Every Time I Hear Lola I Cannot But Be Astonished That BBC Executives Went Batshit Over The Usage Of

A scene I wanted to address, because I think we need to, because there is some understandable concern over this.

So, Aziraphale's first taste of human food... he goes pretty nuts. He eats it as fast as he can get it down. He can barely stop to breathe. And I can see why that evokes the Greedy Fat Person trope for some.

Given that Gaiman is no fan of fatphobia, I'm pretty sure that's not the intent. But I won't lean on that. I'll go further, and explain what that scene evoked for me, and see if it makes sense to anyone else.

(To preface, I'm a fat person with blood sugar problems who DOES eat like a starving animal and has 0 shame about it. So I'm not just Not Seeing It because of skinny privilege etc. To get that out of the way.)

So first off, of course, it's his first EVER attempt at eating human food. The absolute lack of moderation could be explained by that alone. But I think it's significant that it's specifically meat.

Those who are familiar with the Old Testament know what I mean when I say that God is carnivorous. It's the entire reason he was a bitch to Cain and not to Abel. The Abrahamic god was one of many at the time that accepted burnt animal offerings, before later revisions attempted to wave that away because oops, it sounds too pagan. Flesh of livestock was a common and expected offering, and burning it assured that the smell and smoke and 'essence' would rise to the heavens.

With that in mind, consider what the taste of meat would do to an angel. What it might awaken in them, the first of God's creations?

Maybe it's the monster-lover in me, but I didn't see a fat man gobbling food. I saw an inhuman ancient entity of immense power that only disguises itself as a man, briefly succumbing to a primal and Earthly urge. It wasn't comical to me. It was almost frightening, in a very intentional way. Rarely do we see through the human guise in this series, see just how eldritch these ethereal beings really are, especially Aziraphale. But here he is, ripping almost uncontrollably into the flesh of another life-form with ominous music and thunder overlying the whole scene, and a demon staring at him with intense satisfaction and fascination throughout.

That's what I took from it. If I had to guess, I'd say that's closer to the intent. Again, partly from knowing the author, but also from the way the scene is shot. We're watching an angel partake in literal pleasures of the flesh for the first time, taking formerly living matter into his body. I can totally vibe with Crowley's reaction, tbh.

With love like this, who needs miracles?

I wanted to make a separate post about this, because the entire magic-show story in GO2 makes me feral.

Like, for a lot of reasons, but especially for how they both pull off something amazing despite being cut off from miracles entirely. And for the same reason.

Crowley has never used a firearm. His finger is visible shaking on the trigger. But if he misses, Aziraphale will be discorporated, violently. So he doesn't miss. That bullet flies true, a beautiful shot. You'd think it was miraculous, but we know better.

Aziraphale is terrible at magic. He fumbles multiple tricks before this scene. But if he messes up swapping those photos, Crowley gets dragged down to Hell. So he doesn't mess up. For once in his life, he pulls off a brilliant feat of sleight-of-hand. And it's not a miracle at all.

The point of all this, I'm certain, is showing us how strongly they care about each other. So strongly, it bends the laws of probability. When they have to protect each other, when the other needs them, they don't fail. 'I got it right the time that mattered.' You sure did, Aziraphale. You both did.

And looking at this, and the way their joint miracle turned out to be insanely powerful, it's becoming clear that their connection is potent. And it's a power that Heaven and Hell can't take away.

Which matters a lot, because I don't think humans are going to save the day this time. I think Crowley and Aziraphale are going to bear the burden this time. Not without help, I'm sure, but they're not bystanders this time. They're being positioned on the front lines of this catastrophe. It's their problem to figure out. And they have the power to do it, but to tap into it, they have to be together.

(Yeah, sorry fellas, the fate of the world rests on you two making up. No pressure.)

But it'll be okay. Because they get it right when it matters.

Just the sheer matter-of-factness of this. So beautiful. Raw and honest. It's a rare gift to write them like that. Love it.

(Not a shipper, I said? Well...)

