All That Matters
A short story by Mark Ritchie

Third of The Darkness In Men series and part of the Fifth Doctor Fiction collection

Prologue: The Future

I find Nyssa throwing rocks into the TARDIS pond. There is a disaffected look on her face. Her blue velvet jacket is lying on the bench next to her. I move it along, sit down beside her and rest my chin on her shoulder, breathing in the smell of her hair.

"You want to talk about it?" I ask.

"I don't know," she replies after a while. "I really don't know." She bends forward, picks up a stone and looks at it. She doesn't even seem to have the heart to throw it in the pond.

I gently take it out of her soft hands and skim it across the top of the water. It hits and bounces six times before sinking below the surface. Usually such a display of human skill in a pointless exercise, something that Traken never had, being a planet where everything had a point, would have at least elicited a smile from her. Today though, nothing.

"Do you miss Tegan?" I ask her.

"Sometimes," she responds. "We went through a lot together, and to lose her friendship so soon after Adric's death..." her voice trails off.

I wrap an arm round her waist and pull her closer to me. "These things happen," I say, trying to sound comforting. I know I am failing.

Nyssa stands up and pulls her jacket over her shoulders. She stands in front of me for a moment and I take her hands in mine.

"Nyssa, what happened was no fault of yours, you can't go around blaming yourself for what happened."

"I know, I know," Nyssa replies.

I stand up and she leans into me. I can feel her starting to cry; her tears are dripping onto my silk shirt. I don't care. I pull her tighter into me.

***

Part One: The Past

"So, can we go somewhere without any alien menaces, giant killer penguins or great natural disasters? I mean, it'd be just my luck to end up on the Titanic or something."

"Robbie, Robbie, Robbie," the Doctor stammered whilst pacing around the console, occasionally flicking a dial or pressing a button, "I don't intentionally get us into those adventures. And I'm very sorry about those penguins. How was I to know that a mad scientist would think penguins were the true master race? They usually like some sort of octopus or big dog of some variety."

"Doctor," Nyssa said, coming into the console room, "you're babbling again. He always does this when he's nervous," she added to me quietly.

"Nervous, Doctor?" I asked as the central column on the TARDIS ground to a halt.

The Doctor sighed heavily and operated the view-screen. Outside, it was an autumn afternoon, if the colour of the leaves were anything to go by. Of course, as the Doctor was extremely fond of telling me, I was too constrained by thinking of things purely in Earth terms. On some planets, leaves were funky colours all year round, or so the Doctor said. I decided to keep my Earth constrained opinions to myself until I was told whether it was Earth or not.

"Ah," the Doctor said, a nervous smile on his face. "Earth, early Twentieth century I should think. Just right."

"Right for what?" Nyssa asked.

"To meet an old friend of mine for dinner," the Doctor said, brushing his Edwardian cricket outfit down.

"Dinner?" I asked. "Formal dinner?"

"Yes..." the Doctor said. "I should suggest you go and put a shirt on. I doubt an X-Men t-shirt will be appropriate for thirties London.

"Not London again," I said. "I had enough there with the whole business about that alien lizard guy."

"Don't worry, Robbie," the Doctor said, we're at least thirty years earlier than that."

"Oh great," I murmured as I went down to my room to get changed, "not only are we in London again but we're twenty years too early for rock and roll."

***

"I think you look very smart," Nyssa said, smoothing down the lapels on my trenchcoat. It was something that I'd picked up in a thirtieth century flea market on a planet twenty million light years from Earth. What I liked about it was that it could fit in at almost any point in Earth's history after about 1800 and on most alien planet's no one bothered you by saying "My, that's a strange get-up', as invariably happened to the Doctor.

"Yes, well," the Doctor said. I could tell he had reservations, and not just for dinner.

"Look," I said, opening my coat, "I put my best silk shirt on underneath. That fancy enough for you?"

Nyssa, a coat draped over her own shoulders, opened the TARDIS doors and we stepped out.

"Yeah," I said as the air hit me. "Definitely Earth; nowhere else has that smell in the air. And at least this is a London that hasn't been choked by pollution.'

The Doctor himself was taking big lungfuls of the evening air. "Yes, it's delightful isn't it?"

We set off down the road. I was sure the Doctor had parked the TARDIS a good way from our destination for a reason. I guessed a lazier person would have probably materialised right in the thick of things, getting arrested straight away, while the Doctor liked to wander in late, then get arrested.

