One: Turlough

Turlough feels foolish and ignored, following the Doctor through the busy fairground. He glances back into the evening crowd, but he's lost track of where Nyssa and Tegan were waiting. They'll be fine anyway, the Doctor had said so, and he was probably right. But Tegan... Tegan had sounded so terrified. She'd said the Doctor could be in danger.

Earlier, in the TARDIS, the Doctor had fought with something inside Tegan's dream. Chaos and evil, he'd said... A demon. Temptation.

The Mara doesn't sound like anything real.

But if he tried to explain the Black Guardian, would that sound real?

He remembers a deep and booming voice in his head. You will absorb my will. You are to be consumed with my purpose.

Turlough shakes his head sharply, trying to stay in the confusing moment. The Black Guardian had overstated his abilities in that particular case, anyway. Turlough had never spent much time actually lost under the force of the Guardian's will. Mostly, he'd just been relentlessly bullied, and occasionally tortured, by an abstract creature of great power but apparently very little imagination.

Hopefully, whatever the Mara actually is, they'll be able to deal with it, too. The Doctor certainly doesn't seem concerned. Let the girls look after themselves. Boy's night out. Turlough can't deny he likes the idea. And anyway - it means he can keep an eye on the Doctor. For... for Tegan.

Turlough strolls with him up to a midway game in the outskirts of the fairground. At first the Doctor looks like he's enjoying himself, like he does any time he's chucking small round objects, but his face gets darker with each throw. In the end, despite winning, the Doctor nearly starts a fight, and when Turlough discourages him, he settles for sabotaging the game tent itself. Turlough is taken rather aback, but the Doctor just seems immediately bored again as the tent gently collapses.

Turlough has never seen the Doctor engage in simple vandalism, and his sense of unease begins to tick up. "What did you do that for?"

"Oh, not as satisfying as I'd hoped," the Doctor complains, voice full of tepid disappointment. But then he bounds again into action. "Come on!"

Turlough, distracted, looking out for anyone who might have noticed them, realizes he's being left behind. "Wait for me!"

"Keep up, Turlough!"

The Doctor complains that the people here are too ignorant and content; they want for nothing. Turlough half-listens. He still has the cuddly toy the Doctor just won at the game. He wonders how to get rid of it. He should have left it back at the tent.

"They need stirring up," the Doctor's saying, his eyes scanning the crowd with a sort of disgusted delight.

"That's a bit subversive, even for you," Turlough comments.

"Oh, not my usual goody-goody self, you mean? Thank goodness for that. What about you, Turlough, what do you want?"

"Me?" What does he want? Turlough isn't ready for the Doctor to ask him a question like that. He's glad enough just to be here with him, anyway. Explicitly invited, no less. "Look, I thought this was our night on the town."

"What was always out of your reach?"

Does he know? Turlough makes the mistake of meeting the Doctor's eyes. He breaks immediately, looking down, away. "I don't know- I suppose I've learned... learned to accept things a bit. You taught me that."

The Doctor laughs cruelly. "Really? So sanctimonious, Turlough- you've been spending too much time around Nyssa."

"Is that what you think."

"Oh- do you want to know what I think?" The Doctor rounds on him and gives him a dark smile.

He does know. "I-"

"I think I know what you want. At least, one thing you want."

"Doctor-"

But the Doctor has been distracted by a costumed carnival barker outside a long tent with an entrance painted with monsters. He's well into his patter as they walk nearer. "Enter the halls of our maze of fear! Nightmarish visions lurk in every corner! Will you ever find your way out?" He targets the Doctor, catches his eye. "Will you ever be the same again?"

The Doctor beams at the entry arch, a brightly painted monstrous snake. "Would you look at that! It's like a providence. Come on, Turlough!"

Three teenagers amble out of the exit adjacent to the entrance, smiling and laughing, making pantomime scares at one another. The Doctor gives them a cold, disgusted look. The barker leans in from the side. "It'll be six tickets, sir."

"Will it. All right, then."

"And for your gentleman friend."

"It's fairground robbery," the Doctor grumbles, tearing the tickets from his roll, and then they duck through the arch, through the curtain. Inside, it's a trailer rather than a tent: the bright fabric a facade; an affectation.

As they walk further, painted board corridors veer off in a few sharp turns until the light is all but gone. "It's so dark," Turlough complains. "How am I supposed to see anything frightening?"

"You'll soon get used to the darkness, Turlough," the Doctor assures him breezily.

As Turlough steps cautiously around the next turning, an electric firecracker flash and crackle goes off like tiny gunshots, and he jumps despite himself.

The Doctor laughs as Turlough grumbles. "Ah, they got you, didn't they Turlough! And it's only the beginning! Too bad it won't get any better, though. You're just frightened of gunfire."

"I'm not- not scared. I just don't like it."

The next corner has the same crackle flash, but it's lost its power to startle. Dim lights illuminate the typical horror dioramas set back from the path. Bones with melting flesh, a pot of eyes bubbling with dry ice, a monster whose head turns mechanically to follow the marks. The smell of a fog machine fills the cool, damp air.

They pass a blind corridor and a roar plays over half-hidden speakers. A man in ragged clothes and a mask like a mauled lion rushes at them out of the misty darkness, pulled up just short of reaching them by a chain on a harness around his chest. There are lights in the mask's eyes. The man reaches out and paws for them while the speakers play angry growls.

Turlough smiles. "He certainly is giving it everything he's got."

The Doctor stands just out of the man's reach, his expression cool. Turlough's smile falters. "What are you doing, Doctor?"

"Ah..." the Doctor sounds disappointed again. "He can't see me. Too bad."

"What? What do you mean?" But the Doctor has moved on.

A few more turns bring them to a larger room, festooned with green plastic ferns and vines and the colorful loops of a huge mache version of the snake from the entrance. As they enter, the lights come up slightly to reveal a woman lying on a mossy hill, well out of reach of the patrons behind a wall of bars. Or rather, half a woman, her waist improbably girdled by the wide mouth of the brightly colored snake. Its eyes sparkle like the lion's.

At first completely still, she stirs as the Doctor and Turlough shuffle through the misty room. She fixes Turlough with red-rimmed eyes. "Help me," she pleads, and slips a little further down into the mouth of the snake.

"Okay, that's creepy," Turlough says, sounding chagrined. "Can we go, Doctor? I don't think I like this."

"Please - help me," the woman moans, an arm raised towards the Doctor.

"But I can't. There's all this in the way," the Doctor replies amiably, leaning carelessly against the bars, meeting her gaze. "I'm afraid you'll just have to die alone, the life crushed out of you in the belly of the snake. What a shame."

The expression falls from the face of the snake girl. With deliberate speed she shimmies and lifts the prop snake off of her, pulls a section of the bars aside and walks out past the two of them. Turlough scowls, watching, bemused, as the Doctor sweeps into the small room to smile at the gaping mouth of the snake. The Doctor picks it up and briefly wears it like a Chinese dragon, grinning back at Turlough out of its mouth.

Turlough manages a patient smirk. "What exactly are you doing?"

"In here, Turlough." The Doctor sets the prop aside, takes Turlough by the hands, pulls him inside and slides the bars closed after them.

"Eh? Sorry, what on Earth is going on?"

"Earth, Turlough, really? When did you become so parochial?"

"Surely you mean provincial?"

"At least you're still impertinent. Or perhaps I mean impudent."

"Oh yes, I forgot those were traits you admired."

"Those aren't your only admirable traits," the Doctor quips, his eyes quite suddenly dark and close.

Turlough flinches back slightly and finds his back coming up against the wall of bars. The Doctor leans with an outstretched arm on one of the bars behind him, leaving him feeling trapped. Unconsciously, he raises the teddy thing between them. "Doctor?"

The Doctor tugs the plush obstacle from his hands and drops it aside. "Tell me I'm wrong," the Doctor rumbles down at Turlough, dark eyes a challenge. "Tell me I'm barking up the wrong Trion."

"Well you're wrong about how to set the mood, at least," Turlough stalls, baffled by where this is apparently going.

"And are you really going to complain?"

And the Doctor kisses him.

In spite of everything, Turlough wasn't expecting it. He wants to resist but only stiffens, unable to retreat, only knowing something really is as wrong as it seems. But the awkward kiss breaks and those eyes look into his again. The Doctor's hand strokes his cheek, the side of his neck, and Turlough can't help the wave of longing that rolls up through him.

The Doctor, triumphant, draws him into a proper kiss. It's hot and careless, casual in a way that frightens and disappoints Turlough. He wants to stop, to find out what's wrong, because the whole evening has already felt like playing along with some strange manic episode and now, now it's - it's going to make him despair, it really is. He pushes the Doctor away, and is relieved that Doctor lets himself be pushed.

The Doctor looks disgusted. "What are you afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid of anything! But it's not... I just don't-"

"Oh, Turlough, 'not like this,' really? You?"

"You're not yourself, Doctor!"

"Haven't we been over this? Fine! Fine, if you don't want to, if you're so worried that I'm not capable of making my own decisions..."

"It's not like that! Please... Look at my point of view, I-"

"If I were you? I'd be sure to jump at a chance like this. Who knows if the inscrutable Doctor will ever find himself in the mood again?"

Turlough's insecurities squirm. "That's not fair!"

"LIFE isn't fair, but it can be fun, let it be fun, Turlough! Enjoy yourself... Take a risk. Get in trouble. Get in trouble with me."

Turlough continues to hesitate. "This isn't your usual sort of trouble, that's all."

"You don't want to take advantage of me, is that it? Think I'm going to regret it in the morning? Or maybe you're afraid I won't respect you once you've shown your true colors as a fuckable little tart?"

"Doctor!" Turlough objects, but those growled words hit him hard. He knows he's blushing, and more.

"I know you've wondered what it would be like. I've caught you looking."

"Caught me?"

"Oh yes, sometimes you're not so cautious, are you? Sometimes you just gaze."

"I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was so objectionable!"

"Objectionable? You're the one who's objecting! I'm just wondering why you are suddenly so reluctant to try something you've obviously already done in your dreams."

"For one thing I never imagined your seductive style would involve quite so much baiting."

"Ah, so you want me to be dreadfully earnest! I suppose that makes sense. It is what I've led you to expect, isn't it. I really have been so very deeply boring."

This, at least, breaks the ice slightly, and a nervous little laugh escapes from Turlough. "I can honestly say that you have never been boring."

"Come on then! I'd hate to disappoint you. Come gaze into my eyes, come on, Turlough," the Doctor says, a casual command, straightening up, brushing his coat flat, tugging the end of each sleeve, running a hand up through his hair to tidy it, and finishing the whole thing off with a little toss of his head before turning smoldering eyes on his young companion.

Turlough chuckles, his lashes catching the light as his nervous gaze flickers towards the floor. "Doctor."

"I said, look at me." The Doctor's voice is not kind.

Reflexively, Turlough looks back up to meet the Doctor's eyes. He's captured. He knows it. They both do.

"You want me, don't you? Tell me what you want."

"I don't want to tell you. What I want," Turlough says, so softly.

The Doctor closes in again, this time deliberate, measured, with authority. His hands are strong and sure on Turlough's shoulders. His eyes sparkle as he dips closer for a kiss, slip shut at the last moment.

Turlough's heart is pounding. His hands have risen to touch the Doctor, to hold him close. Hands inside the Doctor's coat. Like this. Like this. They kiss. It's soft and hot and careful. His hands move up between them to touch the Doctor's face, to settle onto his neck, a thumb stroking the corner of his jaw. The Doctor rumbles, soft noises that sink into Turlough's soul. The Doctor's hand snakes up to cradle the back of Turlough's head, his kiss deep and slow. Turlough melts into him.

He takes Turlough by the waist and pulls him around, away from the wall of bars, into the plastic jungle. He pushes him down backwards onto the mossy mound where the woman had been. The Doctor leans over him, kissing hard, then grins, ruining their kiss.

"I'm afraid I must insist. And be specific, or you won't get it, Turlough," the Doctor teases, dark, mischievous.

"I- oh! Well a bed would be nice," Turlough grumbles from his perch on the side of the little artificial hill.

"That's not what I meant," the Doctor's tone is airy but it's a threat, isn't it? Or a warning.

"Are you really going to make me say it?"

"Am I really going to know if you don't? Do you really want me to guess?"

Turlough finds the idea alarming but also finds his trousers horribly uncomfortable. "Doctor, we're practically in public," he protests, changing the subject.

"Have you never got away with anything in public? Nothing under the table, nothing under the covers at that school of yours?"

"Ugh! Doctor, those were humans!"

"Really! You never touched them?"

"Have you ever smelled one?"

"You don't seem to object to Tegan."

"Hang on, are you still trying to seduce me or not?"

"I've already seduced you. Now we're just working on the details."

"I don't feel very seduced."

Something quite dark flashes across the Doctor's face, gone in an instant. More himself, he stands back, eyes skyward, full of fussy annoyance. "Fine, fine. You can't say I didn't try."

"Wait! I didn't say..." Turlough stares at him for one long moment. If this isn't.. if this is really because something is wrong... he won't mind, will he? He looks into the Doctor's eyes. "You promise you won't regret it?"

"Oh, Turlough. What are my promises ever worth, really? Take a chance."

That isn't reassuring at all. He knows he really shouldn't. But he does want it. He does want to. He does. What do you call it when you do something you know you'll regret? He's remembering the look the Doctor gave him on a yacht in space, when he exposed a stolen man's mutiny to an Eternal captain. He feels the same way now, his heart sinking, as he takes advantage of whatever is going on with the Doctor.

He tells himself this will be all right. It's... not exactly safe, but close enough, in the circumstances. Even if - if the Doctor is not exactly himself - and he is at least somewhat himself... He can do this, have his fun and have the Doctor's pleasure, in a way that won't be too heavy in the cold light of day. If it's a mistake, so be it. He can live with that. He's already living with so much worse.

Even if this pressure was the last thing he'd ever expected from the Doctor, even if that first kiss had been bluntly terrible; the last one had been perfect. The Doctor's warmth, his body, his gentle mouth, his soft eyes. Nobody.. No one could expect him to resist all of that.

The Doctor's words come back to him. It's about temptation.

But this can't possibly be whatever Tegan was worried about. They were talking about empires, about danger. Not mischief and sexual aggression.

If only the Doctor was properly himself, Turlough would have let him do anything. Anything. Turlough is burning to know what the Doctor wants.

But not like this. Exactly as the Doctor had just taunted him. Not like this.

"Last chance, Turlough," the Doctor says, and his tone brings back every misgiving Turlough has been trying to put out of his mind. "If you don't tell me what you want," the Doctor says, and Turlough is shocked and yet no longer that surprised when the Doctor's fingers twist in the waist of his Brendon School trousers and shove them down, "You'll find out what I want."

---

Two: The Doctor

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming but knows he isn't.

He'd ventured into Tegan's dream, where the Mara had been lurking for so long, where it had finally salted away enough strength or got bored enough to try asserting itself. There, the Mara had shown itself to him, toyed with him, while he'd tried to loosen its grip on Tegan.

Then he'd woken up - and hadn't realised that he was no longer alone.

Its grip had been tenuous at first. It had hidden from him, only influencing him enough to keep him from reaching the obvious conclusion that he was now its host, to keep its actions out of his awareness. It had eased the way for him to believe that he'd only failed at helping Tegan; that he'd driven the Mara back into hiding within her. And he'd only consciously learned exactly how they came to be here in this time, after -

It had happened while they were in Dr. Kerrem's office. He'd found himself somewhere else, witnessing a vision of the Mara fighting its way into the world. It must have been the crystal in Kerrem's machine, resonating with some other experiment.

And the Mara that he hadn't been able to recognise within himself had loomed and expanded and shoved him under. Like being pulled beneath a wave, in one moment nothing obvious had been out of place and in the next he was underwater, lost and disoriented.

If he ever got out of this, he'd be able to tell Tegan he finally knew how she'd felt under the Mara. It seemed to be riding, or maybe melded with, his Id, out there in the real world; to have hijacked what was properly just a part of him: the part the Mara found easiest to overwrite with its own ambitions. Through him, it could scheme, it could tease. And it could send its foul influence into other minds.

And the longer it spent interacting with his friends, with the people of Manussa, the more hateful it became. Its disdain and disgust with everything it encountered was intolerably vile. Feelings he knew were the Mara's were indistinguishable from his own. He was forced to spend quite a lot of his energy refusing to forget that, while he was stuck here to simmer in the Mara's barely focussed frustration and rage.

And with the things that it found suddenly amusing.

Like Turlough.

He had assumed the Mara would want to instill its influence into Turlough; another agent for its ambitions. Instead, it seemed to be playing with him, getting close enough to strike, and then just... not. Perhaps this was the Mara simply enjoying itself. Turlough had exactly the sort of personality that would be vulnerable to the Mara. Taking him? Uninteresting. Tempting him, on the other hand... He could feel the Mara's amusement at Turlough's unease and confusion, and his worry for the Doctor.

"What about you, Turlough? What do you want?" the Doctor's voice had demanded of his accomplice. It had been another overture to play, and one that Turlough had not risen to. But the Mara leaned harder into the new direction in its game; a direction that made the Doctor's hearts squeeze painfully.

And now, in the dark, in an artificial jungle, something he'd left unaddressed was suddenly being stripped bare in front of him.

He's noticed Turlough, of course, and the boy's ingratiatingly intimate approach to him. He's allowed him to cultivate a habit of small, quiet moments of sharing: smiles, glances, little moments of communication and empathy. He's quietly put a lid on how much he likes the way it feels when Turlough stands next to him, how much he enjoys the boy's eyes on him, the way they flicker down, distracted by his mouth, his hands...

When they'd met it had only been common sense to keep him at arm's length, no matter how intriguing he was - Turlough's obvious misplacement and ulterior motives had to be sorted - but then the boy had given up the sort of prize an Eternal would kill for; given it up instead of giving up the Doctor. Given it up for him. For him.

But the time has never been right, and he isn't in this business to get into relationships anyway. Messy things. Even if his mind keeps wandering back to those ice-blue eyes and what it feels like when Turlough stands so close and smiles at him so slyly. Turlough might want him, but he doesn't need him, and it is safer - so much safer not to.

But safety is the last thing the Mara is interested in. And the Doctor is not safe. Not today.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming but knows he isn't, as he looms over Turlough, baits him, steals a kiss from him. He wants him. He means to have him.

He would never - act -

He tries to bottle up his feelings, not wanting to let the Mara enjoy them. But it simply doesn't work.

He has worked so hard to never do this, despite how much, how often he's wanted to - so many moments have passed where he's never done this, and now it's happened, it's happening, he's tasting Turlough, their mouths crashing together like they've never not been lovers, and the Doctor will never have been the one to do this. A rage of his own tries to rise unchecked - Turlough was his, to take to protect - and now -

And now Turlough is pushing him away.

Turlough's eyes, longing and hurt, are looking into his, but they're not his, and they're wearing the wrong expression. Turlough resists and the Doctor cheers him on, the boy's own fortitude his best chance at - this - not happening.

Please, Turlough - you know it's not me? Don't you? Please don't let me -

"You're not yourself, Doctor!"

Yes! Turlough!

But the Mara and the part of the Doctor that only wants are master manipulators, and with sinking hearts he knows he will talk Turlough around. The words that come out of his mouth, that he would not dream of saying, make Turlough flush with arousal.

Just look at him. You could eat him alive.

"You want me, don't you?" the Doctor's voice demands. "Tell me what you want."

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming as he draws Turlough into the sort of kiss he has wanted for so long, as Turlough melts into him in exactly the way he hadn't dared to think about. Turlough's arms are around his waist. They share a kiss just like the one he would have wanted to give to Turlough. Turlough is intoxicating. It's so good it is not good, to finally, unabashedly, hold Turlough close, to feel his body against him the way he's been dreaming of doing.

Well then, the thing driving the Doctor decides, it's over, this phase of the game. He'd try anything once, but it's just too easy to get what you want the way you're supposed to. Time to liven things up.

He takes Turlough by the waist and pulls him around, away from the wall of bars, into the plastic jungle. The Doctor is pushing him onto his back.

This can't be what happens next. The things he's going to do. And it won't be him. Unless it is him.

But despite everything, Turlough resists, and argues, and the Doctor, annoyed, becomes fussy and reticent, backing away and smoothing away the tension. He has just enough time to be filled with exhausted relief, letting his guard down (it has been so heavy), when Turlough, to his delight, goes on the offensive. Of course; it had been a strategy: take the temptation away to see if the boy would chase it.

Turlough's mouth is slightly open, admitting quiet little breaths. Turlough's eyes are looking into the Doctor's eyes and seeing something that isn't him. "You promise you won't regret it?"

The Doctor feels a rush of condescending satisfaction, grins and relishes Turlough's failure. Ah, it's taken a while to get here, but it's perfect. Well worth the effort, after all. The Mara is so, so pleased.

The Mara doesn't even make the Doctor lie. It works anyway. The Doctor is crushed. He can't stand this but he doesn't want to let the Mara enjoy his displeasure. He wants to beg for it to stop, but he doesn't. He won't beg.

The Mara flares with cruelty then, at the peak of its strength. The Doctor is filled with hatred of Turlough for his weakness. The boy knows. He knows exactly what he's doing. The Mara has won but Turlough made it so easy. He didn't even have to pretend he isn't who he is. Turlough just wants. He's so deeply selfish. Even after all they've been through together, Turlough doesn't really care about him at all, and the Doctor hates him for it.

It's not - these aren't his feelings.

Aren't they? Wasn't he just begging Turlough not to do this? And he came so close! And then he threw it away. Is he really going to keep up his act of stoic non-judgement while Turlough lets the Mara smash them together like dolls?

Turlough wants it. That's what's wrong with him. And you want it. That's what's wrong with you. That's why you won't beg for it to stop.

The Doctor bristles. He does not want this!

The Doctor definitely wants this.

Turlough clearly does know exactly what he's doing. Turlough doesn't deserve to be forgiven for this. The Doctor certainly doesn't deserve forgiveness for allowing this to happen. And it is his fault. It's all his fault. Turlough may have disappointed him but he's disappointed himself so much more. Hatred. Rage. Burn it all down. Burn the both of them to the ground.

The Doctor fights down panic. This is - this isn't... There must be some way to get back to the surface of his own mind!

It's not your mind anymore. You're hanging on by a thread. It could snap at any moment. Maybe you shouldn't struggle so much. Maybe you'd have more control if you let yourself enjoy it while I let you do what you want.

"Last chance, Turlough," the Doctor warns, and shoves the boy's trousers down. Turlough cries out but it's strangled, like he's more afraid of making a real fuss than he is of - whatever this is. "If you don't tell me what you want, you'll find out what I want."

What he wants is for this to stop!

What he wants is to see how easily Turlough will fall. To punish him for falling, and finally, maybe, to take him for the Mara. But not until the right moment. What he wants is to feel the satisfaction of contact with this lost boy; to put it in the light for the part of him that pretends he's too good for this. What he wants is to be with Turlough with the part of himself that wants all these things, while the part that wants to believe he doesn't want all these things is dragged along, kicking and screaming. Yes... That will be lovely.

---

Three: Turlough

"Last chance, Turlough. If you don't tell me what you want, you'll find out what I want."

Turlough watches the Doctor whip his school trousers off and toss them aside, horrified and impressed. He's too rattled to properly digest the idea of being naked in front of the Doctor. "You're not serious?"

"What do you think?" It's another non-answer, and the Doctor changes his footing, wraps his hands around Turlough's waist and shifts him a bit on the mossy incline, and - oh. This is serious, isn't it.

All right. The Doctor is insisting on a little bit more. Turlough twitches and calculates. The Doctor's brows go up, his head tilts, prompting him. It's your move.

Turlough hadn't meant to let anything like this happen. As much as the Doctor is teasing him for it, he genuinely doesn't want to do anything that isn't worth how much he'll regret it. Letting this manic, oversexed Doctor do this to him is definitely on that list. Probably. Definitely.

But what will happen if he tries to run now, if he tries to stop? Will the Doctor even let him?

That's a mad thought. There's no version of the Doctor, manic or not, that wouldn't let him stop.

Except maybe this one.

It's what his instincts are telling him. Shouting at him, really.

Earlier, the snake mystic had made a show of checking him for the 'shadow' that had left Tegan, and then waxed apocalyptic about it, wondering where it might have gone. And that was when Tegan had remembered her dream, had suddenly worried for the Doctor, when Nyssa had sent Turlough off to find him.

Can that really be what all this is? The Mara, having left Tegan for the Doctor? But why are they all so alarmed if all the Mara does is make you act out of character?

What actually is the threat posed by the Mara? All Turlough has to go on are the brief moments he's seen of Tegan acting oddly, and the strange feeling it had given him when he'd seen the image of the snake on her arm, like a tattoo that had been there for years, that had never been there before.

Everything his friends have said about it has been downright mythical. It wouldn't have killed any of them to give him something more solid to go on, would it?

Well. If this is a Mara thing, then he definitely had better not. At the very least, he'd never hear the end of it from Tegan. Turlough tries to struggle awkwardly up onto his elbows, but the Doctor is too close, and doesn't back off. "What I wanted was what I was doing. Let me up, would you?"

"Don't lie, Turlough." The Doctor's hands close on his shoulders, force him solidly back down.

"What?! I'm not - Doctor!"

The Doctor puts one of his hands on the fake mossy ground next to Turlough, lifts the other to stroke the side of his face. The Doctor's expression is intimate, kind, but again, Turlough reads it as a threat. "I mean it."

A tremor runs through him.

Hastily, Turlough gets a grip on himself, closing his eyes, steadying his breath. Okay. Say the Doctor is half drunk under the Mara's influence. It's probably safest to go all out. Maybe he'll even be able to think of a way out of this insane situation.

Maybe he's overthinking it and this really is just the Doctor in a rare mood, bored with holding back.

It's a gamble he'll have to take. Because the only other option is to find out what happens if he keeps trying to shut this down. And if there's one thing that would be worse than letting the Doctor do this, it'd be letting the Doctor overpower him and do it anyway. He can't imagine it, but his friends are all taking the Mara so seriously. Why else would they do that unless it was a threat even to the autonomy of a Time Lord?

In any case, the Doctor has the same demand. Tell him what you want.

Could he lie anyway? Could he ask for something soft, or something impossible? Could he ask for something he'd never dare to ask his benefactor, the tall blond flitting confidently around his console, making him quietly want things he'll never have?

"I don't think... don't think you'll really give me what I want even if I do tell you." He lets his eyes flick up to meet the Doctor's.

The Doctor is cool, in control, Turlough trapped beneath him. "Try me," he says, and waits, watches.

Turlough can't help a quick scan, his eyes tracing the soft shape of the Doctor's mouth, the texture of his skin, the rounded planes of his face, his unfathomable eyes. He can feel the Doctor's weight on his hips.

Turlough's body gives a subtle twist. Is this a mistake? He really doesn't want to take advantage, and jumping straight to the outrageous would really not be.. Erm.. Cricket.

He swallows hard and commits to a hopeless charge. This is already completely mad anyway. He makes his demands and tips his chin up with a haughty little jerk of his head. He's transfixed by the Doctor's face, a mask of deeply un-Doctor-like emotions. It's.. actually terrifying. He can't keep looking. He can't look away. Insane. They've both gone mad, that's all there is to it. If it didn't still smell like a fog machine in here he'd think he was dreaming.

---

Four: The Doctor

"You're not serious!?" Turlough manages to object, as the Doctor goes on to shove Turlough's clothes awkwardly over his shoes.

"What do you think?" he asks darkly, maneuvering them both into a better position. He wants to see him. It's important. Turlough tries to get up; the Doctor pushes him back down, watching the boy's face, whose heart on his sleeve: Turlough has dropped all the way back to his basest instinct. He wants to survive. Safer to surrender than to fight. Very good.

The Doctor wishes Turlough would fight. He's not sure whether it's better that he doesn't. He hates this; hates to see Turlough's eyes on him like this, when the thing he's looking at isn't him.

But it is him. He knows that. He's just in denial.

But it's not all of him! It's certainly not the part of him that deserves to touch Turlough.

Oh - so there's a part of him that does deserve to touch Turlough?

That's not what I meant!

It's going to happen anyway. Let go.

Turlough's eyes flash down, up again. His face hardens into an expression the Doctor recognises as one of his practiced ones. "I don't think... don't think you'll really give me what I want even if I do tell you."

The Doctor smiles. Oh? Is the boy playing at last, now that he's already lost? Now that's wonderfully pathetic. "Try me."

Turlough makes his demands, and actually tips his chin up with a haughty little jerk of his head.

Oh. He is playing. How delightful.

He's half furious and half impressed by the boy's late entry into the game. Look at him. Of course he was hiding this. Such a needy little fuck. He was right to be ashamed. The Doctor stops to let his eyes drift over everything Turlough is offering. A false expression of composure, wet, twitching, parted lips, his school uniform crumpled up and crushed against him.

He can't...

The Doctor watches one of his hands reach out to drag ticklishly light fingertips down Turlough's body. This can't be happening.

"Please.... Please, Doctor," Turlough begs, and the Doctor doesn't know what to do anymore. Riding along with the Mara and the worst parts of himself, unable to stop this. And Turlough... seems to want it. To want this thing that isn't really him.

It must be exhausting, how you lie to yourself. You are really you. The only one dividing you against yourself is you. Stop fighting.

He can't stop fighting! The Mara is dangerous. It could do anything.

You're dangerous. You could do anything.

He pulls back slightly, glances up at Turlough, meeting those ice blue eyes. Their facade is gone, leaving only anticipation and twitches.

Look how much he loves it when you do what he wants you to do to him.

The Doctor is struck dumb for a few beats, his face wearing the sultry, satisfied look of the Mara. Turlough's eyes snap open. Intense, hungry. Piercing.

"It isn't really you at all, is it," Turlough says, his voice low and guarded.

