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Chapter Text

River stabbed her trowel into the coarse dirt of Dalben 12, cursing as she hit another rock sending a small spray of dust into the vacuum of the dig site. Dalben 12 was one of many small insignificant asteroids on the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt, with no long gone civilizations leaving nothing that could be dug up centuries later.

The satellite images taken of Dalben had shown long trenches repeatedly crossing each other forming a near perfect grid over the surface of the entire rock. That level of precision and exactness to the modification of a planetary surface almost always meant that there had been at least a level three civilization on the world.

With the markings evident all over the surface of the asteroid River had thought this would be a hotspot for archaeology, but for the past three weeks - nothing. A jolt of pain shot up her wrist through the space suit as her trowel hit another rock and snapped in half.

Sighing, River stood up and made her way past the countless other dig trenches scattered across the barren gray landscape to the supply module. It had not been easy getting this dig approved by Luna. The Department heads had bickered over funding and logistics for almost six hours in the initial project meeting that River’s head began to swim so it wasn’t a surprise when the outpost they had been assigned for the dig was normally used for cosmic meteorology research, tracking and monitoring radiation and solar winds from near dead stars for months at a time.

Not at all suited for the bulky equipment and supplies necessary for good archaeology. But she would make it work.

River jumped down into the final trench plodding past the pair of interns hiding under the ridge to avoid labour and made the last few meters into the module and scowled. Trennent was there.

“Morning Trennent,” She buzzed into her comm with false cheer. She didn’t hate Trennent but he was such a bore.

“It’s not good morning. The Kuiper Belt doesn’t follow standardized Earth time so technically there is no morning here and even if it was I don’t think that the current atmospheric conditions could even potentially qualify the current time -”

“I need another trowel.” River offered up her broken one as explanation.

Trennent furrowed his eyebrows and huffed. “Everybodys breaking their trowels today. You’re the fifth person to come to me for that this shift. Like, I’m head resource manager for the dig, it’s my job and everything, but still- Why is everyone breaking their trowels?”

River rolled her eyes and gazed past him at the faint glows of the stars over his shoulder. “Just get me another trowel, Trennent.”

He huffed again, or as well as he could inside a space suit, bent down to open the supply box, and handed her one. River briefly glanced over it to make sure it was functional. It was.

River turned to make her way back through the trenches to her dig spot. She hiked back up the ridge past the interns. A low rumble echoed across the dusty plain making her hairs stand on edge. She kept going, ignoring the rumble slowly growing in intensity until it felt like there were a thousand tiny insects crawling all over the outside of her bones and skin. River stopped.

And then the ground exploded.

The rock lurched under her feet knocking her to the ground. River gasped as she felt all of the air fly out of her lungs staggering to her feet again. There was a new crack spider webbing across the visor of her space suit obscuring her sight. But she could see enough.

A huge pit had opened up in the ground in front of her. River stepped forwards, peering over the edge. It was pitch black as far down as she could see. Excitement spreading through her, River paced the ledge.

There had been no previously observed tectonic activity on Dalben 12. There had been no evidence of volcanic activity or other major geological events on the satellite pictures and their initial tests when they first arrived detected nothing. No explosives had been brought with them so this wasn’t a dig accident. River briefly considered the possibility that there had been landmine hiding in the dirt, but there was no record of any conflict on Dalben 12 that would have caused landmines to be present on the asteroid at all.

This pit was impossible. The only way it could have appeared was if they had caused it, or something else did. River stopped dead, a cold feeling sinking her stomach.

“Everybody get away from the pit!” she called over the comms, “Return to the outpost immediately.” River turned away from the ledge and began to lead the rest of the crew back to the outpost. It was almost comically far away, just a small sterile looking white compound on the edge of the field. The ground shook again and a surge of fear shot through her. They weren’t going to make it.

“Come on!” River shouted herding the group in front of her towards her so she was at the back closest to the pit, “Run!”

The ground lurched forwards sending a few toppling to their feet- the junior technicians Briscoe and Laurel she noted vaguely. The rest of the crew took the hint and began to sprint towards the outpost. River followed close behind keeping an eye out for stragglers as the boots of her space suit pounded rhythmically on the surface.

The ground lurched again. “Keep moving!” she called, looked back at the pit and stopped dead. A large shapeless blob of purplish flesh was rising out of it.

Globs of something clear and mucusy slid off its sides leaving glistening streaks behind on the creature’s back. Sheets of the purpley flesh continued to emerge on all sides of the pit covering the ledges, rising until River saw what almost looked like a face with a long fleshy tube extending from the middle.

There were only two ways it could have appeared she thought again. Either we made it, or something else did. And this, this was something else. Then the creature opened its eyes. One on either side of the tube, each as bright as the stars in the sky behind it. The thing almost looked like one of the old worm on the string Earth toys that she remembered. River laughed nervously at the thought. Then the creature shot forwards towards her and River turned and sprinted towards the outpost.

The rest of the crew had made it back safely. River yanked off her helmet and stripped off her space suit, the airlock sealing shut behind her with a hiss.

“Everyone evacuate the outpost and ready the ship for launch. Until we know what the creature in the pit wants it is not safe to remain on world.”

“What about the equipment?” Trennent called from the edge of the group.
River stared at him coldly. It was a stare she had perfected during her time in Stormcage and she only knew one person who was unaffected by it.

“I am not willing to risk the lives of this entire crew while there is a potentially malevolent alien lifeform stalking the outpost,” she explained coolly. “Once we are in orbit around Dalben 12 we can assess if it is safe to return, but as captain of this mission and as chief archaeologist on site I am making the call to evacuate the outpost until further notice.”

She stared him down. “Do I make myself clear?”
Trennent nodded. River smiled and brushed a few strands of her curly gold hair away from her face. “Good.”

“Everyone start launch procedures. I want to be in orbit in-” River cut off as a deep boom sounded from the airlock door. It came again and she saw the walls dent. A second later the boom came again and the walls whined and bent further in the outline of a tube visible on the inside of the door.

“Into the main room. Now. Start launch procedure immediately.”
No one moved for a second. Then the boom came again and everyone flew into action. Lucia, their pilot pushed her way to the control panel and began flipping switches, Trennent and three other of the crew made their way to the docking bay and started to activate the launch pad.

The boom came again. The crew furiously working at their tasks. And the boom came again. River thought she heard something give in the walls. She began to herd people onto the launch pad, and spotted her vortex manipulator on the workbench where they had planned to store artifacts. River only hesitated for a second before strapping it onto her wrist.

The boom came again shaking the whole outpost. This time she definitely heard something in the walls give. They weren’t going to make it. A final echoing boom shook the outpost and the scraping sound of the vacuum breaking and walls tearing open flooded the room.

Someone screamed as the giant fleshy tube of the creature poked its way through the hoel in the wall. River didn’t know who as the tube snaked its way into their area almost seeming to sniff the air. She watched it intently as she tried to shove her crew towards the ship. The tube snapped forwards towards the largest group by the far wall, and expanded. The crew members near it all froze as if paralyzed.

River watched as the tube kept expanding impossibly far and then surged forwards swallowing the group - all but three of her crew - whole. River started as a slight breeze whistled past her face. We should have instantly died when the creature breached the airlock; its tube must be acting as a partial seal, she thought. It wouldn’t last longer they would be dead within minutes.

The creature’s tube swiveled back and forth across the room like it was hunting. It probably was. As quietly as she could, River activated the vortex manipulator on her wrist frantically typing on the control pad to expand its effect radius so she could transport the remaining three members of her crew with her.

She finished, looked up and cursed silently. They were grouped together by the door of the airlock almost as close to the tube as the first group had been. River crept towards them, careful not to make a sound. Then one of them sneezed. Trennent, she realized. The tube swerved to face them and expanded.

River lunged for the group as they were swallowed crashing to the ground where they had just been in front of the tube. Groaning from the impact she pushed herself up against the wall facing the creature. As the tube turned to face her River punched in the coordinates for the first place she thought of into the vortex manipulator and pushed activated just as the tube expanded, disappearing into the time vortex just as it closed around the space where she had been less than a second before.

Alone in the empty outpost, the creature scents an energy trail. Isolating it from the lingering smells of panic and fear the creature latches on and follows it dematerializing to wherever it leads.

Chapter Text

Chapter two

The Doctor was hunched over the TARDIS console staring intently at one of the monitors. She had been there for hours.

“Doctor,” Yaz started, “Don’t you think you should take a break? You’ve haven’t moved in hours. I made you tea.” The Doctor looked up at Yaz clearly startled.

“Oh brilliant! I love a good cup of tea, warms the soul - or is it the brain? I can never tell. Thanks Yaz!” She snatched the mug out of Yaz’s hands. The Doctor took a sip and wrinkled her nose. “Oh it’s ginger! Never liked ginger much. Nice to know that hasn’t changed.” She handed the mug back to Yaz.

“Oi Doc, thats a bit rude ain’t it?” called Graham from his seat on the stairs along the back edge of the room. A game board was laid out between him and Ryan with pieces scattered across the general area. A pang shot through the Doctor’s stomach. The board was set up for four players.

“Why don’t you take a break and play with us,” Graham gestured for her to sit on the step next to him. “Settlers of Catan,” Ryan added, holding up the box. The Doctor loved Settlers of Catan, at one point she had won the Galactic Catan Tournament in the Andromeda Galaxy and subsequently been banned from the event while being chased by a mob of angry spectators. She moved to go sit with them, when the memory of their shocked and betrayed faces when the Master had revealed who he was on that plane swam to the front of her mind. Maybe it was safer for them if she stayed away.

The Doctor forced a smile onto her face. “Nah, I’m good. Never been a fan of Catan myself. Always been more of a Dungeons and Dragons man. Woman. Either way,” she rambled on, “ I was thinking. Coral reefs. Earth has got some of the best reefs in the galaxy. Great Barrier Reef - largest naturally occurring one until the Even Greater Barrier Reef is discovered on New Mars in the 34th century.” The Doctor flew around the console flipping switches and turning levers continuing to talk, “Although the Possibly Greater Than The Even Greater Great Barrier Reef found two years later on Calkachite 7 gave it a run for its money. Some of the more academic types think that it's discovery was one of the major factors leading up to the Marine Biologist Civil War of 3501, but that was actually caused by a friendly argument about whether dogs or cats were better blown way out of proportion. ”

She turned to face the fam who had moved from their spot by the board game to face her, “So! Reefs anyone?”

Ryan coughed. “I guess I’d be done for that. Used to have a poster of Finding Nemo on my wall when I was eleven.”

“I could go snorkeling in the ocean,” Yaz added, “Or scuba diving.”

The Doctor turned to Graham. “Well while you young lot do that I can stroll the coast and collect seashells. Maybe skip some rocks if I see any good ones,” he said. She grinned. No time for group bonding while everyone was off on different adventures.

“Excellent!” The Doctor whirled back to face the console and pulled the final level starting the familiar wheezing sound through the room. The fam continued chatting behind her and she closed her eyes. Images of Gallifrey’s ruined citadel burned against the backs of her eyelids. It always seemed like everyone and everything she loved was destroyed. Especially when she got to close she thought as River’s face flashed across her mind sending fresh waves of grief through her body.

The wheezing stopped and they landed. The Doctor threw open the doors to the TARDIS stepping out onto a sandy hill overlooking a long stretch of rocky beach, the fam following close behind her.

“Well it's not as tropical as I was expecting,” Yaz said. The Doctor turned. “Oi! Its plenty tropical!” she gestured towards the low outcropping almost at the edge of her vision in the ocean. “This is the best genetically reconstructed coral reef reserve in 48th century. Complete terraforming of the landscape to an accurate tropical climate, and top of the line biological reconstruction of the Carribean reefs.”

She turned to face Ryan and Graham as well. “Welcome to the Stewart Tropical Reef Reserve and Lab, Cornwall.”

River materialized out the time vortex, knees slamming into the pavement in an alley behind an old church. Nausea rolled through her and she staggered to her feet. She braced herself on the brick wall next to her. This was the worst teleport since she had been pulled out of the library.

“Note to self,” River gasped under her breath, “ Don’t expand the containment field to more than three people.” After a few seconds the nausea faded.

Recovered, River looked down at her torn and burned dig site uniform. She had to track down and stop that creature but first things first- she needed a change of clothes.

Chapter Text

River left the alley, stepping out onto a mostly empty street in what appeared to be London. She performed a quick scan of the area. After a second the vortex manipulator beeped.

48th century. London.

She grinned and glanced down the street. This was a time period she knew well. Judging by the architecture and the clothes of the few people out she would place the year at sometime around 4756. River pulled out her phone and checked the date. May 2, 4756.

Her grin widened. She loved it when she was right. She set off down the street glancing around at the different shops. Her eyes landed on a worn looking thrift shop. Perfect. River made for the door, ignoring the soft chime of the bell as she stepped inside.

The place was cramped with racks of clothes and tabled full of odd ends and lamps covered the floor of the room. It was slightly damp and a small cloud of dust floated up around where she had stepped. The only other person in the shop was an old grandmotherly looking woman behind the counter who was fixated on some soap opera running softly on the single screen hung on the wall opposite her. Perfect.

River browsed the clothes racks. Soon she had collected a dark green tank top blouse, an old pair of sturdy looking jeans and a black leather jacket. Her work boots from the dig were still in good condition. No need to waste a perfectly good pair of shoes. Besides, when combined with the outfit she had picked, River thought they would add a certain badass flair to the look.

River made her way to the counter picking up a few old radio and machinery parts from the tables as she went. She dumped her load onto the counter in front of the woman.
“I’ll be with you in a moment dearie,” she said. The credits rolled on the screen and the woman, River noted her name tag marked her as Britney, focused her attention on her.

“Rough time?” she asked sweetly taking in River’s tattered appearance and assortment of purchases.

River laughed. “You could say that.” Considering that the Dalben dig had been completely destroyed and her entire crew was dead, and the creature that did it had escaped and was currently who knows where doing god knows what in the universe, it was one way to put it.

Distantly, River wished the Doctor was there. He always had a way of comforting her, it was endearing almost. She smiled recalling the time Eyebrows had pretended not to be himself when she first met him as she paid for her stuff and left.

River exited the shop and darted into the alley behind it. She wrinkled her nose and kicked an old broken bucket out of the way as she made her way further in. She passed a puddle of some awful smelling yellow liquid that she decided she really did not want to know more about, looked back and decided she was far enough from the main street to avoid being seen.

River changed quickly tossing her ruined uniform into the bin beside her. The jeans were a bit tight and the jacket fell short stopping just above her hips but that was fine. Occasionally a murder or the hurt look in people’s eyes if she turned them down made her feel a bit guilty, but her body was never something she had been ashamed of.

Satisfied with her new look, River began to assemble a tracker from the machinery she had gotten at the shop. There had been some interesting things in there and she wished she could have spent a bit more time browsing the racks. Place like that and River was sure that she would be able to find all sorts of trouble.

She yanked the transmitter and receiver off of an old radio and began to integrate their circuits to the GPS she had spotted inside a grandfather clock that had been leaned against the back wall between two wardrobes. The control panel sparked where she had opened it up to expose the wires. River cursed and carefully finished connecting the wires, and reprogramming the tracker in the GPS to trace and scan for biological signals, attaching a biodetector she pocketed from the outpost to the back of the device.

River stared at the finished contraption in her hands for a second before adding an extra power bank and a compactable toasting iron as she thought she was bound to get hungry later.

She flicked the power switch on the bottom and the tracker began to turn on. “Come on,” River hissed, whacking its side as the screen flickered in and out of focus. She whacked it again and the static cleared up.

River scrapped some slime out of her hair and placed into the receptor. In the chaos of the attack on the station she had not immediately noticed the slime from the creature dripping onto her, finding it only when she had arrived in the first alley. Anxiety bubbled in her stomach making her restless as the device loaded trying to analyze and track the biosignals from the slime.

River rocked on her feet humming a jingle from a commercial for a product she couldn’t remember. It had to be toothpaste or hair spray she thought. The device dinged.

River snapped her attention down to the display. A pang of worry shot through her. That was faster than she hoped meaning the creature must be very close to where she was. River read the results on the screen and furrowed her brow. The creature did not trigger the proximity alert so it can’t have been too close but it was definitely in the country. She checked the news feed. No reports of a giant man eating slug creature.

Satisfied that the area was not in immediate danger, River set off out of the alley tracking the creature. That it hadn’t attacked anyone yet should have reassured her, but it only made her uneasy. On Dalben the slug had attacked violently and without warning. So what was it waiting for now?

The thought that it could be planning something raced through her mind. If this creature was plotting then it possessed a level of unknown intelligence making it even more dangerous. River put thought to the back of her mind. The signal was clearer now. It was coming from a spot just off the coast of Cornwall.

“Got you,” she said to herself with a wave of relief. She could still get to it and stop it before it killed anyone else. River punched the coordinates for a small town near the location of the creature into the vortex manipulator on her wrist and teleported herself away to meet it.

Chapter Text

The Doctor scrambled down the slope to the edge of the water, picking her way over the larger rocks. She heard Graham behind her grumbling about how this would have been easier if they had landed directly on the beach followed by a quick shush from Yaz. She decided to ignore it.

The Doctor jumped down from the last rock onto the wide stretch of beach along the water with a thud, kicking a small shell into the ocean for good measure. She spotted a relatively large lab building perched at the end of a small strip of land sticking out from the end of the beach. It looked sciency enough. It was a long low two story building although judging from its position on the outcropping and the layout the Doctor suspected that it had at least one basement, and was made almost entirely out of reflective black glass. A small pier jutted out from the end of the building. A few small motor boats were tied to posts at the end, bouncing up and down with the waves knocking against the deck.

Best of all, facing them there was a small metal door with a sign in front labeling it as the Visitor’s Center. The sand shifted slightly under the Doctor’s feet as another wave pulled back out to sea.

“Oh, brilliant!” she said, still staring out at the lab. “I haven’t been to the beach in ages and you know what?” She turned to Yaz. “It’s exactly how I remember. Maybe better now that I got you lot this time.”

Yaz smiled widely. “Well you gotta have someone looking out for you. If we let you come along you would probably insult the fish and get tried for attempted murder in reef court or something.”

The Doctor gaped. “I would not! I’ll have you know, Yazmin Khan, that I am a very responsible person. Most of the time.”

Ryan made a half laughing half choking sound from behind her.

“Sometimes,” she amended. Yaz, Ryan and Graham all stared at her waiting for her to say something else. And sometimes it doesn’t matter what I do, the Doctor thought, and people just die anyway.

There was a tense silence between them and the Doctor continued to say nothing. They were silent except for the crashing of waves on the beach. A year, an hour, or a minute passed and she wouldn’t have noticed. The Doctor still felt so focused on her guilt to pay attention to anything else. Because that's what she was. Guilty.

Sometimes she got careless when she let people get too close to her. And that's when they got hurt. That's when they died.

Eventually Yaz spoke up. “So um, were we going to explore the reef or…” she trailed off.

The Doctor snapped out of her wallowing, shoving her thoughts to the back of her mind where she wouldn’t have to think about them.

“Yeah! No time for standing around when we got this place to explore! Come on fam, let’s go.” Her whole demeanor changed in an instant, back to the bubbly over enthusiastic Doctor they were used to. The whole thing felt fake. It made her sick.

She led them down the beach towards the lab chattering mindlessly about reefs as they went. They were close enough that the Doctor could see the greasy streaks on the windows from where people, probably other visitors, had touched them when she heard a small cry and a thud from behind her.

She turned to see that Yaz had stepped funny on a rock and fallen. Concern flooded through her body.

“You alright Yaz?” she asked, bending down to help her up. Yaz pushed her long dark hair out of her face, a few stray strands catching in her fingers at the end.