Thoschei kiss without a motive :O

(hands to u my first writing of the morning) have some weird little guys

He’s getting used to breathing again.

Funny thing about coming back from the dead in a body that resists it, that would rather burn than focus on the beating of its own hearts: it was hard to remember he needed air. Hunger came much easier.

This body is alive now. A little radiation can be good for you, under the right circumstances. Even better with a taste of fate derailed and a glimpse of the Doctor’s wide-eyed shock, as if he was the only one who got to break the rules of time.

Hunger lingers. Hunger transforms. He’s growing restless inside the TARDIS’s walls. Not a prisoner — the Doctor has never been able to keep what he loves in a cage, always sets it free and doesn’t dare hope it loves him enough to return. Not free — where would he go? And besides, the Doctor can barely fly the TARDIS on his own. What if he went and crashed into a moon and forgot to regenerate because the whole ordeal was so humiliating? The Master can’t leave him.

The Doctor can’t look at him, most days. Others, he can’t look away. He’s bad for conversation whether he’s guilty or enraptured.

So the Master takes up sneaking into his room while he’s asleep. The Doctor would at least lock his door if he didn’t want it to happen, not that any lock would keep the Master out for long. The Doctor sleeps in awkward bursts, a familiar pattern that he’s never grown out of and the Master has always had to deal with. At least he manages to get into his own bed these days before passing out.

The Master perches over him. He watches the Doctor breathe and matches him. He doesn’t make a sound.

He’s bold enough to touch when the Doctor is deeply unconscious. He slides a hand over the Doctor’s chest and feels one heart, then the other, so slow and peaceful. Not like the humans he plays around with their jabbering single heartbeats, too fast and too loud.

He raises his hand to the Doctor’s throat. He likes this body’s neck. His hand fits so well around it. It would have been a shame to let the Doctor regenerate into someone that the Master’s hands might not belong on. His lazy pulse beats below the Master’s fingers, and his breaths echo from the Master’s own lips.

Up again, to his mouth, to feel the air pass back and forth.

He doesn’t think. He takes.

The Doctor’s mouth is slack and warm.

And then, his hand is in the Master’s hair before he can react, keeping him still and close.

When he’s allowed to pull back, the Doctor is watching him. He doesn’t move, doesn’t panic, as comfortable as before. The Master wonders how many times the Doctor’s been playing at sleep to lure him in.

“I thought you came in here to kill me, the first time,” the Doctor says calmly. “I prefer this.”

HANDS. And a well made point about the distinction between the TV and Film BAFTAs. But mostly HANDS.

This proves my point......

I need to make a comment(ary) about this ABSOLUTELY LOVELY photo.

One of David's promo shots for the BAFTAS

Okay, so here's the comment(ary).

I want you to take notice of DT's hands - his thumbs, knuckles, and loooooong fingers (as if you hadn't already, I know, but I'm just making sure!)

I say this because those hands are so uniquely his, especially the way he bends his thumbs...the length from the tip of his thumb to the first knuckle, specifically. Hell, all the joints of his thumbs. Most people don't have that length between their joints. Nor do they usually bend BOTH those joints, as DT does. I bring this up because in my analysis of the obscure short film One-Eyed Jacques - and specifically about whether or not David was in this film, and why I think he was, and my evidence for why I think he was - this photo highlights the "uniquely weird DT hands and fingers that help us recognize him even when we can't see his face." Because in that film, his fingers are the only things we see! So thank you, BAFTAs, for providing me with wonderful photographic evidence supporting my theory. And oh, yes.... Before all of this blows up with regards to "OMG David's never been nominated and how dare they ask him to host!" - keep in mind the BAFTA film awards they've asked him to host are separate from their TV awards. David's films have notoriously been so-so, so it's no surprise he hasn't been nominated for any of them. It would be sillier if they'd asked him to present the BAFTAs for television, since it is his TV projects (like Broadchurch, Des, and Litvinenko) that really should’ve been nominated.

