was daylight. She smelled ozone. The two not-men and the rest of the scorpions disappeared in a flash of bright red light. And she could hear the sound of a huge ship rocketing off.

Marion's hands lowered, the axe dropped out of her hands with a soft clatter.

When she had burned her hands on platform five there had been a moment where they hadn't hurt at all and had instead felt cold and numb but as they had healed the fourth and third-degree burns cooled and turned into second and first and the numbness was gone and the pain came back.

That sense of calm she had felt was like the numbness of a third-degree burn and it was fading fast.

Marion took a deep breath. The breath was too deep. Or maybe it wasn't deep enough. Because she still felt light headed like she wasn't getting enough air. She took another deep breath. And another and another. She stumbled. And then it occurred to her that maybe the problem wasn't the quality of breath, but the quantity. So she tried to breathe in more and more faster and faster but that was just making her more and more light headed and then she considered that, since she was clearly breathing alright, the light headedness meant that the Doctor was still in trouble! And she had dropped the axe! Like an idiot. Marion reached down. She was a little dizzy, but surely she could-

She felt a hand on her shoulder. A strong one. Firm. Warmer than the Doctor's but still- it was someone she knew. Not well, but she'd met him twice. They hadn't really talked much but-

"Ryan?" Marion choked out. She could talk again, but just barely.

She, figured that since she'd just- she didn't know what she'd done. Obviously, she knew that she had attacked the Queen with an axe, but she didn't know if she had killed her or not.

But she figured that Ryan might want some confirmation that she knew who he was and wasn't going to lash out at him. Because she wouldn't. The thought didn't occur to her, but she didn't know if they knew that or not. She heard another voice. I was feminine and it wasn't the Doctor's and it wasn't American.

Yaz was next to her too. She was counting. She'd get to four and then start over and get to seven and then start over and get to eight and then start over and only get to four again.

Four, Seven, Eight.

This pattern was familiar. It was for breathing. In for four, hold for seven, out for eight. Marion tried to follow along with Yaz's voice until finally, her vision wasn't spotty, and she felt like she could breathe normally on her own. She hadn't realized that she was on the floor.

When she looked up right next to Ryan was the Doctor. And she was breathing. And Marion was so relieved that it took her a moment to notice the blue hand print on the woman's jacket from when she had yanked her back. Marion looked down at her hands and found them smeared in something that smelled vaguely metallic in the same hue.

She looked at the stain the Queen had left behind. Blue. Scorpion blood was blue, not red. That was the queen's blood. There was blood on her hands.

And she remembered that sometimes the Doctor hated violence and hated when her companions used it and hated them for using it. And she didn't want the Doctor to hate her. Even if it was an older version of the Doctor, and if the Doctor started to hate her now, she'd still have plenty of time to spend with a Doctor that didn't despise her. But still, she might have a chance to explain herself if she hurried. And she HAD to hurry before it was too late to change the Doctor's mind.

"I didn't want- I couldn't let her kill you."

Saying that sentence caused whatever was making it hard for her to speak break like a dam and rambling words flooded past her lips.

"She was going to kill you. She had her tail raised and I knew that she was going to kill you! I could-I could tell. And if I didn't do something, she was going to kill you. She wasn't supposed to try to kill you. Not that way." Marion didn't know why she admitted to that. But perhaps the Doctor wouldn't see the accidental confession as what it was. "But she was trying to. And I needed her to stop and there wasn't time to get in between the two of you and I was holding an axe and she was going to kill you and you said you trusted me to keep you safe and I could let you die even if-"

Marion cut herself off. She imagined that they might've thought she was going to finish that sentence by saying that she didn't want to break the Doctor's trust even if it meant using violence.

But she knew what she was actually going to say.

"Even if you don't remember."

"I don't know if I killed her. I didn't care about that." She didn't. She was realizing. Not really. "I just wanted her to Stop, and I didn't know how else to make her Stop."

Marion moved to bring her hand to her hair to tug it, and she felt a cool hand grabbing her wrist lightly.

"Doctor?"

"I didn't think you wanted that in your hair."

The Doctor's hand moved from her wrist to her hand, and she held it lightly, gave it a gentle squeeze, and then let go. A part of Marion wanted to jerk her hand away, not wanting the Doctor's hands to get blue on them too. But that part of her- well it wasn't a part she wanted to listen to.

The Thirteenth Doctor had this look she gave. This expression that looked calm unless you knew her enough to know from her tone that she was furious.

Thirteen didn't have that expression and she didn't have that tone.

It's wasn't anger, or disappointment. It was more the expression of a person uncomfortable with emotions looking at someone they cared about and trying to figure out what the correct thing to say was.

"Did she kill me Marion?"

It was a rhetorical question surely. Marion shook her head and answered anyway.

"She almost did. I moved quick enough that I stopped her. But she was going to hit you with your tail. I would've gotten in front of it" she said because she would have, "But I was too far away."