“Yeah ‘m good,” she grunted. “Just a small tumble.”

“You have to be careful though, Poppet,” Graham chimed in. His aging face full of concern. “One bad fall and you can’t stand proper again for six months. Broke my leg hiking a few years back, couldn’t stand straight for ages.” He rubbed his leg recalling the old injury.

Ryan looked shocked. “You never told me that!” he exclaimed.

Graham shrugged. “It really just never came up, did it? Honest.”

The Doctor opened her mouth to add something to comfort Yaz but nothing came out. “I lost my hand in a sword fight once,” she remarked offhandedly. “It grew back almost immediately though, so I’m not sure if that counts as an injury or not.”

She ignored their shocked faces and glanced down at her feet. She spotted something pale and dried like a cross between an old corn husk and a rubber glove at her feet, half covered by sand.

The Doctor leaned down and picked it up. It looked even more ghostly up close and felt rough like sandpaper all the way around. It was definitely some sort of fish remains. Maybe an exoskeleton, she thought to herself.

“You can’t just re-grow a hand Doctor, do you really expect us to believe that?” Ryan said.

The Doctor pocketed the dead fish and stood up. “Oi! I had just regenerated at the time. Wouldn’t be able to do it now if you cut off my hand. I wasn’t joking when I said I used to be a man you know.”

They kept walking the last bit towards the entrance.

“Well what were we supposed to think?” It was Graham this time. “Most people don’t just change faces.”

She yanked open the door to the visitors center ignoring the soft ring of a bell from somewhere inside as she stepped in. “Well Graham,” she looked around the room. A dark wood check in desk stood against one wall and screens featuring slideshows of the different species they cared for on the reef flashed on screens on the walls. There was not one person in sight. “I am not most people.”

The Doctor spotted a gift shop through the arch in the wall behind the desk and felt her blood run cold. The sign over the entrance was wrong. It shouldn’t be possible. She had checked- and then doubled checked the time space coordinates for Stewart Reef. They had been a perfect match so what she was seeing now should be impossible.

The sign over the gift shop read Gilligan’s Reef Research Reserve Gift Shop

Somehow, they were in the wrong place. Confusion flooded the Doctor’s mind. If they were in the wrong place, then why hadn’t the coordinates shown that when she checked them in the TARDIS. Maybe they had slipped into an alternate timeline again and it would collapse before anything happened, but she knew that was not right. She knew that for sure at least. They were definitely in the correct timeline. She could sense it.

Where they were should have been Stewart Reef. But it wasn’t. So -

“Something very, very wrong is happening here,” she said.

Yaz looked surprised and opened her mouth to reply but was cut off by the bell ringing from somewhere deeper in the building again. A group of people all wearing name tags branded with the words Gilligan’s Reef in blocky red text over their names came through the door.

A tall woman with dark hair and hawkish green eyes stood at the front of the group.

“Oh visitors!” she exclaimed. Her voice was surprisingly dark in a way that reminded the Doctor of how River sometimes spoke when she had done something incredibly stupid. “We apologize for our brief absence, but it has been ages since we’ve had any tourists.”

“My name is Natalie Grant, Head Researcher here at the reserve.” Natalie gestured behind her to the rest of her group. “And this is my team. Please, feel free to explore the reserve.”
Natalie crossed the room to a small plastic stand full of pamphlets that the Doctor had missed in her initial scan of the room. She placed it into the Doctor’s hand.

“You can find the museum and activity room through the door to your left. There are walking trails and floating boardwalks all across the reserve so you can explore the reef if that is more your speed as well.” She smiled in a way that made the Doctor feel uncomfortable.

Something is not right about this woman, she thought.

“Oh excellent!” she said with forced enthusiasm. “I love exploring the reef, anyone up for exploring the reef, gang?”

“Yeah I’d be down,” said Yaz. She sounded strained but the Doctor decided to ignore it.

Natalie’s smile widened. “That’s wonderful! Please enjoy the facilities. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to return to the labs. Lots of important work to do after all.” She pushed past them, the rest of her team close behind.

The Doctor watched them as they exited the room through the door to the left, and disappeared.

“Ok you have to admit there was something odd about that,” Ryan said.

“You are absolutely right Ryan Sinclair. There is definitely something going on here.” The Doctor let her face fall flat for a minute as she stared back at the fam mind whirling.

“You all right Doctor? You seem kinda spaced out,” a voice said. She snapped back into focus realizing the voice was Yaz.

“You know me, I’m always alright.” She dropped the map she was holding and pushed past them back out the door to the building so that she was standing facing the beach.

“Come on!” she called over her shoulder and set off back down the path waiting just long enough to hear the sounds of Yaz, Ryan and Graham following behind her.

On the wall next to the map stand had been a floor plan of the building. According to that, there were only two levels in the lab. The one they had been in and the one above it. No basement. Based on what the Doctor had seen the building from the outside, she was sure that there was at least one basement that wasn’t on the floor plan. Probably at least one more than that too.

She quickened her pace, continuing anxiously down the path. This place had secrets.

What does a coral reef reserve need to keep hidden?

It couldn't be anything good. The Doctor reached the bottom of the path and stepped off the main path onto an unpaved trail leading around the base of the outcropping. She glanced back to make sure the fam were still following her.

Graham lagged slightly behind Ryan and Yaz, none of them saying a word as they scurried after her in some sort of silent agreement.

“Oi come on you lot!” she called after them. “No need for lollygagging!”

“Not all of us have two hearts Doctor,” Graham called back.

She grinned, genuine amusement creeping into her hearts and she grinned wider. It took her such a huge effort to feel truly happy lately that she welcomed the smallest bit whenever she could.

“Well try and keep up then!” she said and stepped onto the trail, cursing lightly under her breath as her feet slipped in the soft sand of the path. Something strange was going on here and the Doctor was damn sure that she was going to find out what.

As soon as Natalie and her team entered the other room and were safe from the eyes of their unexpected visitors, she breathed a sigh of relief. They really were a strange group, especially that blond woman.

Natalie rubbed her eyes. Who willingly wears an outfit like that?

It was impossible for them to be tourists. Gilligan’s Reef had been closed to the public for the past year so that they could concentrate more of their focus on practical research instead of keeping people out of the more sensitive areas of the facility. They weren’t due for another visit from management until the end of the week and these people definitely weren’t from management.

If they weren’t tourists and they weren’t management the only other thing it was possible for them to be, were journalists. Natalie wrinkled her nose in disgust. Journalists were always poking their filthy little noses into places they didn’t belong and refused to leave well enough alone.
“Harper,” she called. A small dark skinned man with rectangular glasses sliding half way down his nose looked up, clearly startled.

“Dr. Grant,” he replied.

“I need you to go to the security room. Keep tabs on the visitors, make sure they don’t interfere with our directives. Let me know whenever they go anywhere. Casey will see to your tasks for this afternoon. Is that clear?”

He nodded. “Yes Ma’am. I will see to it immediately.” Harper stepped past her down the hall leading to the security closet. Hopefully with him watching them, the group would not cause any trouble for them. And if they did… well, Natalie had worked very hard for this position and she had no intention of letting some snot-nosed reporters get in the way of her job.

She turned and scanned the faces of her remaining team members.

“Casey, I apologize for not asking you prior to assigning you to Harper’s tasks while he is occupied. I am simply aware that you did not have any experiments scheduled for today.”

Casey looked startled, the poor girl. “I understand. I will get to them right away Ma’am.” Her eyes were impossibly wide and flickered back and forth between the ground and Natalie’s face. The girl was a nervous wreck.

“The rest of you please continue as scheduled. The last thing I want is for us to fall behind in our work. Now,” Natalie clapped her hands. “Let's get to it.”

Casey and Adler made their way to the docks. Adler was Harper’s lab partner and it wasn’t that she wasn’t nice, it was just that she was a bit intimidating. Her shoulders were very broad and Casey was sure she had to be at least six feet tall, towering over her short figure.

She bit her lip. Natalie had asked her to take Harper’s work today so that was what she was going to do. The memory of her green eyes glinting as she made eye contact with her flashed in Casey’s mind, making her stomach flip a faint blush rising to her cheeks. She was going to do Harper’s tasks and she had every intention of doing them well.

Adler stopped suddenly and Casey stumbled almost tripping into her back. They had reached the door to the docks without her realizing.

“Careful,” Adler said as she pulled open the door a slight squeak coming from its hinges,“Wouldn’t want you to get hurt.”

She smiled kindly. “After you,” and gestured Casey through the door.

“Thanks,” she said, stepping out into the crisp sea air. “If you don’t mind me asking, what exactly are you and Harper’s tasks?”

They walked side by side down to the end of the pier.

“Well, every day we take one of the boats out to the edge of the reef to check the shields. Then we generally survey one area or another and catalog the different species, what they were doing, eating, that sort of thing.” Adler came to a stop in front of a small white motor boat with a small film of dirty water covering the bottom.

A coil of fraying rope and a weathered orange lifesaver hung over the side.

She stepped inside. “Coming?” she asked Casey.

Casey only nodded and stepped into the boat after her, brushing a loose strand of hair out of her face.

Adler grinned. “It’ll be fine, don’t worry you will be great.”

Casey swallowed and took a shaky breath. “Yeah, your right. I’ll be fine. Just, nervous is all.”

Adler gave her a long look with a knowing expression on her face that made Casey feel like she could read her soul. “You know, Harper was like this for the first month he was here. Always looked like a fish out of water.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and he’s fine. And so will you be.”

Casey glanced back at the lab, admiring the reflection of the waves on its black glass windows, took one last breath and looked back to Adler. “Alright,” she said. “Lets go.”

Adler reached over the side of the boat, untied it from the mooring post and turned on the engine. The motor coughed to life and before she knew it, they were gently putting away from the dock towards the edge of the reef.

The Doctor came to a sudden stop along the path, inspecting the side of the outcropping as she waited for the fam to catch up. Hairline fractures raced up and down the rock face forming a sort of arch.

“Doctor,” Yaz said. She turned to face her. “Can you please explain what is going on?”

Ryan and Graham nodded in agreement on either side of her.

“We shouldn’t be here,” she began to pace in front of them, “I checked the coordinates in the TARDIS- triple checked them even. We should be at Stewart Reef.” The Doctor came to a halt.

“But we’re not. We’re at Gilligan’s Reef instead. The TARDIS wants us here for some reason,” she said anxiously, “And I intend to find out why.”

“Why didn’t you just ask that group of researchers if anything funny had been going on here lately then,” Ryan asked.

“Because,” she began, “ Look at the lab from the outside. The way it's built into the outcropping shows that it had at least one basement. Probably more. But on the floor plan in the lobby and the map Natalie gave us, it only showed the top two levels. They’re hiding something in this place. And I don’t think it's anything good.”

“So we should investigate then,” Yaz said, sounding slightly strained.

“Yeah, a good ol’ bit of detective work, wouldn’t you say Doc?” Graham added.

“Exactly,” the Doctor said. “And what,” she pulled out her sonic screwdriver pivoting to point it at the cliff face, “Could possibly be so secret that they need a secret door in the side of the cliff under their lab.”

She buzzed the sonic. A faint glow emitted from the cracks, the faint whirring of machinery coming from behind them. A massive grinding sound echoes across the beach and a door swung open in the rock along the fractures.

A long dark tunnel burrowed its way into the cliff face through the door. The Doctor didn’t hesitate before stepping inside, excitement bubbling in her gut.

“Coming fam?” She called over her shoulder.

Yaz, Ryan and Graham all shared a look. They shrugged and stepped together after the Doctor into the tunnel.

Chapter Text

“So how do we check the shields?” Casey called back to Adler as she expertly steered the boat towards the edge of the reef. She leaned just over the side, ignoring the slight discomfort from the edge pressing into her stomach.

Casey looked down into the water, smiling as she caught a final glimpse of the brightly colored corals and fishes before they passed over the edge onto the bare expanse of sea extending for about fifty feet past the edge before the shields closed off the reserve from the rest of the ocean.

“Two ways,” Adler called back. “One of us could swim down to that big rock and check their status in the systems panel that we hide under the seaweed. Or,” she grinned mischievously, “We can throw stuff at the shield and if it bounces off we’re good. You can pick which way we do it.”

Casey pulled away from the edge to stare at Adler. A small smile tugged at her lips. She wasn’t joking.

“Throw stuff at the shields. Definitely.”

“Nice choice,” Adler replied, stepping out from behind the wheel to pull the lid off a weathered looking plastic box that had been leaned against the side of the boat. She tossed the top to the side and Casey saw that it was full of small rocks.

Adler grabbed a handful and passed it to Casey before grabbing another one for herself. “This way is loads more fun.”

She chucked her first rock off the front of the boat.

“Touchdown,” she said as it bounced back at them off the shield, already reaching for her next rock. A small circle of purple energy flared out from where the rock had hit it, the only sign that the invisible wall was there.

Casey grinned and began to do the same.
They had been throwing rocks at the shield for a while when a large wave surged through the water knocking Casey to her knees.

Adler paused to help her up. “You alright?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, “I’m good.”

The boat surged again sending both Adler and Casey toppling to the ground this time. They staggered to their feet as the boat continued to lurch.

Casey scanned the sky. No sign of a storm. Panic began to build in her stomach another wave surging past. She spotted a few ghostly white shapes floating on the surface of the wave. They didn’t look like anything she recognized. Cold dread trickled down her spine, pooling in her gut.

“Adler we have to get out of here, something isn’t right-” Casey cut off as she was thrown across the deck by the largest wave yet.

She groaned and began to push herself up and froze. A massive purplish shape breached the surface of the water on the other side of the shield. It glistened in the light as sheets of something slimy looking slid off its sides.

The thing launched itself at the shield. A boom sounded across the water as they shuddered, lighting up purple.

“Adler!” Casey screamed. “We have to leave, now!”

Adler stumbled as she tried to pull herself up to the wheel, falling as another wave rocked the boat.

The creature slammed into the shield again. Casey braced herself for the boom that she knew was coming, but it never came.

Instead, a loud cracking noise like the worst lightning she had ever heard echoed across the reef. She glanced up at the shield.

Purple fractures spider webbed across the space of air where she knew it stood, growing and spreading until Casey could barely see past them to the creature.

And then the shield shattered. And Casey screamed.

The creature surged forwards again, but this time it didn’t stop.

The boat capsized, and Casey gasped struggling to stay afloat as a massive pinkish tube extended from the creature to cover her vision.

It looks kind of like a giant slug, she thought vaguely before the tube expanded swallowing her and Adler.

Definitely a slug, Casey thought again as the world went black.

The Doctor led Yaz, Ryan, and Graham down the tunnel deeper into the cliff. The light way dim, coming only from single flickering bulbs spaced at irregular intervals along the ceiling of the tunnel.

Yaz walked right at her side.

“Do you have any theories for what they might be hiding here?” she asked.

The Doctor considered her question for a second. “I have a few ideas.”

She reached into her pocket and pulled out the husk she found on the beach and showed it to Yaz.

“This was on the beach. From what I can tell it’s some sort of dehydrated fish. Only instead of pulling out all the water all of its DNA has been pulled out.”

She tossed it to Yaz.

“See? It’s like its just dried skin, everything that makes it a fish has been sucked right out of it.”

“So what are you saying?”

They came to the end of the tunnel, a small metal door set into the rock in front of them. The Doctor turned to face the fam.

“Something happened to this fish. That sort of thing doesn’t occur naturally. And,” she added, “I don’t think this is the only one. It’s highly unlikely that this is an isolated incident.”

She soniced the door open. It swung inwards to reveal a pristine white lab.

The Doctor stepped into the room, Ryan, Yaz and Graham following behind her.

The door slammed shut.

“Ah!” Ryan squeaked.

“Ryan,” Yaz hissed.

“Sorry just got spooked is all.”

The Doctor ignored them. The lab was a good size. Rows of tables lined the walls forming a grid across the floor. Scientific equipment was stacked on every surface giving off the impressions that a very aggressive mechanical fungus had infested the place.

It looked just like an ordinary lab.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “If this is just another lab why go to all the effort to hide it?”

“Maybe they’re just really secretive,” Graham said.

The Doctor shook her head, beginning to feel uneasy. “No, the reserve is open to the public. If they were that secretive, they wouldn’t do that. It has to be something else.”

“Speaking of which, if this place is open to the public, where are all the other visitors?” Yaz asked.

The Doctor beamed. “Five points to Yaz! Now you’re asking the right questions.”

Yaz beamed back. She reminded the Doctor of so many people she knew and lost before her.

I won’t let anything hurt you, she thought, I won’t lose anyone else.

“You alright Doc?” Graham asked.

The Doctor blinked, suddenly aware of how long she had been staring. “Yeah, must have zoned out a bit. All good now!”

A string of rude words flashed across her thoughts. She would have to be more careful not to do that.

“Right!” she said, “How about that bit of investigating”

The Doctor picked a row at random and set off down it. The rest of her fam spread out across the lab.

A pair of monitors on a nearby table caught her eye. It was strange really, she thought as she examined them. These were top of the line computers. And she knew that even one of this particular model had enough computing power to hack the most secure systems of the time in under one minute.

So what did this place need three of them for?

She soniced one as stealthily as she could. The screen flickered to life.

A welcome page shown out at her. She needed a password.

The Doctor soniced the computer again, and a stream of documents and data began to flow over the screen with increasing speed.

She frantically scanned them as they passed attempting to commit them to memory.

As more documents flew past her eyes, the Doctor felt an idea begin to take shape in the back of her mind. These computers were running genetic analysis software. That in itself was normal enough for a biology lab, but something about the way they were being used didn’t sit right with her. It was almost as if-

“Hey Doctor come check this out,” Yaz called softly from the other side of the room.

She looked up. Yaz was standing in front of a set of aquarium tanks.

The Doctor picked her way across the room to Yaz. She saw Ryan and Graham doing the same out of the corner of her eye.

The Doctor reached Yaz, and stood next to her to face the tanks. One of them was full of what appeared to be normal fish from the reef. They were swimming around and looked like they were having an absolute party.

The other tank was full of the same type of dried fish husks that she found on the beach.

“What do you think that means, Doctor?” she asked.

“What indeed,” replied a cold voice from behind them.

The Doctor turned. Somehow Natalie had entered the lab and got right behind them without her noticing.

“Oh I think you know,” the Doctor said cheerfully. “I mean, secret lab, genetically drained fish, suspicious computers. You folks here are running a biotech lab. What else could it be?”

Natalie sneered. “What is it to you?”

The Doctor let herself go cold.

“Natalie Grant,” she began, “Worked hard for this position did you?”

“That's none of your business,” she snapped.

“I think it is.” The Doctor’s voice was low and dark, “I think that it is very much my business.” She took a step towards Natalie, “Because when I find a secret lab running genetic analysis and biotech integration programs I think they’re just doing some slightly illegal research.”

Natalie’s face fell slightly. The Doctor pressed on, a cold fury building in her eyes, “But when I then find a tank full of fish with all of their DNA removed I think that you are trying to weaponize genetic extraction.”

She let her normal cheerful persona reclaim her features. “That’s what I think at least, could be wrong though. You would tell me if you were building genetic weapons here, wouldn’t you Natalie?”
Natalie looked shocked. “Who are you? Journalists?” she demanded.

The Doctor shook her head. “I’m the Doctor and this is Yaz, Ryan and Graham.” She made eye contact with Natalie. “We’re here to help.”

Natalie’s gaze softened for a second and the Doctor took a step towards her.

An alarm went off. A loud harsh clanging noise that made the Doctor wrinkle her nose.

“Natalie,” she began, alarms blaring.

Fear flashed over Natalie’s features.

“You know what that alarm means. You know it’s not anything good.” The Doctor paused, taking a breath.