There are no capital letters capital enough to express how stylistically impeccable that artwork is. WOW is nowhere near enough.

good omens posting !!! (click image for optimal quality)

prints available here

RIGHT, Good Omens folks, let’s talk blocking: the art of where you put your actors within the scene, in relation to others.

Season 1, Aziraphale is always on the right side, and Crowley is always on his left side. The only exceptions to this is in the Bentley, because of the steering wheel, and on the park bench during the switch.

Aziraphale expects Crowley to appear on his left too. At the Ark he still turns right when he feels an ethereal presence, only to turn left right away. Present day, when he’s eating sushi and Gabriel appears, he smiles, turns *left*, instantly realises it’s not that kind of ethereal visit, turns right with a bit of a panic.

Aziraphale right, Crowley left. Always. Right?

Season 2 switches this up. By a LOT.

[[MORE]]

It starts moment one in the coffee shop, blink and you’ll miss it: Aziraphale is sitting down, senses Crowley, *turns left*, only for Crowley to walk around the table *right*, and sit down. It’s a tiny moment, but it speaks so loudly on… well, Aziraphale’s assumptions. Which he has a lot of.

Everything is Meant. Douglas is too brilliant for this to be random. And it happens… so often?

I also find it very interesting that they added moments in history where Crowley is on the right side. Most particularly one where he definitely is *on* the moral right side. (‘Poverty is good actually’, really Aziraphale?)

Then there’s this scene, which, the Job flashback deserves a whole essay onto its own…

Then there’s the the fact that Crowley is always on Shax’s right, and she is always on his left.

And then there’s this!

Muriel is *always* on Crowley’s left.

It’s almost as if things aren’t as black and white as the system would want you to believe, ey, angel?

Bonus: Gabriel and Beelzebub start off their meetings on opposite sides of the table. They end sitting on the same side.

Anyhoo I love this show a VERY NORMAL AMOUNT please feel free, always, to scream at me about it.

My problem with this implication that Crowley is the Selfish One™ for panicking and wanting to run instead of going with Aziraphale to Heaven and Aziraphale being a supposed saint that wants to save humanity (or fix Heaven just for love of Crowley, which is quite reductive and I will to that in a minute) is that it just acts as ir Aziraphale knew that the Second Coming was happening all along (which he didn't) and that once again just ignores that 1) he was pretty excited at the idea of coming back there, 2) that he did imply he misses reporting to Heaven AKA he is struggling to be part of The Company™ - Michael Sheen also mentioned this before the season started - and 3) Aziraphale was spiraling and in denial of the situations happening around him all season.

There are some points I disagree with so much and they are just... Not in the show?

'That Aziraphale didn't know that Heaven tried to kill him.' Yes, he did, he didn't know the whole dialogue word for word, but Crowley says in the first episode that Gabriel tried to cast him into hellfire.

'That Heaven has good angels and that's why Aziraphale was doing the right thing by going.' Okay, I hate this point with passion. Heaven having nice, innocent angels like Muriel doesn't make it less of a cult/totalitarian environment/dystopia/you pick your metaphor. Just because some angels are good doesn't mean the system is not broken. In any case, those angels deserve to get the fuck out too.

Crowley can't let go of his hate of Heaven and that's bad for some reason. This point is so... victim blamy. Why in the hell should Crowley feel anything but hate for Heaven or God by the matter? Huh?!

The point that argues that Aziraphale only wanted to go back to Heaven because of Crowley and to keep him safe deserves a paragraph of his own because I think it's such a 'reduce into shipping' reading. Aziraphale has been struggling with letting go of Heaven, he hasn't been eating, he is playing humans like fiddles during that ball and denying the danger around him, he accepted Gabriel in his home when anyone with some self-preservation would have thrown him out of in the street. All of this, plus his line in Season 1 when he still hesitated about 'his side' not liking him staying with Crowley, all of this is a build up that goes up to the moment where he presents Metatron's offer to Crowley.

Because as much as I ship them and I do think Crowley going was a mayor factor on making him accept, I don't think it's only about Crowley, it's about Aziraphale's inability to let go of his perception of Heaven as the side of goodness.