"So, who's our host this evening?" I asked. I was walking a little slower than the Doctor; every now and then he had to stop to let me and Nyssa catch up. Nyssa's small hand was encapsulated in my own.

"A writer, you may have heard of him; Carter Matheson. He taught me English when I was much younger; at Oxford."

I shook my head, the name didn't ring any bells.

A maid answered the door and it took me a few seconds to realise this was a time when most people who had the money had a maid.

The house itself looked from the outside like an old school building; much more impressive than the rapid succession of dingy flats I'd occupied living in South Shields after my father had thrown me out the house.

"I could definitely get used to this, Doctor," I said, walking into the hallway. It was magnificent; art decorating the walls, sculpture dotting the floor.

"My, dear, dear Doctor," came a voice from the top of the velvet covered stairs. I followed the gold banister up and saw a man who I guessed was in his sixties; all silver hair and a pair of half-moon specs hanging off the tip of his nose.

He cantered down the stairs, taking care despite the speed he was going at. Once he was face to face with the Doctor, he looked him up and down.

"My my," Matheson said, "you're not at all like I remember you."

"I've been through a lot since you taught me, Carter," the Doctor said, shaking his mentor's hand. "And may I introduce my friends, Nyssa of Traken and Robert Bainbridge."

"Robbie," I said, shaking the old man's hand.

"Traken?" Matheson said, seeming to roll it over on his tongue, as if trying out the word for the first time. "Is that near Tangiers?"

Before Nyssa could reply in the negative, the Doctor butted in. "Yes, yes it is."

"Awfully pale skin..." Matheson was saying, peering at Nyssa. I stepped protectively in front of her.

"Ah yes, I should have guessed," Matheson said. "You two are a couple."

The Doctor blushed.

"British family I assume, colonials?" Matheson asked.

"Yes," replied the Doctor recovering his composure.

"Delightful," Matheson said. He began to walk along to what I assumed was a lounge. "You've picked a most fortuitous night to fulfil your dinner obligation, Doctor. I'm entertaining a rather illustrious group of friends, you see."

Matheson (didn't he write that book "Demons In The Dark'?) led us through into the lounge where a group of people were sitting.

One by one, Matheson pointed out his dinner guests: George Dicenzo, a fat Italian who was, apparently, one of the worlds foremost experts on evolutionary theory. He should be, I thought to myself; he looks like a bloody walrus. Lucas Miller, another author, and one of whom I had heard. He wrote the books 'Slow Burn', 'Hollow Love' and 'Wasted Youth' in the late sixties, and I'd read them when I was going through college. They shaped a lot of the way I looked at life. Andrew Shelton, another English professor at Oxford, but he looked a lot younger than my mental image of most professors, and his head was buried in a book on the occult. Then Matheson pointed out a couple of his favourite students - both very fit (the dirty old man) - whom he simply called by their Christian names, Amy-Josephine and Isabella. Next was yet another writer, this one a poet called Iain Sharp. Sharp looked like he sounded; all angular features and hawk-like eyes. And last, but as Matheson jokingly said, not least, Sharp's wife, a young, beautiful redhead by the name of Anna. She spoke with an Irish accent and Iain Sharp was certainly not the type of guy I thought a girl like her would go for.

But then again, I told myself, these are different times. There are no supermodels, no billion grossing movies, no pizza delivery services - that was it! Dicenzo looked like the guy who owned the pizza place I used to work at!

A gong was hit, and Matheson's maid announced "Dinner is served."

I looked down at the dinner service with a critical eye. I chewed my lip. How many forks and spoons could one person need?

Matheson had sat Nyssa next to me; being of noble birth, she probably knew what spoon to use for anything, so I just followed her lead. The Doctor was sitting next to us, gesticulating animatedly in conversation with Miller. I figured at this point in time he wouldn't have written the trilogy I knew him for. I heard the Doctor pepper the conversation with titles like 'The Last Requiem' and 'Mortimore's Law'. Miller seemed to be nodding along.

Sharp was sitting, staring intensely at Matheson at the head of the table. Poets, I thought. As I watched, he removed a piece of notepaper from his jacket pocket and scribbled something down on it, before replacing it in his jacket. Obviously a poem or a note about a poem or something.

"You look a little uncomfortable," Nyssa whispered in my ear.

"I hate formal occasions," I whispered back.

