Chapter Text
“Doc,” Graham said, a bit carefully. “Now, don’t take this the wrong way, but how are you not dead?”
“In my honest defense,” she protested, hands listless at her sides, sonic hanging limply from one hand, “nothing I’ve ever licked has been radioactive before.”
“Why lick it in the first place?” he wondered, wincing as the storage room flooded with the watery red of the emergency lights. Outside, he could still hear an alarm blaring faintly. “This whole ship is a death trap.”
The Doctor kicked at the door, face twisting with faint irritation. It was deadlock sealed, apparently, whatever that meant. About as easy to sonic their way out of as a door made of wood would be, only with less potential for just kicking it down.
“Why lick anything?” she muttered. “Why not?” But she dragged her free hand down her face, scowling. “Stupid,” she said. “That was really stupid, all of this is really stupid.”
Graham agreed, personally, but she was looking sort of green, even in spite of the emergency lights, and there was a hint of concern - look, he was a grandad, he couldn’t help it - eating away at his irritation.
“Are we really stuck in here, then?” he asked, changing the subject. He glanced up at the ceiling, at the seams of metal running vertical. A proper spaceship, this. Like in all the trash he’d read as a boy, stark metal and grunge and rust and - deadlock seals. “No offense, Doc, but locked in a storage room with a bunch of radioactive metal on a ship that’s bein’ evacuated on account of its imminent collision with a sun ain’t exactly my idea of a great time.”
She threw him a withering look.
“I know, Graham,” she said, stalking past him, taking in the expanse of the room with a calculating eye. “Not exactly my idea of a picnic either, this - stupid spaceship has no air vents, what sort of proper spaceship doesn’t have air vents?” She wrinkled her nose. “Ok, so that was Plan B to get us out of here, and it just fell through.”
“What about Plan C?”
Her nose stayed wrinkled.
“Oh, you don’t mean - ” he said, feeling his face sour.
“Yaz and Ryan are still out there,” she said, stalking to the corner of the vast space. There were empty storage bins left scattered, abandoned. She took some of the metal she’d been inspecting and lifted it gingerly into one of the bins, slamming it shut and pointing the sonic at it until it locked. Graham winced at the clang as she kicked it into the corner farthest from them. “The evacuation is ongoing, it’ll take them at least the rest of today to get everyone off, and then it’s still four days until the ship gets sucked into a sun. They’re bound to come looking for us well before then.” She paused, taking in a deep breath. “I hope.”
“You hope.”
“Don’t you hope?”
“Oh god,” he muttered, massaging the bridge of his nose with two fingers. “Nothing’s ever simple with you, is it.”
“We’ll be easy to find with the life support monitors, once everyone else has gone,” she said, far too reasonably. “Now - ”
He looked up, resigned, and then confused. She was drawing a line in the dust with her boot, halfway between the two of them.
“Er,” he said.
“Consider this your do-not-cross,” she said, slapping the imaginary dust off her hands as she finished. “Go on then, scurry back. Against the wall, as far away as you can.”
“I feel like I’m missing something here,” he said. “Why am I doin’ that?”
She squinted at him. Pointed a finger in the general direction of her mouth with less chagrin than he thought was probably warranted. “Radioactive?” she said. “Not very, but still not worth getting too close to, if I were you. The metal’s safe inside the - well, inside the other metal, but I can’t very well put myself in a box, can I. I mean, I would if I could, but - ”
“What?” he protested, mostly on instinct, because mostly he was still just confused. “No.”
“Yes,” she insisted, shooing him with her hands. “Go on.”
He took a step closer, frowning. Realizing, with a chill he didn’t quite know what to make of, that he’d never seen the Doctor sweat before. But there were beads of it lining her forehead, catching red in the light.
“But - ” he said, worry catching rough on his tongue, and her gaze flattened with exasperation.
“Oh, don’t,” she protested. “I’m an alien, and it’s my own fault. I can handle it. Promise.”
“No offense, Doc,” he said, taking a step closer, “but every time you’ve ever said that has been either a lie or a complete miscalculation.”
“Graham,” she said, and she was wearing that flat-eyed, thin-lipped face that he only ever saw when he was about to disappoint her, “sometimes what you think is being brave and noble is only you being an idiot. This is one of those times. Stay back.”