Crowley going back to Heaven is how Aziraphale thinks he can have his cake and eat it. Crowley is safe from Hell (because he thinks in terms of Hell being more harmful to Crowley than Heaven) and Aziraphale gets to 'fix' Heaven and never, ever confront the fact that Heaven is not the side of good, most importantly, never confront the fact that God is not a force of good.

Aziraphale's acceptance of the offer is not just doing Good and Save Earth™ (because remember he didn't know about the Second Coming when he accepted), it's him regressing (in the psychological term, not in the character term) and not wanting to accept real change, which sort of goes with his character being the sort of slow and frozen previous eras (contrasting with Crowley 'going too fast'). It's the same thing with him just believing Crowley is a good person because he is fundamentally an angel Deep Down™, and not because he developed his own moral compass.

Like, I'm sorry, but I don't think him accepting that offer had anything to do with some super mega selfless impulse to save Earth. He doesn't mention Earth in his whole speech. He goes around how Heaven is 'the side of truth, of light, of good' and he looks at Crowley confused as if he doesn't get why Crowley wouldn't want to go back to The Side of Truth, Light and Good™. I don't see Earth and humans mentioned there. It's not about them and deep down is not even about Crowley.

It's about Aziraphale and Heaven. It's about how he, as much as he loves Crowley, he still wants Heaven, he still wants their praise, he wants to be needed by them and how he can't and (in that moment) doesn't want to accept what they truly are.

This is why he will fail in Season 3. There won't be growth if he suddenly manages to change an unchangeable system. He needs to fail, he needs to have this view of them and God broken or he will never grow out of it.

Takin' Over The Asylum (1994) | 1.02 Fly Like an Eagle

And so it ends. I love an open ending - you're free to imagine what have they talked about afterwards, and how it went, and whether the Doctor found what he needed when he came looking for Grace, and whether it was with a heavy heart that Grace let him go again - or whether she made peace with her past and with herself of that past.

And both are written with such heartfelt precision. The Doctor is so on edge, so unsure of - well, pretty much everything, so wound up and deeply distressed, yet somehow determined. And Grace is seemingly - outwardly - fine, but still affected by what has happened, never not to be affected, and she knows it. She knows that no matter how much time passed, she would still be wondering and questioning her choice.

Part 3 of this untitled Doctor Who fic post Waters of Mars where 10 meets up with Grace Holloway again. (Well, I say untitled, and then I realized that when I posted the first bit to tumblr, I used the working title Saving Grace when linking it in this post, so let's go with that for now, shall we? It's better than my document title.) Posted for @gentildonna.

(Previous)

The Doctor made sure he was disconnected from all the machines before he set to work starting up his second heart. It wasn’t easy, not by himself. He would’ve liked to have someone else to help him. But he doubted the hospital staff would give him a good walloping on the back without what they deemed to be good reason, even if he specifically requested it. Not that he would, of course, because that would require explaining himself.

And when explaining himself didn’t work, he tended to run.

That would be slightly harder to do, given the conditions his clothes were in.

He’d started mending them, just a bit, so that he could get by. He could do a bit with the sonic screwdriver, mending fibres here and resonating dried blood off there. He was a bit surprised that, considering he had all manner of things in his pockets, he didn’t have a needle and thread. He made a mental note to put some in there in case anything like this ever happened again.

Though, if and when it did, he probably wouldn’t be wearing this suit anymore. Or this jacket.

Still. He’d worked quickly. Enough so that he’d finished before his scheduled appointment with the good Dr. Holloway. He doubted she’d be particularly disappointed, what with how she felt about him now.

He wished she hadn’t thought he was teasing her, poking fun at her stories. That hadn’t been his intention at all. He should have just come out and said it, but he hadn’t. He had such a gob on him in this regeneration, but did he open his mouth when he should? Of course not.

And now he’d missed his opportunity.

It was just as well. He shouldn’t have come. He managed to ruin them all, somehow, one way or another. This was simply proof that he was making more mistakes, not trying to compensate for his last one. How could he, when he ruined everything—everyone—he’d touched?