The Doctor's hearts flutter painfully. If only he could say that he has no part in this. But now that he's steeped in it, he can see that's not how the Mara works. It's true that this is nothing he'd ever do, but it's not that the Mara forces you to do anything. No, it sifts you, looking for the parts of you that will satisfy its desires.

"Oh, Turlough. Do you think the Mara would waste its time with a creature like you? No, this fascination with Vislor Turlough is all me. Really me, through and through. The Mara has only... let me off my leash."

It's the truth, too. You know it is. Why fight it?

Because it's a lie of omission. And the omission is me!

No. It's just that you're the leash. Would you be happier if I let you be more honest with him, then?

The Doctor braces himself for whatever brutal thing the Mara has thought of next.

"Your sweet Doctor is still here for the moment," he says contemplatively, leaning close over Turlough again, looking into his eyes. His eyes are wonderful. They look like they might be abjectly terrified. Or in love. Hard to tell. Humans. Or... whatever he is. "He's very upset. He would have wanted courtship; candles and wine, to drown you in his affections... But he wants this, too."

"Wh - what? My Doctor?"

Turlough's voice is soaked in apprehension. The Doctor shushes him, murmurs his name.

He wants to shout but it can't get out. He wants Turlough to fight, to run; knows he can't, he won't. The Doctor can't get out, please, please, he can't...

Hate Tegan for this, it's all her fault. Hate Nyssa, it's all her fault. Hate Turlough. Hate yourself.

Turlough's eyes, for once, don't slide away. They're locked to his, they're slicing him open. His hearts shudder. He's going to die.

Can you see me? I'm so... Turlough...

He won't let Turlough look away now. The boy breathes in short little gasps, overwhelmed.

---

Five: Turlough

Turlough is trying not to think has given up on thinking about how different this is from anything he'd ever thought, ever imagined this would be like. The Doctor straightens up, pulls his hands away. Turlough, his eyes half-lidded, watching them go, catches sight of something under the cuff, on the back of the Doctor's wrist. On his skin. Dark, crude, unexpected.

Turlough's eyes snap open. He'd caught barely a glimpse but something had crashed like ice down his spine. It's a bone-deep revulsion. His instincts, which he has been doing his best to discount so far, scream that something is dangerously wrong here.

But what can he do? Now, when it's already far too late?

"It isn't really you at all, is it," Turlough says, knowing it's pointless to ask.

The Doctor looks at him with deep disappointment. "Oh, Turlough. Do you think the Mara would waste its time with a creature like you? No, this fascination with Vislor Turlough is really me, through and through. The Mara has only... let me off my leash."

Ah. Confirmed.

This is trickster talk, obviously, now that Turlough is more candidly looking for it. (And a failed belittling: Turlough has already had several fairly high caliber entities waste their time with him. Interesting.) Nevertheless, the image of a Doctor off his leash is enough to give him another full-body twitch.

Turlough's serious expression doesn't break. "Should I believe that? Would you believe that?"

"Never fear. Your sweet Doctor is still here for the moment," the Doctor says contemplatively, leaning close over him again. "He's very upset. He would have wanted courtship; candles and wine, to drown you in his affections... But he wants this, too."

"Wh - what? My Doctor?" Turlough struggles to absorb this. It does not sound good at all. What he would have wanted? This... It can't really be possible that this is the Mara, and the Doctor isn't able to exert any control at all, can it?

If that's true, if it's the Mara that wants this, then why? Just as a power play? To humiliate the Doctor? Or is this really for him, a temptation, to get control of him, like it seems to be in control of the Doctor?

Oh. It's in control of the Doctor.

Okay. He was wrong. He was diametrically wrong. He hadn't taken things seriously enough. Even if they were all being abstract about the Mara, he really should have known better than to downplay and try to forget the way he'd seen Tegan act. It had been a warning, clear as the rattle of a snake, and just as stupid to ignore.

"Shhh, Turlough."

He'd been willing to settle for 'not exactly the Doctor' when he was talking himself into this, why had he talked himself into this?...

No, Turlough knows exactly why. He'd let himself misapply his confidence in the Doctor in order to pretend things couldn't really be so bad. Because much as he'd been put off by the way the Doctor had suddenly pursued him, he does want very, very badly to be pursued. And he'd let himself believe that even if the Doctor wasn't exactly himself, he was close enough...

Close enough that the Doctor really did want...

But the Doctor hovering over him now isn't what he'd been thinking of; not the Doctor under some strange influence, his inhibitions lost. No, now that he's bothering to think properly it feels more like he's dealing with something from deep in the darkest thoughts of the Doctor, singled out and pulled to the surface by the Mara, while the rest of him is suppressed.

The rest of him, which apparantly makes up his Doctor. That's unfortunate. And just his luck.

So. The Mara. The idea that it's an evil demon doesn't feel so silly now. The Mara is staring into his eyes. The Doctor, his Doctor is in there somewhere, and if he's at all conscious, Turlough doesn't want... Well, he doesn't want the Doctor to see this at all, but if the best he can do is minimize it, then that's what he'll do.

His eyes stare into the Doctor's, willing himself to reach the man inside, if there's any chance, if there's any way. He's sure the Doctor is losing, has lost; if he wasn't he would never have let this happen. But he's still there. Turlough wants to let him know: he'll survive, they'll survive. The Mara can't, won't hurt them. He desperately wants to call out for the Doctor, but he can't trust his voice, and bites it back.

It's not fair, it's not. Why can't this just be the Doctor?

---

Six: The Doctor

The Doctor can't bear it. Turlough's eyes unclench and look up into his face. He feels himself lean forward and kiss Turlough on his forehead. He watches Turlough's eyes slide shut and feels him tremble.

It feels wonderful.

You could have had this the whole time. Really, I'm doing you a favour.

The Doctor's frustration and anguish threaten to overwhelm him. No wonder the Mara is so intractable. Everything pleasurable and powerful in the Doctor is aligned with it, and must be rejected. The only feelings that are truly his are crushing, withering, heartwrenching.

No, that's not true. The feelings of protectiveness and care for Turlough are his. The burning outrage at the Mara for stealing this from him is his. And the way he will feel when the Mara is driven out and destroyed, will be-

The deep, throaty roar of the snake rattles through his consciousness and he reels with disorientation. You're so fucking miserable. He can feel the rage the Mara pours into those words, but it's not as though there's anything he can do about it.

The Doctor feels like he's dreaming, touching the boy who ran away with him, holding him close. "Hmm. That's lovely," he purrs to Turlough, who makes a sound that leaves him weak, whose arms wrap tight around his shoulders.

"Please," Turlough begs, and his voice is high and thready.

The Doctor feels himself shiver. Turlough...

Why resist it? There's nothing else he can do, after all. Will it help either of them if he tortures himself over this? Is that any better than trying to shut it out and leaving Turlough to the Mara without him?

It's - because, this - because - it's not -

Don't be ridiculous. Let it be you.

But it isn't!

It really is.

The boy's face isn't hiding anything anymore, he's just looking up at him, his eyes wide and plaintive. The Doctor knows this one. It's what he looks like when he's looking for someone to save him.

Turlough takes a few strange breaths, and the Doctor recognises that too; he's building up to speak. The boy's mouth twists, distraught. "Why can't it be you?"

The Doctor crumbles. The Mara grins inside him, wide as death.

Turlough... It is me.

The Doctor hears it. He's said it out loud. And he can - he's stopped, he's in control, the Mara let him -

No. That was just you. You stopped fighting yourself. I keep telling you.

Wh - what did he sound like? The look Turlough is giving him is heartbreaking. Oh, no - the look he's giving back is just as bad! "Turlough," he tries again, wets his lips, shuts his eyes, gets his expression under control. When he opens them again he's ready, doing his best to show everything he hasn't got time to say. "It seems I can only be here if I... let myself. Shall we make the best of this?"

Turlough nods, his breath shaky, his mouth relaxing. He looks like he's given up completely, and the Doctor knows the boy can't trust him, of course he can't, of course it's torture to ask him to. But the Doctor wants to fix this, to fix this, please, please - and he wants to kiss him, properly, as himself, and he knows he's playing right into whatever the Mara has planned but he can't help it. He can't. It's right, he's right - there's nothing else he can do.

When the Doctor dips close, he finds Turlough's mouth soft and submissive and finally, finally, he can choose how to move against it, with it, chaste little kisses, barely open. Turlough lets out the softest possible sigh.

His chest is blooming with emotion, with heat. He takes a moment to declutter his mind. Everything drops focus but himself and Turlough. They're wrapped around one another, breathing together, like they should be, and he loves it, loves to be so close to his intriguing little assassin, his crush.

He adds up all the moments he'd decided not to touch, not to hold, not to crush Turlough against him, not to picture the way Turlough would look at him, so adorably, bitchily enamoured with him. He collects these and takes them out on the boy, loving the way he feels, the way he sounds, the way he clutches back at him, his Turlough. And he knows that this is the right choice, knows that whatever else happens, he's the one who's sharing this with Turlough, while he is himself, full and proper.

He holds him tight, mumbling the boy's name against his mouth. Turlough kisses back, one hand stroking the Doctor's soft hair.

I want you with me, Turlough. I want you to know-

No. Ice in his hearts. He isn't saying it. He's lost control.

"Good lord, Turlough, you don't disappoint. You must be positively mad for him."

Turlough's face resolves into defiance over pain, catching his breath and his wits simultaneously.

The Doctor seethes. It's not as though he'd expected anything different from the Mara, but he'd genuinely thought, now that he was ready, that he was prepared for the Mara's move of shoving him aside, that he'd be able to resist it. But no. He didn't even feel it this time.

"But your paramour is misbehaving. He thought he'd be able to overcome my influence. I think maybe I ought to punish him."

"There's nothing more pathetic than a bully," Turlough snarls back at him, eyes dark and angry.

"Turlough?"

The voice is small. The anger drops from Turlough's face in an instant. The Doctor catches on at once and his rage is fully ignited. Don't you DARE!

"Doctor! Is that you? It's all right, it'll be all right, Doctor,"

"What's..." His eyes wide, he stumbles back, away from Turlough, looking around wildly.

Turlough is babbling. "I'm sorry, I - I thought - I couldn't -"

Please! I'll do whatever you want! Just stop!

You're already doing whatever I want. And this is delicious.

"Why was I... Turlough?" The Doctor gives him a devastating look. "Did you let the Mara in? I was counting on you to resist it! Let me see your arm," he demands, and reaches for it.

Turlough fully panics, wrenching his arm away. "This was your idea! I'm sorry, but I didn't know how to say no to you when you were -"

"Me? You mean I... " Hesitantly, the Doctor shoves his own sleeve up. It's there of course, the snake, in red and black. "Turlough. Oh, no, I'm so sorry. I must have let the Mara get inside me when I was trying to help Tegan. Why did you let me-"

"Let you? Are you telling me you don't know what happened?"

"So this is the one time you couldn't find your way out of a tight corner? There's no one even here! You couldn't have run?"

"I couldn't leave you like this!"

"But you could let the Mara do this to us? Turlough, you know I would never have wanted this! You have to know that!"

Turlough is gaping, tears in his eyes. He casts his gaze desperately around the room and settles back on him, angry and hopeless. "I'm sorry, Doctor!"

The Doctor, impotent inside himself, settles into a cold, burning, regretful anger. He's hollow. He's very nearly as hateful as the Mara.

I'm sorry, Turlough.

---

Seven: Turlough

The Time Lord's body grinds against Turlough. Why does the Mara want the Doctor to do this to him so badly?

Does it matter? He's lost. They've lost. He isn't stronger than the Doctor. They both need rescuing now.

Could Nyssa and Tegan save him from the Doctor, save the Doctor from the Mara? It's possible. Unlikely, but possible. Nyssa is supremely competent, and Tegan has surprised him before. He imagines them at the wall of this little funhouse prison, breaking past the door, hauling the Doctor off of him. It would almost be worth it. He imagines Nyssa, handing him his pants with a workmanlike lack of affect, while Tegan hogties the Doctor like an unruly Merino.

Maybe he's wasting his time. It's hard enough to cope at all, without worrying what kind of face he's showing to the Doctor, to the Mara. He doesn't know for sure whether his Doctor is even along for this ride; nobody has told him how any of this works, and it's not as though he can trust the Mara. And it's not as though the Doctor needs Turlough to protect him anyway.

That last thought hurts in a way Turlough had not expected at all. Does he want to protect the Doctor that badly? Is he disappointed that the Doctor has failed, this time, to protect him? Or is he just twisted up inside because he wants to do what's right and there isn't, there isn't a right thing to do, not now, not anymore.

Turlough brings his hands up between the Doctor's arms, slides them up his sides, inside his coat again. The Doctor with his cricket coat on, and Turlough with his school jacket on, with his tie on, like a fumble in a classroom -

His tie, grabbed and twisted, his mouth demanded, by some silly, some human boy -

Well. If this wasn't already ruined by the Mara, by his flighty mind turning to Tegan and Nyssa, by his own damned damaged psyche, now it was ruined by Hippo of all fucking people.

I hate Earth.

Turlough crushes handfuls of the Doctor's jumper in his hands, satisfying, thick, cable-knit, and the Doctor had once explained with the grinning embarrassment of a fanatic that it was the only part of his favorite ensemble that was a genuine piece of cricketing gear, I hate Earth so much

But he loves it. He loves Earth, he loves it so much. He loves it like he'll never love me.

Well. That's a better revelation to have while I'm making out with a demonic precis of the Doctor than the real one, I suppose.

He slips his hands up to the Doctor's shoulders, his neck, to feel skin under his fingers instead, to feel a part of the Doctor that's not tainted by his obsession with Earth. Turlough's eyes unclench and look up into the Doctor's face, and again, it looks almost, almost like it ought to, like Turlough had imagined it might look if the two of them ever got so close, if they let their limbs get tangled the way their lives were.

The Doctor leans forward and kisses him on his forehead; Turlough's eyes slide shut and he trembles. It's so close, it's heartbreakingly close, and he wishes, he wishes it was close enough.

It's still the Doctor, isn't it? Even if only a little bit? Just because the Mara is there too, just because some of the Doctor is surpressed, that doesn't mean this isn't the Doctor at all.

"Hmm. That's lovely," The Doctor's voice purrs, and it hits Turlough directly in the guts. He lets out a truly embarrassing noise, puts his arms around the Time Lord and crushes him closer, his fingers digging into the Doctor's coat.

"Please," he begs, and can't bring himself to say the rest.

He feels the Doctor shiver in his arms. Like - like the Doctor might shiver in his arms, if only the bastard understood how he needed him. Please, please...

Turlough risks looking him in the eye again and his heart clenches at how much he looks like he should. But he knows he can't trust it, can't trust him, and it's so unfair, and he knows he's fallen for this in the worst possible way, but he can't help it. He just can't. It's the Doctor.

Isn't it?

He can't trust his voice but it doesn't matter. The words boil up out of him. He doesn't even care how needy he'll sound. "Why can't it be you?"

It feels like time stops, like the moment after a drop. The Doctor's eyes.

"...It is me."

Oh god. It sounds right. It sounds like rescue. He looks heartbroken. It's him. Turlough feels it. But he'd be stupid to believe it's true. It's too perfect a moment for the Mara to bait him again.

"Turlough," the Doctor says, and closes his eyes for a moment, smoothing his face.

The Doctor meets Turlough's eyes like he's trying to connect, and it doesn't feel like it's felt all night, he doesn't feel captured so much as pitied, which he's not... actually sure is better, but it's in character, and that's what's important.

"It seems I can only be here if I... let myself. Shall we make the best of this?" the Doctor says, like a man picking his heart up off the ground.

Turlough just nods, blinking fast, unconsciously clearing tears before they can form. He has no idea what he looks like. It doesn't matter now.

The Doctor kisses him. His heart lights up, catches fire. It's really him. It's got to be.

Turlough has to keep one proverbial foot on the ground. Just in case this isn't... but it's him. It's him. The Mara let him out. Something terrible is undoubtedly coming next, but the Mara let him out. His Doctor.

Turlough can't help, doesn't even want to help, how much he loves the way this feels, how perfect this would be, if only the Mara weren't here.

The Doctor lets himself slump down to lay over him, muttering his name and kissing him messily. Turlough can barely kiss back, he's too busy smiling, slipping his fingers through the Doctor's hair.

The Doctor props himself up on one arm and smiles down at him. "Good lord, Turlough, you don't disappoint. You must be positively mad for him."

Son of a fuck. Well. He'd known, hadn't he, that it was too good to be true. He waits to see this thing's next trick.

"But your paramour is misbehaving. He thought he'd be able to overcome my influence. I think maybe I ought to punish him."

"There's nothing more pathetic than a bully," Turlough snarls back at him, eyes dark and angry.

The Doctor's expression drops like a flipped switch, breaks into disorientation, as if he has just woken up.

"Turlough?"

Oh. Fuck. That sounds like - No. No, that must have really been the Doctor before, with him. This is the trick. But it's not as though he can risk - if this is finally the actual fucking Doctor -

Turlough scrambles to reassure the Doctor, to find room to assess the damage, but the Doctor has already fully recoiled from this, from him, and he looks - Turlough shudders -

Hell. Fuck. It had been the Mara. Fuck. How could he have been so wrong?

Right. How could he have thought he was clever enough not to be fooled by another bastard entity. He should have known - getting fooled by terrible things that lived in your head was practically one of his fucking hallmarks. "I'm sorry, I - I thought - I couldn't -"

"Why was I - Turlough?"

No matter the magnitude of the Doctor's shock, the situation can't be any kind of mystery.

In his old life, Turlough had learned to expect mistakes to be met with judgement, swift and strict. Deflection had become one of his skills; excuses, lies. It had worked, often enough, on anyone he needed it to. On Earth it had worked every time. Then he'd encountered the Black Guardian and found him both overflowing with judgement and utterly disinterested in deflection, and Turlough had learned quickly that there was nothing he could do that would actually spare him some of the most sadistic punishments he'd ever endured.

But the Doctor wasn't like that. Turlough couldn't stop attempting to deflect judgement from him any more than he'd been able to stop trying it with the Black Guardian, but suddenly, the reason it didn't work was

because it didn't need to

And that's why this will be -

But the look on the Doctor's face is devastating, angry, accusing, and what the Time Lord says is, "did you let the Mara in? I was counting on you to resist it!"

Turlough's heart is in his mouth; the bottom of his stomach is in his shoes.

"Let me see your arm," the Doctor demands, and reaches for it.

Turlough fully panics, wrenching his arm away. His heart is racing, thundering. But he's practised enough at excuses to be able to make one now. "This was your idea! I'm sorry, but I didn't know how to say no to you when you were -"

"Me? You mean I... " Some of the anger bleeds away from the Doctor's face. Reluctantly, he turns his attention to his own arm, shoves his own sleeve up.

The mark of the snake. Turlough doesn't want to look at it. He can almost feel its presence, malign and oppressive. He doesn't want to imagine what it feels like for the Doctor, on his skin.

The Doctor pivots instantly to an apology, taking back his accusation, taking responsibility, and Turlough is able to breathe.

But then the Time Lord gives him an imploring look and asks, like he's begging, "why did you let me-"

Turlough's defenses rise properly this time. "Let you? Are you telling me you don't know what happened?"

The Doctor's face is accusatory again. "So this is the one time you couldn't find your way out of a tight corner? You couldn't have run?"

"I couldn't leave you like this!"

"But you could let the Mara do this to us? Turlough, you know I would never have wanted this! You have to know that!"

Of course he knew that - knows that - Of course he does! But what sort of chance did he have against an honest-to-god trickster demon?

It's what he wants to say. But he's put so much effort into convincing himself to let the Mara do this. He knows he has. He can't deny it. Not to the Doctor.

And everything that has happened in the last hour has been the Mara. Only the Mara. Turlough wishes he could sink through the floor and never be seen again. He feels tears spring to his eyes. Pathetic, but, honestly, fine. Fine. He'll cry over this.

"I'm sorry, Doctor!"

---

Eight: The Doctor

"'Sorry,'" the Doctor hears himself say, his voice hard and cold. "Yes. So am I."

His hearts ache for Turlough. Hurt, blamed and shamed for being manipulated. And knowing Turlough, he probably thinks he deserves it.

"I thought - "

"You thought what? That it would just - what - work out? That you didn't really mind if something took me over and used me like this? How... how could I mean so little to you?"

"That's not... what happened. That's not what it was like," Turlough protests.

"Wasn't it?"

The Doctor can't look away as the Mara twists the knife, of course he can't, from the distress on Turlough's face, the tears threatening to spill, the hands that are clenching over and over as the boy tries to master himself in the middle of all this.

You actually feel how he suffers your ire, don't you. Your poor little lost orphan soldier. How pathetic.

The Doctor bristles again. Turlough is anything but pathetic.

You, you foolish Time Lord. Obsessed with this puppy. You let your soul be laid bare so easily, and why? So that you can keep a little creature whose world begins and ends with you? Can you possibly believe that you are anything else to him than a master? Can you really not understand that that is really what you want from him?

But the Doctor has heard all of that before. Heard it for centuries. Heard it from people that wanted to control him, to corral him, to crystallise his life in amber. From one particular person who has always taken his choice of company very badly.

It's no surprise to learn the Mara doesn't understand what a friend is any more than a Time Lord does. If it has even said any of this believing it's true, rather than beliveving it will be hurtful.

Oh, go on and lie to yourself then, if it makes you happy. He's been lying to himself as well. You make a good pair.

"All right," Turlough admits, "I didn't push back hard enough! But I didn't - I wasn't sure until it was too late!"

"You weren't sure? The Mara's performance must have been convincing. Was it what you'd expected?" He fixes Turlough with an intense, judgemental stare. "What was it that you expected?"

Turlough looks down, away, guilty again, and doesn't answer.

"It's just that I'm trying to picture it. You've known me for a good little while, now. Have I been leading you on? Because I thought I'd been clear enough without being blunt. I never wanted to let you mistake my disinterest for a rejection of you in general - I know how humans can be..."

The Doctor, at last, is beginning to get the knack for letting the Mara's efforts roll over him, for setting aside the knowledge of the cruelty it's using to attack him by proxy. He must neither hide nor engage.

Crushed or not, Turlough seems to have got a better handle on himself. He's giving the Doctor quite a hard look, as if he is more offended than hurt by this needling. "No. I didn't understand why you would be acting so strangely - but I couldn't believe the Mara would do those things either. I still don't understand why it would do all that. Why go after me? Why do any of this?" and his mouth goes tight as he fights a burst of emotion.

Oh... Just look at his face. He doesn't understand. Do you, I wonder?

There is no reply, no defiance. Nothing.

"Maybe it wasn't about you, Turlough."

Icy eyes, properly shuttered now, in a tense, hard face, meet his.

The Doctor waits for a response. There isn't one. "Maybe it wanted to use you to hurt me. And you - "

"And are you hurt? Doctor? Did I let it hurt you? Is that what all this was for?"

The Doctor opens his mouth to reply but Turlough steps forward, crowds him, fully aggressive. "If this is you, Doctor, you're acting like that thing would act. Saying what it would say."

"What? Turlough, you're - "

"Because the Doctor knows what it's been like for me when I've been used to get at him. And he's never said anything. He knows he doesn't need to say anything."

The Doctor matches his posture, staring down at him. "I see. Suggesting that you might be responsible for your own actions for once means I'm not myself. But seducing you, out of a clear blue sky, that was just fine."

"I knew it wasn't you! I just - "

"There it is. You knew and you let it happen anyway, oh, marvellous, Turlough."

"No! That's not-"

"It's either that or you can't tell the difference between me and the Mara; which is it, hmm?"

"You're not the Doctor."

"You're wrong."

"He would be on to stopping the Mara from taking control of him again. He wouldn't waste his time like this."

"Just for a moment, imagine you were right, Turlough. Why would you play along through letting it use us, both of us, for its amusement, only to confront it now?"

Turlough might as well have been slapped. His jaw works, mouth open, and nothing comes out. He lets himself collapse to sit back. A long silence stretches out. He's still not looking at him when he says, "what are we going to do?"

Perfect. The strike has landed, and the boy has folded. He'll get no more defiance out of him now. It's almost a pity, but the Doctor isn't so childish that he'll be grumpy about winning. He reaches down, a bright smile out of nowhere, a quick, companionable pat on Turlough's shoulder. "Get your clothes on, Turlough. You're right - we need to find a way to keep the Mara from taking control."

Inside himself, the Doctor waits.

---

Nine: Turlough

Turlough knows his apology is useless, but it still plunges him into ice when the Doctor's response, flat and ruinous, is, "Sorry...? Yes. So am I."

This isn't fair, not at all. "I thought - "

"You thought what? That it would just - what - work out? That you didn't really mind if something took me over and used me like this? How.... how could I mean so little to you?"

A dull, hopeless feeling grips him, sending him closer again to panic. He's very familiar with accusations dressed up as interrogations. But coming from the Doctor? It's like the ground has been pulled out from under him. "That's not... what happened. That's not what it was like!"

"Wasn't it?"

Turlough tries to boil off some of the horrible tension in a way that won't show, making fists, clenching them as hard as he can, concentrating on what it feels like to release the pressure and then to tighten them again, over and over. It does help.

But how exactly had it happened? How could it be so hard to pin it down? He knows he never decided that what this would mean to the Doctor didn't matter. He'd just been so disoriented, overwhelmed, conflicted and cornered - by the Doctor - everything about it had been wrong.

He had understood that if he responded, if he did what he wanted, he'd be taking advantage of the Doctor's strange behaviour.

Temptation.

It hadn't been too late then. Instead, he'd gambled on a moment of indescretion with the Doctor being basically safe, and lost.

"All right, I didn't push back hard enough! But I wasn't sure until it was too late!"

"You weren't sure? The Mara's performance must have been convincing. Was it what you'd expected? What was it that you expected?"

Turlough looks down, away, guilty again. It had been nothing - nothing like he'd expected. That much had been clear the whole time. He doesn't want to think about the ways he'd imagined the Doctor might act if he set his sights on him. They never happened; they don't matter anymore. They never mattered.

"It's just that I'm trying to picture it. You've known me for a good little while, now. Have I been leading you on? Because I thought I'd been clear enough without being blunt. I never wanted to let you mistake my disinterest for a rejection of you in general - I know how humans can be..."

Disinterest is devestating, but human is so offensive it jars him out of the word's real impact. And obviously the Doctor has not been leading him on. If only. "No. I didn't understand why you would be acting so strangely - but I couldn't believe the Mara would do those things either. I still don't understand why it would do all that. Why go after me? Why do any of this?" Turlough stops, screwing his face up, swallowing hard, fighting himself down until he's back under control.

"Maybe it wasn't about you, Turlough. Maybe it wanted to use you to hurt me. And you - "

Turlough balks at this. "And are you hurt? Doctor? Did I let it hurt you?"

The Doctor seems momentarily caught off guard, no quick answer ready. Clearly, he wasn't prepared for Turlough to do anything but take it. Turlough's angst shrivels up, replaced by anger at the sudden, certain realization that it's just this thing after all, trying to trick him again. Absolutely not.

Turlough faces him, momentarily fearless. "Because the Doctor knows what it's been like for me when I've been used to get at him. And he's never said anything. He knows he doesn't need to say anything."

But the Doctor uses his height to intimidate him right back, dominating the space between them. "I see. Suggesting that you might be responsible for your own actions for once means I'm not myself. But seducing you, out of a clear blue sky, that was just fine."

"I knew it wasn't you! I just - "

"There it is. You knew and you let it happen anyway, oh, marvellous, Turlough."

God! If it didn't sound so much like the Doctor it would be so easy to dismiss this, but it does, and it stings. "No! That's not-"

"It's either that or you can't tell the difference between me and the Mara; which is it, hmm?"

But despite how well it's imitating the Doctor now, Turlough is sure. "You're not the Doctor."

"Just for a moment, imagine you were right, Turlough. Why would you play along through letting it use us - both of us, for its amusement, only to confront it now?"

The Doctor... the Mara has a point. The path he has been taking all along has been to allow the man before him to do just as he pleases, and to pretend that it's all normal, all fine, all tolerable, not unsettling, not frightening, not monstrous. To keep up the pretense that it's all just a momentary oddity that will pass and leave everything the way it was, when it's over, when it's behind them.

And he's just realised that's why he'd stopped playing along.

It will never be behind them.

It's not the Doctor. At least, not the proper Doctor. But it doesn't matter. Until there's something - anything he can do about it, he'll go back. Back to playing along. With the Mara. Because it still beats the alternative.

He sits and stares into the plastic jungle, at the stupid gigantic colorful snake head still sitting off-kilter amongst the fake ferns. "What are we going to do?"

The Doctor's mood seems instantly lightened by his apparant surrender. "Get your clothes on, Turlough. You're right - we need to find a way to keep the Mara from taking control."

Turlough can't tell if the Mara believes it's still got him convinced that it's really the Doctor or not, and he supposes, once again, that it doesn't really matter. He's finished dressing and nervously done and then undone the button of his jacket when he sees motion in the plastic undergrowth. Snakes. He takes and holds a breath, watching them, watching the Doctor.

The Doctor, who has just slid the barred door aside, turns to smile at Turlough and sees him watching, sees the snakes. "Oh," he says, intrigued, "Spies. Let's give them the slip. Come on, Turlough," and he actually grabs him by the hand and pulls him through like an enthusiastic youngster.

"Spies? Whose spies?" Turlough wants to know, stumbling in the dark, pulled past another giant snake, this one coiled up and swallowing a robotically twitching pair of legs.

"Busybodies," the Doctor replies, "nosy parkers."

He follows the Doctor around a hairpin bend into a short, plastic plant festooned corridor whose walls are interrupted by slowly turning loops of the giant snake. At the end of it, there's a soft wall in the same colors, with something pressing on the other side, something trapped and trying to get out.