“You’re ill,” he protested, unmoving. “Or you’re going to be. I’ve seen the films. Hell, I grew up during the Cold War. I’m not gonna sit back all the way over here and watch.”
“Yes, you are,” she said, perfectly still in turn, and he hated it when she did that, hated it when she turned to steel. You didn’t expect it, coming from her, and then you got it and it was like getting your face dunked in cold water. Cold, disappointed water that had no qualms about frightening the pants off you to make a point. “I’ve just absorbed 1,000 rads through my tongue like an idiot, and you’re in remission.”
“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” he said, staying where he was. “I do think maybe you should stop licking things to find out what they are, though. Ain’t that what the sonic’s for?”
“Licking things is quicker. And most people don’t just leave radioactive materials just lying about, health and safety have a field day with that sort of thing.” She made a face. “That being said, I would say this is not my finest moment. There’s blisters on my tongue. Bit worried I’ve burnt away my ability to carbon date by taste.”
“That’s what you’re worried about?”
She crossed her arms and slid down the side of her wall, feet extending out in front of her.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
“It’s just another thing the sonic can do for you,” he protested, settling uneasily on his side of the room. She wasn’t wrong, exactly, was the thing. He was in remission, and he didn’t exactly fancy the odds of exposing himself to anything that might jeopardize that. Only -
“I happen to like a hands on approach,” she said, scowling across at him, and her hair was curling damply at the temple and her face was white as chalk and no, actually, he wasn’t liking this at all. “No point in having an adventure if you’re not going to touch anything, or taste anything, or try anything.”
Only it didn’t really sit all that right, did it. When that threat of exposure was, in fact, your brilliant, if slightly ridiculous, friend.
“Health and safety ought to have a word with you,” he muttered, but it was fonder than he’d have liked. “Honestly, Doc. This was all meant to be an easy in, easy out. Are you really all right?”
“Peachy,” she said sharply, arms still crossed.
“‘Cos I could toss you half a sarnie, at least.”
Her nose wrinkled.
“Pass.”
“Your loss,” he said, retrieving said sarnie from his front jacket pocket. He unwrapped it, resigned to the idea that it might be the only food he got for the next day or two. The Doctor’s nose wrinkled again at the smell and she turned her head, eyes closing. He took a passive-aggressive bite, gaze wandering again to the impenetrable ceiling. To the lack of anything remotely interesting. God, it was the boring bits of being in mortal danger that really got to you, at the end of the day.
He ate the rest of his sandwich in silence, lost in thought. Mostly thoughts about how mind shatteringly dull it was going to be in here, while they either waited to be sucked into the sun or waited to be rescued. Normally he enjoyed a bit of peace and quiet and a chance to have his sarnie, but -
Well. Time did drag on. Especially when -
His eyes narrowed.
Especially when the most talkative person in the entire universe wasn’t bothering to talk.
“Doc,” he said, rolling up the plastic wrap his sandwich had been in and placing it into a pocket. There was no sense littering, even if everything was a few days away from being incinerated.
Her eyes blinked open. “Hmm?”
“Awfully quiet, over there on your ‘just peachy’ side.”
“Don’t be cheeky, you’re too old,” she shot back, but when she turned her face towards him he couldn’t help but wince.
“Looking a bit rough there, cockle,” he said.
“Oh - ” She glared at him, bloodless face scrunched up in irritation. “Shut up. It’s all fine.”
“Yeah, it don’t really look all that fine, though.” He frowned. “Look, all that radioactive rubbish does all sorts of awful things to humans, are you - ”
“There’s pills in the TARDIS,” she interrupted. “For exactly this sort of thing, I’ll be - I’ll be fine.”
His heart was pounding very loudly in his ears, all of a sudden. “We’re not in the TARDIS, though. And it could be days before anyone finds us, you said.”
“Well, probably, they’ll find us sooner,” she said, sounding irritated. “Hopefully. Really hopefully, actually.” She took in a sharp breath. “But it’s fine.”
Graham swiped a tired hand down his face.
“Doc,” he started.