No shoes, but at least he was dressed in his suit again. Not that it fit quite as well as it ought to. Bit lumpy. He wasn’t the greatest at stitching. Never had liked all that domestic stuff. But it would do.

It wasn’t as conspicuous as a certain coat he’d worn in the past, one that would put the biblical Joseph’s to shame.

He’d get by.

Though he would like to find his trainers first.

Shouldn’t be too hard.

And then he could slip away to the TARDIS, no worse for the wear, and leave before he ruined Grace’s life any more than he already had.

-|-

The TARDIS refused to let him in.

Even when he claimed it would just be to get a change of clothes.

But she knew better, and he hadn’t been able to win an argument with her yet.

So he went back.

Not back to his hospital bed, no. No, he could do without that. He’d be fine. He’d only lost a bit of blood. Nothing serious. No broken bones, nothing lodged in his body, both hearts fully functioning, memory intact—not much more he could ask for.

He waited outside instead. It was, he thought, perhaps 2004, 2005. Grace may still be in San Francisco, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t moved. And, really, last time he’d been at her place, she hadn’t even had a couch, so she’d either have needed to buy quite a lot of furniture or move to a smaller place. And her place had been a bit of a hike from the hospital, if he remembered correctly. Not normally something that would bother him, but he was, perhaps just a little bit, under the weather.

The Doctor winced as he tried straightening up. Not quite healed up yet. Shouldn’t’ve tried running, really. That probably hadn’t helped. But he was sore enough that he figured pacing probably wasn’t the best way to pass the time, so he found a bench and sat down, waiting.

He was very quickly reminded why he rarely sat down with only his thoughts for company.

Ignoring the pain and his fatigue, he started walking, slowly, around and around and around the hospital grounds.

When he noticed someone watching him, he stopped that and sat down again.

But the itch to be moving remained, gnawing at him.

He wondered why he was doing this.

It wasn’t like he had a lot of time left, as far as he could tell.

His song was ending.

And here he was, waiting, doing nothing except thinking, rehashing everything he’d thought before, when there were worlds to see and places to explore and people to meet and—

Lives to ruin.

That kept him in place, that single thought.

The Doctor waited, deciding what to say the next time he saw Grace.

Because as far as he could tell, he’d only have one shot to get it right. And if he didn’t—if he started off on the wrong foot again—well, then, he wouldn’t get what he needed out of it. Not that he was entirely sure what he would get, or did need, precisely. Not closure. Not peace of mind. More…understanding. So that he would know for the future. So that, perhaps, once he regenerated—if the circumstances were such that he could regenerate—he might be able to see it, in the future. And if he could see it, he could avoid it.

And then he’d never, ever—ever—make that mistake again.

The fact that he’d done it once still scared him.

Almost as much as what would have happened, had someone else not taken it upon herself to correct it, even knowing what that correction would cost.

-|-

Dr. Grace Holloway was not happy to learn that their patient, the self-proclaimed Dr. John Smith, had somehow managed to escape the hospital and that not a single security camera had seen him leave. She hadn’t been particularly pleased with him, pulling the stunt that he had, but he wasn’t in good health, and if he really was a doctor—something she was strongly doubting—then he ought to at least acknowledge the foolishness of his actions. It was something too few people did, thinking they’d just pull through something on their own when they needed some sort of medical care.

Then again, if she were in another country without a passport or so much as a cent to her name, she might have run off, too.

Still, that didn’t explain why he’d singled her out, nor why he’d tried pulling that cruel joke. There was no reason for it. She’d learned, very quickly, to make the entire thing out as a story. And she’d told it, time and again, when she visited the children’s ward. She told other stories, too, but somehow, she always went back to that particular one.

Perhaps because that particular one wasn’t just any story—or just a story at all.

But the amount of detail she’d put into her retellings of it had some people questioning her. Perhaps because the details never changed, as the details of invented stories tended to do. She’d been shocked by the first remark she’d gotten, and even by all the ones that followed, despite knowing better by then. Not that anyone ever meant anything by it, really, as far as she could tell. They were only joking about it—with her, in their eyes. But the comments still stung.