"Nosy parkers with spying snakes?" Turlough asks, incredulous. "Do you mean the snakedancers?" Turlough turns to look behind them, trying to see, in the disorienting flashes of turning lights, if the snakes are following them. Something moves in his periphery and he turns to face it, thinking it's the Doctor, just in time to be fully jump-scared by the woman who'd been half-eaten by the snake, skeletal arms reaching for his face, and he screams -

Like an idiot, because it's a mannequin, of course it is, and the Doctor is actually pointing at him and chortling. Turlough begins to wonder exactly how much of an idiot he had been to let himself pretend this was really the Doctor.

But the snakes are in fact still coming. The Doctor drops his some of his humour, catching sight of them. "Come along, quickly," he urges, moving on, ignoring the hanging chimes that brush at their faces and shoulders in the gloom, making oddly watery notes as they pass.

They come to a doorway in the shape of the snake's gaping jaws; on the other side Turlough can see a strangely lit spinning tunnel with a gantry-like walkway through it. He stops, staring into it, feeling strange. It's very viscerally reminding him of the liminal space he'd found himself in while his body had lain in the grass by the side of the road just outside Brendon School.

"This will slow them down a little, I think," the Doctor says, halfway through the structure before noticing Turlough has not followed. He gives him an impatient look which Turlough doesn't even see, takes a half step back towards him to take his hand again and pull him along.

Turlough lets himself be pulled. Inside, vertigo hits him hard, and for a moment he struggles to find his footing. But this is one of the times that something that had been drummed into him is helpful: the small craft spin recovery training that pops into his head is enough to take him out of the moment and let him reorient himself, and then he's out of the tunnel anyway, down grated metal steps, through a curtain, out of the attraction and into the deepening evening.

He stops short to avoid running into the Doctor, who is currently being glared at by the carnival barker and the lion man, whose mask is slung under one arm.

"Is there something I can do for you gentlemen?" the Doctor is saying.

Off to the side, Turlough sees that another of the scare actors they had passed earlier is talking to some kind of security officer while holding the snake-devoured woman comfortingly around the shoulders. The woman is staring into the distance, her face blank, eyes wide. Her eyes snap to meet his and he flinches, though her face doesn't change at all. She's staring right through him. What... what had the Mara done to her?

"What in the hell do you think you're doing, terrorizing my girls in there? Using my place of business like a six-ticket motel? I'm going to have you two arrested," the barker says, prompting the security officer to look up from his conversation and step towards them.

"Ah. I see there's been some kind of misunderstanding," the Doctor stalls, putting on affable and idiotic as usual. "My friend and I were just - " he turns to Turlough as if to introduce him, reaches out to put a hand on his arm -

And he throws Turlough into the security guard and takes off running. The boss and the lion chase him, but even this much of the Doctor is excellent at getting lost in a crowd.

The safety officer is struggling to get his footing and maintain control over Turlough at the same time when he sees the snakes that are spilling out of the haunted house and creeping towards them. He staggers back, holding Turlough in front of him like a shield.

Turlough hears someone approaching and tries to twist around enough to see. Dadda Desaka, the snakeherd mystic who'd waved his old serpent at him earlier, addresses the man behind him.

"You don't need to worry, officer, these ladies & gentlemen will pass you by. They seek the evil in the tall man."

"They what?" Turlough splutters, struggling half-heartedly with the man holding him.

Yoanna, the officer he'd left with Tegan and Nyssa, jogs into his field of view. "It's all right," she tells the other officer, "You can let this one go. He'll be coming with me."

"You'd better be throwing the book at him," the actor comforting the snake woman snaps, though the officer behind Turlough does let him go with a bit of a push towards Yoanna. "God knows what he did to Zara! I can't get her to say a word!"

Tegan and Nyssa are suddenly here too, and they crowd Turlough at once, with Nyssa throwing his arm over her shoulders under the pretext of helping him get steady on his feet. "What happened, Turlough?" she asks urgently. "Where's the Doctor?"

The snake mystic approaches Zara and mutters to her. Turlough looks at them, shakes his head. "The Doctor - or - whatever he is, he did that just by looking at her."

"Whatever he is?" Tegan asks, horrified.

After a few more words from Dadda Desaka, the snake-devoured woman looks as though she comes awake; she blinks, takes in her surroundings and collapses towards her fellow actor in a tight clench.

"Where is he, Turlough," Nyssa insists.

Turlough makes a frustrated gesture towards the fairground crowd in general. "He ran off!"

The snake mystic returns, leaving the woman to her friend's consolation. He addresses Nyssa solemnly. "The Evil is leaving the park by the Moonward Gate."

Tegan looks at Nyssa. "That's where I came in - the Doctor stopped our taxi early. Someplace he said he had some sort of business to do."

"Well, let's see if that's where he's going, then," Yoanna says, and sets off, leading them in that direction.

Turlough is thoughtful - and skeptical, now that the horse is out of the barn. "Tegan - did he seem - was he acting like himself when you two left your consult?"

"Well, yeah," Tegan begins to answer, and falters. "No... he was acting strange when he was.. trying to get me to leave him alone at Sundown Studios. Turlough, what was he-"

"Sundown Studios?" Yoanna asks, stopping to look back at them. "I just shut them down for safety citations. Like today. Right before I came here in fact."

"It is too late, that is how the Evil has entered this world, from the thought of a man carrying the evil the young woman cannot name. It will spill forth from - "

"Desaka. That's enough," hisses Yoanna, continuing towards the gate.

"Yes maam."

"He may have been lying to you, as well, Tegan," Nyssa says, quietly upset. "I really didn't say the things he told you I did."

Turlough is staring at the snake mystic. "Nevermind that for a moment, Nyssa - Do you know what he's talking about, Yoanna? What did you shut down the studio for?"

She hesitates. Dadda catches her eye and gives her a look. "AusGarten's parlor trick. It went wrong, it was supposed to make whatever I thought of. But it started to make a giant rose, and it made me see - the things that got this image of a snake stuck in my head!"

"The Evil," Dadda begins, and Nyssa gently shushes him, while Tegan continues to look increasingly distressed.

Turlough frowns. "They can make things straight out of people's imaginations here?"

Nyssa makes the connection. "Like the Mind's Eye! A crystal with the power to create matter from thought! Dadda, what exactly do you know about this?"

Yoanna is looking at Nyssa with frightened confusion. "But it wasn't real. It just - "

"The Evil is only too real, maams, it becomes, it rides the foolish work of arrogant men into being. You saw it as it came into posession of its latest home."

"Doctor Kerrem's machine used a crystal, Nyssa," Tegan tells her urgently. "Just like the one the Doctor got on Manussa. And after he saw me - the Doctor sent me out to hold the taxi while he... paid." She frowned. "He took so long I went back to check on him..."

"Hold on, wait," Yoanna breaks in, "Dr. Kerrem? He's one of our regular neurology experts. You saw him just before I met you at the park? What is going on here?"

Yoanna's phone chimes and she looks down at it and gasps.

Tegan leans towards her, trying to see. "What is it?"

"My officer forwarded me security images of the suspects," she says, looking haunted. "Your friend Turlough and - the man I saw in the rose..."

"At Sundown Studios?" Nyssa asks.

"In the rose?" Turlough says, baffled.

"That's the Doctor!" says Tegan.

Nyssa looks certain now. "Sympathetic Resonance! These engineered crystals, they act as though they're in contact with one another. When we were here before, the Doctor was able to communicate telepathically via such crystals. With no other equipment, just simple concentration. Dadda Desaka, do you think it's likely that if both machines were active at the same time, the Mara would have been able to access the creative power of the one at Sundown Studios, via the one used in Dr. Kerrem's medical device?"

"The Evil brought itself forth," Dadda says helpfully.

"Yoanna, could you contact Dr. Kerrem? He may be able to help."

"I - well, all right. I suppose it couldn't hurt."

Tegan moves up in the group as they walk, close to Turlough. "All right, Turlough. You've got to tell me what's happened to him. What's it doing to him? I have to know."

Turlough tries not to show his misgivings, but Tegan knows his tells by now and gets visibly upset before he says a word.

"It's really got its hooks in then," she concludes. "This is all because of me."

"It's not," Turlough insists at once. "That's just how it wants you to feel. That's practically all it wanted from me, as far as I could tell. For me to feel wretched. And probably the Doctor, too. If he was even really there."

"If he was there? Oh no..."

"He kept switching it up. Seemed more like himself and then not. I'm not sure, Tegan, I'm sorry," Turlough says, keeping his more final opinion to himself.

Yoanna finishes a call and puts her phone away just as they reach the park gate. "Dr. Kerrem is willing to help. I can have a car bring us to his office right away. I've sent a few officers to Sundown Studios to apprehend the Doctor if he shows up there, and we can talk to him at the station after they process him into custody. It'll be safer."

"I'm not sure your officers will be up to it," Tegan says, and shares a worried look with Turlough.

"They're trained professionals," Yoanna informs her, and waves a police car down, and then a van instead, as Dadda Desaka insists on going as well. Tegan notices that he's got his snake back, and there's a short debate over whether he can bring it, which he wins basically through attrition.

They cross the city in the deepening gloom. In the back of the police van, Nyssa and the snake mystic are deep in conversation, trading scientific jargon and abstract terms. Turlough joins Tegan, sitting quietly at the other end, looking out the back window.

"Tegan?"

She looks haunted, maybe wounded, or maybe just exhausted. But she gives him her attention freely. "It's funny," she says, "how, the darker it gets, the more a city looks like any other city. They all look pretty similar at night, down at street level. Even on a whole other planet."

"I've never really thought about it," he says, instead of telling her the way she's wrong. He hesitates. "Look, Tegan - can I ask you some questions? If you don't mind. I understand if you don't want to talk about it..."

She sighs. "No, it's all right, Turlough. Maybe it'll actually be good to talk a bit. I never could, to the Doctor. Nyssa's always willing to help, but she only wants to use therapy-speak." She gives him a thoughtful look. "And for that matter, maybe you can actually sympathise."

Turlough aims an ironic smile at the floor. "Maybe you're right."

"So. What did you want to know?"

"I'm trying to understand what it is, what it does. I was thinking in terms of an influence but what I just saw seemed more like possession. What was it like for you? I mean.. were you.. there?"

"When it was in control, you mean?"

"I suppose."

"Well... Whenever it wanted to take over it seemed like it was... alongside? Something horrible in there with you where nobody but you is supposed to be. Like a bully who's really got into your head. And you can never feel safe even when it's not there because maybe it is."

Turlough's mouth tightens and he sighs with unhappy recollection. Yes, he can definitely sympathise.

Tegan doesn't notice, caught up in her own story. "It liked to copy my voice to say cruel things, trying to weaken me I suppose. And then it was as though I would... slip, maybe? And then I was doing things... watching myself do things." She frowns, looking for the words. "Have you ever done something in a dream, and it made sense at the time, but when you woke up and remembered the dream, it didn't even feel like it was you in the first place?"

"So.. he'll know, then. The Doctor. Everything that happened."

"If it was the same for him as it was for me. What are you getting at, Turlough?"

"I don't know. I suppose... Well, you know that... when you met me..."

"The Black Guardian. We haven't talked about it much. But he kept getting into your head, giving you orders, right? Like the time I caught you talking to him, and you lied about it, right to my face." She smiles at him. "You said you were singing.. God, you were such a little ratbag."

Turlough gives an embarrassed grimace. "Well. His control was more like blackmail than anything else. At first he promised me things. Later he just punished me for not getting on with it."

"He.. is that.. on Marriner's ship, when we found you laid out in the hall all by yourself-"

Turlough looks down, still ashamed despite himself. "Yes. At that point he'd decided he was sufficiently disgusted with me to throttle me a bit. Out of pure frustration I suppose."

"But you had marks! That wasn't in your head!"

"I honestly don't know if he did that from the outside or not. It seemed like it, but I could never tell whether seeing him meant he was really there."

"Turlough! And I was so awful to you when I thought-"

"No, Tegan, you were right. I wasn't exactly brave about any of it, you know."

"Oh, Turlough..."

"But that's my point, really.. At least it was me. Almost all of the time, it was me. Anything I did, it was my choice to do it. It wasn't like that for you. Or.. for the Doctor."

"Turlough? What did he do?"

"It doesn't matter. I was just hoping maybe he wouldn't.. that I could just pretend the whole evening never happened. Or at least that I wasn't the only one who could have stopped him."

"You couldn't have stopped him, Turlough, believe me," she says, reaching for his hand.

Subtly, Turlough pulls his right hand back so she'll take his left. He squeezes her hand in return, gently. "Thanks."

She looks down at his hands, not quite frowning. "Turlough... you know why that's suspicious, don't you."

He smirks and tugs his right sleeve up, shows her the back of his forearm. "I got my hand in something unpleasant, that's all. There's never a lavatory when you need one."

"Did you happen to see - if the Doctor...?"

Turlough takes a steadying breath. "Yes. The mark was there. I'm sorry."

She slips back into anguish. "This is all my fault."

"Tegan. The Doctor barely told me anything about all this but one thing he did say was that it wasn't your fault. And he said he'd driven it away before. How?"

"The first time, with a circle of mirrors. The Doctor's theory was that if it couldn't escape its refelctions, it would go back to where it came from. And it seemed to work - it vanished."

"It vanished? What vanished?"

"Its true form. The mark - it came alive, left Aris - he was the man that the... that it took over, after me - and grew like mad. And then it - it was just gone."

"But it came back."

Tegan looks down at their hands, and her voice is tight when she says, "yes."

Neither of them had noticed Nyssa falling silent, shifting her attention to them. She moves closer, joins their conversation. "When it returned it was much weaker at first. It brought us here, centuries from now, when it had come and gone, to resurrect itself using the crystal they called the Great Mind's Eye. There was a ceremony meant to commemorate the Mara's defeat, and at its height the Crystal was placed in a position that allowed it to draw strength from the assembled crowd. The Mara had already left Tegan to incarnate as the snake, but it still acted through her, as though she were its avatar. The Doctor interfered, disrupting the process by focusing his own thoughts through another crystal. When he removed the Great Mind's Eye from its place, the snake died, and Tegan and the others were freed."

"Others?"

Tegan nods, blinking hard. "It recruited this young man, Lon, he was sort of a prince."

"It - what - it recruited him?"

Nyssa answers for her. "He took the mark, but maintained much of his own personality. In that way he was able to use his position to arrange things for the Mara's return."

Tegan closes her eyes, takes a breath, stiffens, straightens.

"That's why we were worried that the Doctor might have... passed it to you."

Turlough scowls out the window, watching the lights. "He certainly had the chance. I wonder why he didn't."

"Tegan. What if he's marked Doctor Kerrem?"

"Oh no, Nyssa, don't say that!"

Desaka leans closer to the group of friends. "Do not let fear cloud your resolve, young lady. The evil draws its power from such things. Whenever it comes, we must not turn away before the struggle begins."

"But what will we do if he's been taken over?"

The old mystic narrows his eyes. "I will drive it out."

Turlough makes a frustrated gesture. "How?"

Nyssa answers for him. "The Dadda seems to think that physical combat will be effective."

Tegan and Turlough both express their doubts, and Nyssa nods, raising a hand to placate them. "I tend to agree with you - I suspect the answer may be in the crystal. Perhaps the Doctor had the right idea back in the TARDIS. If only I hadn't wakened him."

"For all we know it would have happened just the same if you hadn't, Nyssa. It seems like the Doctor is always underestimating... that thing."

"Maybe, maybe not," Turlough says, feeling some guilty relief that at least he's not the only one to have underestimated the Mara. "What if it broke his crystal because that's its weakness? To stop anyone trying that again?"

"It would be consistent with what we know," Nyssa says.

"Well - if that's the idea, how can we do it? All I saw was the Doctor going into a trance, and I'm not exactly a past master at meditation."

"I'm not so bad at it, but nothing like the Doctor." Nyssa looks at Dadda Desaka. "You're familiar with the concept of the still point. Would you be able to focus through the crystal to help others reach it?"

Desaka frowns. "The crystal is the gate by which evil enters our world. It is hubris given form."

"Does that mean 'no,' Dadda? The crystal is a tool. It's dangerous, not cursed."

He shakes his head. "Ah, and you seemed so wise."

"Am I unwise simply because we disagree? I've seen Manussa's future, and I know that your people will carry these crystals and use them positively. Without such a crystal, perhaps the Mara would never have come. But it's here now. And the crystal can be used against it. I've seen it."

"Hmm, I know this apologia. The same fire that burns the home, drives away the beasts in the darkness."

"Will you help us, Dadda?"

He smiles at her slyly. "You must be the one who talked the legs off the snake."

---

Ten: The Doctor

The Doctor stands by the cage door of the little jungle, resting a hand on one of the big colorful loops of the snake in the scenery. He watches Turlough dress himself, dark trousers slithering up pale, slim legs, and grins, thinking of the woman whose job it was to pretend to be eaten by the giant snake. Maybe he should have kept her. But it seems the fight has truly gone out of Turlough. He should be servant enough for now, not to mention a ready source of amusement.

Still nothing? I know you haven't surrendered. What would it take to wake you, I wonder? Maybe if I gave myself to the boy? The rest of you would love that. You want to. You almost did, after that first kiss. You had him. He was ready. The moment was ripe. But you thought it would be more fun to let him twist and wriggle on your hook. And you were right.

The Doctor lets it talk. It's played all its cards for the moment, and he's waiting to be dealt some new ones himself.

But there's another reason why you didn't take him. Another thing you won't admit to yourself. That you don't want him on equal footing with you. No, you love the way he looks up to you too much for that. That's why you didn't take him.

Well of course he loves that. He knows that, he's not an idiot. But not so much that he'd ever hold someone down.

Yes. You would. That other boy of yours, for instance. The one in yellow.

The Doctor steadies himself, letting a flush of deep, defensive anger roll over and out of him. Be quiet. Be... still.

You won't win just by being no fun. You're losing ground all the time. You can feel yourself going.

He hauls the barred door aside and turns to invite Turlough. But Turlough is looking at something else, down at floor level, and it's -

Snakes. The Snakeherds, who have not yet created the Snakedance, yet who were already, uncannily waiting for the Mara when it was created. Much good it did them. And they are already on guard, here, a hundred years before its creation on Manussa. They have sent their spies after him. It's time to go.

He pulls Turlough after him through the rest of the haunted trailer, no longer interested in either its diversions or in Turlough, though he does enjoy the way the boy shrieks at such simple tricks as are offered here.

He jogs down the steps towards curtain at the exit and sees that some sort of trouble is already waiting for him. He sees the lion mask, its eyes still lit up, being carried by the young man in the chain harness. The lion actor is in his face at once, wielding an accusing finger. "I know you did something to Zara. It's like she's in a trance. Did you drug her? What's your game?"

The Doctor blinks innocently, evaluating the number of people out here who have eyes on him. Only one appears official, an officer gathering interviews, restraints and a baton on his belt. And his enthralled snake woman is here, too. Behind him, he can hear Turlough stumbling out through the curtain. "Please, I haven't the slightest idea what you mean - "

The man who'd taken his tickets puts himself between the lion and the Doctor. "What in the hell do you think you're doing, terrorizing my girls in there? Using my place of business like a six-ticket motel? I'm having you two arrested."

The officer breaks off from his conversation and approaches them.

"Ah. I see there's been some kind of misunderstanding," the Doctor says, stalling as Turlough approaches. He's just going to have to do without him for the time being. "My friend and I were just - " he turns to Turlough, reaches out as if to put a hand on his arm, and instead, fully grabs it, hauls him around and throws him into the security guard and takes off running.

He can hear people chasing him, but he's already deep in the crowd. He wonders if Turlough will get himself out of his mess, rejoin him or perhaps meet up with his other little friends to plot against him. But it's an idle thought - it's past time to get back to Sundown Studios and make sure the Mara's way will be prepared.

A brisk, watchful walk later, he finds the Sundown Studios building dark and quiet. With careful leverage he breaks the doorjamb of a conveniently builder-grade side door.

He looks to his side and sees no companion. No one is impressed, nor deviously delighted, nor judgmental - nobody is there at all.

Don't sulk. It was the simplest way to move forward. Soon you'll have so many companions you won't know what to do with them all.

Interesting. Now that the Doctor has quieted himself, it seems he is able to perceive the Mara needling the part of him that's in control. Ah - but he mustn't think about it.

Do you think you can control what you think, well enough to conceal things from me? Don't you remember where I am?

He slips down a corridor in the gloom, making his way to the room where he'd seen the equipment earlier. Now that the building is deserted, he'll be able to get a proper idea of its capabilities. But a door opens further down the hall, and it's the idiot boy he'd met here before, the one without dreams. He ducks into another room to avoid him.

In here, animal sounds fill the air. Someone is warehousing whimsical, nonsensical creatures. The Mara recognises them at once - unintentional impulses, unintentionally given form by the crystal. The technology is definitely on the road to the Mara's incarnation. Now he must just make sure it will be capable of birthing it now. He's - it's - tired of waiting, tired of not being.

He takes out the mobile phone he'd taken from Doctor Kerrem and calls him, keeping the heat on, making sure all the Mara's plans are advancing at pace.

"But Doctor, I should let you know. Miss Rayluss, the safety officer, she contacted me about Rick ausGarten. She's coming here to consult with me over whether his activities constitute a public health risk. What should I tell her?"

Ah. She must be the reason the workmen had been packing up the studio. "Tell her whatever makes nanny-state bureaucrats happy. Nothing to worry about."

"Don't move an inch." He recognises the voice from the advertisement that intrigued him in the first place. The man has some sort of nonlethal weapon pointed at him.

"...I'll call you back." The Doctor lowers the phone and beams at the man before him. "Mr. ausGarten, I presume."

---

Eleven: Turlough

It's not long before they arrive, piling out of the police van and following one another into Dr. Kerrem's practice, half-filling his waiting room. The interior door opens.

"Ah, Miss Rayluss, so good to see you as always," Doctor Kerrem says, gesturing her to enter his office. "And who are these-" he breaks off, seeing someone else he recognises. "Tegan."

Yoanna speaks over any potential derailment. "These are Tegan's friends Nyssa and Turlough, and Dadda Desaka."

"Er.. pleased to meet you. So. How can I help? I trust you have no further issues yourself, Tegan."

"We need to know more about the crystals," Tegan tells him.

Yoanna nods. "Earlier today, I was at Rick's outfit and I believe I suffered a mental insult from his machine. I think it has a flaw he's trying to conceal."

"A flaw? The whole idea is absurd. If you'd asked me before, I would have told you to stay well away."

"With respect, it's my job, Doctor Kerrem. I can't shut down a business on the grounds that it's 'absurd.' I have to have evidence. Now, when I let him demonstrate his machine this afternoon, it showed me the image of a man I've never seen before. And this young woman here says that that same man was here at the same time; her friend, the Doctor."

Nyssa takes a half step forward. "In my experience, the same properties built in to these crystals to give them utility - the precise wavelengths at which they resonate - may result in a connection from one crystal to another."

Doctor Kerrem frowns. "Of course. But if you're suggesting my scanner and ausGarten's 'materialisation' machine...?" He scoffs. "We're miles apart and my equipment is properly shielded," and he gives Yoanna a significant look, "for safety..."

"May we see your equipment, Doctor Kerrem?" Nyssa asks, the picture of reasonableness. "I'm terribly interested to see the proper use the crystals are meant to be put to. And perhaps it can help us understand what's going wrong with Mr. ausGarten's machine."

"Miss Rayluss, all of this is highly irregular. I'm sure you understand if I'm reluctant to invite all of these spectators into my practice. For a start, if I'm not mistaken, that gentleman has live rodents with him, which is not exactly compatible with the hygenic standards of a medical office."

Tegan raises her eyebrows. "Never heard of lab rats, Doctor Kerrem?"

Desaka scowls at her. "These mice are not for testing."

Nyssa looks as annoyed as Yoanna does, and shoots Tegan a look. "Of course not, Dadda."

"Perhaps just Miss Rayluss and Nyssa?" Turlough suggests. "That wouldn't be too crowded, would it?"

Kerrem raises his hands slightly in capitulation. "I can't say I'm happy with the idea, but it's not too unreasonable if it will help Safety Enforcement."

Yoanna gives him a polite smile. "Thank you, Doctor Kerrem."

"Of course. This way," he says, and leads the two women through a door.

Tegan watches them go, beginning to get a bit nervous. "Are you sure they'll be all right, Turlough? What if - "

"We're right here if they're not."

"I know someone who can keep an eye on them," Desaka says. He lets his snake down and it slithers effortlessly under the door, into the short hall beyond.

---

In his consulting room, Kerrem gestures to a large peice of equipment mounted on a mobile arm.

"This is the neuro-imager we use. It scans for activity; awareness, consciousness, thought and the like." He pulls it over and down, closer to Yoanna and Nyssa. "Though it can be refocussed when the areas of concern are more autonomic, or you might say, subconscious."

Nyssa peers at it. "This is consistent with our theory. It's certainly the same type of crystal, and the rest of the technology could potentially allow a deep mental connection to occur unintentionally, even at such a distance. As a side effect."

"If that is your theory then I'm afraid it is ill-conceived. I must insist that unintentional side effects are simply not produced here."

Yoanna nods interestedly. "If your machine is so safe then we can insist that ausGarten redesign his equipment to use the same safeguards. May we see a demonstration, Doctor Kerrem?"

"If you insist. Perhaps the young man in the waiting room would suffice as an example subject? Miss Nyssa, might you go and collect your friend for us, please?"

"Certainly," she agrees.

---

The door to the waiting room opens. As Nyssa walks in, Tegan stands up. "Anything good?"

"Doctor Kerrem would like to demonstrate his scanner on, erm, you, Turlough," Nyssa says, stumbling through the end of her sentence because of the look he gives her.

With significantly offended skepticism, he asks, "Is that safe?"

Tegan shrugs, though her brows are still pinched and high with general worry. "It seemed to be."

Desaka suddenly perks up. "There is evil here."

And that's when they hear Yoanna's yell from the other room.

Bursting through the door, they find Doctor Kerrem with two snakes on his wrist; the red, black and yellow serpent that is the Mara, and Dadda Desaka's dusky rat snake wrapped around both it and Kerrem's wrist, squeezing tight.

Yoanna is pressing herself against the opposite wall. "Get it away from me," she says, hoping she sounds like a reasonable adult and not someone who'd really prefer to continue screaming.

Turlough supposes this is up to him as usual. "Hey. Back off," he commands, stepping towards Doctor Kerrem.

Kerrem sneers, clawing at Desaka's snake with his other hand. "If I have to take you all, I will. As soon as-"

Dadda Desaka steps past them, a little way into the room, and with an unexpectedly fast movement he brings his staff down on Doctor Kerrem's head. Kerrem folds up, dropping to the ground, and the red and black snake flattens down onto his skin.

Yoanna squares her shoulders and looks at Tegan and Nyssa. "Why does my brain specialist have a tattoo that turns into a live snake?"

Desaka holds up a hand. "Shh, quiet, maam. The evil is sleeping."

Turlough looks at him. "Seems physical combat was pretty effective after all."

"Turlough," Tegan scolds. "Don't joke. He's still not safe."

"What would the Doctor say - 'let's see if this works?'" Turlough suggests, pulling down the crystal scanner and then looking at the controls behind it.

Tegan doesn't have the energy for a full eyeroll. "He wouldn't say that. He'd just try it and then say 'that shouldn't have happened.'"

"Nyssa - do we want to try to use the machine, or am I uninstalling the crystal?"

"Yes, remove it, I think. The Doctor only ever used his crystal by itself. "

Turlough fiddles with a thing or two and finds something to press that releases the crystal from the machine, still held aligned inside a mounting bracket like a thick, mathematically perfect aluminium circle.

Nyssa hands it to Dadda Desaka, who sits on the floor next to Kerrem, and she sits opposite him.

"I'm sorry, maam; I think it should be the officer woman. She knows this fellow."

Yoanna steps back. "Me? I've never meditated in my life."

"I will help you maam. Come, sit down."

Awkwardly, Nyssa and Yoanna switch places. Desaka sets the crystal between them, on top of Kerrem, smiles reassuringly and holds out his hands. "First I will help you to find your still point. And then we shall reach out to Kerrem and lead him to his. Follow," he suggests.

Skeptically, Yoanna reaches out and they join hands. They both close their eyes. The Dadda starts up a quiet, muttering mantra, and nothing else happens at all for several long minutes.

"Do you really think it'll work?" Turlough asks Nyssa.

"I can't say - but it'll be better if we stay quiet."

"The crystal," Tegan says softly.

The blue crystal has lit up from within, shining with a pinprick of bright light at its core.

---

In the dream:

Yoanna percieves the beginning of the attempted meditation as if she is shitty at it as usual but after listening to Desaka's lead for a while and saying it's no good he says they have not spoken any of these words as they are already in a meditatively shared space. The surprise encourages her and she is able to find her stillpoint, simple stability, peace, a state of disconnection that is intentionally observational rather than dissociative. They turn their attention to Kerrem and find him as a quiet science guy who has been steamrolled by the side of him that envied hucksters for their easy successes and public appreciation. Yoanna reminds him that he could have been a guy like that any time if he really wanted to, and the reason he isn't, isn't because anything held him back but because he didn't actually WANT to, he WANTS to be a serious science guy and HELP people and KNOW stuff. His still point is just finding his confidence in his own integrity again.

Yoanna: "You don't bitch about Rick cause you're ENVIOUS, I mean you ARE but in the way you envy a CRIMINAL for just going out and STEALING SHIT. You don't ACTUALLY want to GO OUT AND STEAL SHIT. A lot of people are a little envious of the AUDACITY of villains without actually wanting to BE one. Unless you ACTUALLY want to BE like RICK?"

Kerrem: "Uh.. hm.. I see your point, Miss Rayluss."

Mara!Kerrem: "ARE YOU STUPID? YOU WILL HAVE THE WORLD. THE LITERAL WORLD"

Kerrem: "Do you know? I don't want it. Not with you in it. You're all the things that are obnoxious to me. I think I must ask you to leave now."