“Please tell me what’s going on. Because if I had to guess, and I am very clever, I would say that that alarm has something to do with whatever has been draining the DNA out of all the fish.”

“Please, Natalie,” she continued, “Tell me what’s going on. I might be your best shot at getting help.”

The Doctor moved to step forwards again, and faster then she would have thought possible for a human, Natalie reached into her coat and pulled out a handgun.

She pointed it at the Doctor. “I don’t even know who you are,” she hissed.

Yaz, Ryan, and Graham made small noises of panic from behind her.

“Doctor,” Ryan whispered frantically, “Doctor.”

She ignored him, anger brewing in her gut beginning red hot and furious begging to be let out. She really hated guns.

“I’m the Doctor,” she repeated. “And if you don’t know who I am I suggest that you look me up.” She kept her level, cold fury seeping into her tone.

No one moved. The alarms continued to blare in the background but the Doctor hardly noticed them. She kept her stony gaze focused on Natalie.

Slowly, she began to lower her gun.

“Harper,” Natalie spoke into a comms unit that the Doctor had somehow missed, gripped tightly in her other hand.

“Run a search for ‘The Doctor’”.

“Can I ask why?” came a crackling voice from the device who the Doctor assumed belonged to Harper.

“Just do it.”

They were still for a long moment as she assumed Harper did as Natalie asked.

Finally he spoke again. “Are you sure it was The Doctor, not someone else?”

“Positive.”

A pause. “Okay, I sent you the files.”

A beep sounded from Natalie’s comm and her eyebrows rose as she read whatever was on her screen.

“Thank you,” she said and lowered her gun.

The Doctor felt some of the tension in the room dissipate as the fam breathed audible sighs of relief.

“That alarm means the shields around the reserve are down.”

Natalie frowned and tilted her head as a small beep came from her comm again.

“And we have lost contact with our research team out on the reef today. They were charged with inspecting the shields.”

The Doctor nodded. “Do you think that whatever has been draining the fish is responsible? Could it have gone after your team?”

“I don’t believe so. We have been keeping track of the drained fish. We still don’t know what is causing them but it hasn’t shown any signs of being capable of something like that.”

Natalie stopped as her comm beeped again. Her face paled.

“There’s something else,” the Doctor pushed. “What’s happened?”

“It’s like you said. My researchers,” Natalie squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she was about to say.

“Whatever has been draining the fish got to them too. We just found their bodies washed up on the beach. Completely drained. The wreckage of their boat was found floating nearby as well.”

Dimly the Doctor was aware that the alarms had stopped.

“Show me,” she said.

Natalie nodded and made her way towards the tunnel the Doctor, Yaz, Ryan and Graham had come through earlier, leading them out of the lab.

Natalie led them out of the tunnel and onto the beach, her face set with grim determination. The Doctor strode after her dragging the fam behind her.

“What was that, Doctor?” Yaz asked, lengthening her step so she was shoulder to shoulder with her.

“What was what, Yaz?” she said, feigning innocence.

“You know what I mean. Taunting Natalie, telling her to look you up. The Doctor I know doesn’t do that sort of thing. She pulled a gun on us, and now we’re just going to trust her?”

“Well she’s not pointing a gun at us any more.”

“You know what I mean, stop avoiding the question.” Yaz’s eyes burned.

The Doctor was silent for a long moment. “I’ve been alive for a very long time, Yasmin Khan,” she said coolly, “I think I know what I do and do not do.”

“No she has a point Doc,” Graham said. “Since when did we threaten people?”

“I-”

“Were here,” Natalie spoke.

The Doctor tore her eyes away from her friends’ concerned faces and took in the scene in front of her.

Natalie had led them to a small cove just on the other side of the lab. The small stretch of sand arched away towards the horizon in a way that would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been for the smashed wreckage of a boat strew across the beach.

That and the two bodies. A man in a lab coat that she recognized from the lobby as one of Natalie’s crew stood over them with a camera taking pictures.

The Doctor stepped closer to observe the bodies. She recognized them two. One was the slight girl with long auburn hair who had been staring at her feet awkwardly in the back of the group, and the other was the tall broad woman who had been playing rock paper scissor with the man taking pictures.

Both had their limbs splayed out around them at unusual angles and had been completely drained like the fish. Their skin had turned completely transparent so that the Doctor could see their bones through the skin and their bodies sagges slightly like a deflated beach ball. It was almost as if their muscles had been partially liquidized.

She looked up slowly. “I have no idea what could have done this.”

“Oh, but I do,” said a new voice from behind them.

The Doctor’s hearts leap into her throat. She knew that voice and it was impossible for them to be here. Shakily she turned around and her stomach flipped. It was absolutely impossible but River Song stood behind them about ten feet up the beach.

The sun illuminated her golden curls making it seem like there was a halo around her head.

“Hello Sweetie,” River said. “And I must say, I’m loving the new upgrade.”

Chapter Text

“River,” the Doctor said, her voice shaky. “River, how are you here?”

River frowned. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

She walked towards the Doctor taking confident strides across the beach, coming to a halt just feet away from her.

The Doctor swallowed. “When was the last time you saw me.”

River hesitated for a moment before she spoke. “The last time I saw you was at the Library, Doctor. You were all pin-stripes then.”

“That’s not possible. River Song died at the Library,” The Doctor’s voice was flat. “So whatever you are, you are not her. So if your intent was to hurt me, if you are trying to make some sort of point, then get. Out,” she snapped, venom creeping into her tone.

“Doctor,” Ryan said from behind her, “Who is she?”

“Someone I lost a long time ago,” the Doctor replied. “But you’re not really her,” she said, turning back to River, “So who are you?”

Not-River looked heart broken. “Doctor,” she whispered, “It’s me.”

The Doctor shook her head. “You can’t be.”

“But I am.”

“How. If you really are River Song then prove it,” the Doctor demanded.

“Sweetie-”

“Prove. It.”

Not-River leaned in, her hair tickling the Doctor’ cheek, and whispered her name in her ear. Her real name. The Doctor’s knees almost gave out.

River pulled away, with tears in her eyes refusing to meet her gaze.

‘River,” she whispered her voice softer than it had been in a long time.

A wide smile spread uncontrollably across her face. “River,” she repeated.

“Hello Sweetie.”

They stood staring at each other. The Doctor didn’t dare look away because River was here, and she had been to the Library, and she was alive and in that moment the ocean could have risen to wipe away the Earth but she wouldn’t have cared because River was there.

“No seriously, Doctor,” Ryan said,” Who is she?”

“Someone very, very important,” the Doctor said. Her voice cracking on the last syllable. River was here.

“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Natalie called bringing the Doctor back to reality, “But we do have the bodies of two of my researchers here, and she,” she said pointing a finger at River, “Claims she knows what did it.”

“Right! Of course! The murders!” the Doctor said, shifting her attention back to the crime scene in front of her.

“How do you know they’re murders?” Natalie challenged.

“Because,” she said, tearing her eyes away from River, “All those fish you’ve been finding, they were killed the same way your crew were - drained and everything. Whatever it is that's doing this has to have a reason for suddenly switching to humans.”

River maneuvered her way to the Doctor’s side, leaning down to inspect the bodies. “The Doctor’s right,” she said. “These killings were deliberate.”

Natalie whirled to face River, eyes burning. “You claimed you knew what did this, but you haven’t told us yet. Not to mention I still don’t know who you are. How can I be sure that you aren’t the one who did this?” she accused.

River stood up, meeting Natalie’s steely gaze head on. “ I am Professor River Song, Department of Archaeology at Luna University,” she said coolly. “And whatever did this is the same creature that attacked my dig. It killed my entire team, so I suggest that you listen to me.” River’s face was stony.

The Doctor felt a warm surge of pride at River’s words.

Natalie lifted her chin. “Say I believe you. You are River Song. How do I know you are telling the truth?”

“Because I trust her,” the Doctor cut in, stepping forwards. “And you trust me.”

“Thank you, Sweetie,” River murmured.

Natalie considered her words for a moment. ‘Alright,” she said carefully, “Start talking.”

River smiled. “The creature moves fast. It is very dangerous and it kills without warning. It definitely possesses some level of intelligence. I was able to track it here through biological signals, but I do not know what it is or how it kills.”

“So we know that it’s dangerous,” Natalie sighed. “Anything else?”

The Doctor glanced at River. “We should be able to figure out how the creature is killing its victims, and then we can figure out what it is. We just need access to your lab.”

A grim look settled over Natalie’s face. “Okay,” she said, “Follow me,” and set off down the beach. River and the Doctor hurried after her.

“Come along fam!” the Doctor called behind her.

“Oh you’re saying that again!” River exclaimed, sounding delighted.

“And you’re still not gonna tell us what’s going on,” Yaz grumbled as they all trudged along back to the main facility.

The small group crowded into the lab.

“Alright, Professor Song,” Yaz drawled, her voice dripping with apprehension as if she didn’t believe River was who she said she was, “You said this creature attacked your dig, but what is it? And how is it killing these people.” Ryan and Graham shifted uneasily beside her.

Natalie was stony faced in the corner and fuming. Yaz had taken her line. The Doctor thought that she was likely to spontaneously combust at any moment.

River looked Yaz in the eye. “I can see why the Doctor picked you, you ask the right sort of questions,” she said nodding appreciatively. Her eyes twinkled and she smiled in a way that made the fluttering in the Doctor’s chest pick up.

The Doctor gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it. She could handle her own feelings about her wife.

“But you don’t answer any questions at all,” Yaz pressed, “How do we know that we can trust you?”

The Doctor launched herself between them and grabbed River by the wrist, meeting her gaze briefly feeling a light blush spreading its way across her cheeks.

“Sorry guys, I have to speak with Dr. Song for a moment,” she said and made for a small door in the back of the room dragging River behind her. The Doctor pushed past Yaz, face burning.

She threw open the door and she and River found themselves in a narrow white corridor extending further into the building, probably leading to other labs. It was quiet, and they were completely alone.

The Doctor dropped River’s wrist and whirled to face her. Due to the size of the hall, this was the closest they had been since she had appeared on the beach.

They were almost the same height now. River was an inch or so taller than her, she realized with a jolt. A small smile played on River’s lips.

“Did you want to talk to me Sweetie, or is this just an elaborate plan to stare at me? Because, you don’t need an excuse to do that.”

River breathed the last sentence sounding almost pained. The Doctor flushed deeper than she thought it was possible in this body, and flicked her eyes towards the ground. Her worn boots almost toe to toe with River’s.

The Doctor lifted her head meeting River’s piercing blue-green eyes. “On the beach you said you’d been to the library,” she whispered, “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive? I thought you were dead, River.” The Doctor didn’t look away from River’s gaze. “How long has it been for you, since the library?” Her hearts ached at the thought that maybe River had been avoiding her on purpose, that she didn’t want to see her.

That thought hurt the Doctor harder than she was expecting, sending deep pangs of sadness shooting through her all the way down to her toes. After all, she had no clue how long River was in the library for. It could have been decades, centuries even. That amount of time was more than enough to make their time on Darillium seem insignificant. And if River had been alive and conscious in the computer all this time, waiting for someone to pull her out, it was enough for her to warp the Doctor in her mind as her jailer. To make River hate her.

“Oh, Sweetie,” River murmured, “Of course I wanted to see you. I’m sorry if I made you think otherwise.”

“How long were you in the library River?”

“You know, I’m not exactly sure. I think it was sometime between fifty and seventy years. I was extremely disoriented when they pulled me out.”

The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. That was better than she had been hoping for. “How did you get out?”

River paused. “There was a maintenance team doing routine repairs to the data core. They found me while cleaning out the memory banks and realized I was a person not just an old program that someone forgot to turn off.” She laughed lightly. The sound of it almost made the Doctor swoon which was completely ridiculous, she chided herself. She had heard River laugh loads of times before.

“It was a whole thing apparently, caused quite the uproar. And once they found out that I was there from the incident with the Vashta Nerada, there was a whole thing with the courts and the Lux Corporation. Apparently some activist group sued them for inhuman practices and won.”

The Doctor was acutely aware of just how close she and River were now, counting the light spray of freckles across her nose. The thrum of her hearts picked up in her chest.

River continued on, seemingly unaware as to how she was affecting the Doctor. “And once that happened, there was no way they could get away with leaving me there, so Lux borrowed a whole bunch of energy from some people and managed to download me into an exact copy of my body from the moment I died.”

“I’m sorry River, I should have been there.”

River shook her head, golden curls flying out on either side of her face in a chaotic, beautiful mess. “You have nothing to apologize for,” she said firmly. “You were the one who downloaded me into the data core. You saved me, Doctor. Don’t you ever forget that.” Her voice grew forceful at the end, full of the fire and life that the Doctor loved about River.

She raised a shaky hand up to River’s face, trailing her fingers over her brow to rest her hand on her cheek.

“I missed you,” the Doctor said thickly, realizing just how much that was true. It was like there was a hole in her chest that she hadn’t noticed until now.

“I missed you too,” River replied, her voice impossibly soft, reaching up to tuck a loose strand of the Doctor’s hair behind her ear. She shuddered as River’s finger tips grazed her ear, leaning into the touch.

Neither of them moved. Neither of them dared to breathe for fear of shattering the moment and sending the universe crashing down on them.

“River,” the Doctor muttered. It almost sounded like a prayer.

“Doctor.”

They were so close. River’s breath ghosted on the Doctor’s face. They leaned in towards each other, closing the minuscule distance still remaining between them.

Their lips met and River slid one hand into the Doctor’s hair, the other hand settling on her hip, pulling her closer so that their bodies were flush against each other.

River’s mouth was soft. The Doctor parted her lips slightly, tilting her head back as River deepened the kiss.

She dragged her hand up the Doctor’s side to grab her shoulder under her coat.

The Doctor made a small noise in her throat. River pulled away, leaving her hands tangled around the Doctor.

“River,” she said. It sounded almost like a prayer.

“This regeneration is an excellent kisser, Sweetie,” River said.

“I wouldn’t know. Haven’t kissed anyone yet. Hadn’t kissed anyone yet,” she added quickly. “I kissed you just now. You know it’s different, kissing as a woman. But it’s good different though. I think I could get used to it. Maybe. You’re taller than me now too, so that’s new,” the Doctor rambled.

River looked slightly surprised. “Yes, I suppose I am. I guess I’m the tall one now, ” she said in a low teasing voice.

“I’m not short, you know. I looked it up. I am above average.”

River laughed. “Of course not. You’re absolutely adorable.”

The Doctor blushed and looked down, unable to hide the small grin creeping its way across her face.

River laughed again and drew her in for another kiss. The Doctor sighed against her lips, threading her fingers through River’s hair, deepening the kiss as she pushed her back against the wall.

The Doctor let herself lose herself in River. It had been so long since they were together, but they still fit together like clockwork, and she remembered again just how much she had missed her wife.

The door flew open.

“Hey, are you guys- ah, sorry.” Graham stood in the door, his face flushed looking down at the floor, seeming distinctly embarrassed.

River and the Doctor pulled apart, trying to look like they hadn’t just been caught making out but the Doctor found that she didn’t care that much.

“I was just, ah, coming to check up on you. You’ve been in here for a while I just wanted to see that you were alright,” Graham’s eyes shifted nervously between River and the Doctor. “Didn’t mean to interrupt anything.”

“It’s fine,” River and the Doctor said at the same time.

“Right! Yes! I’m just gonna leave you two then, to ah-” He coughed, and shifted awkwardly on his feet. “We’ll be waiting.” Graham nodded affirmatively, backing out of the hall and closing the door behind him.

The Doctor let out a groan. “I’m never going to hear the end of this. It’ll be teasing for weeks! Not that I regret it though,” finding that she meant it. But the Fam was already so curious. Ever since they encountered the Master it was like they didn’t trust her anymore, always asking questions about her past.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” River replied,“I don’t regret it either.”

The Doctor smoothed her hair down. “I suppose we had better get back,” she said, already dreading the knowing looks that she was sure to get from Graham who had almost definitely told Ryan and Yaz.

River kissed her lightly. “I suppose so,” she murmured.

The Doctor wheeled to face the door. “Right then Professor Song, let’s go rejoin the others,” and together they stepped back into the lab.

The fam was clustered in the corner, chatting. They looked up as River and the Doctor approached. Graham refused to meet the Doctor’s eyes, instead looking pointedly over her shoulder. Ryan shot her a knowing smile. Yaz just frowned, seemingly lost in thought.

Natalie spoke up. “You asked for access to the lab, so here you go. Do what you need to do to find out what the creature is and how it kills, but remember,” her eyes flashed, “This is my lab. And if you do anything to compromise the directives, management will have my head.”

River brushed her off. “Yes, thank you Natalie.”

Natalie opened her mouth like she wanted to say something else, but shut it quickly, deciding to go sit and watch the rest of the group from the corner.

“River,” the Doctor said, realizing something, “On the beach you mentioned that you traced the creature here using biosignals. How did you do that if you don’t know what it is?”

“I had a tissue sample,” River replied, waving her tracker. “It almost got me before I escaped.”

“Yeah, how did you escape?” Yaz asked.

River raised her wrist to show off the vortex manipulator. The Doctor scoffed.

“Cheap and nasty time travel.”

“It works well enough, Doctor.”

“The TARDIS works better.”

“Hmm,” River hummed, “ I’m sure she does. It’s too bad that you're a terrible driver.”

“I am not!”

“Darling, you leave the breaks on.”

“Because I like the noise,” the Doctor whined.

“You just can’t admit that she likes me more.”

“I’m sorry,” Yaz interrupted, “But how do you know the TARDIS? You told us who you were, but how do you know the Doctor?”

River raised her eyebrows. “She’s still not telling people about me then?”

“I thought you were dead!” the Doctor exclaimed, feeling slightly affronted. “You can hardly blame me this time.”

River shrugged, turning back to Yaz. “I’ve known the Doctor for a long time,” she said fondly, “Ever since they were bumbling about the universe in a bow tie in fact.” The Doctor felt all warm and fuzzy in her chest at River’s words.

“We’re married,” she said. The effect was instantaneous. Graham nodded understandingly while Ryan and Yaz spluttered.

“Married?” Ryan asked. “Sorry, I just didn’t take you for the marrying sort.”

“Oi!” the Doctor exclaimed, moving to grab River’s hand. “I can be married! I’m great at married!”

“You try,” River said.

“Well I guess that explains the kissing,” Graham said. The Doctor went beet red, heat rising to her face.

“Look at all this equipment,” she called, electing to ignore Graham’s comment, moving to examine a nearby table. “You’ve got everything here you could ever want or need for genetic research,” the Doctor said appreciatively.

“But,” she continued, “That does make sense considering that you guys are developing genetic weapons. And look, everything we need is right here.” The Doctor spread her arms and gestured around the room.

Natalie beamed. “Management made sure that we were fully equipped so we could bring them the best results.”

“I’m sure they did,” River said, opening the lid to the tank of fish husks and pulling one out.

The Doctor frowned at Natalie’s words. It was good that the lab had all of the equipment she would need to discover how the creature was killing, but she couldn’t help wonder who the mysterious management was. Who would need genetic weapons so badly they hid a fully funded research lab in a reserve? The Doctor filed her thoughts away for later, labeling them ‘important’ in the back of her mind, as they began to work.

River and the Doctor soon fell into their old rhythm as they worked, Natalie watching them like a hawk as the Doctor and River ran test after test, in a way that set the Doctor’s teeth on edge. The fam lingered around the edges of the room, sometimes moving like they wanted to help or say something but every time they seemed to shrink back into themselves and go back to lurking over the Doctor’s shoulder without actually doing anything. Yaz especially, she noticed, did this more than the others.

