'People,' sighed Fitz lazily, watching her go."They're all so... stupid!'

'That's a gross generalisation, surely,' came a polite, quiet voice that somehow made Fitz spin round as if he'd been given an order. 'I'd like this begonia, please.'

The man was looking at him. There seemed something slightly aloof about his manner, about his whole bearing; a sense of detachment from the quiet and the greenery about them. Only the eyes seemed definite, anchored on to his own as if peering inside him.

'This begonia?' Fitz broke eye contact and studied the plant. 'But it's nearly dead.'

The man smiled, and Fitz wondered, looking at the stranger's strange clothes and shoulder-length hair, if this man was some kind of dropout himself.

'I know,' said the man. 'I intend to rescue it.'

'Rescue it?' Fitz realised with a surge of annoyance that his own act was being turned back on him.

'Indeed. You could call it a calling.'

Fitz regarded him with his long-practised look of studied boredom. 'A calling.'

'Oh, you just did. Do you simply like my turn of phrase, or were you raised by parrots?'

'One and six for the begonia,' he muttered with a puff of a cigarette smoke.

'One and six,' sighed the stranger. 'The price of compassion.' The man's face crumpled into a sorrowful frown as he checked the pockets of his dark-green velvet jacket. 'I don't have one and six. Would tuppence suffice?'

'Can't do that,' said Fitz, vaguely, the hint of a jobsworth smile on his lips and glancing about to see if anyone else was in sight. He noticed some old women strolling towards his stall and found himself looking forward to the boredom of their presence.

'Oh please,' begged the strange man, looking longingly at the begonia.

'One and six or it goes back.'

'But I only want to help it -'The man broke off and stared at him, suddenly baffled. 'Why are you putting on that French accent?'

Fitz felt his face redden as the old women approached closer. He affected anger as the cause for this rush of his dubiously Gallic blood. 'How dare you -'

'On peut apprendre d'un grand homme meme lorqu'il se tait ,' said the stranger, suddenly, before looking at him expectantly.

Fitz realised he was expected to reply. Or had that been gibberish? He opened his mouth mechanically a couple of times as he thought desperately how to regain control of the situation. Finally he straightened up, stubbed out the cigarette, smiled at the old ladies now queuing patiently behind this loony, and with accent and dignity only barely intact, glared at the man with the infuriatingly bright smile.

'All right.' Fitz held out his hand. 'Tuppence.'

*

Fitz couldn't believe his eyes as he started walking round the cellar. Bottles of wine, hundreds of them, stretched out before him, crammed in from floor to ceiling. Some were thick with cobwebs, dating back forty or fifty years; others had obviously been laid down more recently to be enjoyed in the future. Well, it seemed unlikely anyone would object to his just helping himself. A good drink was exactly what he needed.

Wondering vaguely if he'd already been killed upstairs and hadn't noticed the trip to heaven, Fitz pulled out his Swiss army knife corkscrew and got stuck in.

***

Fitz sat on a large crate in the middle of the cold flagstone floor and drained a bottle of some fancy wine with a stupid name. It tasted pretty foul, to be honest, but he was comforted by the fact it must've been hugely expensive and not a bad vintage. Wouldn't be here, otherwise.

Suddenly, Fitz felt his stomach lurch as he distantly heard a grating, wheezing noise. It was the Doctor's ship. He'd got away. Or had Watson nicked the keys off his corpse and taken it for a spin himself?

As stealthily as he could with a bottle of posh red inside him, Fitz crept up the stairway.

***

The TARDIS had brought the Doctor to the top of the hall stairs. The scanner showed the landing to be empty. He patted the console and opened the doors.

Cautiously, he looked out. While he'd been crossing to the doorway, Lucy had turned the landing corner and was galloping towards him. He bolted through the doors, dashing to get to the stairs before she did, then taking them four at a time.

'Stop being such a bore!' she yelled at him. 'Stay where you are and let us kill you!'

The Doctor didn't waste time bothering to reply. He took in the decapitated Azoth, glanced at Fitz's mother lying prone by the robot's side, panicked for a moment, then spied the head lying by the far wall, next to Maria. As Lucy hoisted her dress and ran down the stairs, he dashed over and scooped it up. He didn't need to examine Maria closely to realise the woman was dead.

'Doctor?'

The Doctor blinked. It seemed the wall was talking to him.

'Do you know anything about wines?'

The Doctor allowed himself the smallest of smiles. 'A little.' He peered under the tapestry, as a door opened inward and Fitz stared out at him.

'Get yourself in here, then,' Fitz said.

***

Fitz looked glumly at Azoth's head in the Doctor's arms. 'What did you bring that for?'.

'I thought it would make a nice punch bowl,' said the Doctor. 'Now, quickly, what can we use as a barricade? They know where we are, now.'

'Well...' Fitz made a great show of looking about him. "There's one or two bottles of wine lying around.'

'We'll use the racks. Good idea.'

Together, they hefted some of the empty racks and wedged them up against the door.

'That'll hold them for about two minutes,' said Fitz, surveying their handiwork.

'Then I'd better see if I can beat my record for stripping down positronic brains,' answered the Doctor, using the intelligent scalpel he'd used to cut out Fitz's leech to score a large hole in the blackened head. 'About three point two four minutes, if I recall correctly.'