Mara!Kerrem: "And where shall I go? This young lady? Or perhaps - "

Dadda: "No, I think you will go to the dark places from which you have not yet been summoned. You have been greedy, demon... You must wait your time."

Mara!Kerrem: "You can't send me anywhere, old man."

Dadda: "No, I cannot, but this fellow casts you out, and like attracts like. Join with the unborn snake."

---

Turlough notices it first. "Look out - the snake!"

Tegan looks and sees Kerrem's tattoo begin to move, to expand into the third dimension. "Oh no," she says, the sight of it threatening to send her back to any number of terrible moments in her past. She grabs Nyssa's hand and squeezes it hard.

Nyssa grips back and leans against her, reassuringly. "It'll be all right," she tells Tegan softly.

As the snake becomes more real and moves to leave Kerrem's arm, Dadda Desaka's serpent strikes again. The black snake and the colorful one strike at one another, each trying to get the other in its jaws, until the red and black one blurs and fades, and is gone.

The black snake noses around for a few moments and returns to the Dadda, who picks it up, beaming. "Good work, old lady. How proud I am of you!" He turns to Yoanna and grabs her shoulders. "You too have done very well! Wake up now and see."

---

Turlough takes advantage of the brief downtime to find the office's loo. Feeling slightly retraumatized but infinitely more comfortable, he returns to the others, who have moved to Kerrem's waiting room.

"Well - what's our next move?" he asks. He watches and winces a little in sympathy as Kerrem, who is holding a small ice pack to the top of his head, eats an analgesic tablet. "It can't really be as easy as the Doctor being able to expel the Mara with a little help from his friends?"

Nyssa hands Doctor Kerrem a cup of water from the waiting room cooler, and takes a contemplative breath. "I doubt it will be easy. But it may be that simple."

Tegan shakes her head in doubt. "I'm not sure if they'll be the same. The - that thing in him... I'm sure it'll be much more powerful."

"Power is meaningless at the still point. The evil is its own defeat."

"Thanks, Dadda," Yoanna says, her eyes flicking heavenward for a moment.

Her phone rings, and she answers. "Yoanna Rayluss? ... Excellent. Hey, and he's dangerous. Keep him isolated - don't let anyone talk to him. I'll be right there." She snaps it shut, standing up.

"The Doctor?" Tegan asks, worried again.

"He's in custody. They found him at Sundown Studios, just like we expected."

Tegan stands. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's get him free!"

Kerrem squints at them. "I appreciate your help. But you can't just take pieces of my equipment." He holds up his hand as they all protest and then continues, "I'll accompany you to the station. Miss Rayluss, I assume you're willing to be responsible for all of this?"

She grimaces. "Honestly I'd rather not be. But I think we're all outside of our comfort zones here. This is probably a situation where it's worth taking risks."

"I'll.. I'll get my remote scanning equipment," Kerrem says, and makes his way back into the consulting area.

---

On their way to the police station, Yoanna rides in the back this time, keeping her place in the action. She spends a few minutes interrogating Kerrem about the Doctor's plans, but he says all he knows is that he was meant to contact influential, intelligent people, and get them on board for a meeting tomorrow night. Nyssa wonders if the intention is to bring together strong Manussan minds to help summon the Mara through ausGarten's materialisation machine. Kerrem wants to scoff at the idea but he has to admit that with the things that have happened today all bets are, for the moment, off.

Desaka and the offworld visitors turn to discussing their plans for rescuing the Doctor from the Mara.

---

Nyssa regards Tegan seriously. "I think it should be you, Tegan. You've known him nearly as long as I have, and you know the Mara too."

Tegan shivers, her posture straightening. "I can't, Nyssa. I can't face that thing."

Desaka puts a hand on her shoulder. "You have the best chance, maam. Your friend is right, you know him, and you know the evil. Though it weighs heavy on you, this would be your time to show it your strength and master your fear."

"I'm not ready! I'm too afraid to try. It won't work, I'll ruin everything."

"That's not true, Tegan," Nyssa insists.

"I've never seen 'being afraid' stop you," Turlough says solemnly. "Usually.. that's me. Stopping you, I mean."

"Well this is different," she says, heavy and sharp. "Why not you, Nyssa?"

She looks down at her hands. "I'm afraid that I have certain weaknesses due to my own sensitivities," she says, and looks back up at Tegan. "It would be just as difficult for me to keep from worrying about them. I've had poor results before, attempting to meditate in such circumstances."

Desaka gives her a disappointed look. "You are carrying a second arrow. Sit with yourself as you are, worries and all. They shall fall away as you attend to other things."

"Thank you, Dadda, but.." she takes and lets out a short breath. "Turlough, how would you feel about it? I know your history with the Doctor isn't uncomplicated, but he cares for you deeply. I'm sure you would be able to reach him as easily as either of us could."

"Me? I - " Turlough's shoulders twitch with a suppressed shiver. "I suppose I could try."

Desaka raises his brow. "You may succeed. But in truth it should be the young lady."

"Please, Turlough," Tegan says sofly. "I just -"

"No, I'll - It's all right. I can do it," Turlough insists, before he can think better of it. But is he really up to invading the Doctor's mind to help him find his still point?

The idea pulls him in different directions. It's undoubtedly a trespass, even if it's in aid of a noble cause, and he can't help worrying that the aftermath would be... weird.

It's nerve-wracking. It's not as though he's done anything so mystic-adjacent before with a peer, never mind something like a Time Lord, and he has no idea what he might be letting himself in for.

It's thrilling. To intrude on the Doctor's mind. To go into it, into him, in the most intimate possible way. Possibly without even his knowledge. He suddenly finds himself getting turned on, and inwardly curses. Brendon. Latin class. Nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative...

Then Dadda Desaka pulls him into a lesson on shared medetative spaces and he welcomes being distracted by the task at hand.

---

The Doctor is waiting for them in an observation cell, giving them all a smoldering stare through the wide observation window as they file in. Turlough finds himself in the center of the window and the Doctor's attention.

Yoanna turns on an intercom.

"...Doctor." It's awkward. He's still just staring.

"Hello, Turlough. Come to bail me out, have you? You have kept me waiting."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I'm here now. And I've brought this."

He holds up the crystal.

The Doctor scowls. "That didn't help him, and it won't help you."

Turlough matches his stare. "Dadda?"

The mystic approaches. "The evil is sure of itself. But we shall challenge it in the place into which it has crawled."

"Oh, spare me," the Doctor sneers. "Your powers are primitive and weak. You can do nothing."

"I'll secure the detainee," Yoanna tells them, waving over a couple of officers.

The Doctor, completely still, turns his attention to the others. "Tegan. Why don't you come in here with me? And Nyssa..." He trails off, looking at Doctor Kerrem and his bare forearms. His face crumples in a snarl. "What did you do?"

Kerrem manages not to quail under his stare. Tegan steps in front of him. "We freed him. And we'll free the Doctor too."

"Oh, Tegan," he says, his voice mockingly sad. "I'm so sorry, no you won't. He's gone." He smiles. "There's only me here now."

"I don't believe you. You're a liar and a cheat. I never should have listened to a word you said."

"Listening to me was the only real thing you're ever done."

"Maybe where you come from. Why don't you go back there?"

"Because I don't want to. And I never do anything I don't want to do."

"I watched you die. Melt. You wanted to do that, did you?"

The Doctor snarls, his mouth angry and red. "If it's watching things die you're after, I'll bring that to you in spades, Tegan. But you'd get the same even if you could get your Doctor back. You know that, don't you. He kicks up death like dust. That's why he's such a good fit for me."

"I wish you hadn't picked him. But I am glad I finally get to call you a monster to your face."

"Oh, yes, you're so brave. So brave you won't dare try to reach the Doctor yourself. You begged your friends to do it instead. Nyssa can't have volunteered if Turlough's about to try it. He'll fail, of course." Inside the cell there's a brief, halfhearted tussle before the Doctor lets the guards secure his hands behind his back.

"We'll see, won't we," she shoots back at him.

Yoanna speaks up while the Doctor is manhandled into a seat. "All right, all right. Go on in, you two. And good luck."

Turlough and Dadda Desaka sit down across from the Doctor. He leans forward slightly and grins at them. "You know, you two really should join me. Dadda, enlightenment and influence - you could bring your people the status they deserve. And my old friend Turlough. Aren't you so tired of being afraid? Power is the ultimate security, and this time you wouldn't have to give me up to get it. We'd be side by side."

"Sorry, that's not very tempting. I'm not as fond of you as I am of the Doctor."

"You seemed perfectly satisfied with me when you were begging and -"

"You're not being terribly original, you know," Turlough grumbles over him. "You'll have to try harder if you want to upset me again."

"I'm sorry, do you think I need advice on how to get under your skin? Imagine if I tried to give you advice on how to act like the sort of feckless coward that would hide from a house fire."

Turlough gives him a very sour look and glances sideways at Dadda Desaka. "Are you ready?"

He places the crystal, ringed in silver, on the table.

The Doctor doesn't look at it. "I wonder if you'll be able to put up enough of a fight to make it interesting."

But the Doctor does look up at Kerrem, who enters the room and stands behind Turlough with a handheld medical scanner. It rather pointedly resembles a weapon pointed right between the Doctor's eyes. "Please don't be distressed," Kerrem says. "This device's function is to induce sleep."

"You'll regret this, Kerrem - I always settle my debts."

"You are genuinely terrifying while you are suffering from this condition." He activates the scanner and twiddles a control on it. "I hope you may feel more like your old self soon."

"YOU-" is as far as the Doctor gets before he gently slumps forward.

Desaka moves to stand behind his chair and gently pulls him against its back, holding his head upright in both hands. Desaka nods at Turlough, who meets his gaze and puts both hands on the table, either side of the crystal.

---

Turlough's first challenge is his own still point. On the brief ride here, with Dadda Desaka's help, he's seen it, found it, knows what it looks and feels like. But it's difficult, even when led by the hand, simply because it's so completely alien to him, to the way he goes through life. Awareness doesn't come with tranquility. He's sure Desaka could tell; the mystic had insisted that he (no, that was wrong - he had.. influenced him to?) stay in that state, for minutes that felt like hours, to have the chance to get at least a little bit accustomed to it. But now, outside of it, he can't shake the feeling that being in that state had been wrong, foolish, and that's making it much harder to achieve it again.

Desaka is there, burbling helpfully. "Observe your misgivings. They are yours. They will exist whether they worry you or not. Be calm in the knowledge that you do not need to address them now. We are here for other things. We are here for your balance, which exists even when you are not aware of it."

Turlough lets Desaka and the crystal help keep him focused on the moment. The pinprick of light in the crystal brightens, and it reminds him of another crystal, of course it does, and he breathes faster, trying to shut out the image -

"You do not need to deny it. Let it be, it is behind you now."

It was white. Brilliant. It burned. It hurt him.

It doesn't hurt him now.

The crystal is different, it's blue, its light is cool. It hums with a musical tone. It's calm. He's calm.

Dadda Desaka smiles and says nothing.

Their attention turns to the Doctor.

---

It's England. It's so England that Turlough nearly loses it right then and there. A wave of deep annoyance passes through and out of him without catching and dragging him out of his carefully cultivated state of mindful awareness. The hills are beautiful and green, with an empty road winding its way along a low stone wall and peacefully into the distance, where a village sits under a blue sky. He hears a dull sound, like a bell in someone's hand, and turns to find the Doctor standing in the middle of a small group of cattle. He's patting one of them on the face, smiling like an idiot like a person who is experiencing contentment.

The Doctor looks up at him, beaming. "Hello, Turlough."

Dadda Desaka makes an impressed face. "Your friend is already at peace here. Perhaps this shall be easier than we thought."

"Oh, I'm afraid not," the Doctor says, turning his attention back to the cow. "I'm doing well here but it's only a compartment. To try what I assume you did for Kerrem we'll have to open it up and face the Mara, and I can tell you, the Mara's going to be a tough nut to crack."

"But we can do it," Turlough says, hoping for reassurance.

"I think so," he says casually, patting the cow with confidence. It moos. "It will try to run if it thinks I'll be able to beat it. You two will both be in danger if you're here when that happens."

"But you can't do it alone. Can you."

There's a long, quiet moment. Distant birdsong. A little cowbell. "No."

"Well then."

The Doctor sighs. He pats the cow a bit more, then swats it on the hindquarters. It looks back at him and ambles away. So do the others. He watches them go. "All right. Let's try," he says, and sits on the grassy ground.

The two interlopers in his mind join him.

"I'm going to drop the structure of this space. The Mara has been bored with me for a bit but it didn't like me closing off a part of my mind to be able to greet you two. I'm sure it'll be waiting. Remember that it has no power of its own. It's a whisper in the dark. It will dig and promise and lie to get the permission it needs from the most susceptible parts of you. You must protect them. That's where I failed - I - my - "

The sky flashes to an endless, featureless grey. The world, too. The grass, the cows, all grey. Turlough starts. "Doctor?"

Dadda Desaka gives a little shake of his head. "You would pick up a glowing coal just to show it to us? Put it down."

The Doctor closes his eyes, takes and releases a deep breath. A crack of thunder rips across the sky but the color does return.

But someone else is there, sitting back-to-back with the Doctor. He twists around to see the three of them. He looks almost like the Doctor - maybe what the Doctor might look after a week in a trench. His eyes are shadowed, dark and red, incongruous in the bright sunlight. He smiles. "Oh, hello. You both made it, wonderful," he says, shifting gracelessly to sit facing them, interrupting their triangle. "I was wearing this idiot down but he'll go so much faster with your help."

"To destroy the Mara I must find the still point," the Doctor says softly to himself, to the small group, without speaking.

"A still point in a closet like this? It's not the real thing and you know it. You have to face yourself as much as me. We're the same thing, after all."

Dadda Desaka nods. The Doctor closes his eyes. The sky, the countryside, the grass beneath them all fly away to nothing. They're sitting on grey, rocky ground under an ancient, gnarled tree. It's cold. Bleak.

The Mara leans back, smiling. "Ah, much better. Much more genuine. The blackest day of your life - though you've had blacker days since, haven't you."

The three of them stay silent. They concentrate together until they can hear the musical hum of the crystal. There's a little weedy flower in the center of their tiny assembly, and its pentamerous head shines with the five-pointed glow of the crystal.

The Mara's smile deepens into a snarl. "The day of your last death, for one. An absolutely staggering number of worlds, wiped from existence because you will go on sparring with your old friend instead of putting him down like the mad dog he is. Perhaps the number is too large for you to feel it. But I know how hard you try to forget the way your stolid little princess suffers her loss. Her father, her empire, the sun in her sky. Of course she couldn't stay with you for long. And now she's been dragged back. Will she lose her new life as well? Because of you?"

None of them move. Turlough feels questions rise in him like bile and lets them go. They're not important now. It's the Mara doing what it does. It can't do otherwise.

The Mara gets right up in the Doctor's face. "But you've saved some!" it says, with a mocking pout. "Have you saved enough to make up for it? Could that even be possible? What does your balance sheet look like, really? Should you have ever set foot out into this universe at all? Was it worth satisfying your wanderlust?"

He wants to spring to his feet, to give this thing a shove, a jab, to defend the Doctor. But it's not the time. He lets the impulse flow past him. He's sitting on a mountainside in the Doctor's mind, the Doctor and an old mystic by his side, and he's letting the light and the song of the crystal help him keep his own mind clear.

Suddenly, without moving, it's speaking directly to him.

"You want to defend him? Why? When he's allowed such things to happen to you? When evil itself was living in you, setting your nerves on fire whenever you failed to heel, he knew it was there and he never helped you. He didn't save you when your impulse was to escape from punishment into open space. Utterly alone, untethered from gravity with the reality of death making your heart beat so fast you thought it would kill you before asphyxiation could, and he wasn't the one who came for you. And, of course, he couldn't protect you from me."

Turlough notices that he's trembling. That's all right. None of this is in focus now. It's actually.. easy, to let this attack slide. He's here for the Doctor. He's deeply certain of that.

"Oh, Turlough," The Mara objects, sounding thoroughly disgusted. "What has he done to earn loyalty like that from you? He's worse than useless. Is it because you're still guilty about being decietful when you were trying to kill him? Is it just because he's your crush? You would never have rolled over for anyone like this before the war. You knew who you were. And you weren't so pathetic."

With a sharp intake of breath, Turlough glances at it. Right in the eyes.

It lunges.

"Turlough!" the Doctor shouts, dropping his trance.

The Mara has grabbed his hand in its own. Instinctively he pulls away but can't ruin its incredibly strong grip. He hears a hiss, feels a searing stripe of acid pain lancing up his arm and something hot and sinuous and heavy crawling on his skin. Somewhere he hears a sound like a body thrown roughly to the ground.

The Mara is leering into Turlough's face. "You take it so beautifully," it says, its eyes locked to his.

Turlough can barely think over the intensity of it, his wide eyes staring into the mad red copy of the Doctor's. A flash of terror and guilt. He's failed. He let it in.

Its grin falters.

Suddenly the Mara gasps and grabs his arm in its other hand as the hot acid continues to pour into him, more, faster, blooming through him like ink in water. Its face is shocked. "You - you can't - t.." With a strange little moan, its eyes roll back and it collapses and, with a sensation like falling flat into water, Turlough

wakes up.

---

Twelve: The Doctor

The police station is boring. Especially now that the good Doctor has figured out a more effective strategy for ignoring him. Bullying him is still fun in principle, of course, but after a whole evening of perfectly gutting anguish, whispering cruelty into the void is hardly satisfying enough to be worth the bother.

But it's all right. He's already got Rick ausGarten on side and preparing for tomorrow night. And the police will bring everyone that still needs dealing with right to him. It will make everything trivially easy if he can mark officer Rayluss. Turlough will surely find his way here, whether to confront him or to help him escape. Either would do. It's time to take Nyssa as well - she'll be a sitting duck to the Mara - and as for Tegan...

The Doctor grins with the Mara imagining what it will be like to take her back.

The Mara is tempted to have her as its avatar again instead of this Time Lord, despite its technical and traumatic superiority. Tegan is so deliciously base, her emotions raw as swallowed prey, glittering and clear as running water. Not to mention the earthy advantages of being so sharp and pretty.

It feels the Doctor's slighted offense at the idea.

Oh, don't whine just because I'm appreciating someone else. Nobody is better than you.

He'd like to call Doctor Kerrem and get an update, but they've been keeping too close an eye on him. It's mildly infuriating to need to be careful about something as piddling as not losing a portable telephone, but so be it.

There's a flurry of activity outside his cell. Perhaps something interesting at last. He stands, stretches, and puts himself in front of the cell's observation window in time to see - ah, excellent! All of his little friends, and the police woman... the obnoxiously ineffable mystic, and... Kerrem? Who should be hard at work recruiting talent for tomorrow night - perhaps Rayluss has summoned him here. The Doctor's mood sours but at least now he has an audience to take it out on. Within himself, he feels a spike of agitation from the other Doctor being carefully folded away. That's right. Keep hiding, keep fading. It's the only thing you can do.

Turlough has taken point for some reason; the Doctor stares down at him and waits.

An intercom speaker buzzes to life in the cell, a quiet, static ambient hiss.

"...Doctor," the boy's voice comes through the speaker, tinny and tentative.

"Hello, Turlough. Come to bail me out, have you? You have kept me waiting."

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I'm here now. And I've brought this." Turlough holds up a crystal, blue, with its five lateral points embedded in an industrial looking silver ring around it.

The doctor scowls. Did he take it from Kerrem's diagnostic device? Why would Kerrem allow that? If Yoanna insisted, that would suggest she's becoming very dangerous. She'll have to be dealt with. "That didn't help him, and it won't help you."

The visitors spar with him a bit. It's entertaining enough, though it spoils his mood when he realises they've freed Kerrem. He's not too worried about their plans with the little crystal - the Mara has bested the Doctor on that field already - but the Dadda is a wildcard here; if he was able to cast the Mara out of Kerrem he might be a genuine threat after all.

Yoanna sends a couple of heavies into his cell. He doesn't bother to resist them much. A token struggle. They secure his hands behind his back - amusing if they think that will make him safe - and manhandle him into a seat.

Turlough and Dadda Desaka come in and sit down across from the Doctor. He gets a few more needles in, now, up close, where it's easiest to hit. The more bothered they are the more likely the Mara will be able to rebuff their efforts. And if the good Doctor is still paying attention, and he should be, he'll have to spend more of his limited efforts on trying to remain unbothered by such cruelty spilling from his own mouth.

Turlough gives him a very sour look as another barb lands and glances sideways at Dadda Desaka. "Are you ready?"

Turlough puts the crystal on the table, and the other Doctor is being far too quiet. Maybe it's time to bait him again? It's an audacious plan, I'll give it that. But he'll lose. Imagine what he'll be like.

Still nothing. And he hadn't leaked any hope when he would have seen Kerrem was free, either. What are you up to?

He rifles around in his subconscious and finds a part of it that rebuffs him. He embraces the spike of rage he feels at that. He's the Doctor now. He's hardly going to tolerate a hidey-hole for the little heroic idiot in him.

The Doctor doesn't look at the crystal. When he speaks it's both out loud and inside. "I wonder if you'll be able to put up enough of a fight to make it interesting."

Kerrem enters the room and points one of his devices right between the Doctor's eyes, which are dark with anger. "Please don't be distressed," Kerrem says. "This device's function is to induce sleep."

They trade lines until the world hums inside his head and the lights go out, and the Doctor, forced into unconsciousness, turns his attention inwards.

The Mara perceives the good Doctor's fortifications. They're useless.

No, no. It's there as a soft landing for the intruders. Clever, the Doctor thinks. But a mistake. Projecting themselves into the Mara's realm will make them easy prey, whether his sanctuary is functioning or not, and a false sense of security is always good to exploit.

The Mara notices the mental integrity of it weaken temptingly, and tests it. The surface cracks.

Even as it tries to reassert itself, the Doctor pushes and with the Mara he slides through the crack into the good Doctor's safe little haven.

He's sitting back-to-back with himself.

He twists around and gets a good look at his opponents and prey. The rebellious Doctor, the mystic, the meaningful boy. "Oh, hello," he smiles at Turlough. "You both made it, wonderful."

He enjoys hurting them for a while, though of course really he's looking for an opening for the Mara. Enslaving things in front of the other Doctor is likely to weaken him significantly, and of course be deeply satisfying. Turlough is the most tempting, although Dadda Desaka would be the more tactical choice. But it's not as though either the Doctor or the Mara is all that inclined to value tactics over satisfaction. And so he leans into the surface of the boy's mind and puts poison in his ear.

Turlough tries so hard to resist. The boy's faith in the Doctor is annoyingly unshakable, even after the day he's had, but the Mara can see the pulp of him through the cracks in his soul. It swings away from attacking the Doctor and attacks the concept of having faith in him instead. Of no longer being the headstrong boy he was before he lost everything. And Turlough is rising to it; the Mara can see him losing the thread of his concentration and feeling a deep, angry stab of vulnerability. And the Mara strikes.

The other Doctor sees it unfold, yells a warning. It's too late. The boy's hand is clamped in the Doctor's, the Mara's, and no effort of escape will be fruitful. The snake on the Doctor's arm is no longer quiet and still. It's hissing, moving, sliding over their joined hands and past Turlough's wrist. The boy yells, screams. The other Doctor rushes at them in a desperate attempt to knock them apart but the Mara bats him aside with the Doctor's free arm, sending him flying to land hard on the stony grey ground.

Turlough has gone quiet with shock, his eyes wide and staring. The Mara grins with the Doctor's face as it continues to pour some of itself into the boy. The Doctor finds his terror fascinating. The Mara uses the Doctor's voice to tell him how beautiful he is like this, and feels the boy shudder. Oh, he will make a very good pawn, once the Mara has a good grip - and as it pushes deeper into his psyche there are hints that this young fellow may even genuinely have some of the hidden depths the good Doctor seems to see in him -

The Mara feels an unfamiliar flicker of foreboding.

Deep. Far too deep. In fact there is something wrong with him. The Mara is no longer simply giving Turlough the mark. It can't stop. The entirety of it is moving, falling, rushing, plunging headlong into his psyche, a cavity the size of -

Of something like itself but less sinuous, larger, louder and darker than life, the thing that speaks on behalf of evil itself, the way the Mara stands for chaos. The wound it has left behind is slick and sucking, and the Mara feels its grip on the Doctor slipping. With the Doctor's other hand it grabs Turlough's arm just above the wrist, squeezing, desperately trying to stem the flow of itself.

And the Mara gasps with Doctor suddenly twisting his own psyche out from under it. Not the part of the Doctor that's still stunned and trying to get up, no -

The part that knows how to enjoy a little cruelty, a little power. The part that knows how to throw his friends to the wolves, if he has to.

His voice is quiet and firm, directed inwards and only for the Mara.

"I think I'm finished with you."

"You can't defy me," the Mara tries to insist with the Doctor's mouth, but it fails to get the words out before the Doctor's eyes roll back, the last of it slipping from him like grains of sand.

The Doctor's body drops to the ground like its strings have been cut. In the same moment, Turlough vanishes, slipping out of this space, this state, entirely.

The other Doctor finds a hand being offered to him and takes it gratefully. Dadda Desaka helps him up and together they look down at the Doctor, lying flat out.

"Ah, that is a shame," Desaka says, looking at the small flower, smashed in the scuffle. He nudges the Doctor by his side, nods meaningfully at the sad little plant.

They both close their eyes.

The flower and its surroundings shimmer, waver, and it's back, standing, the light of the little mind's eye still shining wanly at the center of its disk.

The Doctor on the ground stirs and sits up, making a grumpy noise of discomfort, raising a hand to his face. The other Doctor crouches to push back his sleeves. The Doctor swats his hands away impatiently, but they've already seen there is no mark there.

"Turlough," the good Doctor says, his voice tight with anger and worry.

"Yes. He'll be fine," the Doctor replies, blinking hard and shaking his head slightly.

"Fine? You've just - practically - sacrificed him to that thing!"

"The opportunity was there. It would have been a terrible idea not to take it. Or did you have a way to expel the Mara that I didn't know about? If you did you were certainly taking your time," he grumbles, getting awkwardly to his feet.

"That's - exactly what we were doing!"

"Your attempt failed. Turlough was too weak to stand up to a serious attack on his ego. It was a close thing, though. He did very well, I thought."

"Your dark side is right," Dadda Desaka tells the distraught Doctor. "Once the boy was struck, the die was cast against any hope of dealing with it here. We did not achieve our victory, but, we have driven it from a stronghold it dearly wished to keep."

"You see?" the Doctor says, gesturing at the Dadda, his brows raised.

"I - we - " The other Doctor protests, pinching his eyes shut in frustration, his hand to his brow.

Desaka sighs deeply. "You cannot let yourself remain divided," he says, gesturing to the flower's fading light. The Doctor takes a step toward it, his face thoughtful.

The other Doctor looks daggers into his back. "I don't know if I even should take him back. He seemed to enjoy cooperating with the Mara just a bit too much."

The Doctor turns and looks down his nose at himself, offended. "Excuse me?"

"You know exactly what I mean!"

"We want the same things. We're the same person. I am you, whether you like it or not."

"Maybe I'm not you."

The Doctor gives himself a serious look, sensing that he has the upper hand and incapable of backing down. "'The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being,' isn't that right? And through the hearts of every Time Lord, too."

Dadda gives a slow, serious nod of assent.

The Doctor looks at both of them, anguished. "How can you tell me I shouldn't be repulsed by everything that he represents!?"

The Doctor looks him in the eyes, fully deadpan. "Haven't we had this sort of argument with ourselves before? You know how it goes. Count the times I've saved your life. Count the times I've led you to do something instead of nothing. Or are you agreeing, now, with the Mara, when it suggested you should have stayed at home?"

"Count the times you've enjoyed joining in the deadly games the Master plays."

The Doctor frowns. It's the Mara's fault that's been dug up fresh. He won't apologise for it. "You hate it that people are hurt. But you're the one who lets him go. Every time. Count those up, I'll wait." The Doctor tilts his head down and looks at himself from under a judgmental brow. "I wouldn't have let him go."

They stare at one another, the air crackling.

The Doctor with the muddied coat continues. "You are our backbone. You are why we put so much on the line. But when you are angry, I am the one who puts us into action. Without me, all you would have is ennui. And shouting."

"That's not - "

"It is and you know it. This is the proof of it," the Doctor says, gesturing around them. "Faced with the Mara and without me on your side, you could do nothing. Nothing. And I know how badly you wanted to stop us. I was there."

The other Doctor's hands are balled up into fists, his shoulders are tight. He wants so badly to strike the Doctor in front of him. He feels like he's hanging on by his fingernails.

"Try it. Try to hit me," the Doctor says.

"Sirs, please,"

"You can't. What does it feel like? Oh well, I'll know soon."

The other Doctor recognises he's being baited but it doesn't help much. He can barely begin to clear his mind. It's too hard not to fixate on what a bastard he is being right now. This should be easy after so much practice with the Mara but he's just too mentally exhausted.

The Doctor considers him. "Are you angry?"

"Of course! And so should you be. Why aren't you?"

"Because I'm at peace. This is my still point now, if you didn't notice. You wouldn't be able to maintain it like this. Look at yourself."

"You're right. For some reason I can't let go of how wretched you are."

Dadda purses his lips, takes a deep breath. "If you reject your dark side, you abdicate your duty to struggle with it. I do not believe that is what you wish to do. Gentlemen, please," and he looks at the Doctors in turn. "Calm yourself. Be kind to yourself. I will not leave until I see you reconciled. It is almost the new year."

They hesitate identically. The other Doctor looks at himself. "I should ask you a few things while I still can."

The Dadda interrupts. "When you are whole you will have the insights of your dark side available to you."

"What would you do after that?" the good Doctor asks recklessly. "After not letting him go."