"I wouldn't have wanted you to that."

"Yeah well, you wouldn't have wanted to get hit by that tail either. If it's anything like getting shot by that red electricity. You don't want that. I wouldn't mind getting hit instead…I would've gotten back up. Maybe hit with her own charge" Marion trailed off. "But I wasn't going to watch you get killed, Doctor. I wasn't. Don't tell me I should have!" Marion shouted that last part.

"I won't" the Doctor replied.

"I- good."

Yaz helped her to her feet. Marion kept her hands by her sides. She didn't want to get blood on any of them.

"Marion?" the Doctor said quietly, but not unkindly. "They're gone, aren't they? And they're not coming back."

"I- no. At least they shouldn't be?"

"Good." The Doctor said, "Then I think that we should finish up here, and you should go in the TARDIS and-"

Marion shook her head. She didn't get it.

"They shouldn't be back. She wasn't supposed to attack you." Marion whispered. "Not with her tail. Not like that. I can't- what if they come back?"

"We fired a bolt of lightning up at them," reminded Graham, "Surely they couldn't survive that?"

Marion didn't know how to verbalize how not comforted that made her feel and how stressed she felt that it should have made her feel better.

The Doctor waved her sonic screwdriver up in the air and then lowered it.

"Marion," the Time Lord said carefully, "I can't sense them or their cloaking technology anywhere. They're long gone. And you should go into the TARDIS and get cleaned up. Alright?"

Marion didn't know how Edison or Dorothy reacted. And she didn't really know how Telsa had reacted or if he had even seen anything.

To be honest, she wasn't even sure how she had gotten into the TARDIS bathroom. She was pretty sure that the Doctor had guided her there. Maybe Yaz was there too, she couldn't be sure.

Either way, she was alone in the bathroom now. She was staring at her reflection in the mirror. Blue was splattered on her face. She looked away. That wasn't important and thinking about its implications stressed her out. But looking at it made it so she couldn't STOP thinking about it. She looked down.

Her eyes were stinging. She brought a hand up to her face to rub at them on reflex, and she caught a glimpse of her hands.

Marion froze.

A high pitched noise that wasn't quite a scream pushed out from the back of her throat. Without a word, she yanked at the knob on the sink with an amount of force that might've damaged it if it had been something else, took a bar of soap, and shoved her hands under the water.

It wasn't that she felt guilty. Because she didn't. The issue was that she didn't feel guilty. She didn't know what she felt.

The Queen was going to kill the Doctor. It didn't matter if it was permanent or not. It didn't matter. It's not like the Queen could've known that her action would be rewound. What mattered at the time was that the Doctor was going to die and for a moment, before time reset, the Doctor would know that Marion had failed her. And it was a situation that shouldn't have happened in the first place because it didn't happen in the show.

Maybe that's why having blood on her hands was bothering her so much. It wasn't the blood. It wasn't that she felt guilt about the Queen (or that she didn't). And perhaps if getting hit with an axe was what happened to the Queen in the original it wouldn't have bothered her. But it hadn't

The blood was a reminder that things could change and the Doctor could get hurt in a way that they hadn't before. She had acted in time, but it was a reminder of what could happen if she didn't. She needed to get rid of that reminder.

Marion continued to scrub at her hands. Until the blue was gone and she continued to scrub and scrub and scrub until the knobs turned suddenly water shut off and Marion was shaken out of her stupor. They wouldn't budge.

Marion moved to turn the water back on, and the TARDIS hummed loudly under her feet.

"Honey, please"

Another hum.

"Please?"

Marion moved to turn the water in the sink back on. The knob didn't move and the TARDIS hummed her feet some more.

The TARDIS hummed under her hands and she looked down. Her skin was red and now that she was thinking about it, they stung. She- she might've had the water far too hot. Marion frowned.

"Thanks, Honey," Marion whispered.

The TARDIS buzzed around near her feet. She moved to pull aside the shower curtain and found it stuck.

"Look, can I at least take a shower? I promise I won't have the water too hot. I don't want to get in bed like this."

She heard a slow hum by her feet. And then a moment later, whatever was stopping her from being able to move aside the curtain moved aside.

When she turned the water on, she was pretty sure that she'd been able to get it hotter than it currently was before, but it wasn't too cold and she wasn't going to push her luck. The woman tugged off her clothes and stepped inside.

It wasn't as warm as she would like, she it probably wasn't a good idea to have the shower as hot as she wanted. She cleaned her arms and counted to thirty so she wouldn't scrub too hard, and then she did the same with her face and neck. And then, when she couldn't see any more blue and she was pretty sure that the smell of metal was mostly in her head, she closed her eyes and rinsed out her hair under the lukewarm spray. Marion stepped out of the shower, and tugged a towel around her waist and wrapped another around her hair.

She didn't feel great. But she felt better. The blue was gone.