Luckily it didn't last very long, and the Doctor made sure both Nyssa and I knew exactly what to say so we wouldn't cack up the timeline. I figured if I mentioned 'Slow Burn' to Miller now, he might take notice of me, and the timeline might change. He might still write the book, but it might be written and published earlier, and not have as much impact, or more impact, and I might not read it as a seventeen year old and model myself on the teenage Miller presented within it's pages. This was a completely different situation to trying to get Lennon to not be in Madison Square Garden; having a single book, or even a trilogy, slightly shuffled around in the continuum wouldn't constitute a major change, so it might go unnoticed, unlike the survival of a certain Mr Lennon.

We retired back to the lounge and Matheson handed out brandy and whisky to all the men. The Doctor politely declined, and Matheson shrugged and began to prepare screwdrivers for the girls.

Nyssa sniffed hers and sipped at it, before deciding that she liked it.

"Be careful, Nyssa, vodka is a very powerful intoxicant," the Doctor said.

I knocked back my measure of Scotch and Matheson filled it up. He popped a cigarette case open in front of me. A fine tobacco smell came out, but I fought with myself, having quit smoking a few months previously, just after I'd joined the TARDIS. "No, thank you, Mr Matheson."

"Carter please," Matheson said. "Are you sure?" he asked again, still holding the cigarette case out in front of me.

"Sure," I said.

He passed one to Shelton.

Suddenly, outside, a low rumble of thunder rolled over the house. There was silence for a few moments after and then the heavens opened and within seconds, the grounds were soaked. A streak of forked lightning carved up the sky before earthing itself, then more thunder pealed over. Louder this time.

"That lightning would appear to be quite close," I whispered to the Doctor. "Will the ship be okay?"

"The TARDIS? She'll be fine," the Doctor said.

Matheson peered out of the window, rain was lashing down the panes. "Well, ladies and gentlemen," he said, rubbing his hands together for warmth, "I would not like to venture as to your prospects should you travel home tonight. However, you are all more than welcome to stay the night here. I have, as I'm sure you all know, plenty of rooms."

Most of the guests said "Thank you," immediately, but the Doctor was hesitant.

"Doctor," I said, "I'm none too keen on trudging through a few miles of muddy field at night, with all that lightning going on, just to get back to the TARDIS."

"You want to stay?" the Doctor asked me, sounding rather surprised.

"Lesser of two evils," I whispered back to him. Obviously he'd seen my unease at dinner. Give me a Big Mac and fries any day.

"Well," the Doctor told Matheson as he was ushering the other people up to their rooms, "it would appear we're staying."

"Is that alright?" I asked Nyssa as we started up the velvet staircase.

"Fine," she said, smiling. She wrapped an arm round my waist.

"This will be your room, Doctor," Matheson said.

We were near the end of a corridor. Matheson opened the door to a luxurious bedroom, it's walls lined with books. Not needing any sleep, I guessed the Doctor would be happy there. At least there was something with which he could occupy his time.

"Thank you, Carter," the Doctor said, walking into his bedroom and immediately crossing to the dustiest bookshelf there and reading the titles of the volumes.

"And finally, Robert and Nyssa, this is your bedroom."

I almost stopped dead. Beside me, Nyssa seemed a little perturbed as well.

Matheson must have noticed the look on my face because he asked, "That will be alright, won't it?"

"Oh... yes," Nyssa said. Then it dawned on me, when the Doctor had introduced us, he hadn't given Nyssa's surname, well, he couldn't really as she didn't have one, so when Matheson had asked us if we were a couple he must have meant married.

"Splendid," Matheson said, and walked back down the corridor to his own bedroom.

I opened the door and walked in. There was a wide window looking out over a maze made from hedges; rain streaking down the glass. Occasionally a flash of lightning lit up the entire room.

"This guy probably has more money than sense," I said, lighting the oil lamp by the dresser. It lit the room up with a lovely warm, cosy glow.

There was a king-size bed in the middle of the far wall, a door with the letters WC screwed onto it next to the dresser and two bedside cabinets, each with a few books in. Before TV I guess people read a lot. There was a chair by the window; one of those big old relaxing affairs that leant back with you.

"I'll take the chair," I said.

"Why?" Nyssa asked.

"Because... there's only one bed."

"I don't mind," Nyssa said. She came over to me and slipped her arms round me, kissing me.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She simply nodded.

***

I stepped down from the spaceship and looked at the devastation around him. The city lay in ruins. The odd fire was still burning, and the sound of anguished children calling from their mothers could be heard over the sound of the passing fighters.

"Kill them!" I cried. "Kill them all!" The bloodlust must have been apparent in my call because my troops armed their rifles.

"Yes, Prospero!" they saluted.

They began to take pot shots at children. Bang bang.