River looked up from the microscope she had been using to inspect the cellular structure of the skeleton fish and swapped out her current slide for a fresh one. The monitor beside the Doctor flashed red again, large scrolling text reading INCONCLUSIVE rolled across the screen. She ground her teeth together and began another analysis test. Maybe this one would give them the results they needed, the Doctor thought as she worked, extracting another sample from the fish. Natalie had refused to let them use the bodies of her researchers.

The Doctor supposed that made sense from an ethical or moral point of view, but all she felt was annoyance. Maybe fresh tissue was what they needed for the testing to yield any results. They wouldn’t be able help the situation unless she knew how people were being killed. And the Doctor had to help.
The fam were starting not to trust her. They were questioning her when they shouldn’t have been. Ganging up on her, doubting her. Yaz seemed the most affected, she was the most vocal and active about it. The Doctor knew she hadn’t been her best around them for a while. Since the Master really, since Gallifrey. But she tried for them, even though it was hard, even though her world was crashing down around her. And she was still losing her friends and she didn’t know why. They wouldn’t talk to her and everything she did only made them question more.

The Doctor’s eyes burned, and she leaned back against the table behind her as she watched the monitor waiting for the new test results. At least she had River back. The Doctor turned her gaze to watch her wife as she worked. River could always understand her. She was better when River was around. River kept the Doctor from going too far, she reminded her of who she was. And she needed that now more than anything. She needed it like a man lost in the desert needed water and she hadn’t known how thirsty she had been until River had been there again.

A beep drew the Doctor out of her thoughts. She shifted her sight back to the monitor. It was green, the words ‘TEST RESULTS CONCLUSIVE’ shone brightly on the screen. Finally, she thought.

“Hey gang, come look at this,” the Doctor called, clicking on the data file detailing the results of the tests.

River, Natalie and the Fam gathered around her as she scanned the file. River placed a hand on the Doctor’s waist.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” River said reading over her shoulder.

The Doctor nodded. “It should be.”

It was impossible what she was seeing. The Doctor read the report again, but the words hadn’t changed. The fish they’d been testing had had their DNA dissolved and sucked out of them leaving only a shell of a life from behind. It was like they had become less than a fossil in an instant.

“What is it?” Ryan asked.

The Doctor took a deep breath. “The creature tears apart your DNA by the molecule, violently deconstructing everything you are. And then it sucks it out of you through the skin leaving only the husk behind.” She nodded to the tank of fish still in the corner. “Every protein, every gene, just gone.”

“So what, it’s like a big genetic vampire?” Yaz asked.

“Worse than that I’m afraid, dear,” River said. “Every creature known to do this is extinct, and have been for millennia.”

“But this one isn’t.”

River pursed her lips and hummed. “Clearly.”

“Ah, lovely,” Graham said.

“So what you’re telling me,” Natalie interjected, “Is that my lab has been under attack by a giant extinct genetic vampire?”

“Essentially, yes,” the Doctor replied. “But what do you mean this place has been under attack, how long have you been finding the fish husks Natalie?” A theory forming in the Doctor’s mind and she didn’t like it one bit.

Natalie blanched. Obviously she hadn’t meant to let that particular detail slip, the Doctor thought.

“A year,” she said finally, apparently giving up.“Their discovery is why management assigned this particular lab to weaponized genetic research. The goal was to figure out how the fish were being drained and create a weapon that could do the same.”

“But the creature only attacked my dig yesterday,” River said, “What you’re saying can’t be possible. How could it have arrived here over a year ago?”

A chill ran through the Doctor. “And who is this mysterious ‘management’ you keep mentioning? Are we going to get to meet them, Natalie? Are you going to tell us more about them? Anything else important that you haven’t mentioned yet?” The Doctor’s voice was laced with venom but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “And what kind of management orders the development of genetic weapons?”

“Who do you work for, Natalie?” she asked. The fam stared.

“Funny you should ask that Doctor. After all, technically you still work for them,” she said.

Natalie drew her head up, iron glinting in her eyes as she spoke. “I work for the Unified Intelligence Task-force. This lab is under UNIT authority.”

River tensed at her side. The fam probably felt as confused as they looked.
“And you,” Natalie continued, “Are going to have to answer to your management very soon. As soon as you told us how the creature kills I called them in.”

“UNIT is on their way.”

Chapter Text

“Oh, UNIT is your management? That’s brilliant, good old UNIT” the Doctor remarked. “Who are they under these days anyway, it’s a bit hard to keep track. Last I heard you were under Kate Stewart.” The Doctor seemed genuinely curious Yaz noticed, but if Natalie wasn’t lying and she did work for UNIT, that would make sense.

“I don’t know,” Natalie said.

Yaz furrowed her brow and the Doctor frowned. “What do you mean you don’t know who’s in charge of UNIT, they’re your boss,” she asked, confusion seeping into her voice. Yaz couldn’t bring herself to feel sorry for her.

The Doctor had been more distant lately. More secretive. She wasn’t herself. The Doctor was hiding things, keeping secrets from Yaz, Ryan and Graham. She was colder too, lashing out at people without warning her eyes icy chips set deep into her face with a thousand year gaze that Yaz suspected came from being alive for literal thousands of years. It wasn’t like the Doctor told them her age or likely that she would tell them if they asked.

“I mean that I do not know,” Natalie snapped, each word more stressed then the last

The Doctor paused, considering her words for a moment before speaking again. “And what does UNIT want with genetic weapons? Last time I checked, experimenting with alien tech was more Torchwood’s business.”

“Torchwood has been discontinued for centuries Doctor,” Natalie smirked, “Things change. Did you think that UNIT would continue to uphold your beliefs when you have been gone for so long?”

Yaz could almost feel the contention in her voice, and tensed waiting for her to press on. Natalie worked for UNIT, and UNIT and the Doctor had history, apparently. It’s not like that information did her any good when Yaz still didn’t know what UNIT was. She glanced around the room to see everyone else’s reactions to this exchange. Ryan and Graham’s faces reflected the same lost expression that was probably on her face as well. Relief flooded through Yaz. At least she wasn’t alone in this. River however, just nodded along with Natalie and the Doctor. Obviously she understood what was going on.

“Well, that was the hope,” the Doctor said, her voice pleasant and friendly, but Yaz was a police officer. She was trained to recognize criminals and liars, people who were putting up two faces, and the Doctor’s body language screamed danger. Yaz felt Ryan tense beside her. He had picked up on it too.

“But that still doesn’t explain why you called them here,” she said, “ We still don’t know what the creature is or why it is doing this. All we know is how it kills.”

“I called them here because of you, Doctor,” Natalie said, looking very much like a cat that had just caught a mouse, Yaz thought. “Because of you and your history. I read your file, you made me do it yourself. Catastrophe and death follow you wherever you go. Every incident with you and UNIT and aliens has resulted in huge collateral damage, and now I have another one on my hands. Two of my researchers are dead and you just happen to show up. I am not willing to risk the lives of any more of my crew, so I called for backup. You cast a long shadow, Doctor. It’s time that you acknowledge that.”

The Doctor stiffened, her eyes cold as steel. “Natalie Grant, I have known many people like you, almost all of them have died, or met a fate worse than death. Let’s hope that you are different.”All pleasantness was gone from her voice. The Doctor’s mask was gone.

The realization hit Yaz like a truck. She hadn’t even realized the Doctor had been putting up a front. It was so simple now that she was no longer pretending, to see that the bright and cheerful Doctor was nothing more than a persona she used to hide the truth from them. Yaz remembered back to the incident with the Master recalling the ruthlessness and danger she had sensed in the Doctor then. The way it had seemed to flow off of her in waves, and wondered if she even really knew her at all and knew that behind all of the smiles and custard creams, the Doctor was just as deadly as the Master and possibly more. She had a whole past that Yaz did not know, she was married for god’s sake. If anyone knew who the Doctor actually was, it certainly wasn’t Yaz.

Natalie nodded gravely, “Let’s hope so.”

A tense silence fell over the group. Even if the Doctor wasn’t who she pretended to be, Yaz could still help. “We can find out what the creature is though, right?” she asked, suddenly feeling very self conscious.

River, who Yaz still didn’t trust, stepped away from the Doctor’s side to face the little group head on.

“Technically, yes,” she said, “But we would need access to a database of alien species, including the extinct ones, and even the simplest one of those isn’t common on Earth for at least another fifty years.”

“But what if we could get access to one,” Yaz pressed, “The TARDIS can go anywhere, we could use her to go somewhere that has to those databases and find out what the creature is then.”

“That’s a nice idea, but we would still need to go through records of every extinct alien to find one that matches what we know about it. There could be hundreds that meet our criteria, it would be impossible to narrow them down without more information.”

“What about this UNIT, then,” Graham said, “If they’re coming for back up, maybe they can help us identify this thing.”

“UNIT wouldn’t have access to the sort of information we need,” the Doctor said, coming to stand beside River. Yaz noted the way they appeared to lean in towards each other like there was an invisible force drawing them together.

“So we have nothing.”

The Doctor nodded. “We’d be sorting through every species in the universe that exists and has ever existed until this time. Maybe even will ever exist. If it’s been here for a year already it’s possible that it has some sort of time travel ability. It would take centuries to go through them all. What we really need is - Oh. Oh!” The Doctor jumped up. “That’s it!” she exclaimed, “River, do you still have the sample you used to track the creature here?”

Yaz blinked. She was pretty sure she almost got whiplash from how fast the Doctor shifted back to her usual bubbly self. “I do. But why- oh. That’s brilliant,” River said catching on to whatever idea that Doctor had come up with.

“Excellent,” the Doctor grinned. “Well, come on gang, lots to do, creature to identify and stuff,” she said addressing the room and starting out towards the tunnel.

‘Hold on, you said it would take centuries to identify the creature. We don’t have a plan or anything, where are we going?” Ryan asked. Yaz found herself nodding in agreement, she was thinking the same thing.

The Doctor turned, catching herself on the doorway. “Ryan Sinclair,” she said, “ Of course I have a plan.” She scrunched up her nose. “Or at least a half a one. Two-thirds” she added, and swung herself out of the lab and down the tunnel to the beach.

River laughed as she moved to follow her while Yaz remained stationary where she was. Graham and Ryan stayed with her.

“You know,” River said, pausing after a moment, “The Doctor hasn’t changed in all the time I’ve known her. She always has been and always will be a mad man with a box. Or mad woman I suppose.” She scanned their faces before following the Doctor out into the tunnel.

Yaz, Ryan, Natalie and Graham were quiet. Finally, she spoke, “We should go.”

“Yeah,” Graham agreed.

“I will stay to watch the station,” Natalie said, “Someone needs to be here when UNIT arrives. You three go ahead.”

“Alright, yeah, that makes about the most sense I’ve heard all day,” Yaz said, ‘I’ll let the Doctor know where you are.”

Natalie relaxed. “Thank you,” she breathed, pulling a chair out from under the closet table and collapsing into it.

“Come on guys,” Yaz said, and started the journey after River and the Doctor, Ryan and Graham following right after her.

“Does anyone else get the sense that the Doctor is hiding something from us? Something big. I don’t know what but she doesn’t seem herself today,” Ryan asked as he fell into step beside her.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Yaz said footsteps echoing on the stone walls of the tunnel, “But there’s not anything we can do.”

River matched pace with her wife as she led their small group down the beach, her companions trailing slightly behind them. It was rather beautiful here, River thought. The gray-blue water stretched out towards the horizon, unmarked except for the tips of the reef peeking up from the ocean at random intervals, white spray from the waves flying into the air around them. She glanced next to her wife. The Doctor was her wife now, not husband. That change was going to take a bit to get used to but looking at the blond hair flying around the Doctor’s face as the wind hit them, it was a change that River found she didn’t mind. This regeneration was still the Doctor- and it didn’t hurt that she was absolutely breathtaking.

The Doctor led them to a rocky trail leading up the back edge of the beach, setting a furious pace for the group as she began to climb. River shivered in anticipation, knowing what she would find when they reached the top. Finally, the top of the ridge came into view and River slowed a bit letting the Doctor crest the hill just ahead of her, the flash of her pale coat vanishing over the edge. The TARDIS was at the end of the climb. She could feel it. River always knew when she was near, she suspected it had something to do with the TARDIS’s motherly instincts.

When Eleven had regenerated into Twelve and turned all grumpy, the TARDIS had changed with him, and River had the sense that the TARDIS had changed with the Doctor this time too. She wondered what new look she would find herself with this time. The Doctor and the TARDIS were a pair and River had every intent of seeing them together at first. She climbed the last steps over the ridge and was met with the sight of that glorious blue box, a wide smile stretching across her face.

The Doctor leaned against it, grinning wildly as River approached. “All of time and space right through these doors,” she said smugly, “What do you think? Fancy a trip in the box?”

River laughed and ran her hand over the TARDIS’s smooth blue paneling. “I think I would like that very much,” she said. “She looks exactly like I remember her. It’s been so long, I had almost forgotten.” Her voice stuck in her throat, suddenly overcome with emotion.

The Doctor caught River’s hand in her own. “Wait till you see the inside,” she grinned and pushed open the TARDIS door, stepping inside.

Instantly, River was met with a surge of warm orangey light, tinged with blue pulsing at the edges. The TARDIS seemed to warm at her presence, sending golden pulses through the large crystalline and honeycomb structures lining the walls and control panel.

“She’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“I know,” the Doctor replied, “The old girl really outdid herself this time around.”

“She’s not the only one.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Sweetie…”

“Oh,” the Doctor said in a small voice, a bright red blush creeping up onto her face. “Oh.”

Her eyes trailed over the Doctor’s new features, catching on the shape of her nose, the curve of her lips.

“Right, so what is the plan Doctor?” the girl with dark hair, Yaz she remembered, called her friends fanning out on either side of her. The rest of their group had caught up.

The Doctor jerked away from River suddenly as if she had been electrified, and began pacing back and forth across the TARDIS.

“Yes, the plan. Basically, we’re time scanning,” she said.

“We’re what?” the old one, Graham, River thought asked.

“Time scanning,” River said. “It’s a way of checking multiple data sets or databases across all time periods simultaneously. Basically, you tap into the time vortex and the scan accesses the timestreams of every database in a set date range at once. In our case, the date range is all time. Tricky bit of work, impossible really, if you don’t have access to time technology, but we,” she said gesturing around the TARDIS, “Have the most advanced time ship in the universe.”

“It’s a bit like interdimensional Google,” the Doctor said, “Or time Google more like. Not scanning across dimensions.”

“So what, you’re just gonna search for a big extinct creature that eats DNA?” Yaz asked.

“Pretty much,” said the Doctor. “I’m going to take the tissue sample River used to track the creature here, and use the scan to find a biological match. Speaking of which, River?”

She tossed the Doctor her tracker, who caught it and pulled out the tissue tray. “Excellent,” she grinned. The Doctor turned to the console, dancing around it pulling levers and switches as she initiated the scan. At one point she slammed a lever, producing a biscuit from a slot below it and popped it whole into her mouth. River shook her head at her wife’s antics.

Her companions stood at the edges of the room, watching, River noticed. Graham, the older one was nice enough, a little comedic at times but River didn’t mind. Her eyes flitted to the tall boy, Ryan. He was smarter than people gave him credit for, and kind too. It didn’t surprise her that the Doctor had chosen to bring him along. And then her eyes went to Yaz.

River didn’t know what to make of Yaz. She was smart, that much was obvious, and bright and bold and brave. But there was a hidden wariness to her that made River wonder. All in all, she liked the Doctor’s friends a lot and she was glad that she had such good people watching out for her- River probably would have chosen to take Yaz with her on a dig if she was a student at Luna. She just wished she knew what they were hiding.

“Scans done!” the Doctor called, “The creature, it’s a Vex.” Her voice was grave.

“Are you sure,” River asked.
“Positive.”

She closed her eyes and leaned back against a pillar. It had to be a Vex, didn’t it. Things were never simple with the Doctor, but she wouldn’t change it for the world.

“A Vex” Ryan asked.

“Vexes are an old species,” the Doctor began, “Almost as old as life itself, very powerful and near impossible to kill. Could survive in a vacuum and very, very deadly. You see,” she said, swinging around a monitor on the console so that they could see; a picture of a large snail-like purple creature, almost identical to the one from River’s dig stared out at them. “Vexes can smell you. That there,” the Doctor said gesturing to the long tube protruding from the Vex’s face, “Is like a combination of a mouth and a nose. They use it to scent out nucleotides based lifeforms, then corner them and release a flood of toxins into the environment around them so you’re paralyzed. Then when you can’t move, they swallow you whole and dissolve your DNA and suck it out of you, spitting back out an empty shell of what you used to be.”

“That’s horrible,” Yaz said.

“Yes, it is,” River agreed, “And Vexes were known for having an unmatched appetite. They would consume entire civilizations in an afternoon, absolute menaces in the archaeology world. The only way to stop them was to satisfy their hunger, or to trick them into going away. This one must have been tricked into hibernation and slept dormant on Dalben for millennia while the rest of its kind died out.”

And we woke it up. River realized with horror. Her dig had disturbed the Vex and now it was here. This was all her fault. She pushed aside the wave of guilt threatening to overwhelm her. Wallowing wasn’t going to fix the problem. Besides, she could deal with it later.

“River, are you alright?” the Doctor asked, her voice laced with concern, “You went a little pale there.”

River straightened herself up, “Yes, I’m fine.” The Doctor narrowed her eyes with suspicion, but let it go a second later.

“Great!” she said, then paused. “But I still don’t know how the Vex got here a full year ago when it only attacked your dig this morning. For that to be possible, it would have to be able to time travel. And Vexes are rumored to have been slightly psychic but they definitely did not have the ability to manipulate the time vortex. So it doesn’t make sense.”

Then a loud ringing sound echoed from the outside of the TARDIS.

‘Um, Doc?” Graham asked, “Is that a phone?”

River watched as the Doctor’s face darkened. “Unfortunately, yes,” the Doctor said and marched past him to the door. She swung half way out the TARDIS, pulling open the panel opposite her to reveal a telephone.

River watched as she yanked it to her ear, the long cord almost getting caught as she did so.

“Hello?” the Doctor spoke. A silence as whoever was on the other side of the receiver spoke.

Finally, the Doctor nodded and hung up. Slowly she turned to face them.

“UNIT is here. And they’re expecting us. You know, sometimes I really hate that they have my number.”

Chapter Text

UNIT had completely taken over the beach. Jeeps and small beige tents sprawled out across the sand like a small city. People in camouflage uniforms dotted the scene, running around the camp- a few of them appeared to be pulling what The Doctor thought was a small boat, but could also very well be a bomb, out of the back of a truck.

“This is UNIT?” Yaz asked, eyes wide as she took in the scene. “The way you were talking about them I thought there would be, you know,” she gestured vaguely at the beach, “Less guns. I thought they were a research institution.”

The Doctor laughed lightly. “Nah, UNIT is a government sanctioned authority created specifically to deal with aliens, and sometimes that includes a little bit of force. A bit like MI6 but for outer space.”

“I think she meant that we weren’t expecting you to be so friendly with a bunch of folks waving around guns,” Graham said.

The Doctor flinched, at the reminder that her fam didn’t really know her at all. It wasn’t their fault, the Doctor had deliberately concealed her past from them, thinking that maybe if they didn’t know what she was, her history, she could pretend it wasn’t real.

It was true what Natalie had said. The people around her all died in one way or another. Bill, Clara, Amy, Rory- even River, though that apparently hadn’t lasted. So the Doctor decided she would pretend she wasn’t dangerous. If all her friends knew was this bubbly shining alien without a past who gave them the universe, they wouldn’t get involved, and she was a very messy person to be involved with. She hurt everyone around her eventually, one way or another.

River seemed to pick up on the Doctor’s distress and shifted closer to her. “It’s alright, my love,” she whispered, so that only the Doctor could hear.