The Doctor gives him a humourless stare. "With all due respect, it's time for action instead of words, don't you think?"

Finally, quietly, they sit around the little shining flower on the grey, grey mountainside and close their eyes.

---

---

Thirteen: Turlough

The lights are too bright. Where is he?

Oh yes. In an interrogation room. At least he isn't on the wrong end of it.

His vision clears to reveal the Doctor, still across the table from him but sitting under his own power now, his eyes still closed, and the crystal, still glowing.

Something happened, didn't it?

He remembers in disjointed scenes, like trying to recall a dream over breakfast. A cow, a flower, a mountain, rolling hills. The Doctor facing himself, one freshly laundered, the other muddy and red-eyed.

One had accused the other of letting a friend get away with destroying someone's whole life.

The 'someone' had to be Nyssa. He never knew she'd lost so much. Maybe Turlough has more in common with her than he'd realised.

He's letting himself get distracted. He needs to return to the matter at hand. Should he re-enter the shared meditative realm? He can't think of a reason not to try. He looks into the crystal and tries to let himself drift with it, the way the mystic had shown him.

He's just begun to fall into it when he's overwhelmed by the image of a strange skull grinning at him, laid over his own face. He reacts, stumbling back, half-falling, the chair skittering away, pushed by his knees. He catches his balance and runs from the room, wrenching the door open, slamming it shut behind him with his whole self. He stays there, arms up and against the door, halfway between holding it shut and clinging to it.

"Turlough!" he hears Nyssa cry. The next thing he knows, she and Tegan are at his side. "What happened? Are you all right?"

Too scared to feel very sheepish, Turlough peels himself off of the door and faces his friends, but he can't meet their eyes. He looks at his hands while he answers them. "I don't know. I can't remember. I was with the Doctor and Dadda Desaka in - a dream, I suppose. Then I just woke up. I tried to concentrate on the crystal, but I saw something... terrible."

Tegan and Nyssa share a look. "I hate to be insensitive, Turlough," Tegan says. "But can we have another look at your arm?"

Distractedly he pushes his sleeves back. Tegan slumps with relief.

Turlough makes himself look into the room. The Doctor and the mystic are still there, silent and straight-backed.

Kerrem is watching them as well, or rather, watching the screen of a little box he has pointed at them. He glances over at Turlough. "At first your readings were typical for persons engaged in meditation. There were a few spikes of unusual activity before you awoke." He gestures towards the two in the cell. "At the moment these two are in a state indistinguishable from REM sleep. At least, I think so. The Doctor seems to be a little bit too alien for my equipment, if I am honest. Where did you say he was from?"

"I didn't," Turlough says distractedly. "What are the chances that the other machine is still interfering with this crystal?"

Yoanna chimes in. "It had better not be. Sundown Studios is supposed to be closed. I've just been issued a warrant to make it permanent."

"But you said the Doctor was there. Who knows what he was up to when your officers arrested him? He might have already got some henchmen with snakes on their arms."

"Turlough's right," Tegan says. "And that's not something I say a lot."

"Thanks, Tegan," he says, sounding more appreciative than sarcastic. He must be more exhausted than he thought. "We should go back, make sure the machine is shut down. We won't be safe until it's taken care of."

"Not without the Doctor," Nyssa insists.

"Well, I'm not waking him up again. You can wait if you want. I'm going. Tegan?"

She looks like she's caught between anger and worry. "I can't leave him. And neither should you!"

"What about you, Ms. Rayluss? You could serve that warrant."

She grimaces. "I don't want to take my eyes off this guy. I've put too much on the line already. I'll send a couple of my officers, you can go with them. I'll call you a technical consultant. You can tell them how to get that dream maker taken apart. And give that Rick ausGarten a piece of my mind while you're at it. It seems like this is all his fault."

Tegan bristles. "I'm not letting you go alone, Turlough!"

"Do I need your permission now? Or are you coming with me?"

She scrunches her mouth and bigs her eyes at him. "If you're going, I'm going."

---

Turlough is sat in the back of a police cruiser with Tegan. She's restless and prickly; he's quiet, still feeling strange and off base. He can't stop remembering that skull.

"So what did you see in the crystal, exactly?"

Turlough fidgets, annoyed. "I told you, I can't remember."

"You said you remembered being with the Doctor before you woke up. Where were you? Was it a place? Or was it just black?"

"Places, I think. Scenery. Outdoors." Oh. Right. He makes a sour face. "The English countryside."

A little of her tension bleeds off. "Why am I not surprised?"

He gives her a little wry smile.

"Did you.. talk? What did he say?"

"Something about beating himself up over ruining Nyssa's life. At least, I gather it was Nyssa he was talking about. Was her father killed?"

Tegan's face hardens. "By one of his lot. A Time Lord. He killed my aunt as well. He's killed a lot of people." She frowns. "But why was he talking about that?"

"I'm sorry, I can't remember any more. It faded so fast." Turlough regrets that enough on his own account that he knows he sounds convincing. "I don't feel so well. Do you mind if I just - shut my eyes for a bit?"

"You can nap at a time like this? More power to you, I suppose."

Turlough settles back into the seat, arms partially crossed, chin tucked, and tries to rest. The city lights flashing past the windows cast abstract blooms of color through his eyelids.

The next thing he knows, Tegan is prodding him in the ribs. He scowls and looks over at her. "What?"

"I thought of a few more questions for you," she says acidly.

"Tegan. I really can't remember anything else-"

"If he didn't kill Nyssa's father, why was the Doctor blaming himself for it?"

"Honestly. How should I know that?"

"He really didn't say anything that would make that make sense? Maybe he meant he regrets the way he puts people in danger?"

"The Doctor doesn't put people in danger," Turlough scoffs.

Tegan gives him a reproachful look. "Doesn't he? You weren't in any danger at that school until the Doctor showed up and the Black Guardian decided to choose you for his contract."

"I was in danger of going mad."

"You weren't in danger of being torn apart by alien crabs, though, were you. Or any of the other ridiculous things the Doctor drops his friends in front of. We wouldn't be dealing with the Mara now if it wasn't for him."

"It's not a safe universe, Tegan."

"Isn't that awfully glib? Though I suppose that's always been your style."

"As opposed to blunt?"

"If you really want 'blunt,' Turlough..." she narrows her eyes. "What was it like?"

"What was what like?"

"You know what I mean."

He looks at her, angry, daring. "That's hardly blunt. That's practically oblique."

"Come on. Spill the beans."

"I'm sure I have no idea what you mean."

"How can someone who lies as much as you do, be so unconvincing?"

Turlough scowls and hunkers down further into the seat, arms fully crossed. "Leave me alone."

"And you were so crushed when I told you the Doctor would remember everything. What was it you said? You'd hoped you could pretend it wasn't your fault for not stopping him? Did you just.. let the Mara make out with you? Is that what happened?"

He's staring relentlessly into the back of the driver's seat. "Nothing happened."

"Did you think it was the Doctor? Or did you figure out what you were really dealing with?"

"Nothing happened, Tegan."

Her face is alight with outrage. "No, you must have realised something was wrong. So the next question is why you didn't stop him. Was it because you're a coward and a pushover? Or was it because you didn't really want to stop him, deep down? Even though you knew? I wonder how he'll feel about that. I'll have to ask him."

Turlough is coiled tight, breathing hard, trying to keep a grip on himself.

Stop it. Stop. Shut up.

"But what I really want to know is," and she leans closer to say it, a hot whisper in his ear, "Did you like it?"

He moves without thinking. He twists toward her. His hand is around her neck.

She's grinning.

The car is gone. Everything is gone but himself and Tegan, standing in a black void, her slim neck hot and pulsing in his grip. His brief flare of anger is traded for shock. He hasn't merely suffered a momentary loss of control. He can't let go.

Slowly, deliberately, she raises a hand to his wrist and pushes the layers of jacket and shirt up his arm. Turlough can't look away as it's revealed by inches: the mark of the snake; and he is thoroughly doused in fear.

"Can you tell," Tegan asks, her voice painfully constricted, "Whether this is only a dream? Do you know what you're doing in the back of that car, right now?"

"Please... stop," Turlough gasps, as though he were the one being choked.

"Why are you asking me? You're the one who's doing it."

"I'm not," he says desperately.

"You are. And you won't be able to stop unless you admit it."

"Then I admit it! How do I stop?"

Tegan pouts. "Good try, but you don't mean it. You're just saying what you think the Mara wants to hear."

Turlough really is panicking very floridly now. "Please!"

"Oh, Turlough. Make an effort."

"I can't think like this!" He can barely move. It's like he's locked to Tegan.

"Can't you? Too bad for Tegan. And to think, she really was finally free of the Mara. For all of four hours."

"I just needed her to leave me alone," he chokes out.

He can see himself lunging for her in the back seat of the car. Both of her hands are pulling at his arm, his fingers, as she struggles. The officers in the front seat haven't noticed them yet. In as much as Turlough can move at all, he cowers from the image. Every muscle in his arm and shoulder stands out and screams in protest as he tries to twist as far away from it as he can.

Tegan is looking down on him, somehow, despite their relative positions. "What a disappointment. You can't even lose to me in a satisfying way. All right, don't worry. You haven't hurt her. We wouldn't hurt her. She's our favorite."

She shimmers and reappears on the other side of him - the side he'd been cowering towards, making him flinch. "Besides. Fun as it is to play with you. We're free again and there's a lot to do before tomorrow night. So I need you to shape up for me, Turlough."

He's able to shrink away from her, to work his own arm again, and he makes a fist and stares openly at the image of the snake. His mouth twists and he pins that arm under the other, finally turning to Tegan. "I won't. I can't. I can't - I've already done this - I can't do it again! I won't!"

She looks bored. "Oh yes, the Black Guardian. He left your mind in quite a state, I can tell you. Something of a power vacuum, in fact. It feels downright loose in here. Not that I'm complaining. It's comfortable. I can really stretch out."

His jaw juts. "At least I took you from the Doctor."

"It's cute that you think that." Tegan steps back, into the shadows, and the Doctor steps out. "No. You failed, just like I promised."

"You're lying."

"Suit yourself. You'll see soon enough."

"The Doctor said you'd need permission. I haven't given you that."

"Ah, but he doesn't understand, does he? How weak you are. He's in denial, I think. He wants to give you far more credit than you deserve. You'll never live up to his hopes for you, you know. Which is something of a trend for you, isn't it, Turlough? Failure to live up to expectations?"

"You sound like my Headmaster."

"Ah, now that was fun, wasn't it! You could turn the whole thing on its head. Failure hits differently when you're not trying, after all. As much as you love to ruminate on how much you hated Earth, you loved having the freedom to engage in intentional self-destruction, didn't you? Earning yourself the odd half-hearted beating from someone who's too worried about getting on the wrong side of your solicitor to do anything too ugly. And what could they do to really punish you properly? Nothing. Because you were nothing. Not like at home. There was nothing left to take."

Turlough scowls at the accusation, the idea that he'd had it easier at Brendon than at home. And it's wrong anyway. He'd always escaped consequences on Trion - until a different kind of consequence came to roost for everyone.

"Lying to yourself again. What you escaped was formal punishment. Not consequences. Until, as you say, you didn't - and neither did anyone else." He leans closer. "And neither will you escape me."

"We'll see," Turlough says, stinging, and yet, still being more baffled by how the Mara works than terrified of it, now the shock's worn off and the absolutely bog standard taunts have set in. If there's one thing he's already had plenty of time to sit with, it's the fact that he'd started on top, and lost everything but his life and his ruined name. It's wasting its time needling him about that.

"Be careful what you wish for, Turlough. I'm not sure you'll enjoy it if I get more creative with you. You already know what I'm like," and the Mara flashes the Doctor's grin.

And Turlough surges forward, pressing his whole body against the Doctor's and kissing him hard.

The Mara vanishes from under him and reappears just out of reach. "Really?"

He squares up. "I don't know what you want and I'm not spending another moment of my life trying to figure out how to placate a monster whether it's in my head or not. So I'm going to do what I want."

The Doctor gives him a dark, challenging smile and vanishes into the void.

The invisible plane he'd been standing on is gone. For the first few moments there's nothing but the terror of falling. The blackness has suddenly become very close all around him; his breath is loud, hot on his own face.

There are stars.

The Sun is among them, and the large, shining white marble of Venus. Nothing else but stars, and falling, and a fan whirring softly somewhere behind him, trying to filter the vapor of his breath.

Turlough screws his eyes shut, knowing exactly what is coming next.

"You were promised eternal torment, boy," the Black Guardian's voice booms in his head. "I can fulfill that promise for you."

---

Fourteen: The Doctor

Kerrem looks up from his readings at the same moment Nyssa sees that the light of the crystal is fading. "Something's happening," she says.

He nods. "I'm seeing conscious activity."

Yoanna hasn't stopped frowning. "Can you tell whether either of them are affected by - whatever it is that was making the Doctor act out like that?"

"Well. The mystic seems healthy, at least. The Doctor seems to show signs of significant trauma but he isn't Manussan. Without a history? I can't say."

Nyssa looks pained and worried. "If only we'd used your equipment to scan you while you were under its control. At least then we could have had a clearer idea of what to look for in comparison to your usual state."

Kerrem looks hopeful but shakes his head. "Even then. I'm afraid it would take more than these few brief encounters to build up a reliable diagnostic for this, erm.. condition," he says.

The Doctor is looking at them. He starts to get up and finds himself pushed by the shoulders back down into his chair, by the two observing officers.

Behind him, Dadda Desaka rolls his shoulders and sighs, nods at the officers, and exits the room. "All is well here," he tells the small gathering. "If you could tell these gentlemen to let the Doctor go, we may continue our struggle against the darkness."

"Is that wise?" Yoanna wants to know. "How can you be sure he's not just faking until he's ready to start making trouble again?"

"The evil has left him, just as it left the young lady." He looks around the room for her. "Where has she gone?"

Nyssa addresses him. "Tegan left with Turlough, to help Yoanna's officers - "

She's cut off by the Doctor's voice, crackling over the speakers. "Turlough? You let him go?" He tries harder to get up and is shoved back down once again.

"This is unfortunate," Desaka muses. "The young man is carrying the evil now. Manussa will suffer."

"What?" Nyssa gasps. "But - we checked, he wasn't marked - we wouldn't have let him go if-"

"The mark isn't there when the host is only - hosting," the Doctor snaps. "Obviously. Or we would all have known that Tegan wasn't fully free of it."

"But then - if he's not fully affected, perhaps there's still time to-"

"Well, yes, quite!" the Doctor cuts her off again, glaring at Yoanna. "So it would really be very nice if you could have your men let me go so that we can find him before it's too late."

"All right, all right." Yoanna takes a frustrated breath, her eyes closed, and blasts it out again, matching the Doctor's glare. "Let him up. And get those restraints off him."

The Doctor rubs his wrists, mainly out of habit - the safety officers' cuffs are among the more comfortable things he's been tied up with - and contemplates the situation. He'd like to be shocked at them all for letting Turlough and Tegan leave, but if there's one thing in his life that's consistent it's his friends making exactly the wrong choices and wandering off into danger.

Right. So. Hearing that Turlough is still himself for the moment is a small reprieve. He wonders whether the Mara was weakened by what's just happened or whether it's chosen to hide itself in order to escape. Either way the clock is ticking.

"Doctor Kerrem," he says, pushing the man's little box down to gain his attention. "How much further did you get with the plans for tomorrow night?"

"I didn't," Kerrem says, shrugging. "I was confident but with the holidays - and then I was hit quite hard over the head, you know."

"Excellent, well, that's one piece of good news at least. About the plans, that is, not, er.. Right. So - "

Yoanna ends a brief telephone conversation with a keyed bleep and interrupts. "My officers are at Sundown Studios. AusGarten is refusing to comply with the warrant. I've told them to wait for us before entering." She gives a quick, put-upon sigh. "They say your friends were right behind them but now they're not there."

Of course.

She looks at him with a determined, critical eye. "Can you ride a motorcyle?"

---

Fifteen: Turlough

He waits, tensed up, expecting a reprise of one of the Guardian's punishments. He tries to stop himself from remembering the time he spent on the TARDIS floor, alone, alone and desperate for it to end. Not that it seems to matter, as far as accidentally revealing his own weaknesses to the Mara. Obviously it can see into him as deeply as it likes without his participation. But he doesn't want to spiral himself into panic - he intends to make this damned thing work for it at least.

The anticipation drags on so long he starts getting annoyed at his own panicked breathing and uses the contrasting emotion to calm down. He cracks his eyes open cautiously, half-expecting another jump scare.

It's just stars.

Right. Now all he's got to do is stop wondering what in the hell it's planning to do to him.

Well, he's not being literally tortured, and the air's not getting thinner, so - yes. It's the wondering. Which he's going to stop doing. If the game is anticipation, well. He can make an end run around that one by fully relaxing, as long as whatever might be in store for him, he's willing to take it flat-footed.

Do you know what you're doing, in the back of that car?

That has the flavor of his own intrusive thoughts, though he supposes there's nothing stopping the Mara from using those against him. It's a weak attack, if it is one. The Mara called its own bluff about seriously harming Tegan, and even if it had been lying, there are two officers there, out in the world, who can defend her.

The Mara must know he's thinking all this. It must be letting him play himself out to it.

He closes and opens his hands, feeling the gloves of the spacesuit creak. It's a dream anyway. He might as well enjoy the stars.

He's able to turn enough to put the two celestial bodies and the surfaces of his suit that are bathed in their light behind him, to let infinite space fill his field of vision.

There are so many stars. There's something else out there, too, a fleck of light. He watches it for a while; loses track of it when his eyes wander.

It's intensely beautiful and intensely lonely, and he's deeply grateful that he knows this is only a vision, that he's not really,

he's not really lost and alone in open space

He remembers reaching in instant, mortal regret for a life ring that might as well have been miles away, losing sight of the Doctor, of Tegan, indistinguishable amongst the tiny figures of the crew watching him from the railings. Watching the ship recede from him, faster than it should with the human-scale momentum of his panicked leap, realising he must have put himself outside of some field of effect, realising that in the magnitude of his mistake, he'd put himself well out of reach, even for the Doctor. That no one would be coming for him.

Let it be. It is behind you now.

That sort of thing has always seemed trite to Turlough, but as he pictures the old man's calm face and tries to do it, he finds it does help. He counts as he breathes, gazing out into the quiet stars.

There's definitely something out there; he sees it again as it flashes. Something spinning slowly perhaps, and catching the sunlight. It's closer, brighter, but.. indistinguishable.

He's successfully calming himself, his heart slowing to something like a normal rate. He also remembers being rescued, after all. That the terror had abated and he'd had to pivot to getting himself in with roleplay pirates. The whole thing had been surreal. The next time he'd seen the Doctor he'd been, well. Screaming his name. What a harrowing fucking experience that had been. And later he'd ambushed the Doctor in the same room, watched him look on with curious mistrust til the moment Turlough had flicked his eyes to the pirate on the left.

It's getting closer. Definitely not just a rock. Something from one of the ships, perhaps.

The Doctor had lit up with absolute manic energy after that, announcing that they must win the race with Wrack's ship. Turlough had told him that was mad, and helped him anyway. And amidst a flurry of activity so intense he never had room for a single thought of the Black Guardian or his task, they'd done it.

Then the diamond. The choice. And suddenly it had all been over. The secret out, the contract broken - or fulfilled, really - and yet a thick dread of the Doctor's judgement still hung over Turlough. Tegan had broken the silence and Turlough had seized the possibility of escape - to be taken home instead of sent there, instead of being sent away, or worse, kept under betrayed and mistrustful eyes. Because how could he stay? How could he stay knowing that they knew? Exposed and found guilty, or weak, or both.

And yet, he's still here, isn't he. And he's still -

He thinks of the Doctor. He's completely, intolerably infatuated. And now there's a whole new layer of dread, another question he knows couldn't possibly be resolved in his favor and so must be avoided instead.

Was it him? Was any of it really him? Could I ever really have that?

He waits for the Mara to pounce on that wound but there's nothing. It's still just letting him chew on his own leg like a fox in a snare. He tries to think of something, anything else.

The gently turning shape is close enough now to almost make out its - Oh, wait, no.

Turlough's heart sinks. He knows what it is, the thing spinning through space. It's a body. He heaves a calming, stuttering, defeated sigh. And whose is it going to be, he wonders dryly, sarcastically. He's definitely starting a psychologically damaging nightmare sufferer's club with Tegan when he gets free. He decides not to look at it anymore. He knows what it is anyway. And it's not even real. It's a dream, a cruel vision, and for what? To wear him down? Does the Mara really need to do that? Turlough would already be glad to do whatever it wants. He doesn't care anymore. The only thing he won't do is perform for the damned thing. He won't beg to be told what it wants. He's never doing that again.

Simply trying not to look at it proves difficult when it's the only thing in his view that's moving. He tries to turn, to look away from it, but finds his choices are basically either that or the sun and Venus, uncomfortably bright in his visor. He tries closing his eyes but the darkness and sound threaten to close over him and he starts to lose control of his breathing again.

So. Here he is, trapped in his own head, with no choice but to watch an icy corpse gently spin as it approaches him, closer and closer, until he can make out the fawn coat, the hint of stripes, the bright red socks and shining white shoes.

It's only a dream. This never happened. He was never left behind, and the Doctor was never thrown overboard. They're both alive. He's not in space, he's in a police car, and the Doctor is free of the Mara and will undoubtedly defeat it, just like he has before.

It's close enough now to watch the Doctor's face glitter as his body rotates in the light of the sun.

That's right. It doesn't bother me at all, does it. The Mara should just. Give up.

That's bravado, he thinks to himself.

Then it occurs to him that he's not actually sure that thought is really his.

And now it's becoming clear that the damned thing is going to hit him. He reaches out his arms in anticipation.

Do Gallifreyans actually die outright, from exposure like this?

Turlough catches the Doctor as they collide, softening the blow and sent drifting backwards.

His hair floats. His icy, silent face is frozen (ha!!) in concentration. He -

The ice is melting, vanishing, sublimating.

Heat is blazing out of the Doctor. Turlough can feel it through his suit like sunlight. Light. The Doctor's face is positively angelic.

For a moment.

The Doctor explodes into being someone else. A stranger.

A stranger who clutches at Turlough, staring into his eyes, until he slips into boneless unconsciousness. A thin cloud of sublimated vapor is just visible around his face, dissipating as fast as it can form.

It doesn't take very long to die this way.

Turlough is staring, heart racing, chest heaving.

What. The fuck.

"Why? What do you want from me? What is it even for?" he yells into his space suit.

The answer comes in his own voice. "You've got it all wrong, Turlough. The Mara doesn't create anything, you know. You did that to yourself. You dreamed it up when he didn't punish you, and not being punished put you off balance."

"I'm not doing this!" Turlough roars, painfully loud in the confines of his helmet, and he reaches behind himself and

wrenches it off

With his eyes screwed shut, his mouth open and his oxygen levels already crashing, he hears himself click his tongue in exasperation. "So dramatic."

Losing consciousness shouldn't take more than a handful of seconds. It can't happen fast enough.

---

The lights are too bright. Where is he?

The lights are bright because Matron has just thrown his blankets back from where they'd been, tugged up over his head, and the sun is streaming through the window. The air is sweet and cool, a little antiseptic, but it's ambrosia. He feels his chest expand as he fills his grateful lungs with a deep breath of it.

"You'll smother yourself rather than get out of bed in the morning," she says, though she smiles while she does it, watching him stretch. "Feeling better?"

"Er.. Yes, Matron. Thank you," he answers, though he doesn't remember how he got here or what had been wrong with him. Or rather, what the humans thought had been wrong with him.

"I'll bring you some tea. And then you can get dressed and out of here, young man, and back to your classes."

Classes. Right. Wonderful. He tries to remember what he'd been playing up so that he can have a relapse.

"I'm afraid I'm quite lost in the fog, Matron. What day is it?"

"Tuesday, Turlough. You've been either ill or skiving off since Monday morning, and if I were a betting woman..." She taps his shoulder with another knowing smile, and he sinks into the hard bed and its meager pillow with embarrassment.

"It's not my fault," he says poutingly. "It's not as though I get ill just so I can miss school."

"If you could, you would."

"I'd only do it if you'd still bring me tea," he says, and bites his lip with boyish charm. She smiles again and turns away.

He hears the door open and guesses from the hesitant steps who it is. Ibbotson sits tentatively on the side of his bed.

"Ooh. You're still looking quite peaky, Turlough. Good thing, too, I was going to be really cross with you if you'd missed out helping me in calculus on purpose."

"You don't need my help," Turlough mumbles, feeling strange, like he's done all this before.

"Oh, I know I can do it, I just - I'm so worried about that exam, I think I might end up in here."

Turlough makes a show of checking that they're alone. "Well. Ivers is selling it if you want a leg up."

"Turlough!"

"Shh! Hippo," he hisses.

"Turlough, that's serious cheating. That could get me expelled!" His face melts from scandalised to deviously excited. "That could get Ivers expelled..."

"Don't you dare think of going and ratting him out, now. That was privileged information."

Ibbotson makes his excuses as Matron returns with some tea for Turlough. He sits with it, still feeling like none of this is quite real. He's not still at Brendon, is he?

He's.... No. He's not. He's off this stinking planet. If he's lucky he'll never see Ivers or Hippo Ibbotson ever again. He does remember this now, though. It had been one of the times he'd been genuinely ill and he'd taken his misery and boredom out on Hippo. The other boy had spread his lie around and it had got to the wrong people. And it hadn't helped a bit when he'd tried to blame it on Turlough.

He remembers his habit of getting Hippo in trouble, getting him beaten, and then all at once laughing at the boy's torment, feeling guilty for his part in bringing it about, and feeling affection towards him - perhaps just for having endured it? Even if he was a soft little idiot, he was MY soft little idiot. On my side. Ride or die. Nice to have, even if it had to be an Earth teenager called Hippo.

Weren't there other boys at the school? Better, more strategic choices? Well, maybe. But no. Turlough wasn't actually going to bother with politics or power plays, not in this ridiculous place. He was going to amuse himself, full stop.

And in that indulgence, what of himself had he lost? What had he been losing more of, every day he spent on Earth, full of venom and bile, hating and not caring, in the company of brash little idiots from a culture that still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea?

But in the end, he'd finally escaped. He's with some kind of mad, righteous alien vagabond now, going where he goes, and while he does feel at risk of changing to fit his circumstances, at least he doesn't feel like he's being diminished. Did he dare to see himself regaining, rebuilding himself, with.. With the Doctor, as a possibility, something achievable? Could he be himself again?

He imagines the Doctor's voice. "Or something better?"

And that was the spike strip of it all. There was nothing wrong with who he'd been on Trion. Why else fight for it? Why else kill and be killed for it? Better? Better than what he'd been split from his family, his world for?

He hears Nyssa's voice this time; the voice of reason. You see? You don't really want the Doctor to want you, to love you. You don't even want him to see you, not all of you. Because he'll change you. You know he will. And you don't want to change. Not like that.

No, you know you can only ever have him on the terms that are acceptable to you, for as long as you can keep who you really are, safely hidden from him.

Turlough pretends he's not listening. He crunches on one of the digestive biscuits Matron left for him.

Or.

You could have him with me, with us. While he was mine, he wanted you just the way you are. He wanted you so much it broke his will. Let it break yours too. And let him see it - let him see you break like he did - he loves it when he can see himself in you; it plucks at his heartstrings. Oh, Turlough, you simply must. Please.

He feels his heart drop. Because he knows. He knows it's right. But it had been one thing to take advantage of the Doctor under this thing's influence - and he felt awful enough about that already - it would be quite another to work with the Mara to put him back under its yoke, just because he wants to be with him without being made to look at himself through the Doctor's eyes.

Perfectly understandable, if you ask me, Nyssa's voice tells him, as his surroundings go dark but for the pale light of night in the window, suddenly evening in the school infirmary. The creak of the door breaks the silence. There's a swish of fabric, black in the shadowy room, capturing his attention. His heart beats faster.

I can't stand to look at myself either.

Someone is prodding him gently.

"Hey. Wake up, sleepyhead. We're here."

He blinks hard in momentary disorientation, soaked in a cold sweat, but he covers his discomfort and even manages to get out of the police car without fumbling or hitting his head. They follow the officers towards the building.

"You do look rough. Maybe we should wait for the Doctor?"

"I'm fine. Really." He looks over at her, meets her doubtful eyes. "Really."

"If you say so. I know I'll feel better when we decommission that machine. Hey - wait," she says, her eye caught by another parked vehicle. "That's the same guy that brought me and the Doctor here earlier today. It doesn't look like he's moved."

They approach it and find the driver staring into the distance. "Hello?" Tegan asks, and waves a hand in front of his face. "What's happened to him?"

Turlough has seen this before. "He's in some kind of psychic shock, I think. The same thing happened to the woman in that haunted house. The Doctor just.. I don't know - " He shakes his head in consternation and leans closer to the tuk tuk driver. "Hey. Can you hear me? He's gone. You're safe."

The driver looks at him.

"You're okay," Turlough tells him.

The man reaches out for the key, turns it, and Tegan and Turlough step quickly back as the small vehicle motors off. They look at each other. "What was that about?" Tegan asks.

"I wish I knew," Turlough says.

The officers at the main entrance have just had the door shut in their faces. They're talking into their devices, looking butch and official. Turlough raises an eyebrow. "Trouble in paradise," he says, and motions with his head towards the side of the building. Tegan follows him.

Creeping around the perimeter, they soon find the door the Doctor had forced earlier, still broken, and slip through it. With the help of the description Yoanna had given them, they make their way further into the studio, until they find a very promising double door leading to a short corridor, posters boasting on every wall.

"You can't be in here," a voice sounds behind them, making them both start. "Mr. ausG's very busy. He has plans."

"We're here on Doctor Kerrem's invite," Tegan says confidently. "You wouldn't want to treat Sundown Studios' prime guests to such a poor reception, would you?"