"Robbie."

Bang bang.

"Robbie? Wake up! Nyssa?"

The Doctor's voice permeated my sleeping world and I woke up. Immediately I felt Nyssa's naked body against my own.

"Robbie, this is important!" He banged on the door again.

I climbed out of bed. "Hang on a second!" I pulled a pair of trousers and my shirt and opened the door. The Doctor was standing there, looking like he'd been wearing the same clothes all night.

"I just had the weirdest dream," I said.

"Delightful," the Doctor said dismissively, "tell me about it later. Our poet in residence, Mr Sharp, has been murdered."

"I'm sorry Doctor," I said, "it's a little early in the morning. Who's been murdered?"

"Iain Sharp," the Doctor said. "Come on, I need your help."

The Doctor dragged me down the corridor, the pine flooring was cold and I hadn't had time to put any socks on.

"Fasten up your shirt," the Doctor suggested.

"What about Nyssa?" I asked, trying to keep up with the Doctor and button my shirt at the same time.

"She'll be fine," the Doctor informed me. "The police will be here shortly."

"The police already are here," came a gruff voice. I turned round and came face to face with a hefty guy of around fifty, who obviously enjoyed his wife's cooking. He had a huge handlebar moustache and his cheeks were ruddy, no doubt from being dragged up to Matheson's place at - what time was it anyway? I looked at a clock, half past six in the morning.

"Inspector Drew, Scotland Yard," the uniformed officer said.

"Any chance of some coffee?" I asked.

It was then, contemplating the caffeine that I needed to wake myself up, that I saw Sharp's body lying on the floor. He had been covered with some bed linen, but there was a rather large bloodstain on the cream sheet.

I cleared my throat and ran my hand through my hair. "Let's not bother with the coffee then, shall we?" I suggested, feeling more awake than I wanted to be.

"That's probably a good choice," the Doctor whispered in my ear.

"Where were you last night, Mr Bainbridge?" Drew asked me, taking out his notebook.

"Well," I said, "we had dinner and then I had a couple of Scotches and then I went to bed with Nyssa... my wife," I added for clarification. I didn't want any of these thirties goons to think I was some sort of sexually promiscuous gentleman of leisure. If the Doctor was surprised at our rather sudden marriage, he didn't show it.

"And you never got up in the night?" Drew asked.

"No... I slept like a log."

That comment drew an expression of surprise from the Doctor, and myself once the words had left my mouth.

"Robbie, you're usually quite an insomniac, aren't you?" the Doctor reminded me.

"Yeah," I said, "until you cooked up that sleeping draught thing for me, but we left it back..." I nearly said back at the TARDIS, "...home."

"We did, didn't we?" the Doctor mused.

***

Miller was sitting on the couch, nursing a drink which, in any other circumstances, drank this early in the morning, would have had him labelled an alcoholic. "You okay?" I asked him as Drew went off, presumably to question some of the other houseguests.

He took a rather large gulp of the scotch. "Fine, thank you, Robbie," he said. "Quite unnerving business. The last thing you expect when you wake up in the morning is to find a dead body lying on the floor."

There was something about Miller's speech patterns that struck me the more and more I spoke to him. He didn't sound like a thirties gentleman. His idiom was too contemporary, that was, my contemporary. Early 21st century. But how could that be? Could he be one of the Doctor's own people?

"If you'll excuse me," I said and went over to the Doctor. I led him out of the room into the hallway. "What're the chances of another one of your race turning up, wandering about like you do?" I asked him.

"More likely now than a thousand years ago," the Doctor said. "There's the Master, the Rani, Mortimus; when you come from a society as stagnant as mine, you get a lot of people who run off to join the metaphorical circus, as it were."

"You'll have to tell me about your people one day," I said. I tucked my shirt into my trousers.

"Oh, I shall, soon," the Doctor promised. "Why do you want to know... about the chances of one of my people turning up, that is?"

"Miller, his speech is too modern, he talks like me," I told him.

A smile cracked across the Doctor's face. "Very well spotted, Robbie. Lucas isn't one of my people, no, he is a time traveller though, belonging to a very exclusive clique of people called the Riders. They are like caretakers of the timelines, making sure that everything that is supposed to happen, happens. They don't particularly like us, they see us as the people who mess up most of the timeline. Mind you, they've been busy lately with the Daleks making some crude fourth dimensional experiments. They're around to make sure that people don't erase themselves out of existence... no, they leave that to Faction Paradox."

"Who?" I asked.