She let out a long breath. “Oh, there are loads of things I bet you wouldn’t expect about me!” the Doctor said, immediately regretting it. A response like that was only going to raise more questions. Hurriedly, she tried to cover her blunder. “I once met a bunch of farting aliens in Downing Street. Turned out they were just Slitheen in skin suits though, so that explains the farting. You know, I haven’t been to Raxacoricofallapatorious in a while, how about we go there after this whole thing is done?”

“I’m sorry, Raxa- what?” Ryan asked. “Are you sure you’ re okay and not, like, having a stroke or something?”

“I’m fine, and it’s not my fault you have never heard of Raxacoricofallapatorious before, is it?”

“I mean, it kinda is,” Yaz said, but the Doctor hardly heard her.
A UNIT soldier was hiking up the beach towards them, a walkie-talkie held loosely in his hand. Yaz followed her gaze.

“Oh,” she said. The group waited in silence as they watched him approach, coming to a halt about a meter away from them.

“ Which one of you is the Doctor? We have orders to take you to see the Commander,” Walkie-Talkie asked. His voice was rough, like he had screamed himself hoarse at a concert.

“That would be me,” the Doctor said, stepping forwards.

He looked her up and down briefly, slightly surprised. “They said you could change your face. Showed me pictures too, but I guess I didn’t really believe them.”

“I for one, quite like the change,” River said, also stepping forwards.

“And you are?” Walkie-Talkie asked.

“This is my wife, Doctor River Song,” the Doctor said. “And this is Ryan, Yaz, and Graham. They’re my friends, wherever I go, they go too. Now,” she said, clasping her hands, “Take me to your leader.”

“This way, Ma’am,” he said, leading the way down into the camp.

“Ma’am,” the Doctor said, shaking her head, “I’m still not used to that.”

River smiled. “I bet there’s a whole load of things you’re not used to,” she said as they made their way towards UNIT.

The Doctor could feel Yaz’s gaze burning a whole in her back as they followed Walkie-Talkie through the camp.

Since arriving at the reef, she had been acting different. More wary and standoffish somehow, like she didn’t trust her. The Doctor worried about her. Quickly she shoved those thoughts to the back of her mind, making a note to ask Yaz if there was anything bothering her. There were bigger problems to deal with right now, mainly the Vex, but UNIT was also going to be a handful.

The soldier bobbed just ahead of them, guiding the group past a line of jeeps with people working at small stations set up around them. A few looked up as the Doctor passed, watching her and her friends. The Doctor was hyper-aware of their gaze as they walked by, the weight of a thousand eyes pressing against her back.

She caught fragments of their conversations as they walked by:

“Is that…”

“I heard the Doctor...”

“Change their face…”

“Companions…”

“...River Song too…”

The Doctor grit her teeth, and ignored them. She could put up with a few whispers. Finally, the Walkie-Talkie brought them to a tent that was larger than all of the other ones that had passed so far. A broad man with medals lined up across the chest of his uniform that identified him as the Commander leaned against the side of the tent.

He looked up as they approached, blowing a big bubble of pink chewing gum as he watched. It pooped with a loud snap that echoed around the area like a gunshot. The Doctor heard Graham stifle a laugh from behind her.

“You must be the Doctor,” he said, making eye contact with her as he spoke.

“I am,” the Doctor replied tersely.

He smiled. “It’s an honor to have you here. The reports said you could change your face, although I must say, it doesn’t prepare you for the real thing.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“Commander Phillips,” he said, holding his hand out for her to shake. The Doctor didn’t take it. The grin fell from his face, and he turned to the soldier who met them on the beach. “You may leave,” he said.

Walkie-Talkie straightened up and saluted. “Sir!” he said and left, heading back through the row of jeeps.

Phillips shook his head, before facing their group again, eyes lighting upon River. “And you must be Professor Song.”

“Yes,” River said. She didn’t smile.

“I’ve heard a lot about you. Some rather, interesting stories if I do say so myself. You’ll have to tell me, are any of them true?”

“Depends on who you ask,” River said tightly.

Phillips nodded as if this confirmed something to him, it took everything the Doctor had not to wipe that smug look right off his face.

“You both should come in,” he said gesturing to the tent, “ I bet you want to know why I called for you.” Philips pushed the flap open halfway, before pausing. “Oh, and your friends are welcome too. I know how you can get about that.”

“My friends were never a question, Philips. Where I go, they go,” the Doctor ground out, her hate for this man growing with every second, curling like a snake in her gut. He was everything she hated about UNIT- it made her want to scream.

Philips made a face as if to say, have it your way, and spat out his gum on the ground before disappearing behind the wall of camouflage mesh and canvas.

The Doctor and River shared a glance. This was going to be interesting.

“I suppose we should follow him,” River said.

“Yeah,” the Doctor sighed, and turned to the fam, “Come on then. I don’t get the feeling that Commander Phillips is a very patient man.”

Yaz had an incredulous look on her face as River led them into the tent. The Doctor tried to ignore it and added it to her “Talk To Yaz About This Later’ list that was getting longer concerningly fast, but those thoughts were pushed aside as she saw the contents of the command tent.

It was bigger than it looked on the outside. It was no TARDIS, that was for sure, but the Doctor was mildly surprised as she took in the sheer amount of tables and equipment that UNIT had managed to jam into the tent.
It stretched on until she almost couldn’t see the end, every surface was covered in radios and other surveillance equipment. One wall of the tent had a large screen hanging from it, projecting security feeds from all across the camp. UNIT soldiers sat at every workstation, some of them wearing what the Doctor recognized as science technician uniforms, all busy doing something on their computers or tablets and sometimes both at once. Then she spotted a small table with a coffee maker and a microwave that stood tucked away in the corner and froze.

Barely breathing, the Doctor walked over to the table and ran her fingers over the two framed pictures that had been placed on top of the coffee maker. The faces of Kate Lethbridge-Stewart and Osgood stared out at her, unblinkingly, from their perch. A pang of grief struck the Doctor. It had been so long since she had seen them, and now they were gone and all that was left were two pictures in a tent.

Distantly, she knew that she was being sentimental, that Kate and Osgood were perfectly fine back in their own time, that she could pop down and see them whenever she liked, but seeing their pictures here reminded her they wouldn’t be that way forever. One day, both of them would be dead and there was nothing she would be able to do to stop it.

“Are they friends of yours?” Yaz asked softly from her shoulder.

The Doctor jumped- she hadn’t noticed Yaz approaching. She jerked her hand away.“Yes, haven’t seen them in a while though,” she managed. Yaz nodded, eyes flashing like another piece of a puzzle had slotted into place in her mind.

The Doctor turned away quickly, refusing to meet Yaz’s gaze as she forced her features into a cheerful expression again. She felt like a clown, hiding behind a mask.

“Well, Phillips, I must say I’m impressed. This is quite the set-up you’ve got here- took, what, half and hour to build?” she said.

Phillips puffed up at her words, sticking his chest out in a way that made him look like one of those flamboyant tropical birds Ryan liked. He had shown her pictures of them before and the Doctor had to admit they were quite entertaining.

“You would be correct. Everything in this room is built for maximum portability. This whole camp could be taken apart and reassembled thirty feet further down the beach in twenty minutes,” he remarked, bracing his hands on his hips as he spoke.

River hummed. “And what about all of the computers, what are they for? You were called in to deal with one creature, not an army.”

“Ah, that would be where you’re wrong, Professor. I brought a small strike team here to take out the creature. They are what’s being monitored from this tent- audio feeds, video feeds, radiation levels- we got it. I hand picked my best men for the squad myself, made sure they have the best weapons, and sent them out as soon as we arrived. They should be departing for the reef in a boat any time now,” Phillips boasted. “Everything else is because of you and the Doctor, a precaution.”

The Doctor didn’t want to think about what Phillips might have heard about her that led him to bring an army as a precaution. “Hmm,” she said, “It’s a pity that all your effort was for nothing.”

He drew his eyebrows, hints of confusion dancing over his face. Good.“Of course it wasn’t, this team can tackle anything.”

The Doctor tisked almost playfully. “That’s where you’re wrong, mate. Your men aren’t going to be able to kill this creature, it’s a Vex. Order them to come back now , and maybe they’ll even live.”

Phillips’ face turned a sickly shade of purple. “Is that a threat, Doctor?” he seethed.

‘No,” she remarked, darkening her voice. “It’s a promise.” If it was possible to kill the Vex, it wasn’t going to be with the weapons that UNIT had. The best chance they had of stopping the Vex was trapping it, imprisoning it where it couldn’t hurt anyone.

“Vex’s are old, almost as old as the universe itself,” River began, “Very powerful, near impossible to kill. They would arrive on planets and devour entire civilizations in an afternoon, leaving no survivors. The only way they could be stopped was if their appetite was satisfied, or if they were trapped, and as far as we know only one was ever trapped successfully. If you send out that mission, they and everyone else on this planet will die.”

“You talk about this creature, the Vex, like it’s a legend when it’s obviously not. It is here right now.”

“That’s because,” the Doctor said, “They are. Vexes have been extinct for millennia. This one has been trapped in hibernation for thousands of years, it’s the only one left in the universe, and it only just woke up.

“It is hungry, Commander, and nothing you could do can stop it. The Vex will eat its way across Earth, and we,” she said, waving her arms at River, Yaz, and Ryan and Graham, “Are the only ones who are able to prevent that. You know who I am, so listen to me- that mission will only make it angry and destroy any hope of stopping it. Call it off.”

A vein bulged in Phillips’ neck; he looked like he was about to have a stroke.

Finally, he spoke. “This is my operation, Doctor,” he spat, “You may have more experience than me, but I am in command. You do not get to how to run my own operation.” Each word was a bullet, punching the air with each syllable.

He wasn’t going to call-off the mission. A wave of icy fury crashed over the Doctor, turning her voice deadly even. “Fine,” she said, leaning back against the wall of the tent. “Have it your way.”

“You’re not going to stop me?” he asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Nope!” the Doctor answered, popping the P at the end, “It’s your command after all, who am I to step on your authority?” She met his eyes, grinning at the deep frown now set over his face. “Problem?” If he wouldn’t listen, she would make him listen.

“No,” he snapped. He watched her for a second longer as if expecting her to explode. The Doctor did not move. A cool breeze blew through the tent. Satisfied, Phillips spun away and sat at the big desk in the center of the tent, facing directly towards the screen.

“Pull up audio and video feeds for Special Task Force One,” he ordered. The soldiers leapt into action, and began typing furiously, at their stations, monitoring whatever communication channels were being used. The Doctor suspected that it was just a basic Hyper-feed system- very common, and very easy to hack.

Static buzzed on the big screen, disrupting the security feeds, slowly coming back into focus as the video feeds stabilized. A group of seven people in military uniforms milled around a small boat with UNIT sprayed across the side in large blocky yellow lettering. A line led out of it to one side, anchoring it in the shallows a few feet off shore, bobbing in the waves as the task force loaded it up with weapons. The Doctor could make out some of them, spotting what looked like a chest of outdated grenades
and. . .

“Is that what I think those are,” River muttered. The Doctor nodded.

“Yes,” she said- because stashed among the standard stock of explosives and assault rifles, were DNA guns. “At least we know what kind of genetic weapons UNIT was building here.” Even if those weapons were illegal in almost every civilized star system. And for good reason too. So much destruction had been wrecked by them, any sane person would outlaw them.

“Idiots,” River said. “They’re messing with stuff they don’t understand. They built those out of Vex DNA, they’re not going to hurt it- that’s the founding principle of genetic weapons.”

Yaz jerked her gaze away from the screen sharply at this. “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Genetic weapons can’t harm themselves. If you try to shoot something with the same biology as the weapon you’re using, nothing is going to happen. Most of them are customized by people to match their DNA so there’s no chance of them accidentally killing themselves. These things are designed to never hurt anything that matches their DNA.”

“And these ones are based on Vex DNA,” Yaz said slowly, as she realized what they meant, “And they’re going to be used to kill the Vex. The task force is being sent to their death and they don’t even know it.”

“Exactly,” the Doctor said grimly.

“But we have to do something, we can’t just let them die!” Yaz cried. “Make Phillips cancel the mission or something, anything.”

“I can’t, Yaz,” she said.

“Why not?” Yaz shot back. “Because at this point I don’t know what you would and wouldn’t do. There must be something.”

Oh. A stone landed in her gut. So that’s what had been bothering Yaz. The Doctor had been trying so hard not to let the fam see past her bubbly act, but Yaz had seen right through her anyway.

The Doctor said nothing. “Well then,” Yaz fumed, “That answers that. If you won’t do anything, I will.”

Ryan and Graham gaped at her. Yaz pulled away from her and stormed towards the exit, pausing briefly only a step from the flap.

“Are you coming?” she shot at them. All three of her companions shared a look having some kind of silent conversation that lasted a century. A creeping feeling of dread came over the Doctor. They were going to go, she knew it. She had lost their trust.

Finally, Ryan and Graham looked at each other, a silent agreement passing between them.

“Sorry Doc,” Graham said, not making eye contact, and he and Ryan left to follow Yaz, and they were gone. Empty air floated where they had been like none of them had ever been in the tent at all, leaving the Doctor feeling very, very alone.

Chapter Text

Yaz’s heart pounded, anxiety bubbling in her chest as she stormed across the camp. If the Doctor wasn’t going to do anything then she would.

Soldiers jumped out of her way when they saw her coming, Ryan and Graham struggling to keep up behind her. She must have been using her Police stare that sometimes came out when Yaz was on duty. The first time she had done it, her supervisor had said it made her look like she was willing to burn the world down to save it.

“Yaz,” Ryan gasped, stumbling a bit as his foot caught on a rock hidden just below the sand, “Those people, do you have a plan?”

“Course, Ryan,” she grit out. “Get to the task force before they head out and stop them from going to their deaths.”

Graham was the one to speak this time. “I like the idea, but how are we going to do that?”

Yaz slowed down. “I’m not sure yet. I was thinking maybe yell at them, or tell them the mission was cancelled or something.” She came to a full stop, rounding on her heel to stare them in the eyes.

Both their faces were grim, Graham in particular had set his face so that the lines on his forehead were more pronounced then usual, making his concern more obvious. “But no matter what, I won’t let them die. It’s not right,” she said.

They stayed like that for a moment. And then another, none of them speaking, Then a loud snap rang out from somewhere off to their left. Yaz snapped her head towards the sound.

A group of men swarmed around a truck. The engine must have backfired she realized. “We have to go,” she said, turning back towards Ryan and Graham. They nodded and all three of them took off towards the water again, furiously dodging between the people and tents cluttering the beach.

The Doctor sulked against the back of the tent, arms crossed over her abdomen. Her eyes glinted like steel as she watched Phillips pace around the tent giving orders. On the screen, the task force still busied themselves with the boat.

River watched as they seemingly finished loading up on weapons and all climbed in, checking everything for launch. Staticy audio crackled in and out of the speakers in the tent, but it was filled mostly with crashing background noise from the waves leaving her unable to pick up anything they were saying.

She turned her gaze back to the Doctor, who still watched stonily, not saying a word. River knew what she was doing, but it was cold in a way she hadn’t seen the Doctor get in a long time. She couldn’t judge though, River could think of a few times where she had been the one pulling almost this exact stunt. Still, her companions leaving seemed to have hit something in the Doctor.

It was like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders in a way, but the Doctor didn’t seem particularly happy to have it gone. Her stance was rigid, her gaze more piercing- like a storm was brewing in her eyes. It made the Doctor feel older, more intimidating.

Philips barked out another order to his assistants, and they scrambled to do whatever it was they had told them. River looked back to the screen. The mission had launched and the small boat was currently floating about twenty feet off shore, steadily making it way past the breakers sending spray into the air around it as it hit the waves.

Yaz broke through the final line of tents and soldiers, breaking free onto the short stretch of beach leading down to the ocean. Her lungs burned as she sprinted towards the shore line, Graham and Ryan close behind her.

The boat was crashing in the water a little ways out. A lead weight hit her stomach as Yaz pushed out a final burst of speed.

“Hey!” she shouted at the team. They didn’t give any sign they had heard her. “Hey!” she called again, feet splashing in the waves, finally staggering to a halt as the water rose up to around her knees.

“Come back!” Yaz screamed at them, struggling to make her voice heard over the pounding of the ocean. A huge wave rolled towards her. Yaz stumbled backwards as it hit her, the cold water soaking her up to the eyes. She could have sworn there were no waves that large a minute ago.

Suddenly she realized that Ryan and Graham were still on the shore line. Both of them were shouting at the boat trying to get its attention. Yaz choked as another wave crashed over her. This wasn't going to work, if they were going to stop the mission they had to go to it.

Yaz dug her feet into the sand, bracing herself against the tide. The boat was going slowly, and she had always been a strong swimmer. She would make it. She had to. Ryan threw a rock at the boat and it splashed down next to her in the water. Nothing else was going to work.

Before she could think any better of it, Yaz took a deep gulping breath and dove forwards into the water. She had already been soaked from the waves, but this was different. She was suspended in the cold icy brine with nothing to grip onto, struggling furiously to move forwards. The salt stung her eyes as she swam, arms burning with the effort.

Yaz broke the surface, gasping for air. She tread water for a moment as she took in great aching breaths. The shore was far behind her now. Fifty feet at least. There was no way she was touching the bottom at this depth. The boat was close now and she could make out the people on board, but it was still too far away for them to hear her. A woman with dark hair sat at the stern. She was obviously in charge, Yaz noted, as she said something and the others snapped into action doing something with the ropes knotted to the sides of the boat.

Another wave rolled forwards, larger than the others before it, sending Yaz and the boat bobbing in the water. Fish swam around her feet and she realized that she must be over the reef. Then the woman turned her head so that Yaz could see her face clearly for the first time. She gasped, and choked again as cold sea water flooded into her mouth. It was Natalie.

Yaz shook her head and began to swim forwards again, but found herself being pushed back by waves that were definitely larger than they should have been. She kept her head above water as she swam, focusing on the boat. One of the other crew, a small man that Yaz recognized from when they first arrived, leaned over the side trying to tie something to a hook just below the surface. That must be Harper, she thought remembering what Natalie had said when she found them in the lab, the security guy.

The largest wave yet shook the boat, almost capsizing it as the water surged around it. Yaz waited for the wave to hit her but it never did. Instead, it kept rising up in front of the boat, a dim purple glow shining out from just beneath the surface. It wasn’t a wave.

The crew yelled and scrambled for their weapons as the Vex broke through the water, rising up like a great slimy skyscraper from the ocean. It glistened all over, a great wall of slimy flesh with no face or features other than one long tube that grew out of it’s front, whipping around in the air like the tail of an excited dog. Yaz opened her mouth to scream as the Vex extended its tube towards the boat and flipped it over, sending Natalie and the rest spilling into the sea. A smell like rotting fruit wafted off of it making Yaz retch.

She swam frantically back towards shore, the waves pushing her along as she tried to get as much distance between her and the Vex as possible. The Vex surged again and Yaz didn’t look to see what happened but she didn’t have to to guess that the task force was gone. Eaten. It would come for her next. A massive wave rose up around Yaz, sending her crashing down beneath the water.

Terror choked her, making it hard to think. The waves had thrown up sand from the bottom, sending it swirling and rushing past her cheeks, scraping them raw. She couldn’t see.

Blindly, Yaz picked a direction hoping it was towards shore and began to swim, fighting against the current. A shock wave rippled through the water, making her teeth vibrate and gnash together. It pushed her forwards with a force so great, Yaz lost all control over her limbs and let herself be dragged through the water. She couldn’t fight it.

Then she felt the rough grating of the sand against her back as the current threw her down. Shore, she thought, and jerked herself upwards breaking the surface of the water. Yaz staggered the last few feet towards the shore, dragging herself out of the water and collapsed on the beach.