The young man looks doubtful. "That's tomorrow night. You're too early."

"Well. Rick might want to go ahead with no rehearsal but I'd like to at least see what he's got in store for us," Turlough says, squaring his shoulders and looking both bored and offended.

"Oh. I'd better get him, then. Who shall I say is calling?"

"Turlough and Jovanka," Turlough pronounces, to the young man's blank stare, and begins to worry he's getting a bit panto. "I'm Turlough. She's Jovanka."

"Surely you've heard of us. We're very popular on the lecture circuit," Tegan adds.

"Theoretical temporal mechanics."

"Ethics and debate."

"No, I haven't. I don't get out much, I'm afraid. I'm Baala, Mr. ausGarten's assistant." He looks at them curiously. "What do those have to do with one another?"

Tegan grimaces. "He talks about whether we can and I talk about whether we should."

"I see. I'm sure Mr. ausG will be glad to give you a tour," he says, and turns to go.

"Oh, that's not necessary," Tegan says, touching his arm to stop him. "He's so busy, we wouldn't want to bother him. Why don't you show us around, Baala?"

He looks up from her hand to her face, to Turlough's, as if he's trying to remember something but can't quite reach it. "...I suppose that's all right - but nobody is allowed to go near the machine. Come this way, please."

---

Sixteen: The Doctor

The police bikes make short work of the traffic; in no time they are parking behind the police car at Sundown Studios.

"Could you and your officers stay back just a little, Mrs. Rayluss? You too, Nyssa. I'm going to tell Mr. ausGarten that I've convinced you to review your safety evaluation and rescind your warrant."

"I'm not going to rescind my-"

The Doctor looks at her with meaningful impatience and she relents.

He's standing alone by the door when it opens. "Ah, thank you, Rick. It's time to let these good people in - our little hiccup with Safety is about to be taken care of. Sundown Studios' broadcast license will be jotted and tittled for tomorrow night - with no chance of being shut down for piracy."

AusGarten frowns. "These two said they were delivering a warrant to shut us down."

"And I'm delivering some persuasion to get that warrant torn up," the Doctor says. "Keep them busy here for a few minutes, promise her everything she wants; it won't matter once the show begins. I'll set your dream-maker to perform a boring substantiation and convince her that she's overreacted."

"And if you can't?"

"Then I'll find another way to convince her," he smiles, and displays his hand as though about to offer it. He turns towards Yoanna and the others and uses the hand to gesture that they should approach.

"All right, then. But you had better know what you're doing."

"I always know what I'm doing," the Doctor says, as ausGarten steps aside for him to enter.

He resists the urge to rush through the lobby on his way deeper into the building. Tegan and Turlough must have found their way in by now and are surely headed for the thought materialization machine.

Bursting through a double door, he finds his companions and the blank young man all turning to face him in surprise.

Tegan is drawing breath to speak when the boy without dreams steps between them.

"You're Mr. ausGarten's new partner, the Doctor, aren't you? These are Turlough and Jovanka. They're advance guests for tomorrow night. They wanted to see the studio. It won't be put back together properly until tomorrow, but I thought it would be all right."

The Doctor meets Turlough's eyes and tries to gauge the situation. He only seems wary - in other words, himself, for now. "Yes, thank you. We welcome those who will help us bring about Manussa's new age. Turlough and Jovanka, is it? A pleasure to meet the two of you."

Tegan is watching him with obvious misgivings and Turlough is wearing a light scowl. He risks a wink. Tegan's expression flashes with anger and settles back into a fake smile. "Likewise, I'm sure," she says, holding out her hand, and he takes it with a grin.

"Your snake has gone," Baala observes.

Tegan drops his hand at once and turns to the young man. "Baala, I've been dying to see the dream maker machine. Won't you ask the Doctor if we can get a closer look?"

"What a good idea," the Doctor agrees.

Baala hesitates, looking between the three of them. "I'm not sure. I should ask Mr. ausG."

"Oh, he's busy cutting red tape with Yoanna Rayluss in the lobby. You wouldn't want to disturb him in the middle of delicate deals with the local authorities, would you?"

"I suppose not. Well... This way, please," he says, heading towards a door near the back of the room.

The Doctor touches Turlough's arm as he turns to follow. "I need to talk to you," he says softly, urgently, and lets go and smiles, waving to Tegan, who's stopped and looked back. "Go on ahead please, you two. We'll be with you in a moment."

They go.

"Doctor?"

With a hand on his back, he guides Turlough to a nearby alcove, checking quickly that they're out of sight of any obvious cameras. He has a thousand things he needs to say but they'll have to wait. "How are you feeling?"

"What? How am I feeling? What kind of question is that?"

"Turlough... You freed me. Thank you. But... the way you got the Mara to let go of me was to take it yourself."

"What? No I didn't! What are you-"

"It seems to have hidden itself, like it did when I didn't realise I'd taken it from Tegan. We need to get you away from here, somewhere safe, where we can deal with it."

"Doctor." Turlough argues. "You're talking nonsense. I didn't take it! I'd know! Maybe it's hiding in that old mystic. Maybe it's back to hiding in you!"

"Please, trust me. It's there, and if you can't see it, it's because it doesn't want you to. But I can't get it out of you without your help. You need to be able to face it in order to drive it out."

Turlough is resplendent with anger. "There's no evil hiding in me that I need to drive out!"

"Please - listen to me, Turlough. That's the Mara encouraging you to resist. Please just.. let me help you, the way you helped me," the Doctor says, and fishes the crystal hopefully out of his pocket.

"It's what's best for me," Turlough says, his voice strangely dull.

"That's the spirit. Let's hope so, hm?"

"You would never ask anyone to do something that wasn't right. That wasn't necessary for their own good. Or at least for good. In itself."

"Turlough?"

"So if you say I'm full of an evil I can't see, you'll make me look at it until I hate it like you do. So that we can cleanse me of it."

Well, that's a worrying reaction. The Mara must already be plucking at Turlough's strings, making him believe the Doctor intends to stamp out some integral part of him. The Doctor wishes this hadn't come down to him; he knows from experience that reassuring a vulnerable friend is something he's terrible at at the best of times, and the Mara has already damaged their rapport. "I don't want to destroy any part of the real you, Turlough. Please. Whatever you think I'd hate, it can stay, you can stay."

"Don't lie," Turlough says, and his tone makes the Doctor's hearts shudder. He leans closer. "We both know there's a line."

"That's the Mara talking. Don't listen to it," the Doctor begs.

"It's the truth," Turlough replies. "Even if it was the Mara - which it's not! Why should you be so interested in telling me not to listen to it? When it's right?"

"Turlough. I want to help you."

"Of course you do. Your way. No - I don't think I'm interested."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, was that not clear? I don't want you to help me. Who are you to decide what the real me is?"

"You don't trust me?"

"Why should I? You clearly don't trust me."

"I've done nothing else but trust you, Turlough."

"Then trust me when I say you're wrong!"

"That's not a matter of trust, Turlough. I'm - when it tried to mark you, the part of me that was empowered by it let - it pushed - the Mara into you."

Turlough stares at him in open disbelief, then closes down, his mouth warping with anger. "I'm sorry, is that meant to help me trust you?"

"I'm not a saint, Turlough. But it takes the influence of something like the Mara for me to lose the ability to control myself. It will do the same to you."

Turlough gives him an incredulous look. "Is that what happened in the park, then? You lost the ability to control yourself?"

The Doctor lets his eyes slip closed. "...Yes."

"You do know what you did to me, then. And it was you, you did it to me."

"I... Yes. I did."

"Not the Mara?"

"The Mara. And I."

"Because it kept you from controlling yourself? Because you always want to kiss me like your life depended on it and then act like I've betrayed you but you usually restrain yourself? Is that what you're saying?"

The Doctor tries not to flinch from the pain of Turlough's anger. "What I'm saying is that we can stop you from doing things you'll regret if you can trust me to help you now. Before the Mara can take hold."

Turlough's face shuts down, unreadable. "Can you tell me exactly what part of that you regret, Doctor?"

"That both of us had to see the worst of me. That I hurt you. That I pretended you'd hurt me. That I couldn't stop any of it from happening."

"Not what you did, then; just how you did it."

"Please, Turlough, we don't - I'm so sorry but we don't have time for this. You're vulnerable and every moment is another chance for the Mara to recover and exert its control."

"I already told you no, Doctor."

The Doctor's face falls. He's too late after all. But he does still have the crystal. He holds it in both hands and hides his concentration behind a scowl of disappointment.

Turlough grabs his wrists and forces them apart, shoves him back against the wall. "And if I say no you'll do it anyway? Is that how this works?" He digs his fingers into the Doctor's hand, forcing him to give up the crystal. "Just how hard did the Mara even need to look, to find what it wanted in you?" He throws the crystal away as hard as he can, and they hear it ping and clatter somewhere out in the studio. The boy is breathing fast, limbs twitching.

All right, the Doctor thinks, I've walked into this one. Maybe my optimism has got away from me. He swallows. "The Mara finds what it needs in everyone. It doesn't mean-"

Turlough kisses him quite hard. The Doctor's protests are utterly ignored. The boy pulls back, breathing shallowly against his face. "What doesn't it mean, Doctor?"

"That - what the Mara finds, means.. means..." and a little sound escapes him with Turlough's hand at the small of his back, pulling him against his hips.

"We both know exactly how much you want it," Turlough says with his most artificial sweetness.

"I'm tempted," the Doctor admits, catching Turlough's eye to give him a deep, earnest look. "That's what temptation is about, though. That part of you really wants something. While another part says," and he twists and ducks out of Turlough's space, deftly hooking an ankle in the process. He shoves the boy stumbling sideways into the wall, and runs. "No, thank you!"

---

Seventeen: Turlough (barely different from the Doctor's POV)

They all turn to look as the doors they just came through burst open. It's the Doctor.

Tegan is about to call out to him but stops herself when Baala steps between them to introduce the Doctor as ausGarten's new partner. Turlough meets the Doctor's eyes and tries to gauge the situation - Had they succeeded? Is he himself?

"Yes, thank you," the Doctor says. "We welcome those who will help us bring about Manussa's new age. Turlough and Jovanka, is it? A pleasure to meet the two of you," and to Tegan's deepest possible annoyance, gives them a wink.

Despite the Mara's penchant for subterfuge, Turlough doesn't feel like that's the sort of thing it would do, and clearly Tegan is attributing it firmly to the proper Doctor. "Likewise, I'm sure," she says, holding out her hand, and he takes it with a smile.

"Your snake has gone," Baala observes.

Tegan decides it's best to draw his attention away from that, and turns to the young man. "Baala, I've been dying to see the dream maker machine. If it's all right with the Doctor, could we get a closer look?"

"What a good idea," the Doctor agrees.

Baala hesitates, but in the end the Doctor sends him, with Tegan, off to see the machine.

Turlough has taken a step to follow them when the Doctor stops him with a touch on his arm.

"I need to talk to you," he says softly, urgently, and he waves Tegan and Baala off, promising to follow them.

Turlough lets himself be manuevered into an out-of-the way alcove, and finds himself uncomfortably reminded of the way things started back at the haunted house. "Doctor?"

The Doctor has got one of his looks that's probably meant to be fully engaged concern, but comes off closer to mania. "How are you feeling?"

"What? How am I feeling? What kind of question is that?"

"Turlough... You freed me. Thank you. But... the way you got the Mara to let go of me was to take it yourself."

"What? No I didn't! What are you-"

"It must have hidden itself, like it did when I didn't realise I'd taken it from Tegan. We need to get you away from here, somewhere safe, where we can deal with it."

"Doctor." Turlough argues. "You're talking nonsense. I didn't take it! I'd know! Maybe it's hiding in that old mystic. Maybe it's back to hiding in you!"

"Please, trust me - I was there when it happened. It's there, and if you can't see it, it's because it doesn't want you to. But I can't get it out of you without your help. You need to be able to face it in order to drive it out."

It's there? How dare the Doctor insist he knows better than Turlough about his own damn self? "There's no evil hiding in me that I need to drive out!"

"Please - listen to me, Turlough. That's the Mara making you resist. Please just.. let me help you, the way you helped me," the Doctor says, and fishes the crystal hopefully out of his pocket.

The Mara, indeed. Of course if he disagrees with the Doctor it's because of some malign influence. Turlough couldn't possibly simply be right. The Doctor knows best. He'd take yourself from you if he thought it was the right thing to do. "It's what's best for me," Turlough says, deadpan.

"That's the spirit. Let's hope so, hm?"

The Doctor isn't capable of noticing or caring if Turlough has any misgivings, is he. "You would never ask anyone to do something that wasn't right. That wasn't necessary for their own good. Or at least for good. In itself."

At last the Doctor seems to realise he's not being received well. "Turlough?"

"So if you say I'm full of an evil I can't see, you'll force me to look at it until I hate it like you do. So that we can cleanse me of it."

"I don't want to destroy any part of the real you, Turlough. Please. Whatever you think I'd hate, it can stay, you can stay."

That's what he says. But you know that if he learns all of your truths he will find some of them intolerable.

"Don't lie," Turlough says. He leans closer. "We both know there's a line."

"That's the Mara talking. Don't listen to it," the Doctor begs.

"It's the truth! Even if it was the Mara - which it's not! Why should you be so interested in telling me not to listen to it? When it's right?"

"Turlough. I want to help you."

"Of course you do. Your way. No - I don't think I'm interested."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, was that not clear? I don't want you to help me. Who are you to decide what the real me is?"

"You don't trust me?"

"Why should I? You clearly don't trust me."

"I've done nothing else but trust you, Turlough."

"Then trust me when I say you're wrong!"

"That's not a matter of trust. I'm - when it tried to mark you, the part of me that was empowered by it let - it pushed - the Mara into you."

Turlough stares at him in open disbelief. But the words spark a memory from the shared dream: the Doctor's iron grip all but crushing his hand, the searing, acid electricity that raced up his arm, the Doctor's red-eyed face close to his, taunting him, and then faltering, flailing, fainting.

So it's true. The Mara is in him. And the Doctor put it there. And now he wants to be the hero again? What kind of Munchausen-by-proxy bullshit does the Doctor expect him to put up with? "I'm sorry, is that meant to help me trust you?"

"I'm not a saint, Turlough. But it takes the influence of something like the Mara for me to lose the ability to control myself. It will do the same to you."

Turlough can't believe the self-centered excuses the Doctor is trying on him. Has the man got no sense at all of the world past the end of his nose? "Is that what happened in the park, then? You lost the ability to control yourself?"

His eyes slip closed. "...Yes."

"You do know what you did to me, then. And it was you, you did it to me."

"I... Yes. I did."

"Not the Mara?"

"The Mara. And I."

"Because it kept you from controlling yourself? Because you always want to kiss me like your life depended on it and then act like I've betrayed you but you usually restrain yourself? Is that what you're saying?"

"What I'm saying is that we can stop you from doing things you'll regret if you can trust me to help you now. Before the Mara can take hold."

Turlough puts on his most unreadable expression. "Can you tell me exactly what part of that you regret, Doctor?"

"That both of us had to see the worst of me. That I hurt you. That I pretended you'd hurt me. That I couldn't stop any of it from happening."

"Not what you did, then; just how you did it."

"Please, Turlough, we don't - I'm so sorry but we don't have time for this. You're vulnerable and every moment is another chance for the Mara to recover and exert its control."

"I already told you no, Doctor."

The Doctor's face falls with a scowl of disappointment, but Turlough notices he's holding the crystal in both hands, just the way he did when he went to work on Tegan's subconscious mind back in the TARDIS.

Turlough grabs his wrists and forces them apart, shoves him back against the wall. "And if I say no you'll do it anyway? Is that how this works?" He digs his fingers into the Doctor's hand, forcing him to give up the crystal, and brandishes it in front of his face. "Just how hard did the Mara even need to look, to find what it wanted in you?" He throws the crystal away as hard as he can, and they hear it ping and clatter somewhere out in the studio. The transgression fills him with a heady thrill, stoked by his anger.

The Doctor squirms and swallows. "The Mara finds what it needs in everyone. It doesn't mean-"

Turlough finds that he likes the Doctor's discomposure, likes the way he's let Turlough overpower him with little more than a perfunctory struggle. He doesn't want to listen to him. He wants to touch him. He is, he's already touching him, and he suddenly wants more. And why not? It's not as though the Doctor held back. And it seems now Turlough has the same excuse.

Turlough presses forward and kisses him experimentally. The Doctor doesn't return it but, with his back already against the wall, he doesn't try to escape either. Turlough breaks off and breathes shallowly against his face. "What doesn't it mean, Doctor?"

The Doctor's eyes are shut, his face pinched with stress, and he's blushing. "That - what the Mara finds, means.. means..."

Turlough smiles and distracts him with a hand at the small of his back, pulling the Doctor against his hips. A little sound escapes from the Time Lord, a good one, another break in his facade, and Turlough loves it. He gives the Doctor a smoky gaze. "We both know exactly how much you want it," he says with his most artificial sweetness.

"I'm tempted," the Doctor admits, finally returning Turlough's gaze with a deep, earnest look. "That's what temptation is about, though. That part of you really wants something. While another part says," and he twists and ducks and shoves Turlough off-balance as he shouts, "No, thank you!"

By the time Turlough's recovered, the damn fool has already pelted out of sight.

---

Tegan walks carefully around the dreammaker, listening to Baala's rapt miniature lecture about it, about "Mr. ausG" and the studio. At first she'd worried about rousing the young man's suspicions, since he'd already seemed skeptical, but the more she observes him, the more it seems that he doesn't have a suspicious bone in his body. He doesn't seem bothered in the slightest as she peers at the crystal in the machine, looking for a way to access it. Maybe his reluctant reaction had just been discomfort with the unexpected.

The mild and messianic way he talks about ausGarten starts to catch her attention, and she wonders if he and Rick aren't a cult of two. "The way you tell it, Baala, the New Years' Eve show here would be an unmissable boost to anyone's career. I'm glad to have lucked into it - but tell me more about the real Rick. How long have you known him?"

"I've always known him."

"Always? A friend of the family then?"

"I don't have a family," he says mildly.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Tegan says softly.

"No, it's all right. I never had one."

Tegan stops, her train of thought juddering uncomfortably. She isn't at all sure that he means he's always been an orphan.

"How did you come to work for ausGarten, then?"

"He says I'm clever. He could always teach me how to do things."

"I mean, how did you two meet?"

"Well, he was here, and then I was here, and we met."

"You make it sound like you just popped up in the studio out of nowhere."

"Oh, no," he says.

Tegan shakes her head, relieved. It was just her imagination running away with her.

"The dreammaker was still in the lab, then. The studio wasn't built out for it yet."

"Baala. I'm sorry, but... Are you saying you were created using the dreammaker?"

Baala lights up for a moment, taking a breath, but suddenly seems to think better of it, looking troubled instead. "Mr. ausG doesn't want me talking about it. Something legal. Like the animals."

"The animals?"

He looks even more uncomfortable. "I don't think Mr. ausG wants me talking about those either. I'm sorry."

Tegan looks at Baala, wondering how to approach him if his innocence is down to being literally new. "Baala, if this machine been making living things already... I don't know how to say this to you. This thing is about to create a monster that will devastate Manussa. A monster that came here as a thought in somebody's head, to take advantage of the dreammaker, to be made real. That's what the Doctor and Mr. AusGarten are trying to do tomorrow night. And they've got to be stopped."

"Mr. ausG would never do something like that," the young man protests.

"Not on his own," Tegan insists, wracking her brains for the right way to put it for Baala. "This thing gets into people's minds; it makes them want to do its dirty work. He can't help it."

Baala is frowning at her, worried. "That man, the Doctor, he was here before. I heard Mr. ausG screaming, and I came running, but then he said he was all right and the Doctor was going to fix everything for us. He sounded so confident. But I was so scared. And before that, the mystic, he said terrible things would happen. I thought he was just upset because he thought our work was profane."

"Mr. ausGarten is in real trouble, Baala, and we've got to help him. By stopping him. We've got to put this machine out of commission before tomorrow night."

Tears form in the boy's eyes. "We can't do anything to the dreammaker machine! It's his life's work, it's everything!"

"We - we don't have to break it, we can just disable it - just until we can fix your friend Rick, get this thing out of his head, you understand? We can do that. I think we already got it out of the Doctor, he's - well, I'm pretty sure he's just pretending to still be on Rick's side."

"Is that why he doesn't have the snake on his arm any more?"

"That's exactly right! You are a quick study, Baala."

"But I don't understand, I thought you wanted to be in the show tomorrow night. Now it sounds like you want to ruin it. And I can't help you do that. He'll be devastated."

"I'm sorry. Turlough and I were lying about being guests so we could see the studio. But I'm not lying or exaggerating about this, I swear. Your friend Rick is hurting right now, he just can't show it. And if he uses the machine to bring the monster in his mind into the real world, it will hurt everyone. Everyone.. I don't want to be callous, but, Baala... Is that worth your friend's showbiz career?"

Baala looks deeply troubled. "I can't just believe you. Mr. ausG is always telling me I don't understand how much people will lie. Most people don't even notice it. Or they'll lie to get what they want. They'll take advantage of people like me. And you just told me you lied."

"Well, yes, and he's.. not wrong. But I'm not lying about this, Baala." She frowns, her lips pressed tight together, looking at him hopefully. "I know about it because it got to me, first. It was the worst thing that's ever happened to me. My friends fought to help me, and now they're in danger; now everyone is in danger. That's why I lied to stay in the building. It means that much to me to stop it now. Because if it wasn't for me..."

Baala's face crumples slightly. "Please. Don't be upset."

Tegan takes a calming breath. "If it wasn't for me, that monster wouldn't be hurting my friends or yours. It wouldn't be here at all, not for ages."

"What do you mean, 'not for ages?'"

"Oh. That." She gives him a defeated little ironic smile. "The Doctor doesn't want me talking about it."

"I see."

"Do you?"

"No."

"Well. If I expect you to trust me, I should tell you," she says, sizing him up. To tell the truth would ruin her credibility with most people, but Baala... "The Doctor and my friend Nyssa and I, we've been to Manussa in the future. They learned that this monster I'm talking about, it will be created for the first time somewhere around here, but not for a long time yet. They fought it, and they thought they destroyed it, but really it was still hiding with us. We were trying to go back there to get help, but it brought us back to this time instead, because it wants to make itself come true that much sooner."

He considers her evenly for some time. "This monster you're talking about. Is it the Mara?"

A shiver runs through her. "How do you know that?"

"When the Doctor was here earlier, when he first wanted to meet Mr. ausG. He was saying some very strange things. He showed me his snake. He said it was the mark of the Mara."

"He - he showed it to you?"

"He seemed to think I ought to be impressed. But it was just a snake."

"Just a snake! Baala, I only wish! What did he do then?"

Baala shrugs. "He left."

Tegan is impressed. "It sounds like you really stymied him."

"I suppose."

She steadies herself. Might as well go for it. "Will you help me, Baala? Maybe we can hide the crystal so he can't use the machine until it's safe? And if it turns out to be the wrong thing to do, you can always just put it back."

He looks between it and Tegan, torn.

---

Eighteen: the Doctor

None of this is working out the way he'd hoped.

Nyssa and their potential allies are stuck outside and chatting dangerously with the Mara-possessed ausGarten. He's left Tegan alone with Baala. Turlough is not himself; angry, full of nefarious intentions, and hot on the Doctor's heels. He'd meant to warn Turlough about the Mara and instead it seems he's given it the final push it needed to take control.

So now he's got that to deal with.

He's been here in the Sundown Studios building before, at least, and Turlough hasn't - though the Mara in him has, hasn't it. Damn. The warehouse is probably a good option anyway, full of noisy, distracting creatures.

He bolts through the doors as quietly as he can and does his best to disappear between the racks of cages filled with muttering animals, his sprint switching to a pad as he hears the main doors chunk open once more.

"I know you're in here," Turlough calls out. "Give it up, Doctor. You're going to lose this one. You've already lost me. Careless of you. You know, I really believed in you there for a while. I should have known what a stupid thing that was to do."

The Doctor can tell where Turlough is as long as he's taunting him, so at least he's got that going for him. He wonders if he can lead the boy deeper into the warehouse and circle around. For that matter, there's bound to be a second door or a fire escape.

"How long do you think you can hide? And what good will it do you? What will you do if I give up on you, go back inside and pretend I'm good old Turlough for Tegan? And Tegan, she'll have no trouble at all getting close to Nyssa. Then we'll only need one more for tomorrow night. Maybe Yoanna Rayluss? Maybe you? If the Mara will still have you, that is. You've made it very angry."

A silly thing to say. The Mara is always angry.

"To tell the truth, Doctor, I'd quite like it to be you. I think we'd both enjoy ourselves a lot more if you weren't holding yourself back from what you really wanted all the time. If you didn't have so many precious moral opinions to always be hoping I'd agree with."

Well. That's troubling.

"Besides. If one of the things you want is to see me shine, it would be perfect for both of us. I was born to stand at the head of an empire, Doctor. And now I will. You could watch me build the Sumaran Empire from the ashes of Manussa. You could be my grand vizier. We'd be unstoppable."

What? Good lord. There's a lot to unpack, there.

He turns a corner and comes face to face with a creature that looks like a dog made of nothing but black fur and white teeth. Despite having no eyes, it immediately takes a stance of wariness; a low growl drifts out of it. The Doctor puts up his hands and backs away slightly, but it's no use. The thing lunges at him, barking madly, jangling its cage, and the other animals nearby join in the racket.

He runs. The animals squawk, cry, call, chitter. It's a cacophony. He heads back towards the doors. If he can get to Tegan-

Turlough slams into him from the side and they scramble uselessly on the warehouse floor. He should be stronger than Turlough but just now he finds he isn't. The boy wrestles him to a standstill, shoves his shoulders hard into the floor, bouncing his skull jarringly off it. He doesn't hold back his grumpy cry of pain. He looks up at Turlough and sees a face completely absent of the hesitation he's only just started to realise he's been fascinated with all this time.

"Well, Doctor. What now? Will you give up? Take the mark? Or will I have to k... keep you prisoner for a while, let you watch the Mara bring itself to life and begin to gorge itself on the fat of this planet?"

Oh! Perhaps not completely absent.

Perhaps he should buy Tegan and the others some time.

"It seems you've won," the Doctor says gamely. "I'm at your mercy. Assuming you've got any."

"For you? You don't deserve it," he smirks.

"Perhaps not. After what I did to you earlier. Considering how much I enjoyed it - forcing myself on you. Making you doubt yourself. Making you beg."

Turlough slaps him hard, leaving his face stinging.

He does his best to look dissappointed and surprised. "Oh, didn't you like me making you beg? Are you sure?"

He catches Turlough's wrist on its way to another slap. It takes the boy two tries to wrench it free. The Doctor gives him a dazzling smile. "You won't be able to do to me what I did to you if you give me the mark. I won't be torn, or reluctant, or afraid I'm doing the wrong thing. I won't be confused by the way you're acting, and you won't be able to pretend I've betrayed your trust. I won't be hurt at all. With the Mara, all I'll want is to feel your skin against mine."

Turlough's breaths are ragged, his eyes blown wide, deep red where they should be black.

"So, Turlough. What do you want more? To turn the tables on me? Or just," and he drops every bit of pretense from his face, his voice, his mind. "Me?"

Turlough drops his body fully onto the Doctor's, burying his face in the Doctor's neck, kissing, licking, scraping teeth. The Doctor arches beneath him, baring that neck to him more fully, letting himself groan deliciously with the feeling of Turlough's mouth on him, Turlough's hips rolling against him, just a bit. He wraps his hands around Turlough's slim waist and pulls him closer.

Is this really a good idea? Won't this just be more trauma for Turlough to deal with at the end of the day?

It's oddly settling to have his own conscience pricking at him again.

You know that 'buying time' is the flimsiest possible excuse for this.

True. But he's confident that as long as he doesn't let Turlough do anything monstrous to him, the boy won't be any worse off for this encounter.

And you will be able to stop him? If he does do something monstrous?

Oh.... Probably. Through it's true he mustn't underestimate him. Or the Mara. That's got him in trouble before. That's got him right where he is now, in fact.

And what should he do right now? If they're ever going to touch one another again, it would be nice to have something that won't necessarily remind the boy of the Mara.

Of course, that's a spectacularly crass and selfish thing to hold out hope for, just at the moment. And what exactly happened to his old determination to keep his relationship with Turlough platonic? But he can't help hoping. And he can't blame it on the Mara, either, can he. It didn't create that temptation.

Turlough pushes himself up to look down on the Doctor, a strange expression, hungry and - certainly not reluctant. Indecisive, maybe. The Doctor looks up at him, fascinated.

"Take what you want," the Doctor says, softly, quietly. "Don't ask."

Turlough breathes faster, deeper, but doesn't move. "No. That's what you want. To pretend it's all right. Why should I let you do that?" he says coldly. "Those things you said, those aren't the ways I could hurt you, are they. You're not worried about yourself. You're worried about me. The only way I could really hurt you is by harming the part of me that's lost beneath this. Beneath me. Now, what can I do to achieve that, do you think, Doctor?"

This is definitely not working out the way he'd hoped.

"How much do you think I could do to you without a twinge of real angst? Maybe you're holding out hope that I might really be able to act like the psychopath Tegan took me for. After all, if I could get over that little agreement with the Black Guardian, who's to say I couldn't just do whatever I want to you while I can, and be able to remember that fondly? Just another mad adventure with the Doctor? Or maybe you know that I haven't stopped waking up from nightmares where I have to kill you. Maybe you understand I would regret it forever, taking advantage of you in a situation like this. That I'd feel the way you felt when the Mara got you to take what you wanted."

"Are you really asking me to imagine what would hurt you the most so that you can do it? In that case, definitely, letting me go right now, that would be the worst thing imaginable. I'm not sure either of us would ever recover."