“I was lying to you, before,” she interrupted again, and she wasn’t looking him in the face. “Sort of.”
He knew better than to look too interested. He dropped his hand and raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“I’ve never licked anything radioactive, but I have stuck my hands in toxic goo.”
He waited a beat, expectantly, because her face was doing that sort of twisty thing it did when she was trying to decide whether to lie to you or not.
“And then died,” she muttered, after a moment, giving in to the force of his unmoving eyebrows. “Stuck my hands in toxic goo, and then I died. Story of my life, really.” She looked up at him, finally, and there was a rueful smile sliding across her face. “You want to know how I’m not dead, but the answer is that I am. Over and over and over.”
“Doc,” he said, feeling cold flood the pit of his stomach.
She squinted across at him. “Hold on. That was meant to be comfortin’. Did I do it wrong?”
“Did you - ” he sputtered. “Doc.” He took in a shallow breath, watching her gleaming eyes in the dark, still squinted at him, puzzled. “How in the bloody hell was that meant to be comforting?”
“Well, I’m just saying, I’m not - I’ve died before, is all. I’m not scared. I’d pop up right as rain, mostly. Only I wouldn’t be me anymore. Or I would, but - not. Sort of.” Her nose wrinkled. “It’s hard to explain, actually, and also you’ve got three heads at the moment. It’s very distracting.” She swallowed wetly. “I told you when we all first met. I was becoming someone new, then. Becoming who I am, becoming who I was. Changin’.”
“Doc,” he said again, stomach filled with cold. “What exactly are you trying to get across here?”
She smiled at him, a bit grimly. “When it comes to radiation, Graham, the best cure is, generally speaking, prevention. Or fancy pills from the 63rd century. But, in the absence of those - ”
His throat had gone very dry.
“How long have you got?” he asked, unsure if he wanted the answer or not. Unsure if she wanted to give it to him, by the look on her face, but she plastered over it quickly.
“Three days,” she said, too quickly, too confidently. Took a shuddering breath through her nose and twisted over herself, gagging. She inched herself back upright, looking faintly irritated at the liquid pooling in her hand, dark and orange and stringy. “Okay. Two and a half days,” she amended hoarsely, still looking irritated, swiping her palm on the floor beside her. “At a push.”
“You’re bleeding,” he said grimly.
“Internally,” she protested, maddeningly, rust darkening her lips. “Technically speaking, that’s where all your blood is meant to be.”
She gagged again, and he closed his eyes, feeling like a coward.
“It’s just - ” She coughed hoarsely. Spat, and there was iron under his nose now, dark and heady and wrong at the back of his mouth. “Just alpha particles, ripping things up. Physics at work.” She sighed, and there was a muffled clang as her head settled back against the wall. “It should be beautiful. It is beautiful, probably, at the molecular level. Cells are just like stars, you know. Dying and being born, over and over and over. All life is infinitesimal,” she told him, a bit too fervently, and when he opened his eyes her own were glassy and dark. Rusty, orange blood was drying at the corner of her mouth. “It can all be ripped apart. Cells and stars alike.”
“I know,” he said quietly. And he’d never felt it, really, had never understood it, not like she did, not like anyone with more than a bus driver’s understanding of basic maths and science did, but he knew it, didn’t he. Knew better than most what is was like to have your cells ripped up inside you, torn up and made alien to you.
He’d known that, then, and been sure that it would kill him. He’d been sure that it would kill him, in the same way that he’d been just as sure no one would miss him. Until Grace and Ryan had come into his life, and now, well -
It made it all a bit different, didn’t it. Having something to lose.
Having everything to lose.
“You just keep on burning,” he said. “Don’t you. But we burn up and out, all of us. All life is infinitesimal, but you’re like a giant.”
“All life is infinite,” she said, contradicting herself with the illucid confidence of the very drunk or the very stoned or the very ill. “I’m not a giant. I just stand outside and watch. You’re the birthday candles and I’m the match that won’t go out.”
“But you do,” he said, watching her, and her eyes were half-lidded and her mouth was thinly pressed. “You said - you said when you die you become someone new.”
“Someone new who’s still me,” she tried, shifting, but her breath caught and her lips twisted. “I don’t - it’s like - burning up the old me to make a new me. A different me, but still a - still a me.”