She lay there for a moment, coughing up sand and water, distantly aware of people rushing around her yelling things in a language that could have been English. Someone placed their hand on her shoulder as she stopped coughing and gently helped her sit up.

Graham crouched next to her, the wrinkles on his forehead more pronounced than she’d ever seen them. Ryan sat next to him, looking equally worried and Yaz realized that it was his hand on her shoulder.

Ryan pulled her into a bone crushing hug. “Don’t you ever do that again, Yaz,” he said into her shoulder, “You’re my best friend I don’t think I could take it if you died.”

Yaz choked down a sob as she wrapped her arms around Ryan, returning the hug with as much force as it was given. Died. She had almost died. It didn’t seem real, but then, at one point neither had aliens and that was what had almost killed her. It was a sobering thought- that she might never see her Mum or Dad or Sonya again. That she might have already checked into work for the last time, would never make her way up in the police force.

She pulled away, making eye contact with both of them as she spoke. “Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t plan to.”

“Yaz!” the Doctor called frantically racing towards her across the beach, River and Phillips in tow. “What were you thinking? You almost died!” she demanded. Yaz hiccuped, as ancient fury mounted in the Doctor’s eyes. “You shouldn’t’ve done that,” she said. Her voice was hard.

“I’m sorry,” Yaz whispered, surprised at how raspy her voice came out, “I couldn’t let them die.”

“That’s the problem. You risked yourself and they were going to die anyway- it was reckless and dangerous what you did,” the Doctor said.

Yaz froze. They were going to die anyway. The Doctor knew they were going to die and she hadn’t done anything- she had let them die. The Doctor leaned over her, concern in her eyes as if she was innocent. At least Yaz had tried. A surge of anger clouded her mind. “You-”

“Doctor,” Phillips said. He stood a few feet off. River was next to him, arms crossed over her chest.

The Doctor whirled away from Yaz, her coat sending sand flying as she turned. Yaz winced as some of the sand stung her face. Graham reached out again to place his hand on her shoulder in a comforting gesture.

“And you,” The Doctor said threateningly, “You don’t deserve a say in this. You sent the mission out knowing they would die, so don’t act like you’re innocent here.”

Philips glared. “It was our best chance of stopping the Vex.”

The Doctor scoffed. “ See how that worked out mate. Your men are dead and the Vex is gone. Look at the sea.”

Yaz shifted to stare out at the water. The Doctor was right- there was no sign of the Vex.

Phillips looked at the ground. “Well I didn’t know that-”

The Doctor cut him off. “Yes. You didn’t know.” A mocking tone crept into her voice hinting at something within her that sent a cold shiver down Yaz’s spine.

“And thanks to you, the Vex was able to escape. It can teleport itself, that's how it got here. It latched onto the signal from River’s vortex manipulator but the time distortion threw it back a year in the past, it’s just been asleep so long that it didn’t have the strength to teleport again until now. The Vex has been slowly recovering its strength, eating fish until it could take a human- and you just sent it a whole team of them.”

Philips visibly paled. “So where did it go?” Yaz could barely hear his voice over the sound of the sea.

“It’s impossible to know,” River said. “Your team gave it the strength to teleport again, it could be anywhere from New York to Shanghai. But we’ll find out soon. Don’t think a creature that's been asleep for millennia won’t be hungry, it's going to have to feed.”

“When you say feed,” Phillips began.

‘I mean kill.” River’s eyes flashed. “And it won’t stop there, the Vex will eat the entire planet if we let it.”

“I- I didn’t think-”

“No,” The Doctor interrupted. “You didn’t. And now the whole world is going to pay.” She stepped closer to Phillips and snatched his Commander’s badge off of his uniform. “I don’t think you deserve this,” she said, turning the gold badge over in her hand, “Do you?”

Phillips looked shocked, but recovered quickly. “No ma’am,” he muttered. Yaz felt Graham’s hand tighten on her shoulder, and her mouth went dry.

The Doctor grinned. “ I’m glad we can agree on something. From now on your troops are under my command. I’m pretty sure I still have the authority to do that. Any objections?” she asked sweetly. No one said a word.

Her grin widened and a look came over the Doctor’s face that made Yaz’s instincts scream at her to run.

“Well then,” the Doctor said, “We have a Vex to catch. Come on!” She and River began the journey back through the camp to the TARDIS. Yaz groaned and hauled herself to her feet.

She stumbled. “Careful Yaz,” Ryan said as he caught her by the arm.

“Thanks.” They all looked at each other and followed after the Doctor.

As they walked the Doctor didn’t look back to check on them, like she usually did. The noise of the UNIT soldiers faded to a faint buzz in Yaz’s ears as they walked. She remembered the Vex rising out of the sea in front of her and the sensation of being pulled through the water, unable to control where she was going, her lungs screaming for air. She shivered. The Doctor was right- she had almost died. The thought made her stomach churn.

Dimly, she was aware of the fact that they had now passed out of the camp and had reached the TARDIS. She shuffled inside the box after the others, staring down at her feet. Ryan and Graham stood next to her and they didn’t look to be doing any better.

Ryan’s hands kept picking at a loose thread in his jacket cuff and Graham kept rubbing the back of his neck.

River and the Doctor seemed unaffected though. They circle the console, twisting knobs and doing something with a strange device the River pulled out of somewhere that looked like a cross between an old radio and one of those microscopes that they had always used in school. She assumed they were trying to track the Vex and they were doing just fine on their own. They didn’t need her.

Finally she spoke. “Doctor,” Yaz called. The Doctor looked up, her stormy gaze made the hairs on Yaz’s arms stand up, making her more certain than before.

“What is it Yaz?” she responded, frowning slightly. “Are you feeling okay? The close call with the Vex can’t have been easy-”

Yaz cut her off. “I’m fine, Doctor,” she said. “I just,” she paused for a second steeling herself for what she was about to say. “Doctor, I want to leave.” Ryan and Graham stiffened.

The Doctor held her gaze. Her eyes darkened and the temperature of the room seemed to drop ten degrees. After an eternity, she nodded as if accepting something she knew was coming.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you,” Yaz said, her throat burning. The Doctor held her gaze for a moment longer before turning back to the console. Over the controls, Yaz could see River look at her with something that almost looked like pity on her face.

The Doctor hovered around the TARDIS controls, silent as she worked. A deadly quiet hung in the air. River stood hunched over on the other side of the console, occasionally pushing a button to help. Yaz, Ryan, and Graham watched from the edge of the room.

She tried to ignore the feeling of their eyes burning holes in the back of her head. Finally, the whirring of the TARDIS stopped leaving only a stormy quiet to fall over the group. This was it.

The Doctor forced a blank expression over her face and turned to face them.

“Well,” she choked out, all of her normal cheerful pretense gone, in favour of a flat monotone. It’s not like it would have done anything anyway, they would have seen right through her. “We’ve landed. Sheffield is right through those doors. All you have to do is step through them and you never have to see me again.”

Yaz shifted slightly, pulling her newly torn jacket tighter around her. “Doctor-”

“That’s what you wanted,” the Doctor snapped, cutting her off, “To leave. So go, you have nothing to wait around for.”

“Doctor,” Yaz said again, her voice barely above a whisper, “I don’t want to leave forever. Just right now, you’re not yourself, it’s like you’re someone I don’t know and I can’t. I can’t stay while you’re like this, I just can’t. I’m sorry.”

“I have lived a very long time, Yasmin Khan, if you think that I am not acting like myself then maybe it’s you who doesn’t know who I am,” the Doctor said icily.

Yaz pursed her lips. “Fine. But when you’re ready, I’ll be here right where you left me and then we can travel again. Goodbye, Doctor.”

She stormed out the TARDIS doors. “Yaz,” the Doctor called after her, but she was already gone leaving her feeling emptier than before.

“And you,” she snapped, whirling to face Ryan and Graham who still stood motionless against the wall. “What are you going to do?”

Ryan coughed uncomfortably. “Well, Yaz kinda said it all already, Doctor. You haven’t been acting yourself, we just can’t stay.” He stared determinedly at his feet, refusing to meet her gaze.

“But we’ll be waiting when you come back, Doc,” Graham cut in, “Right where you left us.”

The emptiness in her chest grew. The Doctor almost felt like she was suffocating as she managed a small nod. “Anything else I should know? Anything else you’d like to say to me?”

Neither of them said a word. She swallowed. “Alright then, no need to stick around. I won’t keep you.”

“Doc-”

“GO!” she shouted at them, her voice echoing around a suddenly too big TARDIS. Ryan’s face fell. “Come on Grandad,” he said and tugged Graham towards the door after him.

As they left, Graham stopped in the threshold grabbing onto the frame of the door and looked back at her one last time. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “You are always welcome at my place, anytime. Just remember that, would you?”

A pang shot through the Doctor. “Graham-” she said, but he was already gone.

The Doctor stood staring at the door for a long time. When Yaz first told her that she wanted to leave, the Doctor had accepted it. It stung yes, but it also hadn’t seemed real. Like her companions were playing a prank on her and they would all have a laugh about it when they got to Sheffield.

“Silly Doctor!” they would cry. “You didn’t really think we were going to leave you?”

It was stupid really, for her to think that, but now they were gone. The Doctor collapsed on the floor, her legs sprawling awkwardly out in front of her but she didn’t care. Tears burned in her eyes. It wasn’t fair.

She heard faint footsteps make their ways across the console room towards her, but she barely paid them any attention. The Doctor had lost her fam.

She felt a warm, sturdy presence as River sat down beside her. She gently placed a hand lightly on the Doctor’s shoulder. “It’s alright, my love,” she whispered gently, “It will be alright.”

The Doctor sobbed and drew River towards her, burying her face in her shirt.

“They left, River,” she said, “They left me.”

River shifted, wrapping her arm around the Doctor, pulling her even closer so they were almost on top of each other. “I know,” she said.

The Doctor looked up at River. “It’s my fault, if I hadn’t tried to protect them, if I didn’t pretend that I’m not who I am, hide my past- they’d still be here.” She sniffled. “They wouldn’t have felt so betrayed. Or maybe they wouldn’t even have come with me at all, and have never left Sheffield.”

River cupped the Doctor’s cheek in her hand, a serious look falling over her face. “Sweetie, listen to me. It’s not your fault, there was nothing you could have done. Don’t you ever blame yourself for their decisions.”

“But,”

“Doctor.”

She chuckled, “I got your shirt wet.”

River raised an eyebrow. “It’s not a big deal.” Her eyes danced with determination, and the hard set of her expression turned the corners of her mouth down at the ends. The Doctor let her gaze wander over to trace River’s jawline, disappearing back into her voluminous golden hair and down to the curve of her neck. Sitting next to her on the floor of the TARDIS, the Doctor thought that she had never looked more beautiful. She flicked her gaze back up to River’s face. A small smirk played on her lips.

‘Doctor,” she said, “It’s not your fault they left. If they can’t see how brilliant you are, how hard you try, then that’s on them.”

A million thoughts ran through the Doctor’s mind, all things she could say to River-

But it’s my fault for hiding from them

I shouldn’t have shut them out

River

but she didn’t say any of them. Instead, she leaned forwards and kissed her.

River’s mouth was warm under hers. The Doctor moved her lips against River’s, parting them slightly as she flicked her tongue between them in a motion that made the Doctor let out a high pitched whine.

River smirked against her mouth, dragging her hand down the Doctor’s side, setting every nerve alight before wrapping around her waist and pulling them closer together. The Doctor couldn’t think and her mind went blank as their bodies slid into place together like a key in a lock.

She opened her mouth, gasping a little as River’s tongue flicked over her lips making her tilt her head back, arching up to meet her. The Doctor bit her lip lightly causing River to open her mouth, allowing the Doctor to deepen the kiss.

She ran one hand through River’s hair, fingers grasping at her curls as she shifted so that she was leaning over the Doctor and pushing her back against the console and all that she could feel was River.

The Doctor brought her hand up to grab the front of River’s coat as River ran her hands over her back, slowly traveling down until they rested under her thighs and the Doctor felt herself being lifted off the ground. River had picked her up.

The Doctor broke the kiss. “River,” she gasped in shock, her wife's arms wrapping around her body holding her up.

River hummed and brought her face down close, her breath tickling the Doctor’s ear. She shivered. “It’s alright Sweetie,” she murmured, pressing a kiss to the Doctor’s neck. The Doctor leaned into it.

“River, put me down,” she breathed. River smirked, but pulled away and gently lowered the Doctor onto the console.

The controls poked uncomfortably at the Doctor’s back as River pressed her into the console, her legs giving out beneath her. River leaned down to press a kiss on the corner of the Doctor’s mouth.

Her eyelids fluttered as River began to trace her way down the Doctor’s neck with her mouth. A light flashed on the console next to her.

“River,” she muttered, “River there’s a light.”

Abruptly River pulled away, leaving the Doctor floundering still leaned back against the controls.

“So there is.”

The Doctor groaned, pushed herself up so that she was standing, and turned to examine the light. She considered it thoughtfully for a moment. “Oh! It’s the Vex alert.”

She looked at River, who had made her way to the closest monitor and was busy deciphering the lines of information covering the screen. “It’s attacked again, but we got a reading on it this time so the TARDIS should be able to track it.”

“Doctor,” River called, “It’s moving.” She swung the monitor so the Doctor could see it. “The Vex is heading for London.”

A chill ran through the Doctor and she ran her fingers through her hair. “If it gets there it will kill everyone in the city. Millions and millions of people- gone. It would be a catastrophe, completely altering history. And it won’t stop there. The Vex will keep going until it has consumed everything, it could destroy the planet.” It could end the world.

“It’s only about 10 kilometers from the village. If we hurry we’ll be able to catch up to it before it reaches another town,” River said.

“Right,” the Doctor said. “Let’s go. But first,” she looked down at the rainbow outfit that had become her uniform- they worked but they didn’t feel right anymore, “I think I need a change of clothes.”

“Doctor-” River began.

“Time machine, River. Beside,” she gave her a quick kiss on the cheek, “I’ll be quick.”

The Doctor pulled away and strode off into the TARDIS, quickly finding the wardrobe room. She suspected the TARDIS must be working with her today as she remembered it being a lot harder to find the last time she had looked for it. The Doctor pushed open the door which swung open easily under her fingertips, and stepped forwards into the room.

Row after row of coats and shirts stretched back across the room, displaying fashions from everywhere and when across the universe. In the corner the Doctor spotted what she thought was a traditional chinese qipao next to an Apollo 11 space suit. A warm glow seemed to emanate from under the wall panels, casting a soft light across the space. The Doctor grinned and began to sort through the clothes.

It wasn’t long before she had found what she thought to be a suitable outfit. The Doctor had replaced her short gray pants with a pair of long loose black ones that reached down to cover the tops of her boots. She was wearing a light gray button up with thin red and purple stripes stretching horizontally across from arm to arm, paired with a dark blue waistcoat that she had buttoned up to just below her collar and the long black coat she had worn to Daniel Barton’s party during the deal with the Kasavin.

The Doctor stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, and spun, coat flaring out behind her.

“Brilliant,” she said and headed back to the console room, pausing briefly to grab her scarf from over a peg by the door.

Perfect, she thought, wrapping it around her neck and raced back to meet River.

The clang of her footsteps on the metal floor changed abruptly to a muffled thump as the Doctor’s feet found themselves back over the crystalline floor of the console room. River looked up from where she was still studying the monitor, intensely scanning the Doctor from head to toe.

“I like the new style, Sweetie,” River said as the Doctor approached.

“Thanks.”

River shook her head. “While you were gone I got a lock on the Vex, and put the coordinates into the TARDIS. We can be there about five minutes ago.”

Five minutes where it could kill. The Doctor swallowed and pulled the Squiggly Lever, activating the TARDIS, the familiar wheezing sound picking up from within the ship. She and River danced around the controls piloting the TARDIS. Finally, the groaning stopped. They had landed.

The Doctor looked to River, taking her hand before standing to face the door. “We’ve landed,” she said, “The Vex is right through those doors.”

River nodded. “Yes.” She gave her hand a squeeze, before they walked forwards and stepped outside to meet the creature.

Chapter Text

The Doctor’s gaze fell flat over the scene in front of them. The small town was everything a small town should be. They had landed the TARDIS right in the middle of the square so from the moment they had stepped outside they had had a clear view of the quaint little shops lining the cobblestone streets. A café had set up a handful of worn looking outdoor tables under its awning. Dishes were scattered on top of them, some with half eaten meals still on them, waiting for customers who were nowhere to be seen. 

“It’s quiet,” River murmured, almost to herself. Bird song rang out across the square, echoing between the buildings. 

“Too quiet,” she agreed. The Doctor pulled her sonic screwdriver out of her new coat and marched forwards, scanning the air in every direction. Nothing. 

Cursing, she pocketed the sonic. This place was everything a small town should be, so where were all the people? She turned to ask Yaz what she thought but the words died on her lips. This place was full of ghosts.

River hummed to herself, busy as she fiddled with the display on her tracker. The Doctor walked further into the square. She knelt down next to a motorbike splayed out on its side in the middle of the road, placing her hand on the surface over where she knew the engine would be. 

Still warm. It couldn’t have been here longer than five minutes. The Doctor looked up, searching for any signs of the townspeople. She locked onto a bicycle lying on its side, pedals spinning lazily in the air. Her mind raced, a sense of unease trickling down her spine like cold syrup making every thought feel like a lead weight in her stomach. 

Doctor, she can almost hear Yaz’s voice, sickeningly sweet and innocent, What happened to all the people?  

Shut up, she thought, you’re not real. 

Aren’t I though, the voice echoes back, colder this time, a whisper blowing faintly over the back of her neck. 

The Doctor stood abruptly.

“River,” she called, “How many life signs are in this village?” 

River glanced up at her, frowning slightly. “Including you and me? Just one.” 

The Doctor let out a long breath, tugging lightly on the ends of her scarf as she kept River’s gaze, an unspoken conversation passing between them. The people were gone and the Vex was here. She didn’t need to be a genius to figure out what had happened. 

She closed her eyes for a second before looking at River again. The understanding on her face told the Doctor that she had already come to the same conclusion. At the same time, River and the Doctor walked off towards the edge of the square, falling into step beside each other almost instantaneously. 

“Can you trace it?” the Doctor asked. 

River smiled, “Already on it.” The device in her hands pinged, and the grim set of her face hardened. “This way,” she said, leading the Doctor down the street towards the edge of the town. 

Cars were parked haphazardly along the street, their doors hanging open like they were expecting their passengers to return at any moment. Over and over again, the Doctor faced impossible creatures hellbent on destroying civilizations, hellbent on destroying humanity, and every time she stopped them because there was no other choice. She was the Doctor, she saved people, but how many lives were lost before she won?  

“It doesn’t make any sense, though,” she began, “The Vex shouldn’t be this strong, it shouldn’t be able to do this yet. You said it yourself, just today, it woke up and attacked your crew, but that alone should have been enough to wear it out. For this level of destruction the Vex would have needed ages to recover from all those years  in hibernation.” 

They reached the edge of the town, green hills sprawling out beneath them with the same abandoned cars scattered across the road leading out into the country. A lone sheep bleated from somewhere in the distance. At least it left the sheep alone. 

“Doctor,” River called softly, tearing her attention away from the empty landscape. “I’ve located the Vex.” She pointed to a barn perched at the crest of a hill halfway between them and the horizon. From this distance the Doctor could just see that the door was hanging crooked on it’s hinges. 

“We have to stop it,” she said, surprising herself with confidence with which she spoke. “We can’t let it leave that barn.” 

The Vex had taken too much from this world. It had cost countless people their lives, it had cost her her friends. 