"Never mind," the Doctor told me. "All you really need to know for now is that Lucas isn't a threat. In fact, he's here to help us find the murderer."

"He knew this was going to happen?" I couldn't totally contain my outrage at that guy, who'd allowed Sharp to die. Alright, I may not have liked him, but that's no excuse for letting someone get their throat cut. Then, I looked in and saw Miller refilling his whisky glass. Apparently, letting Sharp get killed was taking it's toll.

"He's still human, Robbie," the Doctor said. "He's not like me. He's just had this weight placed on his shoulders. The Riders select people on the point of death. To all intents and purposes, they don't have any choice in the matter. They have to become agents. It's a very nasty existence."

"Okay, so who killed Sharp?" I asked.

"Well, we have six suspects, his wife, Anna, Dr Dicenzo, Professor Shelton, AmyJo and Isabella, and of course, the maid."

"What about Matheson himself?" I asked.

"Carter would never do anything like that," the Doctor said, his voice full of sureness. "He and Iain had been very close friends since their own days at Oxford. Had something of a writer's circle, if I recall correctly. Carter was even the best man and Iain and Anna's wedding."

"Okay, if you're sure. Right, my vote goes with the wife," I said. "Probably out to get the money or something."

"Robbie, you are cynical. I'll go and wake Nyssa, you talk to Lucas," the Doctor told me.

I suddenly thought of Nyssa in bed naked. Hers was a state I didn't particularly fancy the Doctor seeing her in. "No!" I said firmly, "I'll get Nyssa, you talk to Lucas. The guy kinda creeps me out."

The Doctor ran a hand through his pale hair. "Alright then."

I headed to our bedroom, feeling slightly ashamed. I was sure the Doctor would have known something had gone on last night; he had a knack for knowing those things. I felt slightly annoyed at myself for, well, not exactly lying to him, but for not telling him the whole truth.

Sod that, I decided, reaching our bedroom. I opened the door and walked in. What me and Nyssa did was our own business.

I stopped dead in my tracks.

Nyssa was gone.

***

AmyJo and Isabella both seemed pretty hysterical when I got back to the drawing room.

"Nyssa's gone," I told the Doctor.

Lucas rose out of his seat, showing no ill effects from the half a bottle of scotch it looked as if he'd obliterated.

Her clothes hadn't been draped over the chair where she'd left them last night, so I knew was wasn't wandering around naked. But had she got herself dressed or had a kidnapper dressed her? Urgh, I shuddered. The thought was too repulsive to contemplate; a possible murderer manhandling my Nyssa.

"Kidnapped?" asked Miller.

"I should think so," the Doctor said, his eyes never leaving me. "If Nyssa had rose of her own accord I suspect she would have come to see where you were first."

Drew, who was in the middle of claming down the two young girls, turned around when he heard the word kidnapped.

"Kidnapped?" he said, his moustache bristling. "Who's been kidnapped?"

"My wife, we think," I said.

"Small girl, yay high," the Doctor held his hand up to shoulder level, "short wavy dark hair, about so long," he indicated a length.

Matheson was standing in the corner, seemingly obsessed by Sharp's body. "My dear Mr Bainbridge," he said, turning his attention to me, "I'm so, so very sorry."

"We must search the grounds," Lucas said firmly.

***

I got to search the hedge maze. I'd had a good look at it the night before, even though it had been dark, so I was fairly sure of a way to get to the middle and back out. The gravel was crunchy and wet beneath my feet after the night before.

"I've found her!" came a call.

I dashed in the direction of Miller's voice, not really caring that I scraped myself on the sharp branches of the hedges.

"She's been drugged," Miller said when I got there. He was in the garage with the Doctor, who had apparently got there before me. The Doctor held one of her eyes open and flashed a small pen-light at her pupil. It didn't move.

"Looks like xyrorphin," the Doctor said.

"But, Doctor," Miller interjected, "that drug won't be discovered on earth for another eight hundred years."

"Ah, yes," the Doctor said, "well, old Carter's wife, last time I was here, she was dying of appendicitis, and as I'm sure you know, xyrophin is a very powerful anaesthetic. It helped her in the end."

A metaphorical lightbulb appeared over the Doctor's head. He reached into his pockets, rummaged about and brought out what looked like a balloon.

"Is Nyssa going to be okay?" I asked.

"She'll be fine," Miller assured me, "just needs a good shot of dyrophin. I'm sure the Doc's got some in his TARDIS."

"Don't call me Doc," the Doctor said. He handed me the balloon.