“So it’s still dyin’, then.”
Sullen, aching silence, which meant that he was right.
“Is it scary?” he asked.
There was a beat of silence. “No,” she whispered, but she was lying to him.
He closed his eyes. “Are you scared now, Doc?”
He could hear the smile in her voice. “‘Not necessarily dying, for the record. My money’s on me. And on Yaz and Ryan Generation Z -ing their way into the life support monitors and finding us.”
“You know what I meant.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said, and it was more convincing this time. “I’m not alone.”
He opened his eyes, though, and she was across from him still, wedged into a corner, knees up, lonely, and the space between them might as well have been infinite.
“It’s just, I would be afraid,” he said quietly. “I was afraid. And I was alone, at least for a while. I ain’t afraid to admit it, Doc, there’s no shame in it. You’re not saving me from it, because I lived it, didn’t I.”
He stood.
“Graham,” she said quietly, warning him away, but her lips were bloody and her skin was waxy, and he didn’t care, suddenly, whether or not she was lying. Whether or not she was dying, whether or not she was afraid, whether or not he was damning himself.
“I’m not trying to be brave,” he said, bridging the distance, stepping over the line she’d drawn onto the floor with no ceremony. “I’m not trying to be an idiot, neither. I’m just doing what I can live with.”
“What you can live with is what you might die for,” she snapped, alarmed, insistent, but her voice was a rasp and her fingers could only twitch. He settled down beside her with a groan, knees aching. “Graham, I mean this with all possible sincerity, I have killed enough people that I care about.”
“You say enough shocking things to try and scare people into doing what you want, Doc,” he said, cross, just for a minute, just for a breath, “and eventually they stop being so shocking.”
“You’ve got people who need you.”
“Ryan’s got his father.”
“His father isn’t you.” She shifted again, agitated, eyes fever-bright. “His father - no offense, Aaron - is sort of terrible, and I can say that, because I’ve been a terrible father. And a terrible grandfather, for that matter.” She took in a rasping breath. “You are neither of those things.”
“I know.” He shrugged painfully out of his jacket, decided to try to wrap his head around the idea of the Doc being a grandfather some other time, tucked it away with all the other odd anecdotes she never bothered to explain. “Well, I know I’ve tried my best. But it’s all luck, innit? I already knew my odds, and I doubt this’ll change the game all that much.”
“Don’t take that chance,” she insisted. “Don’t take it, I told you, I’m - ”
But she bent over herself again, burying a moan into her knee, knuckles whitening into fists.
“You’re dying,” he said tiredly, draping his jacket over her shoulders. She was shivering. He hadn’t noticed, from all the way across the room. “But that’s alright. You’re not doing it alone.”
“‘M not dying,” she mumbled into her knee. It sounded faintly petulant. “I can’t. It’s too stupid, I’d have to stay dead out of shame.”
“It’s not your fault, Doc.”
She raised her head to look at him, deadpan.
“Ok, it is a bit your fault,” he amended. “But I ain’t gonna judge you for it. You were right, before. No point in having an adventure without a bit of risk.”
“Bit of risk,” she said, and it was a hair bitter. “Well, at least it’s not fallin’ six feet off a radio tower.” She swallowed. “Because that was just embarrassing.”
“I’m not going to ask,” he said, settling back against the wall. She burrowed deeper into his jacket and slumped, boneless, against his shoulder, a bit resentfully. “On account of I really don’t want to know.”
“I’ve got more stories than you’ve got brain cells,” she rasped. “It’s your loss, really.”
“Oh, ta, thanks very much. I give you my jacket, and all I get in return are insults.”
“Not my fault you’re an easy target.”
“Says the woman who licked the first piece of unidentifiable metal she came across.”
She twisted her head to glare up at him. “I thought you weren’t gonna judge.”
“I wasn’t. ‘Til you insulted me.”
Her nose wrinkled and she wriggled into a more comfortable position, catching him in the gut with a bony elbow in what he could only assume was not an accident.
“ Oi ,” he protested.
“You’re the one that came over here,” she said, finally settling. She was warm against him, a comfortable human temperature, and it sat wrong in his gut. Alarming. “At your peril, I might remind you.”