“Yes,” River agreed. The Doctor turned to look at her. She was staring at the barn, her hands limp at her sides with a distant look that was distinctly un-River stretched over her face. 

Of course, River had lost people too. Silently, she cursed herself for not thinking of it sooner. The Vex killed her crew, her friends. All those people had been her responsibility, the way Yaz, Ryan and Graham were hers. Had been hers. 

Typical Doctor, came the voice again. She ignored it. Everyone else is always a second thought. 

“Hey,” she said, cringing at the awkwardness, “We’re going to stop the Vex, put an end to all of this. No one else has to die today.” 

River met her gaze. “Everyone who’s died, I feel like it’s my fault.” 

The Doctor stared. “Well that’s stupid, of course it’s not your fault.” 

“That’s the thing, Doctor. It is. When the Vex attacked my dig, it cornered a pair of my assistants. I expanded the field on my vortex manipulator to try and take them with me when I jumped. If the Vex somehow managed to access that and piggyback on my signal then all these people are dead because of me.” 

The Doctor swallowed. “Of course it’s not your fault, River. Even if the Vex did hijack your jump to get here, you had no way of knowing that this was going to happen, you didn’t tell the Vex to kill all these people. This isn’t your fault.” 

River stared at her, but something she had said lingered in the Doctor’s mind. Even if the Vex had managed to hijack River’s jump the expanded teleportation field would have made it extremely unreliable. Given that, it was theoretically possible for the teleport to split mid-jump. 

“River,” she said, “Can I see your vortex manipulator for a second?”

River furrowed her brow, confused, but handed it over anyway. 

The Doctor set to work on the device. She accessed the user history, opening systems records for recent jumps. The one River had used to get to Earth from Dalben had fragmented in transit. She pulled up the data for the fragmentation. 

It was as she thought. “Thanks,” the Doctor said and handed the manipulator back to River. 

“Dare I ask what that was about?” 

“I know how the Vex got here,” the Doctor said. “It was like you thought- it managed to piggyback on your jump when you expanded the field, but it was really unstable and honestly, I’m surprised it managed to stay connected to your jump as long as it did. Midway through the Vex fragmented off the main teleport path, which is why you ended up in different locations when you first landed. But the Vex didn’t just land in a separate location,” she continued, her voice growing louder as she spoke, falling back into the familiar role she so often played. 

“When the Vex fragmented it tripped the chronometer, activating a split second connection to the time vortex. It didn’t just land in a different place, River. The Vex landed in a different time. One year ago, when the reef first started finding the dead fish, that’s when it landed. That’s how the Vex is so powerful, for it, the attack on your dig was a year ago. A year where all it had to do was build up it’s strength until it was ready to strike.

The Doctor finished, swinging her arms out to her sides like she was challenging the world. “Pretty good, right?” A manic grin spread over her face. 

River rolled her eyes and looked back out at the barn. “If the Vex is at full strength,” she mused, “We’re only going to have one shot at stopping it.” 

“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed. 

“We’re going to need back up.” 

The Doctor found herself agreeing. “Call in UNIT and tell them to meet us back at the TARDIS. There’s something I need to do.” 

--------

The Doctor sat down, legs crossed on the grass staring out at the barn. The empty silence seemed to weigh down on her, impossibly heavy. 

Are you happy, Doctor? Are you happy now that we’re not here to hold you back?  

She stared resolutely at the sky.  The Vex was too powerful now for them to trap. Any containment field she put up around it would just be thrown off immediately. The Doctor closed her eyes. 

She sent her thoughts out into the air around her, casting her mind out for the Vex. The edges of her consciousness soared over the countryside, focusing on the barn. 

It came into focus, crystal clear like a reflection in a pond. In her mind, the Doctor saw the door sway back and forth in a wind she couldn’t feel. She moved forwards to enter and the image rippled at the edges of her vision. A rock cast in the water. She had neglected her telepathy for too long, she was getting rusty. 

The Doctor forced her mind through the door into the barn. It was dim, a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling far above as the only source of light. But she didn’t need the light to see. She could sense everything in the barn- the hay trampled on the ground, the tractor in the corner, and in the center of the floor the Vex. 

The giant purplish creature spread across the barn from end to end and rose halfway to the roof. It had grown bigger in the short time since the Doctor had last seen it. 

And why is that?

Yaz asked, but the question was pointed. The Vex’s lone tentacle swayed in the air in between it and the Doctor as if it could tell she was there. 

The thought made her pause. So little was known about the Vexes, and they were rumored to have some psychic abilities. The Doctor focused on the creature lounging in front of her, and sent her thoughts out to its mind. 

For a long moment there was nothing. Then- 

Contact. 

The Vex’s mind reared up in response to her own, grating on the Doctor’s consciousness. It felt oily and wrong, a great writhing psychic ball of worms. She nearly pulled away in disgust. 

Contact, she thought. 

A garbled howl came back from the Vex. 

The Doctor reached out again. The howl returned but after a second it faded into a garbled sounding language. 

It was like nothing she had ever heard before. It didn’t sound like anything the Doctor had ever heard or heard of before- and it rubbed at her thoughts like metal grinding on metal. 

Hello, she thought at the Vex. 

The Vex garbled back a series of incomprehensible warbles and groans. 

I’m The Doctor, the Doctor tried again, pushing her thoughts against the Vex’s. She didn’t know what she was doing, trying to communicate with it. This creature had destroyed so many lives, it wasn’t likely to listen to her, let alone change it’s mind. 

Try, Doctor. 

She couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t at least try. The Doctor gathered all of the mental strength she could muster and poured it into a single thought, piercing through the chatter like a knife. 

I’m the Doctor, she said, and this planet is under my protection. So leave or I will be forced to make you leave. 

The warbling died down, and the Doctor knew the Vex had heard her. The edges of her vision flickered from the strain of maintaining the connection for so long. And then the Vex responded. 

The strange malevolent language returned, screaming in her mind so loud that it made the Doctor physically wince. She couldn’t understand it, but she didn’t need to to know what it was saying. The Vex was never going to leave. Every part of its being radiated cruelty and hunger. It didn’t care about the world, and it would never listen. 

The Doctor broke the connection, pulling her mind back into her body with a gasp. Her eyes flew open and she stood bolt up, the whining of the Vex still echoing in her mind. She winced again, rubbing her temples at the headache that was slowly forming behind her brow. 

She stared down the barn in the distance, trying to ignore the whining. 

Well Doctor, what are we going to do? 

The Doctor shoved Yaz’s voice away, cold fear trickling down her spine. The whining wasn’t just in her head. She could hear it ringing out across the fields. The Vex was yelling. It’s angry, she thought, and turned on her heel sprinting back into town towards the TARDIS. 

-------

The Doctor ran back to the square, panting slightly as she came to a stop in front of River. She was standing by the TARDIS talking to a man in military uniform. Commander Philips, she realized, looking around for the first time seeing that UNIT had arrived. 

The force was smaller than what had been down on the beach. What was a whole fleet of jeeps and trucks had been reduced to one jeep and one truck. A handful of soldiers were scattered around the square. Most appeared to be regular UNIT men, but the Doctor thought she recognized a few from the command tent. There were maybe fifteen total. 

“Commander Philips,” the Doctor said, meeting his gaze. 

He stared at her hardly, the jagged flap of fabric where she had torn his badge off  hung down from the front of his jacket. “Doctor,” he said. 

“Where are the rest of your men,” she asked. 

Philips pursed his lips. “Funnily enough,” he began, “When you ask for volunteers for a mission to hunt down and kill a deadly creature who already killed the best strike team in your force, you don’t get a lot of people lining up to join. 

“People are scarred, Doctor. Everyone here either feels responsible for what happened or they have something to prove. Count yourself lucky that this many of us even showed up.” 

“Right.” The Doctor gave a dry swallow, nervously tapping her fingers against the side of her leg. The prospect of going up against the Vex with so little support made her a bit jittery. 

“It’s nothing we haven’t done before, Sweetie,” River said. “We’ve both faced worse odds and come out alive. Remember Jim the Fish?”

Her words calmed the Doctor a bit- but River hadn’t heard the Vex. She hadn’t felt the cold hunger in it’s mind. This wasn’t a battle they could afford to lose. 

She gave a small chuckle. “Still building that dam.” 

The Doctor immediately drew herself back in. “How soon can we mobilize?” she asked Phillips. 

Philips frowned. “The force can be ready to go in ten minutes. But why-” 

She cut him off. “Then get them ready. We’re leaving as soon as we can.” 

This time River frowned. “Isn’t that a little soon?” 

The Doctor shook her head emphatically. “I heard the Vex,” she urged. “I could feel it’s mind. I- I’ve never felt anything like it. It was so cold, the Vex felt evil. If we’re going to have any chance of stopping it, we need to act now.” 

River’s face hardened as she listened. When she was done the square set of her shoulders told the Doctor she understood. 

Phillips, obviously didn’t. “What do you mean you heard the Vex?” he asked. 

“Timelords are telepathic,” the Doctor said, “And, turns out, so is the Vex.”

Phillips looked like he wanted to ask more questions, but bit his lip and nodded. “Alright, so what do we do now?” 

River and the Doctor shared a glance as they both began to speak. 

------

The road to the barn somehow seemed emptier now that UNIT was with them then when it had just been her and River. Phillips and his men slowly maneuvered their way down the street, weaving between the parked cars. 

They reached a break in the traffic and drove the car out into the open field, scaring a small flock of sheep that had gathered near the road. River and the Doctor walked down the hill from the TARDIS to meet them. 

The driver parked the jeep and Phillips jumped down from the passenger seat. The rest of the UNIT force followed behind him, landing with heavy thumps on the wet grass. 

Phillips stared past them at the barn. “That it?” 

“Yep,” the Doctor said. “The Vex is in there.” 

He let out a long breath, and sighed, turning around to face the rest of the group. “The Vex is in that building,” he called. “Don’t let it get away.” No one said anything. They understood. 

River grabbed the Doctor’s hand. “You ready?” 

The Doctor nodded. “Just remember the plan.” 

They led the way to the barn, stopping in front of the door. It hung slanted off it’s hinges just like it had when the Doctor saw it in her mind. But the smell, like a pile of fruit left to spoil in the sun, was what announced the presence of the Vex. 

It was so strong it made the Doctor want to recoil, to run away and try again another time. The whole place screamed that it was wrong, radiating the harsh malice of the Vex. You’re not supposed to be here,  it seemed to say, the darkness of the barn a warning to anyone who might enter. Go away. 

The UNIT soldiers spread out in an arc facing the door, bracing themselves for the Vex to emerge. River broke off from her side, exiting the arc heading her way in a circle around the barn.  Doctor stared into the dark, dimly aware of Phillips issuing commands from his position at the top of the arc. 

It was calling to her. The Doctor held up her sonic to the door and buzzed. Slowly, it creaked open. 

The inside, just like the outside, was the same as she had seen in her mind. The lone lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and the Vex hunched in the corner like a giant evil slug. It reared up, the top of it almost brushing the ceiling, globs of slime glistening on it’s oily pinkish flesh, it’s tendril the size of a firehose lazily bobbing in the air like a cobra and the Doctor was the snake charmer. 

The stench rose to unbearable levels, almost making the Doctor gag as the scent of it hit her nose. It would have looked almost pitiful if it hadn’t been for the aura of pure malice that rolled off the Vex in waves, seeping into every corner of the barn, soaking it through. The sight of it filled the Doctor with rage. This was the thing that had taken her friends away from her?

A hum buzzed through the air, the sound of a containment field being activated. River, the Doctor thought. She took a step into the barn, trusting that River’s field would hold if the Vex tried to escape, keeping it contained to the area. 

“Hello,” she said, keeping her sonic raised in front of her. The Doctor took another step, reaching into her coat pocket, feeling for the permacage. 

All she had to do was get close enough to the Vex to activate it, then the ionic energy ropes would do the rest. The Doctor took another step. The Vex seized up. She froze, thumb ghosting over the activation panel of the permacage. She took another step. The Vex surged. 

The Doctor dropped to the ground, rolling to the side to avoid being crushed by the Vex’s tendril. She hit the wall of the barn, gasping, and threw the permacage skidding across the ground. 

She shielded her eyes as burning blue light erupted from the device, sprouting thick lines of energy that quickly grew up the Vex, wrapping it in what looked like ropes of lightning. 

They encircled the tendril, dragging it down to the ground, the rest of the Vex careening after it. The Doctor jumped to her feet, running back to the door. She stood in the entrance watching as the permacage spread, leaving angry red welts wherever the ropes touched the Vex. 

The creature let out an unearthly howl that made the Doctor’s bones vibrate, and hissed against the ropes. Hope bubbled up in her stomach. It almost looked like this was going to work. The permacage would incapacitate the Vex, so that River and the Doctor could get rid of it while it was unable to fight back. Almost. 

The Vex reared up, straining at the ropes. It’s stinking flesh oozing out from under them like an overfilled waffle iron. It surged again and the ropes snapped. 

The Doctor found herself on the ground again, dodging out of the way of the shattered remains of the permacage as they flew through the air. They weren’t functional anymore, but getting hit by one would still hurt. UNIT opened fire on the Vex. 

“Get down!” she yelled, “Stop shooting!” 

Phillips glared at her. Bangs rang out from their guns, bullets screaming through the air. Cursing. The Doctor crawled to the side of the barn, staying low to the ground to avoid the bullets. Sometimes, she really hated guns. 

She stood, watching for a moment. The bullets weren’t harming the Vex. They hit the thing’s slimy body, which flexed at the impact absorbing them. UNIT was giving it a meal made of lead and fire. 

River appeared next to her. “Oh that’s not good,” she said. “The bullets will only make it angry.” The Doctor nodded. 

They ran down the side of the UNIT line to Phillips. “Phillips!” River called, “Hold your fire!” 

He lowered his gun, turning to face them. “No need!” he yelled happily, “This is working! Look, the Vex hasn’t moved since we started fire!” 

The Doctor looked. He was right. “And why do you think that is?” she challenged. “You have eyes, you know your bullets aren’t harming it! It’s waiting for you to run out of ammo! We have to pull back.”

New understanding flashed over Phillips’s face. “Hold your fire!” he yelled, struggling to be heard over the echoing shots of the guns. “Stop shooting!” 

Slowly, the shots faded out. The soldiers looked to Phillips expectantly, for orders. The Vex lunged. 

The shooting started up again, but faded out a second later as the Vex whipped back and forth, swallowing them. 

“No,” Phillips breathed. 

The Doctor grabbed him, and ran, following River towards the end of the containment field. A wave of static made the hairs on the Doctor’s arms stand up as they passed through the barrier. Panting, they reached the abandoned jeep. 

The Doctor turned back to watch the Vex. It was pounding on the barrier, every impact lighting up, sending sparks into the air as the containment field shook. 

“It’s not going to hold much longer,” River said. The Doctor’s mind whirled. 

She ducker her head, shoving her hands into her pockets, thinking. The permacage had almost worked, maybe she could get another one and boost the power to melt it… no. That had been the last one she had. The Doctor made a mental note to pick up a few more the next time she was in the Platinum Ring. 

The Vex crashed against the shield again, more powerful this time. The Doctor could feel the impact vibrate in her skull. She winced, moving to rub her hand to her head and froze. She brushed against something cold and rectangular in her pocket. 

Hearts pounding, she pulled it out and stared at the little remote in her palm. The permacage receiver. 

The Doctor flipped it on, scanning the information now scrolling over the small screen and froze. 

“That shouldn’t be possible.” 

River and Phillips spun to look at her. 

“Doctor?” River asked. 

The Doctor stared at the device in her hand. If what she was reading was true… well, it would explain how the Vex had survived so long in space. Because this- this was impossible. But if it was true, then maybe they still had a chance after all. 

She looked up, raising the permacage receiver as she did so. “The permacage sent some data back to the receiver before it got destroyed. The Vex’s molecular structure resonates with the background radiation in the universe, it’s designed to generate gravitational waves just by existing.” 

River’s eyebrows shot up into the stratosphere. “But that’s impossible. No living creature can support that kind of radiation.” 

The Doctor grinned. “Exactly, but the Vex isn’t exactly normal. Check on your scanner, I bet you anything you have the same readings.” 

River busied herself for a minute, but did what she asked. A moment later she looked up. “That shouldn’t be possible.” 

“But it is.” 

Phillips looked confused. “What shouldn’t be possible?” 

“The Vex,” the Doctor began, “It’s molecular structure has the same resonant frequency as universal background radiation. It uses universal energy to create gravitational waves. That's why they were so hard to kill. Vex’s live on the same spectrum of energy as blackholes.” 

Phillips frowned. “The Vex is like a living cousin of a blackhole. That’s why it’s so hard to kill,” River explained. 

“Exactly,” the Doctor continued, “So if we can get close enough, then a strong enough wave of anti-gravity will counter the Vex’s gravity, breaking the molecular bonds in it’s body and essentially disintegrating it.” 

“And you’re sure that will work?” Phillips questioned. 

“Nope,” the Doctor said. 

A final echoing boom came from the barn. The Doctor looked just in time to watch as the containment field sent up a massive spray of sparks, and shattered like a firework. The Vex roared, racing over the country. 

“But hey, no time like the present!”

Phillips glared. 

“Alright team! Let’s go,” the Doctor called, and this time, she was the one to lead the group as they ran. 

------

Her feet pounded on the grass as they approached the TARDIS. The Doctor grabbed the door and pulled it open, River dashing inside behind her. 

Phillips stumbled in and collapsed to the floor, gasping. 

River and the Doctor ignored him, and set to work flying around the console. 

“River! Can you get a lock on the Vex?” the Doctor asked, setting the TARDIS for flight mode. 

“Already on it.” 

They whirled around each other, both performing the dance of the TARDIS, perfectly synched like they knew what the other was going to do as well as they knew the back of their hand. 

Phillips watched in awe as they flew, laughing weakly to himself. 

Are you having fun, Doctor? 

River pulled up the Vex on the monitor. It was crashing over the road below them like a massive fleshy tidal wave, sending cars flying out in all directions. “We’re right on top of it!” she called. 

The Doctor nodded in affirmation. “Phillips!” she shouted, “Open the door!” 

She didn’t watch to see if he did it, trusting that Phillips was just as invested in stopping the Vex as she was. A second later the rush of wind flooding into the TARDIS told her that Phillips had opened the door. 

The Doctor glanced behind her. Through the open door the ground was racing past. They were only a few meters away from the Vex, and it hadn’t noticed them yet. Her best guess was that they had a couple minutes before the Vex caught on and tried to kill them. 

“River,” she called, “Keep her steady. I’m going to ready the pulse.” 

River gave her a brief kiss. “Be careful.” 

The Doctor pulled out her emergency stash of engineering supplies from underneath the console. Her hands moved faster than her mind as she worked, frantically assembling the anti-grav pulse. This was going to work. Done. 

She stumbled to the door, catching herself on the frame to keep from falling out. Phillips was clinging to the frame on the other side just across from her. The Vex was so close she could have reached out and touched it. 

Suddenly, it came to a crashing stop. The TARDIS shot up, throwing the Doctor staggering back. 

“Doctor!” River called, “It’s now or never!” 

She leaned out the TARDIS again. The Vex had noticed them. There was no more time. 

The Doctor activated the pulse. 

A wave of energy blew out of the device so strong it knocked the Doctor back. A shower of sparks rained from the ceiling, lights surging around the room as the TARDIS expressed her distress. 

The Vex fell away. The Doctor watched as it hit the ground with a sickening splat. 

It roared, jerking its tendril in all directions in a final attempt to get them as the rest of its body convulsed on the pavement. 

River landed the TARDIS and all three stumbled out. Phillips fell forwards onto his knees as if in prayer. 