Marion opened the door to the bathroom and looked around for the door to her bedroom, since knowing the TARDIS, the door wouldn't be that far away. She turned the corner and nearly bumped into the Doctor. She tightened her grip on the front of the towel and the other woman froze. Marion realized that the Doctor was standing in front of the door to her room.

"Are you feeling better?" the Doctor asked. The woman was avoiding her eyes.

"A bit. Still not up for traveling if you're asking about that. Did everything work out with Tesla and Edison and everything?"

"Yes." The Doctor replied with a nod, "Everyone is alright. They're worried about you."

"Tell them I'm fine." Marion replied with a nod, "I think I just need to sleep it off."

"Right. Sleep. That'll help." Marion wasn't quite sure if the Doctor was talking to her or herself. "Don't let me keep you." The Doctor said kindly with a nod. "Sleep well. And if you need to see me, I'll be in the console room."

Marion stepped inside of her room.

She absent-mindedly reached into one of her drawers until she found something that she could change into. A pair of long flannel pants and a t-shirt that was a couple sizes too big.

The corkboard was covered with images she couldn't really focus on. The only one that she could see well was the drawing she'd done of the lab. The paper had to be thousands of years old. She pinned the drawings of Peri next to them. Other than that, the room was just the way that it always was save for a mug on her desk. Marion went to pick it up, wondering if it had been something the Associate had been drinking before she'd taken it away intending to walk back to the bathroom and dump it out since she had no idea how long it'd been sitting out, and then she realized that the mug was still warm.

She picked the mug up with her hands and sat on the side of her bed. She inhaled the steam and felt her breathing calm. The tea smelled like lavender and mint and chamomile.

"How did this- Oh."

Marion had met the Doctor as she was stepping out of her room. And the Doctor had made remarks about her needing sleep.

That's what she'd been doing in her room.

Marion sat with her legs crossed and took a sip from the cup.

It was good. It was that special temperature of hot tea where it's cool enough to drink, but too warm to drink more than two or three sips at a time. It was sweeter than she would have made her own tea, but considering the Doctor had made it, that was to be expected. And anyway, it was still warm enough that that didn't really matter much to her. She breathed in and out slowly and sipped the tea until it was gone. She could feel her eyes getting heavy. She crawled under the quilt and the room's lights dimmed until they were barely there. Marion clutched one of her pillows and breathed in and out and in and out until the tea finally kicked in and she was asleep.

She hoped that when she dreamed, she wouldn't be taken into the dark place again.

These are the events that led to her Being.

She was watching as She gently swirled together hot, hot, hot gas around until it became something that managed to be about a tenth as bright as the specks that covered Her skin.

The light shined brighter and brighter and brighter and She had a gentle smile on Her face as She rolled Her fingers and twisted Her arms and gently coaxed the hydrogen and helium where She wanted. Something to the side caught her attention. She looked there to see what it was and that's when she saw the bright light that She had made before suddenly disappear. Not like it had been moved like it had been ripped apart and snuffed out.

Something crept from the remains of the bright. Something wrong. It slunk towards Her.

She wasn't supposed to be here when It arrived.

The thing wasn't.

It wasn't hot. It wasn't cold. It wasn't happy. It wasn't sad.

It was rot. It was the end. She had seen it destroy so many creations. It hated them for existing and It hated the beings that allowed for them to exist

And it was going to hurt Her. It was going to rip Her apart just like It'd ripped apart so many of Her creations..

And the moment she realized this, she Felt.

She felt angry. So, so, so, so Angry. She had never felt That emotion before. The only emotions she'd ever felt outside of the vague nothingness and the future grief was the seed that grew and sprouted gradually as she watched Her create. The Joy and Wonder and Love, because you could not look at Her face as She held Worlds and Stars in her Hand and gently swirled them together and not fall in love with Her.

Except for It. Because It looked at Her and wanted to destroy Her.

How. Dare. It.

But none of that mattered because she didn't exist. Or at the very least, she didn't exist enough for it to matter.

She didn't have a body, not yet. But she needed one. She needed something that could grab and touch and rip and ward and block.

Because if She was destroyed then there would be nothing new and everything old would be ripped apart soon after and there would be no proof that She existed except for her. And she didn't exist.

Next Chapter: Well, That Happened

Marion: I don't choose violence.

Marion: People try to kill my friends and choose for me.

Oh yeah in case it wasn't clear, what you were voting on in that poll was if Marion attacked the queen with a sledgehammer or the fire axe. I got to writing that bit and couldn't decide. Fun fact, this whole chapter was supposed to be a scene tacked on the back of chapter Sixty-Eight that went on for WAY too fucking long. But I liked it enough that instead of getting rid of it, messed around with where chapters started and ended so I ended up with three chapters instead of a kinda long one and a SUPER long one.

I finalized chapter two of "Death was a Temporary Inconvenience" some time after writing this arc. For no reason in particular, I think you might want to reread it. There's a line there that might interest you.

I'm worried that this chapter contains typos that my brain missed despite reading it over and over again like 12 times.