"Hilarious. No, you know the Mara watched both of us when you were with me before. Not only does it know exactly how you felt, it saw what made me suffer most. I don't ask because I need you to tell me. I ask to build the shape of the pain I'm going to put in you before I reclaim you for the Mara. And that is what will really hurt you - because you know that your sweet little crush would very nearly rather die than hurt you. I'll make you imagine your friend, lost inside himself and begging for it to stop, just like you did."

Oh. Fuck.

"Dying for you would hurt you worst of all, obviously, but I won't do that. I'll do the next best thing. I'll make you watch as the part of me that doesn't want to hurt you is tortured and destroyed. The good in me, as you might put it. The better Turlough, the one you were trying to nurture. Right up until your hubris let the Mara unleash the hungriest part of you and you made him beg for you, Doctor, and in that moment when you had finally let the kind side of yourself out - what else did it do but just keep going? Honestly, Doctor, when it comes to destroying me, you've hardly left the Mara any work to do at all."

The Doctor is upset with himself at how arousing this diatribe is. And he's fighting down the urge to defend himself; this isn't the time, this isn't the place. His concern is Turlough. Not himself. He moves his hands steadily further up the boy's sides as he replies. "The Mara can't destroy that part of you any more than it could destroy that part of me, or of Tegan, or anyone else it's tried to lead down its garden path. It's as weak as it says it enemies are. All it's got is bluster and lies."

"It's sweet of you to think so, Doctor. But as I've been telling him, you don't understand how weak he is. He's already lost and mewling. His suffering will be fractal: he'll hurt you and be hurt by knowing he's hurt you; you'll be hurt by knowing he's hurt by hurting you... It won't end, and his ego won't survive. It'll just be me. And then we'll really have some fun."

"How exactly do you plan on convincing me that Turlough is being harmed, to cause all this recursive angst?"

Turlough blinks down at him suddenly begins to try to scramble back. "Doctor - I'm - I'm so - I-"

The Doctor's hands hold him firmly, not letting him move away. "Shh, Turlough, it's all right. Really." He can't know, of course, whether the Turlough he wants to speak to is actually the one being presented to him at the moment, but it doesn't matter; either way the words will reach him. "I'm tough as old boots and so are you, even if you don't believe it. You were brave enough to make your way into my mind to help me be rid of the Mara and you succeeded, even if it took more of a sacrifice on your part than either of us meant to happen. It can try to chew on me with your teeth if that's what makes it happy. I won't give it the satisfaction if you won't."

Turlough scowls at him, dark and angry again like a summer raincloud. "You're determined to ruin everything, aren't you."

The Doctor is feeling a bit better about all this. He's bought a good handful of minutes and nobody has taken any clothes off at all. "It's a curse," he says, with measured flippancy. "The trouble is, I know you want to keep me," and he smiles his most punchable smile, "and I know I've got very good at frustrating you."

"Hm. All right, you've convinced me that you won't be any more fun." Turlough lifts his arm between them, pushes the fabric of his sleeve back to reveal the mark.

The Doctor is determined not to look -

He looks at it, the snake tattoo on Turlough's pale skin, on his slender wrist, dark and red as a dried wound. He looks away, a shudder rippling through him, momentarily disrupting his calm, his determination.

"Look at me, Doctor."

All right. It's time for a real test of his mettle. The Doctor meets Turlough's gaze, doing his best to keep his expression clear, neutral.

The boy's face is not his own, his eyes red, his grin manic. "Yes. Look at me."

The snake is alive on Turlough's arm. The Doctor lets him take his hand from Turlough's side, where the Time Lord had been stroking him. The Doctor feels the snake move, slithering past their joined hands to settle on his forearm.

This time, he can feel it, feel the Mara trying to slide under and into him, like a dream, like a wave, and this time, this time he can -

The snake is wriggling, trying to flatten itself against his skin. He can keep it out. It's not even hard. He'll have to think about this, later, when there's time.

Turlough's face is sneering darkly at him. "Be good and take it, Doctor, or all your friends will suffer everything you've ever imagined. I'll skin them alive."

The Doctor is calm, in spite of everything. "You shouldn't make promises you can't keep."

"No? Not like you do, Doctor?"

Fair enough. He shrugs. "I shouldn't either."

Turlough's face twists, his red eyes blazing. "Take it! Take the mark of the Mara!"

---

Nineteen: Turlough

Turlough scrambles back to his feet and chases the retreating figure of the Doctor. Briefly, he loses him around a corner, but then he hears the chunk of a door's catch closing and homes in on Rick's warehouse. The Doctor may have opened it just to mislead him, but the Mara knows it's one of the only places he explored earlier, so he takes the chance and slips through the door.

The warehouse is full of the soft sounds of every animal imaginable. There's no sign of the Doctor.

"I know you're in here," he calls out, and starts a taunting tirade. He threatens the Doctor with the prospect of giving the mark to the rest of his companions - Tegan obviously wouldn't appreciate that idea but Nyssa could certainly benefit from a little repression of her more morally uptight side. It would be interesting to see what the rest of her might really be like.

He's sure the Doctor is here, hiding amongst the shuffles and trills, despite the lack of response to his words. Why can't he admit how much better things would be if they all just let their genuine selves out onto the surface?

Turlough tells him what he's insisting on missing, what could so easily be.

He hears himself tell the Doctor that he was always meant to control an empire, that now he'll build the Sumaran empire and rule it, and he's splashed with a sudden, deep discomfort, so cold it feels like fear. He - that's not - he doesn't want to say that, not to the Doctor, that was too much, too far -

Why not? He'll be ours again soon, won't he. With us, that's not something you'll need to hide.

But not now, not yet, it's not safe to tell him that yet -

"You can be my grand vizier," he hears himself say.

What? What are you trying to do?

What's wrong with telling him what's going to happen while he's still capable of being scandalised by our ambition? Don't tell me you still want to avoid disappointing him.

But he doesn't want to disappoint the Doctor. He doesn't want to imagine the Doctor listening to all this, or what he must think.

Stop that. Don't apologise for yourself. Don't let him make you so pathetic.

Turlough sulks a bit. For all he knows the Doctor isn't even really in here. The thought gives him a nice little dash of schadenfruede for the Mara, and he grins. But suddenly there's a flurry of activity a few rows away, further into the warehouse. Turlough makes for it with quiet speed.

There he is.

Turlough slams into the Doctor as he passes by and knocks him to the warehouse floor. Turlough wrestles him to a standstill, shoves his shoulders hard into the floor, bouncing his skull off it, earning a satisfying little cry of pain.

"Well, Doctor. What now? Will you give up? Take the mark? Or will I have to-"

Turlough knows the next threat will be death. Quite apart from not liking the idea, it's simply not a good one. It would be better to say you'll make him watch you win.

A ridiculous cliche.

As opposed to 'die, Doctor?' All his enemies try to do that. You should know that. Weren't you in his head?

You're getting better at this game.

"-to keep you prisoner for a while, let you watch the Mara bring itself to life and begin to gorge itself on the fat of this planet?"

"It seems you've won," the Doctor says gamely. "I'm at your mercy. Assuming you've got any."

Turlough smirks. Gratifying of him to admit it. "For you? You don't deserve it."

"Perhaps not. After what I did to you earlier. Considering how much I enjoyed it - forcing myself on you. Making you doubt yourself. Making you beg."

How fucking dare he. How dare he gloat about things he would never have dared to do without the Mara? Turlough slaps him hard, the sound disappointingly deadened by their surroundings.

But the Doctor fails to be shamed, feigning surprise. "Oh, didn't you like me making you beg? Are you sure?"

Didn't he like...? Turlough hauls his stinging palm back, eager to see himself strike the smug bastard again, but his wrist is caught in a grip like the one from the dream.

The Doctor smiles, kicking his smugness levels up dangerously high. "You won't be able to do to me what I did to you if you give me the mark. I won't be torn, or reluctant, or afraid I'm doing the wrong thing. I won't be confused by the way you're acting, or shattered by the way you've utterly betrayed my trust."

He's gutted, and seething. Does the Doctor think that guessing exactly how Turlough felt will help? And fuck him for knowing all of that, while we're at it.

"I won't be hurt at all. With the Mara, all I'll want is to feel your skin against mine."

And Turlough still just wants him so, so much. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you.

"So, Turlough. What do you want more? To turn the tables on me? Or just... Me?"

That face. The Doctor knows what he's doing, tempting him like this. Fuck him if he thinks Turlough is going to do anything besides taking him right up on the offer. He drops his body fully onto the Doctor's, burying his face in the Doctor's neck, kissing, licking, scraping teeth. The Doctor arches beneath him, baring that neck to him more fully, making a delicious sound, and wraps his hands around Turlough's waist and pulls him closer.

Turlough pushes himself up to look down on the Doctor. The Time Lord's eyes are soft, enamoured, fuck, they are downright fuck-me eyes.

"Take what you want," the Doctor says, softly, quietly. "Don't ask."

Turlough breathes faster, deeper, but doesn't move. "No. That's what you want," he says coldly. "You're not worried about yourself. You're worried about me. The only way I could really hurt you is by harming the part of me that's lost beneath this. Beneath me. Now, what can I do to achieve that, do you think, Doctor? How much do you think I could do to you without a twinge of real angst? Maybe you're holding out hope that I might really be able to act like the psychopath Tegan took me for. After all, if I could get over that little agreement with the Black Guardian, who's to say I couldn't just take what I want from you while I can, and be able to remember that fondly? Just another mad adventure with the Doctor? Or maybe you know that I'm still waking up from nightmares where I have to kill you. Maybe you understand that I'd feel just like you felt when the Mara made you take what you wanted."

Turlough hates this. He wants him so much. He hates what the Mara is making - letting - him say. Maybe he wants to ruin them. Maybe they both fucking deserve it. But more importantly, he'd rather chew off his own arm, triangle and all, than keep talking like this. He's already imagining how obnoxious the Doctor is going to be about what's been keeping Turlough awake at night.

The Doctor is looking up at him, pleasant, unfazed. "Are you really asking me to imagine what would hurt you the most so that you can do it? In that case, definitely, letting me go right now, that would be the worst thing imaginable. I'm not sure either of us would ever recover."

"Hilarious. No, you know the Mara was watching both of us when you were with me before. Not only does it know exactly how you felt, it saw what made me suffer most. I don't ask because I need you to tell me. I ask to build the shape of the pain I'm going to put in you before I reclaim you for the Mara. And that is what will really hurt you - because you know that your sweet little crush would very nearly rather die than hurt you. I'll make you imagine your friend, lost inside himself and begging for it to stop, just like you did."

I'm not begging for it to stop, I'm begging for it to start! Do it, if you're going to!

But the Mara just goes on and on instead, threatening to destroy the part of Turlough that's not in control, trying to spear the Doctor on fears that Turlough can't see that he's actually got. Then it tries to hurt the Doctor by invoking the memory of their encounter at the fairgrounds and - it -

It was the Doctor - the real Doctor, at the end of it, when he'd most wanted to believe - and his heart swells as he watches the Doctor blush and feels the Mara recoil. And he doesn't hate him. And he does care if he gets hurt.

The Doctor's hands stroke Turlough's sides, firm and grounding, as he utters encouraging platitudes for Turlough's sake, and maybe his own as well. But Turlough can feel the way the Mara's words have affected the Doctor.

The Mara gloats as though he's got him where he wants him. "It's sweet of you to think I can't hurt him, Doctor. But as I've been telling him, you don't understand how weak he is. He's already lost and mewling." I am not! "His suffering will be fractal... It won't end, and his ego won't survive." Do you think I'll cooperate, with you saying things like that? But as he gropes for control and finds none, he does begin to genuinely worry. It feels like the Mara has discarded him, at least for the moment. "It'll just be me. And then we'll really have some fun."

"How exactly do you plan on convincing me that Turlough is being harmed, to cause all this recursive angst?"

At least the Doctor isn't swallowing the Mara's obnoxious attempt at manipulation at Turlough's expense. Good. Even if it's because he doesn't believe Turlough cares about him that much. Good! Because - because he doesn't.

Who does he think he's trying to convince?

He blinks down at the Doctor and suddenly begins to scramble back. "Doctor - I'm - I'm so - I-"

Oh, come ON!

"Shh, Turlough, it's all right. Really. I'm tough as old boots and so are you, even if you don't believe it. You were brave enough to make your way into my mind to help me be rid of it and you succeeded, even if it took more of a sacrifice on your part than either of us meant to happen."

Right. Thanks so very much.

"The Mara can try to chew on me with your teeth if that's what makes it happy. I won't give it the satisfaction if you won't."

Turlough believes him. Unfortunately, or perhaps if he's being sensible, fortunately, it seems the Mara's motivation for assaulting the Doctor is slipping away.

Turlough scowls at him, dark and angry again like a summer raincloud. "You're determined to ruin everything, aren't you."

"It's a curse," he says, with measured flippancy. "The trouble is, I know you want to keep me," and he smiles his most punchable smile, "and I know I've got very good at frustrating you."

"Hm. All right, you've convinced me that you won't be any more fun." Turlough raises his arm, shucks his sleeve down and catches the Doctor glancing at the snake before looking away, knows he didn't mean to, knows he didn't want to look. "Look at me, Doctor."

What? No, don't do it, Doctor!

It's ridiculous that Turlough would still want anything but for the Mara to take the Doctor. He'll have everything he wants. Everything, and an empire to rule.

The Doctor meets his gaze with just a hint of defiant concern.

Turlough's chest is tight, his heart throbbing, making him feel sick. The Mara is grinning in triumph from ear to ear. "That's it. Look at me."

The snake is alive on Turlough's arm. He reaches in front of himself and takes the Doctor's hand, the one that was stroking his left side. He holds it painfully tight, while the Doctor looks up into his eyes.

Turlough's heart is in his mouth. The Doctor's eyes are dark and quiet, betraying nothing.

The snake moves, slithering past their joined hands to settle on the Doctor's forearm. But it can't - it can't sink, it can't...

You can't do it!

Turlough sneers. "Be good and take it, Doctor, or all your friends will suffer everything you've ever imagined. I'll skin them alive."

The Doctor is calm, in spite of everything. "You shouldn't make promises you can't keep."

"No? Not like you do, Doctor?"

The Doctor frowns, raises his eyebrows, gives a tiny shrug. "I shouldn't either."

Turlough's face twists, his eyes blaze red. "Take it! Take the mark of the Mara!"

And then he feels something soft and light hit him in the back, and hears an almighty screech.

---

Tegan is smiling when she calls out, "Turlough!"

But her feeling of accomplishment ebbs away as she jogs out into the soundstage and finds it empty.

"Doctor?"

The Doctor had stayed back with Turlough so they could conspire with one another about something or other, but now they are nowhere to be found. It hadn't been that long. "Now where could they have got to," she huffs.

"Most of the doors are locked for the night," Baala pipes up, unexpectedly beside her.

Tegan clutches her chest and resists the urge to snap at Baala for startling her. "What isn't locked, then?"

"The soundstage, the break room, the washrooms, the warehouse..." He stops, looking suddenly guilty. "I was meant to keep the warehouse locked."

"Why, what's in the warehouse?"

"The animals," Baala says sullenly.

"Show me."

As they approach the warehouse doors, Baala slows, listening. "I think they must be here," he says. "Something's disturbed the birds. They're very upset."

Tegan motions for Baala to open the warehouse doors with her, quietly, slowly.

As soon as they're inside they can hear, under the background noise of the animals, Turlough's voice. Tegan is about to call to him when Baala gets her attention, puts his finger to his lips, and listens.

Now it's the Doctor's voice, quiet and carrying like it always is, easy to hear, easy to follow. "The Mara can't destroy that part of you any more than it could destroy that part of me, or of Tegan, or anyone else it's tried to lead down its garden path. All it's got is bluster and lies."

Baala takes the lead. The two of them creep along one of the rows, Tegan chewing her lower lip. So the Doctor really is free - and Turlough -

"It's sweet of you to think so, Doctor. But as I've been telling him, you don't understand how weak he is."

Oh no - Turlough...

Earlier today, when she'd suspected he might be carrying it, she nevertheless hadn't really thought about what that would be like. Now it's really happened. He must have been carrying it ever since running into the Doctor at the fairgrounds. Had she spent half the evening side by side with the Mara hiding in Turlough? Had a heart-to-heart with him about it while it listened and laughed at her? Anger rises in her chest. She hates that she'd suspected and had talked herself out of it.

She listens to them, back and forth, trying to hear every word over the noises of the animals - and what animals! Any other time she'd be shocked and captivated by them, but just now her attention is full with the drama of the Mara's threats, Turlough's voice dripping with its cruelty, and the Doctor's stolid replies. How can he be so calm? He must understand the danger. What can he be thinking?

Baala stops short, points left down the next row. Tegan peeks around the cage at the corner, trying to ignore the featherless bird inside, that blinks at her and changes colors like flipping TV channels.

There they are. A little ways off down the row, between the cages, the Doctor flat on his back and Turlough pinning him down. "You're determined to ruin everything, aren't you," Turlough is saying to him, cold and impatient.

Tegan pulls back behind the cage again, her heart pounding, and finds Baala looking at her for guidance. She swallows, listening to the Doctor's calm voice in the background, gathering her wits. "That monster's got into Turlough. We've got to get the Doctor out of there," she tells Baala.

Baala nods. He looks at the cages and hutches around them and approaches a huge birdcage, its occupant unseen behind a partition. Quietly, he unclips the large door and opens it wide. "Hawkins," he says softly, and reaches into his pocket.

Tegan covers her mouth and gasps as the creature inside hops into the light on feet that look like gnarled branches. It's got quite a few clear, piercing eyes, multiple hooked beaks sticking out all over its head, and two extra pairs of legs besides the ones it's walking on.

Balla pulls out a palm sized toy animal made of felt with hook-and-loop patches and shakes it at the instantly attentive bird. "See it, Hawkins," he says temptingly, then turns and starts to run down the row right at the Doctor and Turlough, holding the toy high.

The bird launches itself after Baala. Tegan curses colorfully and runs after them both, towards -

Turlough's got the Doctor by the hand and he's shouting -

The snake - the snake - the Doctor -

"Get it," Baala commands, and throws the toy straight at Turlough.

The bird thing screeches and swoops on the toy, grabbing it in one of its beaks and smacking Turlough with a few more in the process, besides bowling him over with the shock and surprise of something with multiple huge wings and six clawed feet trying to land on and launch off of him.

The Doctor takes the opportunity to get away, to his feet. "Tegan!" he says, elated, jogging towards her.

"This way, quickly," Baala says, cutting between two cages, and Tegan and the Doctor waste no time in following him.

Behind them all the bird drops the toy animal on Turlough, pauses, and tries to get it again, while Turlough yells indignantly, trying to fend it off.

---

Twenty: The Doctor

The Doctor is pinned under an unreasonably strong Turlough with the Mara shouting in his face and demanding that he let down his guard against it - the one that's just been successful for the very first time. Before he has the chance to come up with his next move, there's a chaos of sound and beating wings and Turlough is knocked off of him by a deeply unlikely and quite sizable raptor.

He takes advantage of the distraction to get to his feet and find his bearings. Running towards him are Baala and -

"Tegan!"

The relief and warmth on her face are infectious. He could hug her. (He won't hug her.)

Baala leads them between two of the cages in the row, and again, down the next aisle and through another door, to the screeches of excitable birds and the sounds of Turlough trying to deal with the monster of a hawk that's intent on swooping him. "Where should we go?" he asks.

"You have keys, don't you, Baala?" Tegan responds. "Is there somewhere you could lock us in so he couldn't follow us but we could get out another way?"

"The studio stage," the Doctor says. "I still need to take a good look at that machine."

Baala nods and leads the way. Tegan hesitates, looking back. "Will that thing hurt Turlough?"

"Hawkins? I don't think so."

The door behind them crashes open and a disheveled, scratched, and incandescently angry Turlough explodes out of it. He catches sight of them and charges.

Ah, now, here's a situation where the Doctor knows exactly what to do. "Run!"

The three of them make it to the soundstage with barely enough of a lead for Baala to successfully set the lock on the entryway before Turlough slams into it on the other side. They can hear him practically roar with anger and the doors rattle with his blows. "Let me in!"

Baala looks so terrified, Tegan puts a steadying arm around him. "We won't let him hurt you."

"He's so angry," he says, in awe.

Tegan listens to Turlough threaten and demand, and hugs Baala a bit closer. "Doctor, what are we going to do?"

He's already jogged over to the dreammaker at the back of the main studio stage. He'd given it the most cursory of evaluations earlier, while the Mara was driving him around by the id. Now, there's something quite obvious about it that jumps out at him. "The crystal's missing."

The hammering on the door stops, and Tegan relaxes slightly. She looks hopefully over at him. "I talked Baala into taking it out, so nobody can use it."

"Not a bad idea," the Doctor muses, taking his little glasses out of his pocket and perching them on his nose to investigate the rest of the machine more closely. "Where is it now?"

She looks again at the now silent door and says softly, "Baala's hidden it."

"Hm, well, under the circumstances, that may actually be the safest thing to do. He seems to be spectacularly resistant to the Mara's influence. Well done, Tegan," he says, and she beams. "See if you can find Doctor Kerrem's crystal - it should be in the studio somewhere over... there," and he points vaguely in the direction Turlough had thrown the thing.

"Will we use it to free Turlough? Would that work?"

"I don't think so, not here, we'd need a little time and quiet, and ideally, the Dadda's assistance. And we don't really want to risk ausGarten spreading it to more people while we try."

"But isn't Turlough the real M..monster? The 'main' one? Wouldn't Rick and everyone else be freed, if we destroy the one that's in him?"

"It seems to be doing something different this time. I believe when the Mara has been giving its mark, it's been splitting itself more fully, to remove the risk of a single point of failure." He's pulled a panel off the machine and is fastidiously fiddling with its guts. "But that has also left its primary psychic mass, the one that was in you, and then me, and now Turlough - weaker than when we've dealt with it before."

"Is that why you - why it was so angry when it saw we'd freed Kerrem? Did we actually destroy a part of it when we did that?"

He hums his agreement without looking up from his work. "And then just now I was fully able to resist its attempt to mark me. I doubt I've got that much better at that in the last few hours. I suspect it's gambling with a significant fraction of itself, hoping to collect a massive payout tomorrow night."

"Here it is," Baala says from the other side of the room, standing up from between the empty rows of studio seating, the blue crystal in its silver ring in his hand.

"Excellent, Baala," the Doctor beams as the young man strides up to him and hands over the crystal. He turns and holds it up, looking at it over his half-moon glasses and comparing it to the machine, before getting back to work. "I'll install it to distract anyone who inspects the dreammaker from the other adjustments I'm making."

Tegan watches. "Is there any reason we shouldn't just use mirrors this time? A city like this must have plenty of them."

"It's a fine idea, Tegan, but have we got time to actually find a circle's worth of mirrors? How long do you think it would take you to collect them? Although - I had been considering trying to make some with this machine, but now I'm not sure it could do it even if you two hadn't removed its crystal. Geometric challenges like a plane smooth enough to be reflective don't appear to be its strong suit. You'd need the mind of a mathematical savant; powerful, precise and undistracted. Just as well, or Rick would probably be trying to use it to make bigger crystals."

Baala has been watching them curiously. "Why would you need a circle's worth of mirrors?"

The Doctor begins to explain, automatically. "A circle of mirrors traps the Mara with no escape from facing itself; its nature can't bear that. Unable to retreat from its reflection in our reality, its only escape is back to the places it came from. Or, in this case, the places it will come from." He raises his eyebrows. "I suppose it must already exist here in some nascent form. It may be a hundred years before Dadda Desaka's people become the snakedancers, and yet it seems he recognised the danger of the Mara at once."

"There's a very good mirror maze at Scrampus Park. Except it's not a maze to me. There's a room near the end where the way in closes behind you, and it's all mirrors. Everywhere. It's like standing inside a kaliedoscope. You can even get in from the back if you ask the staff nicely."

Tegan looks from him to the Doctor. "Doctor. That would be perfect. Make Turlough and ausGarten think we've taken the crystal to the park to do something with it that will ruin their plans, and lead them in there."

"You think they'd follow us into an attraction with a sign above the door saying 'mirror maze?'"

"It doesn't say anything if you go in the back way," Baala says helpfully.

"They might," Tegan says doggedly. "Turlough's obsessed with you, Doctor, and the... the Mara is always following me."

Obsessed? He wonders exactly what has made Tegan say that, but decides to let it lie for now. "I'm just not so sure they're likely to fall for such an obvious trap."

"If Baala would help us, it could work. Look at him - I bet if he said 'honest' was painted on the ceiling, Rick would look up."

"Be serious, Tegan," the Doctor says automatically, but does give Baala an evaluating look. "Then again. You might be right. Still... On Manussa, in the future, interrupting the Mara's becoming banished it from this world entirely. If we can do something like that again, maybe that would keep it safe for a hundred years; put the timeline of Manussa back the way it would have been if it hadn't brought itself here."

"You mean, if we hadn't brought it here," Tegan sulks.

"Well. I'm not keen to blame anything the Mara's done on any of us. But it can be all of our faults, Tegan, if that makes you feel better," he says, and gives her a smile that doesn't even attempt to read the room.

Baala and Tegan exchange a few more words about the fair and the maze while the Doctor does hasty work on the dreammaker, until they hear a little electronic buzz and Baala straightens up urgently. "That's the door unlocking! You've got to go now! Take the fire escape - it's right over there where it says 'Emergency Exit.' Hurry! Go!"

---

Twenty-one: Turlough

Turlough jogs through the building looking for Rick ausGarten, furious, skin still stinging everywhere the stupid creature's whatever seventy-bastard talons had raked him. Door after door is rattled fruitlessly, until finally he nears the lobby near the front entrance, where he can hear Yoanna Rayluss complaining loudly about how long she's been kept waiting.

Turlough stops just out of sight to listen.

"You're right, Mrs. Rayluss. You've been very accomodating. I'll.. I'll go check on the Doctor and see what's holding him up. Please wait just one more moment, I'm so sorry."

Turlough puts his back to the wall and when ausGarten walks past, he silently follows. A brisk few seconds later Turlough quietly clears his throat and catches up with him.

Rick glances over at him and scowls, looking him up and down, taking in his scratched face and clothes. "Who on Manussa-"

"Mr. ausGarten. Pleased to make your acquaintance. I'm Turlough." He holds out his hand, casually displaying the snake on his forearm.

Rick looks down at it and doesn't reciprocate. "Are you. Very nice. Do you happen to know what's taking the Doctor so long?"

"The Doctor is his own man again, I'm very sorry to say. He's found a way to keep the Mara out."

"What?"

"And he's got Baala to lock the two of them and Tegan inside the soundstage. I presume you can get past the doors?"

"Of course I can. Baala..! He'll be the death of me, I swear-"

"Listen. The Doctor's friends have put this whole thing in jeopardy. We won't be getting the talent he promised." Rick starts to protest but Turlough talks over him. "No, we'll choose a few names to use anyway - by the time the audience realises they won't show it'll be too late. But we will need a few more minds on side. Nyssa will be ideal; if the Doctor and Yoanna are here she's bound to be around somewhere. Perhaps Yoanna as well? And of course, Tegan."

"All right. I'll tell Yoanna the dreammaker is ready for another test. We can get her inside, away from the other officers, and introduce them both to the Mara."

"Let's deal with the Doctor and Tegan first. We can have them convince Rayluss to send the officers away."

"What does it matter if we have to shove them in a cupboard or daze them? It's not as though Yoanna will tell, once-"

"We can't afford to draw suspicion. Safety Enforcement will have all day tomorrow to get nervous about the condition of those officers, even if Mrs. Rayluss is covering for us."

"Then why not just-"

"Until the Mara gains form and grows strong on the energy of your audience, we mustn't spread ourselves too thin. No, it'll be better to make sure they see nothing until Yoanna can tell them there's nothing to see. Unless you think the two of them would be good candidates to be part of the summoning?"

Rick is clearly souring on being constantly interrupted. "All right then. The Doctor. You don't think we can force him to rejoin us?"

"Maybe. I didn't get to modify my strategy much before someone threw a bird at me."

"Is that what happened to you? I didn't want to ask."

Turlough gives ausGarten a look of such daggers that the man has to fight off a smile. But they've arrived at the doors to the soundstage, and Rick puts his efforts into digging through his suit pockets for his key card. Turlough sighs and fidgets with annoyance at how long it's taking, but finally Rick produces it and flourishes it with a condescending smile at Turlough before reaching towards the key panel. Turlough snatches it out of his hand halfway through the gesture and opens the door himself.

"Get your dogsbody under control," Turlough says, ignoring ausGarten's incensed look. "and make sure Tegan doesn't go anywhere. I'll handle the Doctor."

They push the doors quietly, partially open and sidle through.

Inside, Rick finds Baala, hiding, shut inside the isolation chamber. He opens the door and approaches the young man where he's sat crouched and huddling against the wall.

"Baala? Are you all right?"

He starts and then his posture stretches up towards Rick, no longer plastered into the corner, but he remains visibly upset. "Mr. ausG! I didn't know what to do! This strange man was threatening your new friend, the Doctor, and then he was chasing us, and he was so scary, I just - I just locked him out, and he was pounding on the door and saying things and-" he catches sight of Turlough approaching, and pales, practically shrinking. "That's him," he says, understated and fearful.

"No, Baala," Rick says as if correcting a beloved but tryingly stupid child. "This is Turlough, our new Lord Mara. He's going to make sure the show goes off perfectly tomorrow night."

Baala blinks doubtfully up at them. "Yes, I met him - he said he wanted to be in the show."

"And he will be," Rick smiles, and looks at Turlough, now hovering in the doorway. "Did you find your friends?"

"They're not my friends. And no. They're not here."

"Shall we invite Mrs. Rayluss in, then?"

"Hmm. What was the Doctor taking so long to do, if I might ask?"