To have snippets of the story repeated back to her, in a manner that hid the joke a little bit too well…. It felt cruel. Uncalled for. And it wasn’t even April Fool’s Day.

Perhaps it wouldn’t bother her so much if she hadn’t spent so much time thinking about it. Wondering, for the most part, what she had missed out on. Whether she’d made the right choice. Whether she’d change her mind, given the chance to. Whether it really had all been just a story or a dream.

The hospital records of that particular John Doe had been destroyed. Explaining away a dead man walking was a bit more difficult than simply burning a couple of x-rays and covering up the death in the first place, but it could be done. Rationalized. It had been late. The orderly had been confused, half-asleep, mixing up reality with that blasted movie he’d been watching. The door hadn’t been closed properly and had been loose on its hinges. It had been battered during normal use but had functioned well enough to not be reported, but its evident failure of function had ultimately required its immediate replacement, holiday or no holiday.

And things had simply fallen into place, logically, rationally, and everything that hadn’t fit had been shoved under the rug and had become unmentionable.

She’d even tried to find Chang Lee, once, when it was all said and done. She hadn’t been successful. She suspected it was because of the two bulging bags he’d held the last time she’d seen him. She still didn’t know what had been in them, but she knew they were from the Doctor. And that…that meant that they could have held anything within them from trinkets to cash to something as outrageous as gold dust.

Grace laughed, a bit bitterly. Oh, look at her now. Pining away after a forgotten possibility. All because some skinny idiot who had no idea what he was doing, how much he was hurting her, was dredging up her memories and shoving them in her face. Someone would have had to put him up to it, she was sure. They’d gone to a lot of trouble, telling someone all her stories. Perhaps he was a friend or relative of someone, thinking he’d have a go at her and have a laugh at her expense.

Although the wounds had been all too real. And the heart trouble wouldn’t have been faked, either. She wondered if they still had those x-rays. She’d be able to tell if his heart was overworked, as he’d kept insisting, by its size.

Grace put her coffee cup down. It was cold anyhow, though the brew had barely been lukewarm to begin with when she’d gone on her break.

Still. John Smith. Doctor. She should have seen through it immediately. The lack of ID, the odd things in the pockets, no money. And then the jelly babies. Oh, it had been planned, all right. Carefully. Not the stabbing, though she expected he’d have come up with one reason or another to see her. It was quite understandable that they didn’t replicate circumstances too much—and it wasn’t easy to fake a gunshot wound, not unless the entire hospital staff was in on it except her. The heart trouble may have been unexpected, or it may have been the reason he’d been the one to try it. She couldn’t be sure. X-rays inconclusive her foot. Perhaps they hadn’t even been taken.

Pursuing that thought, she went to check. But when she got there, she was informed that they had already been disposed of. She demanded to know why, without her even seeing them, particularly before they’d had a chance to take more, and had simply been told that it was out of their hands.

She cornered the newest addition to the staff. She didn’t know the man very well, and she wasn’t good at intimidating people, so she didn’t even try it. She merely pulled him aside and asked for the truth. What they had looked like.

Double exposure.

Double exposure. Yeah, right. As if she’d buy that after all this. Apologetic tone or not, even if he had been the one to take the blasted things— That didn’t matter. They were all in on it. What was this for? There was no rhyme, no reason. Who was trying to make her life hell?

She needed a break. And not just a measly five minutes. She wasn’t the only cardiologist in the hospital. They could cover for her. Oh, not easily, but they’d make do. She might lose her job, but, given the circumstances, she wasn’t so sure that wouldn’t be a bad thing. She’d thought about leaving after that first time, back in 1999. She hadn’t. She’d hung on, clinging to normality after her life had spun out of control. She’d used it as an anchor.

But some things you couldn’t bury so easily.

Given time, it would resurface.

Time.

She’d seen it backtrack, loop around, and play again. Just the once. But that experience had changed everything.