“Well, I ain’t leavin’ now,” he said, worry clambering back up his throat, “so you’re just going to have to put up with me.”
She took in a rasping breath, swallowing gingerly.
“Sorry,” she said, after a moment. “For - ” She waved a hand, and he pictured her scowling. “Oh, I don’t know. Pick something. I’m just - ”
“Scared,” he said.
“No.” Her voice was quieter now. Somewhere between a slur and a whisper. “I told you. ‘M not alone. It’s just - went to quite a bit of trouble to become who I am. Be a shame to - ”
She swallowed.
“Well, it’d be a shame,” she whispered. “That’s all. But I really would be fine, in the end. It’s you lot I’ve got to worry about. Honestly, someone sneezes on you and the next thing you know - ”
“Doc,” he said, a bit too firmly. “Believe me. I know.”
“Sorry. Of course you do.” She shifted painfully. “Which is why you should go - ”
“Doctor,” he said, wrapping his arm around her, tucking her head under his chin so it would stop wobbling, “ shut up .”
She tensed, and for a moment he thought she might scramble away.
“Right,” she said quietly, relaxing in increments. “Right, well. Okay.”
“You kids are gonna be the death of me,” he breathed. “Just - just let me do what I can live with, Doc.”
“I’m not a kid.”
“You licked - ”
“Oh, shut up about it,” she moaned. “If Yaz and Ryan come to rescue us, you tell them I - ”
She hissed through her teeth, knuckles whitening.
“Tell them I stepped in it or something. Please?”
“Doc, no offense,” he said, “but if you live through this, I think you’re gonna have to live with it.” He let out a breathy laugh. “And we’ll all have learned a very important lesson. Just - ” His grip on her shoulder tightened. “Just hold on. Yeah? On account of we’re all a bit attached to the person you’ve become, too.”
“Oh, well, in that case,” she mumbled, but she was growing limper in his grasp by the second. “Graham. Graham, I - ”
There was an urgency to her voice that he recognized. He sat them both up, turned his face away from the blood and the bile and the iron under his nose but kept her in his grip, a comfort, maybe, but there was no escaping the sound or the way her shoulders tensed so horribly -
“I’m sure they’re coming,” she rasped, settling back against him, lips bloody. There were specks of it on her cheek, in her hair.
Two and a half days, he thought, tucking her back under his chin. Feeling his eyes grow watery, but he was old hat at worrying, wasn’t he. Nothing new, in this life. Nothing new, before. Bloody hell.
“I’m sure they are,” he said. “Could be a bit of a wait, though. Like you said. Maybe I could use a story or two after all.”
But her breaths were shallow, and she could only swat him on the knee.
“Oh, I see how it is,” he said quietly, taking in a shallow breath of his own.“You take my jacket, insult me and my sandwiches, and then leave me to do all the entertainin’. Well, I hope you like the Beatles, ‘cos that’s the only repertoire I’ve got.”
“Met them,” she whispered, swatting him on the knee again, weakly. “Bunch of hippies.”
“I can do a decent Elton John, too.” He swallowed, when she didn’t answer. “ABBA, in a pinch. Always meant to ask you to take me to see them perform Waterloo for the first time.”
“Next trip,” she breathed. “On the house.”
He smiled, but it was watery.
“I’ll hold you to that,” he said.
---
Of course, in the end, it was only a measly six hours before Yaz and Ryan finally came at the door with some sort of laser cannon, but they were still probably some of the longest six hours of his entire life.
“Took you long enough,” he said, once the smoke had cleared. “What are the Doc and I, the leftovers?” He levelled a look at them. “Did you even notice we were missing?”
“Oh, here we go,” Ryan muttered, hefting the laser cannon like it was something he planned on keeping. “You’re welcome, by the way. Not like we evacuated the whole entire ship by ourselves and came to rescue you.” He squinted. “Are you - snuggling?”
“Oh my god,” Yaz said, absently swatting him on the arm as she stepped closer, “are you two alright? What happened?”
“You know what,” Graham said, patting the Doctor’s hand. She didn’t stir, but she would. She would, in time. He smiled.
“I think I’ll let her tell you herself.”