The Doctor stared as the Vex slowly stopped twitching and instead began to melt, flesh sluicing away like the world’s most murderous pile of Jell-O. 

And then it stopped and all that was left was a stinking pile of pinkish sludge on the road. The last of the Vexes, gone. 

Are you happy now?

-----

The Doctor looked at the pink sludge that used to be the Vex slowly oozing its way over the pavement. River stood next to her, eyes locked on the stinking remains. The Doctor turned to Phillips taking care to keep her voice steady and even as she spoke.

 “Get a clean up team, make sure all traces of the Vex are gone,” she said.

Phillips returned her carefully composed look. He seemed different now, duller. Like the events of the day were finally catching up to him, weighing him down. “Yessir,” he said, tone as managed as her own, and began to walk away. 

He made it a few steps before turning back around. “Doctor,” he said, “The files about you, are they all true?” 

Memories tugged painfully at her thoughts. Ones she would rather forget and ones she hoped she never would both flashing past her eyes. The Doctor looked at the ground, staring intently at a streak of mud that ran the length of her left boot. 

“More or less,” she replied. “Some are more true then others, but everything happened.” 

“How do you do it then?” Phillips asked pleadingly. She met his gaze, a hollow, broken look that the Doctor knew only too well stared out at her from his eyes. “How do you deal with knowing all the suffering you’ve caused?” 

Quiet. 

“I don’t forget what happens, you can’t,” she began. “ I remember everything, everyone who was lost. It doesn’t go away. But you keep fighting, Philips. You keep fighting so that they aren’t gone for nothing. You keep fighting so that maybe one day, you feel like it was almost worth it.” 

Phillips nodded, grateful. The Doctor looked away. She would never forget, she could never stop fighting. There were always going to be people who needed her, and she was never going to outrun her past. But maybe she didn’t have to. 

The Doctor put her arm around River, tilting her head to rest it on her shoulder. They stood vigil over the Vex  in the middle of the road. There was so much pain in her past, so much she was ashamed of. But she wouldn’t hide it anymore. And the Doctor stopped pretending. 

Are you happy now?  Yaz whispered from the back of her mind, Now that you don’t have to pretend for us anymore? 

No, the Doctor thought back. You’re the ones who keep me sane. You keep me grounded. You keep me from losing myself. I need you.  

Yaz’s voice stilled and then was gone. The Doctor felt empty. She hugged River closer to her, a single tear trailing it’s way down her cheek. 

Chapter Text

River stayed with her. With her around the Doctor almost didn’t notice the new emptiness that filled the TARDIS. Almost. Her golden curls filled her sight, her personality so big everywhere she went came to life in a way that it never did otherwise- like River was glowing and her light lit up the hidden corners of the universe. But it wasn’t enough. Yaz’s voice still nagged at the Doctor from the back of her mind, no matter how hard she tried to smother it. 

Are you going to forget about us?  

For the most part the Doctor ignored it, and tried to forget the hollowness that ate at her whenever she thought about her friends. Of course, she didn’t miss them, not after they had left her, but if River noticed an uptake in their adventures she certainly didn’t say anything. 

And if the Doctor noticed that River might be taking more risks, well, she didn’t say anything either. 

--------

It was late, probably. It could be challenging to tell time in the vortex. River was asleep. The Doctor lay on her back under the console fiddling with a pair of loose wires. She had noticed a slight delay in the reality differentiator earlier during their escape from the Exploding Forests of Yeon. How was the Doctor supposed to know that the forests would actually blow up? Besides, if she happened to modify the custard cream dispenser to also give out Thin Mints, then that more than made up for it. 

She jammed a final wire into the console and a  few sparks smarted across her face. 

Done. 

The Doctor stood up. Wiping machine oil off her hands on her pants a wide grin spread over her face. She pulled the custard cream lever and was greeted to the glorious sight of her beloved biscuit and a Thin Mint. The Doctor whooped, grabbing the biscuits and shoving them into her mouth. 

“Look, Yaz!” she called, “Isn’t it great?” 

Her own voice echoed around the empty room. In her excitement she had let herself forget for a minute. The TARDIS suddenly seemed too small, the shadows cast by the crystal structures looming like silhouettes of people that weren’t there, mocking her. 

The Doctor turned away and grabbed another biscuit. 

----- 

“Did you sleep at all last night?” River asked, “I didn’t hear you come to bed.” 

The Doctor ignored her, busying herself with her toast. The clatter of the diner rang around them, making her feel like they were in a bubble, contained in their little booth. 

River raised an eyebrow, waiting for an answer. The Doctor stayed silent, looking out the window at the stars beyond the bare landscape of the asteroid the restaurant has been so stubbornly built upon. The truth was no, she hadn’t slept last night. Or the night before that. Or even the one before that. 

In fact the last time the Doctor had slept had been the previous week. The eight armed cook called out an order of Xorbelbeeb Dohpaz, a delicacy enjoyed among the people of the New Jupiter Empire, and a similarly eight armed client went to pick it up. 

“Does it matter?” she asked. River frowned. 

“Doctor, you need to sleep.” 

She huffed. “And you need to eat,” she said, pointedly looking at River’s untouched plate.

River pursed her lips, letting the argument go, but she knew they would be continuing it later. The Doctor sunk down even in her seat, wanting nothing more than to be smaller, staring out the window for the rest of breakfast, not touching her food. 

-------- 

If the Doctor had barely been sleeping before, now she essentially never slept. She was vaguely aware of River watching her as she worked. She wanted to cry- to scream, yell, anything. 

It didn’t make sense. She felt like she was losing her mind.  Ruth had been the Doctor, but the Doctor was her but neither of them had ever been each other. 

Do you even know who you are? 

“Shut. Up.” she grit out through clenched teeth, her anger at the voice in her head that wouldn’t leave her alone boiling just under her skin. 

The voice quieted. 

River moved to stand next to her. “Sweetie,” she began, her voice full of more concern then the Doctor thought she deserved, “If you tell me what’s bothering you, I can help.” 

The Doctor turned away. She couldn’t look River in the eye. How could she when the truth just drove everyone away. Everyone but River. 

“Ruth was me,” she choked out. 

“But-” 

“How is that possible? Yeah, I don’t know either.” 

There was a long moment. 

Who are you really, Doctor?  

She could almost see Yaz, her bright smile and wide eyes hovering at the edges of the room, Ryan and Graham beside her. 

We’re here for you , they seemed to say. 

Not anymore, the Doctor thought. 

The silence was cut through by a loud alarm blaring from the console. The Doctor tore herself away from her thoughts to see what it was. River ran over to one of the monitors, while she read her own. The blinking Gallifreyan text announcing mysterious deaths that occurred simultaneously on Earth and a missing astronaut. That was odd. Something was definitely going on there. 

The Doctor launched into action, piloting the TARDIS to the scene of the first death. River met her eyes from across the console. 

We’re not done talking about this , she seemed to say. 

The Doctor looked away. No, they weren’t, were they. There was no getting out of it. The TARDIS landed with a jolt. She took River’s hand as they made their way out of the door into the unknown, River bouncing on her heels, the Doctor somehow feeling even emptier than before. 

It wasn’t until they were on the beach with the dead body that the Doctor realized she had forgotten her coat on board. She could swear she could hear Yaz laughing softly in the back of her head. 

------

The Doctor had parked the TARDIS in space at River’s request. 

It had been a few days since Praxeus, she thought. After stopping the alien plastic virus, the Doctor and River hadn’t slowed down. This was their first real moment of relaxation since that river garden they had been to right before meeting Ruth. 

She sat in the door, legs hanging out into open space. Stars twinkled pink and blue and green against the vast blackness of the universe. If the Doctor had cared, she would have named them all and recited their histories from memory. Instead, she sat silent, watching every galaxy and star system slowly drift across the cosmos. 

Almost every star had a civilization built up around it, each as vibrant as the last, bright specks of hope and life in the universe; but they were so small compared to the emptiness of the void surrounding them, every one of them alone. There was so much space keeping them isolated from one another. 

The Doctor marveled at the fact that on some of the planets orbiting those stars there would be whole generations living their lives unaware that there was anything else in the world but them. 

It’s so easy to be alone, isn’t it?  

She huffed, blowing some of her hair out of her eyes. Typical, there wasn’t even any wind and it was making a mess of itself. The Doctor sighed, leaning back on her hands, trying to relax as she watched more and more of the universe drift by. 

River’s soft footsteps thudded in the TARDIS behind her, slow and careful in a way that suggested she was taking extra care not to break something as she moved. River sat down beside the Doctor and handed her a mug of tea. 

The Doctor sniffed at it. Peppermint. She smiled a little at that. River knew her so well that even in a new body she had only known for a short while, she was able to tell exactly what kind of tea the Doctor wanted. It was a little overwhelming at times, but the Doctor found she didn’t mind. 

“Thanks,” she mumbled, nuzzling herself into River’s side. 

River was warm and comfortable. The Doctor always thought that their bodies seemed to fit together like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle. On Darillium, the Doctor had always been able to fit their head over River’s shoulder, his arms wrapped around her in a perfect fit, but now it was River who could do that to the Doctor and somehow it felt more right than it ever had before. 

“Sweetie,” River whispered in her ear, “We need to talk.” 

The Doctor groaned internally, knowing exactly what she wanted to talk about. She had been avoiding this conversation for weeks hoping that River would forget about it- apparently she had not been so lucky. 

“Your friends,” River pressed on not waiting for the Doctor to respond. She really does know me too well, she thought. “You miss them,”

The Doctor was silent, staring pointedly at her tea. She missed them more than she wanted to admit. Missed them so every time she said a joke there was a moment where she was waiting for Yaz and Ryan to scoff at her before she remembered that they weren’t there. That she found herself more and more often withdrawing into her own head without them there to pull her back out. That sometimes, no matter how hard she tried to pretend it didn’t happen, the Doctor could hear Yaz’s voice in the back of her head tormenting her with whispers of betrayal and heartbreak. That sometimes the Doctor didn’t even know if it was Yaz or herself that was broken. 

Finally she spoke, “Yeah.” The Doctor took a sip of her tea. It was bitter like ash in her mouth. 

“They might not be travelling with you right now, but they’re still your friends Doctor. You should go and see them. I think it will help.” 

The Doctor bit down her initial responses. That talking to them wouldn’t help, it would just be rubbing salt in a wound. Because she knew the truth- she had let them see the Oncoming Storm and they had left her for it. Yaz, Ryan and Graham had all left because they were afraid of her. 

“Maybe,” she said. 

“I know you, Doctor,” River continued. “You need people around to keep you sane, to remind you who you are and to stop you from going too far. You need your friends with you. And as much as I try, we’re too alike for me to help this time.

“Think about it, Sweetie,” she said, and fell silent. 

They sat like that for a long time. The Doctor pressed up against River’s side, gazing out at the stars. 

We’re too alike for me to help this time. 

River’s words echoed in her head. Too alike for me to help. The Doctor glanced over at River. Her eyes shone in the twinkling light of the distant stars, the hollowness the Doctor felt reflected in them. How could she have missed it for this long? 

“River,” she said hesitantly, feeling each syllable carefully as they came out of her mouth, “It’s okay for you to need people too.” 

River froze. Her breathing stopped leaving only the quiet sounds of the TARDIS faintly murmuring in the background. And then all at once the tension bled out of her body. The Doctor breathed a sigh of relief. 

“Yes,” River said, “I suppose I do.” 

The silence settled around them again like a blanket. It was peaceful, she realized, sitting here together. The Doctor snuggled deeper into River’s side, bleary eyes slowly blinking closed. 

You need us Doctor, they said. 

Yes, she found herself thinking, I think I really do.  

The Doctor yawned for the first time in a while and drifted off to sleep still half hanging out the door to the universe. 

-------

“Doctor,” River says, “I can’t travel with you forever.”

Exhausted as they are from their most recent adventure, it takes a minute for the Doctor to realize what River has just said. I can’t travel with you forever. The world tilts under her feet, narrowing to a single point of focus. Sooner or later River was going to leave and she would be alone. 

The Doctor shakes her head. “You don’t mean that,” she says. Anything for River to stay longer.

A sad smile creeps across River’s face. “I have a life back on Luna, Sweetie, I’m a professor. I can’t stay away for too long, people are bound to notice.” 

A great sob rises in the Doctor’s chest making it hard to breath. She chokes it down. “Please, stay a little longer.” 

River’s face is wide and full of understanding. “I won’t be gone forever. You’ll still see me every so often- it will be just like it was before.”

This time it is the Doctor’s turn to understand. They’ll go back to random chance encounters and River’s wild mystery-box summons. Their time apart will be greater than their time together again, but she knows River is right. They can’t go on like this forever, it’s not how they work. 

The Doctor nods. “I’ll take you home in the morning.”

They don’t go to bed that night. Instead, the Doctor parks the TARDIS in space again and they spend the hours holding each other watching the universe roll by. They point and laugh at constellations, recounting adventures they’ve had to each other both shared and alone, and the Doctor knows that this is what is best. 

River could never stay in one place for too long, and neither could she. They both had too much running to do, both of them too large to ever stay together for long. Darillium had been wonderful, but it was hard for both of them. They stayed together for twenty-four years beneath the Singing Towers, but still, every now and then, the Doctor would steal their TARDIS and run away for an adventure. Sometimes River went with them, and sometimes River would use her vortex manipulator and have an adventure of her own. 

So when morning comes, and they start their dance around the console together setting course for Luna, the Doctor knows that she’ll see River many times again. The TARDIS lands with a thud in the middle of River’s bedroom. She pokes her head out the door and laughs. 

“You smashed my bedside table!” River exclaims, mirth twinkling in her eyes. 

The Doctor grins. “Oops.” 

River rolls her eyes and pulls the Doctor close. “Don’t be a stranger, Sweetie,” she says with a kiss, “And don’t be alone.” 

And then she’s gone, leaving the Doctor in an empty console room with only the whirring of the TARDIS. 

“I know,” she whispers as the warm glow of the room fades to a deep blue, “I’ll miss her too.” The TARDIS whirrs again, orange light leeching back into the walls from the crystal pillars, and the Doctor realizes that even though she is alone, she doesn't feel quite so empty anymore. For once, the voice in her head stays silent. 

A wide smile spreads over her face as the Doctor makes her way towards the console, destination already in mind. There was something she needed to do. 

--

She’s in Sheffield again. It doesn’t feel the same without her fam there with her. She parked the TARDIS down the street where it would be out of view. The Doctor stood on the sidewalk in front of Graham’s house, trying to gather courage to walk up the short path leading up to the front door. 

The temperature of the street drops a few degrees and the Doctor shivers. Graham had told her she was always welcome at his place, there was no reason for her to be this nervous about it. She takes her first steps towards the front door almost vibrating with anticipation. Was the path always this long, the Doctor thinks as she walks. But she didn’t really know. Whenever she had visited the fam before, she had always parked the TARDIS in a remote location and they came to her, or she crashed right in the middle of their homes. She smiled, recalling Graham’s yells of mock outrage whenever she did that, scolding her for smashing the furniture even if nothing was broken. Her piloting skills were a fair bit better than that, thank you very much. 

The Doctor reached the end of the path, staring at the plain blue door in front of her. It shouldn’t feel intimidating, but the sight of it still sent anxious pulses down her spine. She rings the doorbell. 

The Doctor stands on the step, contemplating if she should run away before someone answers the door. She was wrong, River was wrong, this was a terrible idea, they wouldn’t want to see her, but it was Graham’s insistence that she was always welcome at his place that made her stay. The Doctor stands her ground and does not look away when Graham opens the door. 

Neither of them say anything. Graham looks surprised to see her, mouth gaping like a fish. The Doctor scuffs her feet nervously. Then his face splits into a wide grin and he calls back into the house, “Ryan! Get over here!” 

He wasn’t going to make her leave. The realization washes over the Doctor, soothing all her nerves. Her friends want her to stay. And all at once the floodgates open. 

“Hi Graham!” she said, cheerfully, “I know it’s been a while- at least it has for me, I don’t know how long it’s been for you. Can’t have been too long right? Anyway, you said I was always welcome to come around to your place and well, ah, I kinda, missed you? So I came if that's alright? I mean, you already said it was but you could have changed your mind or-” 

The Doctor’s rambling was cut off as Graham enveloped her in a massive hug. 

“Don’t stay away for long again, Doc. We missed you too,” he said. 

The Doctor pulls away, smiling wide. “Good to know!” she laughs. 

Ryan appears in the doorway behind Graham. “Hey Grandad, what did you wan-” he cuts off when he sees the Doctor, frozen in shock. 

She gives a small wave. Ryan unfreezes. “Hey you came back! Took you long enough.”

Ryan paused, giving her a once over. “Nice outfit,” he said, raising an eyebrow at her.

The Doctor shrugged. “This just seems to fit now,” she said. 

Graham stepped back, opening the door wider, beckoning her inside. “Well come on in then,” he urged, “We can’t stand on my doorstep all day Stopped carrying around sandwiches in my pockets, I’m gonna get hungry!” 

The Doctor stepped inside, shaking her head. How had she ever thought they wouldn’t want to see her? She follows Ryan and Graham into their living room, plopping herself down on the couch. 

Graham goes off to the kitchen to make tea while Ryan sits down on a chair across from her. “You should stay for dinner,” he says, “Yaz was going to come over later. You should see her.”

Yaz. Yaz was going to be over, she would see Yaz. The Doctor nods. “Yeah, I think I’d like that.” 

Ryan nods back and they sit in silence studying each other waiting for Graham to come back with the tea. Ryan looks exactly how she remembered, hands shoved into coat pockets. Yaz was coming.  The thought filled the Doctor with dread and anticipation. She had hurt Yaz the worst out of all of them, and Yaz had left the biggest hole when she was gone. What if Yaz didn’t want to see her? 

Eventually, Graham returned from the kitchen laden down with three mugs of tea. He handed one to the Doctor and she took a sip. Cream and five sugars- exactly how she liked it. Warmth flooded through her chest, easing her nerves a little. Even if Yaz didn’t want to see her, at least she had Ryan and Graham back. 

“So, Doc,” Graham says, “How did things go with the Vex?” 

The Doctor takes another sip of her tea. “It’s dead,” she said flatly, “We handled it.” 

“And River?” 

“She travelled with me for a bit, but went back to Luna a few days ago.” 

Graham took another sip. 

This time Ryan is the one who speaks. “Why did you never tell us about her?” he asked. 

The Doctor shrugs. “Honestly? Because I thought she was dead and I would never see her again.” A brief pause. “It also never really came up,” she added. 

Ryan and Graham stared at her in disbelief. “It never really came up?” 

“It was a while ago then. There’s a lot of stuff in my past that I’m sure would shock you.”

They sit in comfortable silence for a while. The Doctor finishes her tea, putting the mug down on the table when the sound of the front door opening echoes through the house. A second later Yaz walks into the room. 

She freezes when she sees the Doctor. 

“Hi Yaz,” she said meekly. 

“Doctor,” Yaz said, her voice cold and wary. “You came back.” 

The Doctor smiled. “Couldn’t stay away from my fam for too long, could I?”

Yaz raised an eyebrow. “Your outfit,” she said, “ It’s different.” 

“Just felt like it was time for a change. Do you think it suits me?” 

Yaz laughed a little. “It’s somehow just as horrible as your last one, I don’t think you would be you without ridiculous clothing.” 

There was a pause. “I missed you, you know,” Yaz said quietly. “I’m sorry.” 

And how could she have doubted Yaz? “I know,” the Doctor said, “I’m sorry too.” 

“So,” the Doctor said, facing Yaz but addressing Ryan and Graham too. “Fancy a trip in the box?” 

And none of them need to say anything for the Doctor to know their answer. Yes.

Chapter Text

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