They always say that if it doesn’t matter in five, ten years, it doesn’t matter now, not really. Well, it had been five years. And it was still affecting her. And she was fairly sure another five wouldn’t change that.

She didn’t head to the parking lot, to her car. She knew she’d come back. But now…she needed to walk, now. Just to work off some of her frustration, expend her energy. She needed some time to think, where other things weren’t crowding her thoughts.

She nearly didn’t see him, sprawled on the bench as he was, fast asleep.

“Dr. John Smith,” she said, looking him over. She frowned as she studied him further. She’d seen the condition his clothes had been in, bloodied and torn. And while they were a bit raggedy, there were no gaping holes, no dark red stains stretching across large portions of the shirt. But she knew it had to be the same, because there were smaller spots of blood still there. Only, when she moved closer to get a better look at the material, she couldn’t tell that it had ever been ripped. The holes had closed up as if they had never been there.

How the hell had he managed that?

She shook him, intending to wake him up. He didn’t stir.

She felt for a pulse and yanked her hand back. He was cold. How long had he been out here? She pried open his eyelids, wishing she had a flashlight to better test pupil reactions, and then tried checking for a pulse again. She couldn’t find it, but his pupils had contracted slightly in the light when she stopped shading them with her hand. He wasn’t dead.

He really was in trouble after all.

It was all a bit more serious than she’d been led to believe, then.

“I’ve got to get you back inside,” she said. She looked dubiously at the lanky body splayed over the bench. He’d be heavy enough if she had to carry him. She’d be better off going inside and getting a wheelchair or someone to help her than struggle with him alone.

“And here I only wanted some time to think,” she muttered as she arranged the unconscious man into the recovery position.

She’d just finished making sure his head was tilted at the right angle when his eyes snapped open.

It was a bit hard not to shriek at that.

A grin spread across his face. “Hello, Grace,” he said as he pulled himself into a sitting position. “Just the person I wanted to talk to.”

“You need medical help,” she hissed, too angry with herself for losing her self-control earlier and for letting her emotions interfere with how she’d treated a patient than to wonder about how quickly he’d woken up, let alone how he’d woken up at all.

“Nah, better now. Had a bit of a rest. Didn’t expect to. Well, didn’t mean to. I did expect it would sneak up on me. Haven’t had much the last few days, and then, what with getting stabbed and all, well, I do need to replenish my energy now and then. Even I can’t run full-out forever.”

She grabbed his arm and only just stopped herself from pulling him roughly to his feet. “Come with me,” she said, her tone not allowing for argument.

“I don’t need to check back into the hospital if that’s what you’re thinking. If I need anything, I ought to see if I’ve got another zero room hiding out in the TARDIS somewhere. Listen, please. I just…. I think I need to talk to someone.”

Oh, and he was still at it. TARDIS indeed. Not that she knew where he got that bit about a zero room from, but that was beside the point. “I’ll make sure someone will be there to listen to you.”

He frowned, carefully extracting his arm from her grip. “I don’t need a visit from psychiatric,” he groused. But then his expression fell again. “Or perhaps I do, by your terms. But it wouldn’t help. Well, not me. I don’t need to end up in a padded room, thank you very much. Plenty to do without having to deal with that.” He sucked in a breath. “Please. You have to listen to me. I….” He trailed off. “It’s different now,” he said, starting again. “I’m alone now. Gallifrey’s gone.”

“Why do you insist on doing this?” Grace demanded, but she was uncertain now. There was something in his eyes….

“I can regenerate twelve times. But don’t worry; you’re the only one to kill me by punching a hole through my second heart. I’m not about to make that mistake again. Not that it was working earlier. Sign that I wasn’t doing so well, that. But she’s pumping now.” He caught her hands and placed one on either side of his chest before she could think to fight him—maybe because she didn’t want to. Maybe because she wanted it to be true.

A near-impossible duality of rhythm beat beneath her palms.

“There, see?” he asked, giving her a lopsided grin. “I’m easy to find. I’m the guy with two hearts.”