"What am I supposed to do with this?" I asked.

"Blow it up," the Doctor said as if it was obvious.

I almost threw it down on the floor and proclaimed that this was no time for a party, but, as always, I suspected the Doctor had some sort of plan behind all the madness. I put the balloon to my lips and blew. It expanded. The Doctor took it off me and held it closed for a second. The clear rubber slowly turned an aquamarine blue.

"Jackpot," Miller said.

"It's like litmus, Robbie," the Doctor explained. "Because of it's powerful painkilling effects, xyrophin became a black market drug in the late thirty third century. These balloons..." he let it go and it flew nosily around the garage, "are like breathalysers for alcohol. Blue for positive, red for negative."

"I always thought it should be the other way round, myself," Miller said.

"I think I've got some dyrophin around here," the Doctor said, rummaging deeper in his pockets. "Aha!" he exclaimed and produced a small red tablet. He broke it under Nyssa's nose and the sparkly powder inside went in with her inhalation.

"She'll come round in a minute or so."

"So, Matheson drugged us?" I asked

"Presumably with the drink. I didn't have any, and Lucas' unique biological chemistry made sure it wouldn't have any effect on him," the Doctor said.

I looked at him, "Your body just breaks down poisons and stuff just like that?"

Miller nodded.

"But why would Matheson want to kill Sharp?" the Doctor mused.

"It's a shame you had to work out it was me," came Matheson's voice from behind us. We turned round; he was holding a small pistol. "I'll have to kill you too, now."

"Why?" was all the Doctor asked.

"He stole one of my novels," Matheson said simply. "It was to be my masterpiece, and that thieving bastard stole it and sold it. Well," Matheson paused and laughed maniacally. Nyssa was beginning to come round. "He won't get any money for it now!"

"And Nyssa?" I asked.

She groaned as she woke up fully. "I woke up and got dressed to follow you," she said to me, "I got attacked from behind...suffocated."

"Well," Matheson said, continuing to cover us all with the gun, "I know the Doctor has amazing skills of detection, almost comparable to those of Mr Holmes. By providing you with an extra mystery to solve, one that you would care about more, namely the disappearance of your delightful female companion, I knew you would be out of the way, and I would only have to deal with that buffoon from Scotland Yard."

My nails were digging into my palms; so angry was I. I just wanted to leap across the garage and start laying into him.

Nyssa reached out with a hand and I took it; she was shivering, although whether with cold or because she was scared, I don't know.

"Put the gun down," Miller said sternly. Even though he was a lot younger, well, at least he looked a lot younger than Matheson, his voice had a commanding air about it.

Suddenly, like lightning, the Doctor produced a dusty hardbacked tome from his pocket and flung it at Matheson. It hit his hand between the thumb and index finger and he yelped as he dropped the gun.

I let go of Nyssa's hand and elbowed Matheson in the stomach. He coughed, winded, and I grabbed the gun, letting my knee connect with his face as I stood back up. He fell backwards against the garage door and I was about to let my fist smash his already bloody face in, when the Doctor called, "Robbie!" I turned towards him and he shook his head sadly. "Let the police deal with him."

***

Epilogue: Now

My palm still hurts where the half moon indentations of my nails dug into the skin and sinew.

"It wasn't your fault," I tell her again.

"Robbie's right," comes the Doctor's soft voice. Nyssa moves her head and looks at him with big red eyes, puffy from crying. "We...we, well, we are employed in a dangerous line of work. There's always going to be risks to be taken. I know you and Robbie love each other dearly, and I also know that that will confuse you sometimes when you're placed in the crunch. But you can't blame yourself for getting kidnapped, Nyssa, if anything, it's my fault for not bringing you both down when I came for Robbie."

The Doctor looks at her with those big brown puppy-dog eyes and she smiles, hugging him. He gives her a tissue to wipe her eyes.

"I'm going to get something to eat," she says, heading out of the pond room. Once the door (enclosed within what looks like an old oak tree) has closed both myself and the Doctor turn back to the water.

"You didn't really want me and Nyssa to become involved, did you?" I ask.

"Truthfully," the Doctor replies after a while, "no. But I'm glad you did, she needs someone like you."

I run a hand through my hair.

"So," the Doctor says, easing himself down onto the grass, "you want to hear about my people and all of my wondrous adventures?"

Robbie smiles and sits down on the grass as the simulated sun falls below the horizon. But, as the Doctor begins his tale, Robbie still feels that there's something the amazing Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey isn't telling him.