"He told me he was going to set the machine for a nice reassuring demonstration, to convince Yoanna to go back on her obsession with shutting us down. Who knows what he was really doing."

"You'd better check your machine. He's bound to have interfered with it."

"All right," Rick agrees, and reaches out to Baala. "Come on, up you get. You can help me look over the dreammaker."

Reluctantly, Baala takes his hand.

"Hm," Turlough muses, peering at the machine as they approach. "Seems we don't need to check too closely. Look."

The crystal in the machine is visibly cracked.

AusGarten gasps and makes a sound of anguished frustration; Baala cringes. "Oh no! Where can we possibly get another crystal? There's no way - By tomorrow night?" Rick leans his forehead on the side of the thing, staring forlornly up at the crystal - and frowns, pulls back. "...This isn't my crystal."

Turlough looks closer and gives an angry sigh. "It's Doctor Kerrem's. The Doctor must have taken yours; put this one here to throw us off. He must have known we'd notice," he scoffs, annoyed. That's the Doctor for you - always assuming he's the only one who's paying proper attention to anything.

"Baala," Turlough says, fixing the young man with a cold glare. "Where is the crystal?"

Baala looks from him to ausGarten, terrified.

Rick tips his head towards Turlough. "Go ahead, Baala, tell him."

"The Doctor and Jovanka. They took it."

"Do you know where they went?"

Baala's expression is reluctant and upset as he looks between them. "I - I heard them talking about going to a place in the fairgrounds at Scrampus Park. I think I know it. I could show you," he finishes hopefully.

Turlough looks at Rick. "If they let him hear it was on purpose. They'll be expecting me to follow them for the crystal, and for the Doctor - but I don't think they'll be expecting you. Whatever they're planning, we should spoil it with a show of force."

Rick considers. "All right. What about Yoanna? Are we just going to ghost her? That might get that warrant enforced, you know."

Turlough looks sour, like he's found another dish after washing up. "Safety."

"Yes, I know."

"Let's tell her the truth. Your valuable equipment's just been stolen, you've got a lead and we're going to get it back."

"She'll have a hard time arguing with that."

"She might even come with us. We might have a convenient chance to extend our influence to her yet."

---

---

Twenty-two: The Doctor

(Yoanna)

Yoanna Rayluss, her ass parked on a lobby bench sofa that looks far more comfortable than it is, is finding it very easy to play the part of an official waiting for someone to be ready for an inspection. At first she had encouraged Rick ausGarten to chatter to her some more about his work. She's paying more attention to him, being more fully engaged than before, now that the Doctor and his friends have convinced her that his show is more than smoke and mirrors - and to keep him from noticing how long the Doctor is taking to do whatever he's told Rick he was doing while he's really looking for Turlough. But Rick has been getting more tense and nervous as the minutes drag by, and even her faux patience has worn thin.

"How much longer is this going to take, exactly? I'm willing to give you a second chance but I don't intend to stay here all night. My officers and I have other work we could be doing, you know," she says, though the officers are sipping drinks from the lobby's refreshment machine and don't seem too bothered.

Rick brings a hand to his mouth, looking as though he's resisting the urge to bite his knuckle. "You're right, Mrs. Rayluss. You've been very accomodating. I'll.. I'll go check on the Doctor and see what's holding him up. Please wait just one more moment, I'm so sorry."

A few minutes after he leaves the room, there's a tap on the thick glass door of the main entrance. It's Nyssa.

When Yoanna opens it, Nyssa leans in without entering. "The Doctor and Tegan have left," she says. "They took one of the motorcycles, and they've gone to the park. Apparently they've got a plan - they want Turlough and ausGarten to follow them, and they've left Baala here to try to make that happen."

"All right. I don't suppose their plan includes what we're meant to do?"

"If we're lucky, they'll both leave here shortly. If they do that, we're to lock down the building and follow them to the park. If it's just one or the other, we'll try to make sure they don't leave here until the Doctor returns, or at least keep track of them. And he warned me that the Mara said it wants to take you and I under its control now. So we mustn't let Turlough or ausGarten near us."

"Wonderful."

"I'll keep watch out here. If I could borrow one of your officers' communication devices, I could contact you when I know more."

Moments later, Nyssa has vanished, and Rayluss and her officers are left watching the doors that lead out of the lobby, into the depths of the studio.

The safety officers are in the middle of taking turns to use the lavatory when Rick jogs back into the room. Yoanna stands up.

Rick holds out a forestalling palm. "I'm so, so sorry Mrs. Rayluss, but our demonstration will have to wait. Someone's stolen the most valuable component in the whole studio and I've got to get it back." He starts making shooing motions. "Please, please - I'm sorry but I need you all to leave so I can lock up the building."

Yoanna doesn't move. "We'll keep watch here at your studio, Mr. ausGarten. Don't you worry about a thing."

"Please, Yoanna," he begs, entitledly. But she doesn't budge, and and with both safety officers watching, he storms out of the front doors of Sundown Studios.

---

(Tegan)

The Doctor and Tegan leave the safety motorcycle on the outskirts of the fairground. Tegan sets her helmet on the seat and fusses her hair back into shape with her fingers. She feels a bit silly about succumbing to the impulse to fix it, under the circumstances, until she notices the Doctor doing the same thing in the wing mirror.

The mirror maze isn't hard to find, with Baala's directions. They approach the structure from the wrong side, a little exit atrium with plastic mirror keychains and other souvenirs for sale.

A young lady stops them as they head for the exit door. "The way in is 'round the front."

Tegan has already decided the two of them are a bit too memorable to claim they'd been through earlier and lost something, so she has another story prepared. "I'd really like to show my friend here the last room, without making him try to get through the whole maze. He's a champion at walking straight into the walls in these things," she says, and ignores the petulant, accusatory look he gives her.

"Oh! Well I can help you out with that," the young lady says, turns away to a rack of trinkets and back with a little collapsible bendy stick type object with a plush bobble on the end. "Only two tickets."

Tegan smiles as though she's pleased to share a secret, reaching into the Doctor's pocket and pulling out an identical one. "Already tried. He's useless," she says, and ignores the way he takes a breath and huffs a sigh, rolling his eyes. "Any chance we could just pay admission to the back passage?"

Her adversary snorts a laugh, half at the half-joke and half at the quality of the faces the Doctor is making. "Aw, that's fine, go on in, love," and the two of them enter the maze by its exit.

"I've never seen you use sleight of hand before," the Doctor comments, moving to the side of the passageway, where his fawn coat picks up the colors from the gently pulsing light strips on the walls, to let another patron out past him.

"It was just for verisimilitude. I wanted to look like someone who'd paid for a bit of their rubbish."

"I've never heard you use the word 'verisimilitude' either."

"Hey! I've got a bonzer vocabulary, thank you very much. Just not for your sci-fi stuff."

"Sci-fi stuff?" the Doctor complains.

They fumble for a moment with a door that's meant to be mostly one-way before figuring out how to pull it open and stepping into the room that Baala had described. It's dizzying. They see themselves everywhere, the reflections broken only by another light strip, a spiral with different colors chasing each other around and around the mirrored coving of the room.

Tegan frowns, looking at herself twelve times over in every direction. It brings back feelings from a forgotten dream of herself, repeated over and over in a black void, the half-remembered image of an unsettling man, as hard to see as someone lit in full sun when you've only ever been in the dark, smiling cruelly at her distress. "Doctor... It's not going to, I don't know.... Curse this place to do this here, is it? I'd hate to think of kids coming through here and getting psychic contamination or whatever it is that thing leaves behind."

"I shouldn't think so," the Doctor assures her, looking for the door to the rest of the maze. "The Mara contaminates minds, not objects. The place where you fell asleep on Deva Loka wasn't just a place; it functioned as an open mind, itself, meant to facilitate shared dreams - and the Mara was lurking there. Ah," he says, finding it, obvious from the fingerprints and circle marks on its edges, but unlike the other one, he doesn't find a way to open it from this side. He starts to dig through his pockets.

Somehow that's not all that reassuring. "It's still from here, from Manussa, isn't it. Like you told Baala. The idea of it is already here, it just hasn't been made real."

"I don't have answers, Tegan, only guesses. But I suspect the Mara isn't from anywhere in that sense. It looks for ways to inhabit and exploit the unconscious, routes to the physical world, wherever they can be found. This world just had the bad luck to create a technology that was uniquely vulnerable to it. And they didn't realise their mistake until it was far too late."

"That old mystic sure seemed to realise it."

"Yes. It's not uncommon for bleeding-edge mavericks to ignore posted warnings while grasping for the latest thing," the Doctor says, and with a smile, finally fishes out a plastic dart with a suction cup on the end. Tegan watches, quizzical, as he licks a finger and frowns, hesitating, then slicks the cup's edge and smacks it onto the mirror.

He pulls the door open by the shaft of the dart and turns to grin at her. "All right. Let's see if we can misdirect the other patrons from this door long enough for our little plan to work uninterrupted, shall we?"

---

Twenty-three: Turlough

Turlough doesn't like Baala.

The boy is leading them through the fairgrounds, as undistracted by the bustle and life as if it weren't there at all. It's the first time he's looked confident, and Turlough has no idea how to take that. He's just too hard to read, to judge; none of his reactions betray any deeper thought at all. Rick seems to trust him implicitly, and Turlough doesn't like that either.

Baala turns and enters a roomy stall full of pegs loaded with identical shiny new bits of useless junk. He waves at a young woman in an outfit that suggests she works here; she waves back and her attention returns to a little device she's holding.

There's a large door at the back that leads into a more permanent looking structure, one of the larger ones in the park, the back wall of which they've been walking past for a little while already. Baala walks up like he owns it, hauls it open and turns back to wait for Rick and Turlough.

The attendant looks up. "Hey! Just a minute, where do you think you're going? You can't afford the tickets, or what? Hey!"

But they've already barreled past, Turlough in the lead, Rick dragging Baala behind them down a hall that's dimly, colorfully lit by pulsing light strips. Turlough doesn't give any attention to the lights that move past them, the atmospheric sounds. He just strides seriously towards his goal until he notices Tegan, peering around a bend further down the corridor.

They lock eyes for the smallest moment before she whips out of sight, the sound of hurrying heels clicking away, and he hears her shout, "Doctor! We're out of time, we've got to go! They're already here!"

Turlough's face flashes with determined, righteous anger and he runs after her. Rick, just behind him, doesn't run. He walks slowly forward with the back of Baala's shirt in his fist, pushing him on in front.

At the end of the corridor, Tegan is nowhere to be found, but the Doctor is slightly crouched, doing something to another door. He turns at the last moment and straightens up, dropping whatever he had in his hands into his pocket. "Hello, Turlough," he says, as though nothing too interesting has happened today.

Turlough doesn't hesitate; he marches straight up and grabs him by both lapels. He stares coldly into his eyes, but the effect is frustratingly ruined by the collected way the Doctor returns it, head tipped back slightly, brow untroubled. Turlough can't, the Mara can't, wait to destroy him.

"Doctor. It's time for a rematch, I think. I've brought a little more of my strength along - and someone you probably don't want to watch me hurt," Turlough says, gesturing with his eyes back towards Rick, who's just caught up, and Baala, who's stumbling to a halt as Rick stops short.

"You won't let them do that, will you?" Baala says, with a matter-of-fact sort of fear.

"No, of course not," the Doctor assures him.

Turlough's face darkens. How dare he pretend he'll be able to protect everyone he wants to? The day's been full of proof that he can't. "We were just talking about empty promises, weren't we. But this moment is full of promise, Doctor. I'll take you and your friends, I'll take the crystal, I'll take Manussa, and that will only be the beginning." He takes a step forward, forcing the Doctor to take a step back. "Just imagine the span of our empire, with the TARDIS at our disposal."

"I won't let that happen. I'd hoped to save you, and to save this planet from your influence. But if I've really lost, I can always take the coward's way out," and his eyes flick towards the door, "nip into the TARDIS and take Nyssa and Tegan and I, all out of your reach."

Turlough is shocked completely silent by such a casual suggestion of abandonment. He'd hoped to save him? A sense of betrayal deeper than he'd thought he could still feel squeezes his lungs so hard even the Mara can feel it. But they won't show that to the Doctor. "You really think you can, don't you? Don't you learn from experience? Your overconfidence has put the Mara in control of you once already."

"Ah, but I got out of that, didn't I?"

That bastard! "By unleashing it on me."

"You knew the risks."

The risks? Of being thrown so casually under the bus? "I didn't expect you to-"

"You knew the risks," the Doctor insists. "Maybe you hadn't thought everything through. Maybe you were just determined to be heroic. I'm not the only one around here who's impulsive. But I wouldn't have used you to free myself if the Mara hadn't suppressed my better nature. You can ask the Dadda about that - if I recall I was quite cross with myself over that move."

"Oh, you regretted saddling me with a demonic entity, did you?"

"Immediately. But I also knew you'd beaten one before. On your own."

"Convenient. Delegating the hard work to your companions again? The way you let the Brigadier stand in the way of your dying seven times over? The way you let me stand between you and the Black Guardian, or left Nyssa and Tegan to drag your useless body all over creation?"

"Are you... I'm sorry, are you actually trying to attack me by pointing out that I can rely on my friends.. to help me?"

The Mara barely has to blow on the spark of rage in Turlough before it's an inferno, pouring out of him, and he's shaking the Doctor, shoving him back another step, into the wall. "Your friends? Was I ever your friend? That you'd give me over to chaos and just leave me here?"

The Doctor's hands go up reflexively, his face shows the shock, the realisation of how his words landed. He looks horrified. Good. Hurt him. Take him. He's looking into your eyes. Now. Now.

But the Doctor seems to realise what's about to happen, and clenches his eyes shut, his face still full of pain and regret. He opens his mouth and seems to try to speak, but all that comes out is a useless stutter.

Turlough leans close to him. "You're never leaving."

Rick is watching all this drama, holding Baala by the arm and looking very annoyed. "Lord Mara, stop fucking fooling around," he admonishes.

At the same moment, the door opens just a crack, and the Doctor slips out of his coat with a boneless shimmy. He's through the door like a shot. Turlough grabs for him, misses, catches the closing door and throws himself through it.

It snaps closed behind them, leaving the Doctor's coat crumpled on the floor, beige and empty.

---

The Doctor is like a giant white rabbit. Turlough lunges at him and the Doctor launches himself to the side, leaving the boy staring into one of the mirrored walls.

Turlough cringes away from it, angrily, his face a wincing snarl, but as his eyes come up to find the Doctor, it's just another mirror; another reflection.

Forget him! Get out! GET OUT!

He turns, looking for the door he came in through, but he can't - they're all - all the walls look the same, all mirrors, all him, all himself and reflections of himself. He tries to slam himself into one and finds he can't. His own image in the mirror repels him like the matching pole of a magnet.

His cry is full of the Mara's frantic rage. "DOCTOR!"

But he turns, and turns, and can't find the Doctor either.

He's abandoned you! Just like he said he would! He knows if I'm destroyed here I'll take you with me. He can't save you; he won't save you!

This time it's loss, it's terror. "Doctor? DOCTOR!"

But the Doctor doesn't appear. He's gone. He's gone, and Turlough is alone, with the Mara, and a thousand thousand reflections, fading into the depths of the glass in the endlessly repeated distance. It's worse than space. He's calling his name anyway, though he doesn't know why, because the Doctor won't come for him, not ever, and nobody else will either.

Suddenly his arm is searing, like in the dream, and as his knees give out in agony he screams and clutches at it and finds the snake sizzling its way out of his arm and into reality, red, sinuous and strong. Then it's gone, it's gone, out of him and on him instead, growing larger every moment. His terror is no longer abstract, it's animal; this thing, it's deadly and it's here.

He's trying to roll, to at least get out from under it, and someone's got him, arms under his shoulders, and he's being dragged, and he's kicking at the huge snake, its white belly, its yellow eyes. He catches it in the side of the head, a glancing blow with the heel of his shoe. It's knocked back, away, and whips itself back around, straightening its face to dive at him -

and a door snaps shut between them, and he's on the floor, half laying on the Doctor, who's on the floor behind him, arms looped around him, breathing as hard as he is. And Turlough, blissfully, passes out.

---

Rick turns on Baala, squeezing his arm harshly and shaking him, once, hard. "What is this exactly?"

"Don't you remember this place?" Baala says, looking up at him, heartbroken.

"What do you - " his attention seems to fade inward, and then his expression is sharp and angry. "Funhouse mirrors. Was this meant to be a trap? It won't work."

"You took me here. It was nice to be out of the studio. We had a good time," Baala says miserably.

"What exactly happened while you were locked in with the Doctor? Does he really even have my crystal?"

"Jovanka told me something got into you. That you'll do things I know you'd never want to do. All you really want is to show people something amazing. That's what you've always wanted."

"I'm still going to show them something amazing." Muffled, from the next room, they hear Turlough belting out the Doctor's name with murderous intent, but Rick barely looks in his direction, concentrating on Baala instead, tightening his grip on him. "What's the Doctor done with my crystal?"

Baala just frowns, his eyes welling with tears. "Mr. ausG. You're hurting my arm."

"I'll do a lot worse if you don't answer the question, Baala."

"She was telling the truth. There's a monster inside your head."

Turlough is calling out almost nonstop for the Doctor now. Rick ignores it entirely. "Where is my crystal?"

"Mr. ausG!"

"Hey!" It's the girl from the stall outside. "Aren't you Rick ausGarten? You don't need to yell at that poor guy! Knock it off and get out, right now."

Rick somehow manages to make letting go of Baala's arm a violent act, and turns on the girl. "Are you sure that's who I am? Take a good look. Go on, look at me."

"Don't hurt her," Baala pleads, his hands curling into terrified fists.

"I..." the girl stutters, staring, confused.

"Look at me instead," Baala says, suddenly sounding confident, composed, so much so that the girl's eyes jump to his face and stay there. "That's good. You can trust me. Look at me."

"Baala, you idiot, what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm asking her to look at me instead of you."

Rick steps behind him and wraps an arm around Baala's head, covering his eyes and staring into the girl's startled face. She looks at him reflexively and he smiles coldly while she goes slightly slack. "Very good."

The door swings wide open behind them. Tegan is standing in the doorway, her head held high, her eyes sparkling, taking in the scene.

"Oh, leave Baala alone, he doesn't matter," she says, cold and deep. "Come on in, Rick. I've got the Doctor. Come and help me take him back."

---

---

Twenty-four: The Doctor

The plan is in motion, the trap is set. Now all the Doctor can do is wait, and try not to let himself spiral into terrible speculation and self-recrimination over everything that's happened because of the Mara. He catches himself being angry at the Kinda for not marking the danger at their place of dreaming, leaving no warning for strangers - but of course the very idea of a stranger was something that had only very recently been thrust upon them.

It hadn't been anyone's fault. Not even his.

Perhaps it's most useful to think of the Mara as just another emergent hazard of life, and luckily one that takes vanishingly unusual conditions to manifest itself this way, as a villain, as a monster.

Tegan shouts her line, her warning, and as she pelts up the corridor towards him, he helpfully prepares for her arrival by opening the door for her.

"Turlough's way out in front," she hisses to him under her breath as she passes him and vanishes through the door, which he lets drop closed with a click.

He invents some nonchalant tampering to be discovered in the midst of; abandons it as footsteps approach.

"Hello, Turlough."

The boy is deep in the Mara's grip now, confident and aggressive, confronting him physically as an opening move. The Doctor covers his misgivings with a good solid show of self confidence. The Mara may have been able to read him like a book while it was inside him, but now it has no idea what he's thinking and it shows. Turlough is on the back foot again, visibly angry that the Doctor isn't responding properly, and goes right for the idea of using Baala's continued safety as leverage.

Baala asks the Doctor for reassurance and he gives it without hesitation. This, unexpectedly, sets Turlough off. He attacks the Doctor with threats that are also promises of the Mara's greatness, of the uses they'll put his TARDIS to.

The unprovoked mention of the TARDIS brings an opportunity to add it as an element of his little subterfuge. "I'd hoped to save you, and to save this planet from your influence. But if I've really lost, I can always nip into the TARDIS," he says, and his eyes flick towards the door, "and take Nyssa and Tegan and I, all out of your reach."

Turlough manages to look even angrier. "You really think you can, don't you? Your overconfidence has put the Mara in control of you once already."

The Doctor indulges in a little pure cockiness. "Ah, but I got out of that, didn't I?"

"By unleashing it on me."

And now, play it cool. "You knew the risks."

"I didn't expect you to-"

"You knew the risks," the Doctor insists. "Maybe you hadn't thought everything through. Maybe you were just determined to be heroic. I'm not the only one around here who's impulsive. But I wouldn't have used you to free myself if the Mara hadn't suppressed my better nature. You can ask the Dadda about that - if I recall I was quite cross with myself over that move."

"Oh, you regretted saddling me with a demonic entity, did you?"

"Immediately. But I also knew you'd beaten one before. On your own." And that was even true - his hotter, colder, more pragmatic side had soothed its conscience with that.

"Convenient. Delegating the hard work to your companions again? The way you let the Brigadier stand in the way of your dying seven times over? The way you let me stand between you and the Black Guardian, or left Nyssa and Tegan to drag your useless body all over creation?"

He's almost got a point - except - "Are you... I'm sorry, are you actually trying to attack me by pointing out that I can rely on my friends.. to help me?"

The words land like a slap and suddenly, violently, Turlough is shaking the Doctor, shoving him back another step, into the wall. "Your friends? Was I ever your friend? That you'd give me over to chaos and just leave me here?"

The Doctor is trying to needle him into rash action, but perhaps he's miscalculated. It hurts him as much as it hurts Turlough. But the Doctor will be able to dig the betrayal out of him later, won't he? Replace it with trust? Later, when he understands. That will erase these moments, the ones when the boy was sure to his soul that the Doctor had planned to abandon him.

It's not true, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. It's not true. I'll tell you so soon that it was never true. As soon as I can. He gets ready to escape Turlough's grip, shuts his eyes, signals Tegan.

Turlough leans close to him. "You're never leaving."

The Doctor hears the door beside him open just a crack, hears Rick making some complaint, takes advantage of the distraction to slip out of the coat that's twisted up in Turlough's fists. He ducks down and through the door before the boy can get his hands back on him.

Tegan scampers back from the exit door after opening it, out of the Doctor's way, and watches Turlough throw himself desperately into the room after him, chasing him with oblivious determination, limbs and fingers outstretched. She edges her way around the room, pulls the entry door open just far enough to put her fingers through the gap, and disappears through it.

The Doctor can't afford to look back but he hears the sound of Turlough's pursuit and he zigs and zags until he hears the snap of the door closing properly. When he hits and shoves himself away from the first mirror he comes to, Turlough nearly crashes into it behind him, stopping as short as if it were a spike trap. By the time the boy recovers from that strange distress, the Doctor has already vanished, after Tegan, through the second door.

Someone is gripping the Doctor by the arm - it's Tegan, her worried face lit strangely by the maze lights, looking up at him for reassurance. "How will we know when to get him out of there?"

They hear Turlough roar the Doctor's name, rabidly angry, and their eyes flick to the mirrored door and back to one another. The Doctor grimaces a bit. "Intuition?" he says, and then they both wince in sympathy as Turlough yells the Doctor's name again, now as a devastated plea.

"Now?" Tegan asks, but the Doctor just holds up an index finger, listening.

There's another cry from Turlough, this time like someone's tearing his arm off. "Now," the Doctor says decisively. Tegan opens and holds the door; the Doctor rushes through.

And it's there, just as planned. The Mara in its true form, attacking Turlough for no more reason than to channel its rage amongst all these mirrors. The snake is still vulnerable, though, disoriented by its own rapid growth, burning through the strength it has spent all this time leeching from the turmoil of its hosts. Turlough is fighting it off in a mindless panic, still on his back. The Doctor gets down, grabs him, pulls him backwards towards the open door, while Turlough continues to struggle, trying to throw off the snake. They're almost through when Turlough lands a lucky blow, a kick right to its eye. Doctor hauls on him for all he's worth as the now python-sized snake recovers itself and rears back, fast and steady, to strike. Tegan shrieks a warning and pulls the door shut with a snap, followed by the thud, the roar, of the snake on the other side, and then the Doctor and Turlough are lying in a jumble of limbs, awkward, safe.

Tegan watches the Doctor extricate himself gently from Turlough, who's gone suddenly limp and quiet. "Is he all right?"

"As rain, shortly, I should expect," he replies, letting Turlough's head down carefully onto the floor. "It didn't take Aris long to recover from a similar ordeal, as I recall."

"He had all his brothers, though. Didn't you say they were telepathic?"

"We'll just have to support him ourselves then. Now. How will we get ausGarten in there? He must know by now it's a trap."

Tegan gives an involuntary start as they hear the snake thump against a wall in the next room. "At least he hasn't figured out how to open the door on his side and let it out."

"Oh, you can't open it from that side right now, I've disabled that feature."

"Then one of us has got to open it for him anyway."

He moves towards the door. "I'm afraid so. Let's check on the Mara, shall we?"

Tegan is immediately alarmed. "What do you-"

He flips a hidden switch and plunges the hall into darkness. Tegan chokes off a little shriek of surprise, and they hear, off somewhere nearby in the maze, sounds of the distress of strangers.

With the lights off they can see through the glass; it's become a one-way mirror. On the other side, the snake is gargantuan now, coiling and flipping in distress, the flashes of its white belly shining multicolored in the lights still racing around the room.

There's a crescendo of size, of malevolence. Then, like a dream being forgotten on waking, it's simply no longer there.

The Doctor puts the lights back on.

Tegan looks up at him, her face serious and set. "I guess it's my turn," she says, and opens the mirrored door.

"What are you going to do?"

"Don't you worry about that. I've got an idea."

He is definitely going to worry about that.

---

Tegan steels herself, standing in the middle of the mirrored room, tugging at the ends of her white sleeves. She glances down. That'll do. All right. Here we go. She takes a deep breath, shoulders down, neck long, and thinks, murder. And walks.

She pushes the exit door open wide and stands in the doorway, evaluating the situation. The girl who'd been minding the merchandise outside is here, staring at Rick and Baala, mesmerised. And now Rick, his hands still on Baala, is turning to see who's at the door.

Showtime.

"Oh, leave Baala alone, he doesn't matter."

Rick lets go of Baala without thinking, turning to face Tegan more fully, to look collected and in control while he casts an evaluating eye over her.

She graces him with the hint of a knowing smile. "Come on in, Rick. I've got the Doctor. Come and help me take him back."

"Lord Mara," he says, slightly awed. She must be doing something right.

"Miss Jovanka," Baala says quietly, looking very anxious, and Tegan has to hope against hope that he's not about to give her away. She doesn't dare try to signal him - and would that work anyway, with Baala? But what he says is, "Please don't hurt him."

"Shut up, Baala," Rick snaps under his breath.

She gives him a slow blink, a broader, more condescending smile, while Rick approaches and she stands aside to let him through the door. "Oh, I won't hurt anyone. Promise. You believe me, don't you, Baala? Come closer."

"Yes," he replies, and there's the tiniest movement of his eyebrows, "Lord Mara."

Tegan channels the urge to punch the air into a more smug looking Mara face as Rick passes her by. She gives Baala a nod, pushes the door shut and leans on it with all she's got. "Come on Baala, help me keep it shut."

They hear the sharp thud of a flat-footed kick from the other room, not to the door, thankfully, but near it.

"Help her,"" Baala says to the still glassy-eyed attendant, and they both join her, pushing at the door. He looks at Tegan. "What's going to happen to him?"

"BAALA! BAALAKA, LET ME OUT!" Another kick, this one to the door, but with all three of them backing it up, the catch holds.

Baala's brow wrinkles with conflict. "What happened to Turlough? I heard him getting hurt! I thought you were going to save him?"

"Turlough's fine! I think he's fine. He'll be fine. And the Doctor will get Rick clear."

"BAALA! OPEN THAT DOOR RIGHT NOW!"

The next kick doesn't land on the door, but Baala winces at the sound, takes his weight off the door, takes a hesitant step back. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure, Baala! Please!"

"I can't just.. I'll meet you on the other side," he says, and runs away.

"Baala!"

On the other side of the door, Rick begins to scream.

---

The Doctor turns the lights back off so he can watch through the mirrored door. Somehow, Tegan gets Rick to go inside without her, and she slams her door shut with everyone safely on the other side. Excellent!

AusGarten doesn't seem any more able than Aris or Turlough had been, to directly attack the mirrored surfaces, until he turns and mule-kicks one behind him, and the Doctor winces. But luckily, this structure is built for the public, including its rowdier members, and the mirrored wall stands up to the punishment. Still, if Rick kicks the door leading out.... But all he can do is watch, and be ready to sprint through the room if the Mara escapes it.

But Rick's escape attempts fail, the Mara's tolerance is exhausted, and it leaves him to spend its last moments fully in reality in one last hope of escape, or at least, one last burst of violence.

The Doctor goes through his door, wedges it open with Turlough's foot so he'll be able to get back out with Rick. Rick, for his part, is putting up a decent fight, trying to throw, to scrape the snake's tight, muscular loops from his wrists, and he's got its head in both of his hands. It's working, partly, because this snake isn't growing nearly so big or so fast as the ones the Doctor has seen before.

And so the Doctor decides to fight the snake directly, laying hands on its dense, hot, smooth body and pulling it away from its prey.

Rick gets disentangled enough to stand up and twist the rest of the way free of the snake, letting go of its head and dashing backwards. And he sees the door that's cracked open and runs for it.

"Rick! Don't - Help?" the Doctor complains, yanking an arm back to narrowly avoid a bite, the snake's fangs sinking deeply into the chunky knit of his cricket jumper and hitting nothing, but ausGarten is probably half-mad with primal fear, anyway, and he's gone, and - and he's thrown the door wide open.

And the snake has seen the exit as well. With an instantaneous change of intention, the line of its action is completely redirected into escape.

---