'That thing is really dead now, I take it,' said Fitz.

'I hope not. I'm relying on a couple more dying breaths,' said the Doctor, airily, glancing up. 'If he is dead, then so are we.'

***

Sam clutched hold of the door to the butterfly room for support as she ventured out into the corridor. She hated feeling useless, weak and ill. She'd seemingly done little but recuperate lately; after Janus Prime, Belannia, Proxima n. She was sick of being sick, and on current form she'd need a hefty convalescence period to cope with that realisation too.

Her head swam about her as she reached the console room. She called for the Doctor, but he wasn't there. She'd put the kettle on, make him a cup of Darjeeling. Just as soon as she stopped seeing two or three of everything, anyway. She'd make it across to the armchair, rest easy for a couple of moments.

***

'What are you trying to do, anyway?' asked Fitz.

'I'm glad you asked,' said the Doctor, brightly. 'I approve of an inquiring mind. It's my sonic screwdriver.' He inserted a short, wandlike instrument into the hole in the robot's head. 'Azoth's final solution. I've discovered what it is.'

'Go on then,' said Fitz, wearily, swigging from another bottle of wine and smacking his lips.

'It's crude, but horribly effective. A bioelectrical pulse, transmitted from Azoth's brain. A bit like lobotomising with a cleaver - it switches people off, just like that.' He clicked his fingers as he finished speaking. 'And it's self-replicating, increasing exponentially. The energy released by the pulse shutting down the brain propels it telepathically to whoever's nearby.'

'Your critical-mass theory, again,' noted Fitz. Suddenly, he did a double take. 'Jesus, it can do all that and you're trying to get it started?'

'Not exactly,' said the Doctor, making minute adjustments to his sonic screwdriver.

Fitz watched him work, both impressed by and slightly resentful of his skill. 'Why didn't Azoth set it all going the moment he arrived here? That would've sorted out his problems.'

The Doctor removed a complex latticework of crystals from the metal shell and peered at it. 'That's like an exterminator blowing up your house because it's got a cockroach infestation,' he said.

'Azoth wasn't a butcher. His directives insisted he disrupt the civilisations he came across as little as possible.'

'Even so,' said Fitz, taking another swig. 'Makes you wonder how many planets he gave up on and wiped out before going on to the next.'

'Quite. I agree he wasn't a hundred per cent warm and cuddly.' The Doctor tentatively tapped on a crystal deep in the lattice, and sighed. 'What a mess...'

'Doctor,' announced Fitz, suddenly, 'Not wanting to cause disappointment later on by cocking up, I want you to know I am totally out of my depth.'

'Best way to learn,' the Doctor assured him.

'But I don't want to learn!'

'Best go to university, then.'

A loud banging started up on the cellar door. Fitz and the Doctor looked at each other.

'The final assault,' said the Doctor. 'It's started.'

***

'Doctor! Can you hear me in there, Doctor?'

Watson ripped away the tapestry from the small door in the wall, flanked now by Lucy, Taylor, Waller and Mrs Kreiner.

'I'm sorry?' The Doctor's voice floated up from the cellar. 'You'll have to speak up - I can't hear you.'

Watson smiled. 'It's quite a hall of mirrors you've got up there, Doctor.'

***

The Doctor stopped what he was doing and slapped his forehead. "The TARDIS. In the rush I didn't close the -' He broke off and called out. 'Sorry, Watson, I don't know what you're talking about. That's just a police box. Perhaps you're insane or something.'

Fitz shivered as Watson laughed. 'Insane or not, I found something in there, Doctor.'

The Doctor and Fitz looked at each other.

'Go on, speak to him, girl.'

They heard a muffled groan. Even in the pale light of the cellar, Fitz could see the colour drain from the Doctor's face.

'Sam,' he whispered.

***

'Come out and face me, Doctor. Now. Or the girl dies.' Watson paused, grabbing hold of Sam's fringe - taking care not to touch her skin just yet - and pulling her head about for scrutiny. 'Best be quick about it, too - she's not looking too clever as it is.'

'Watson!' the Doctor yelled. 'Listen to me, my hall of mirrors: it's a time machine, a spaceship.'

***

'What are you telling him that, for?' hissed Fitz.

'I just need a little more time,' said the Doctor, feverishly making fractional adjustments to the crystal circuits.

***

Watson enjoyed hearing the fear in the Doctor's voice. "That's a little desperate, isn't it, Doctor?'

'It happens to be true, although your cynicism does you credit. 'The Doctor babbled on, while Watson tried to coax some response out of Sam, pale and sweating at his feet. 'Most villains ask me to ferry them round the universe destroying things. I have to turn them down, of course...'

'There's only one thing I want from you, Doctor,' Watson called backhand that's your head on a stick.'

'Would you mind if I provided the stick myself? Only I'm terribly fussy about hygiene...'

***

The Doctor was still working frantically as he talked. 'Nearly there,' he muttered.

'Why are they stringing it out like this?' wondered Fitz.

'Until they're strong enough to transmit this taint of theirs by thought alone, they'll be at something of a loose end.' He smiled faintly. "The 1960s. We're still in the good old days of live entertainment.'

'You still haven't told me what you're doing,' grumbled Fitz.

'Later.'

Fitz grabbed the Doctor by the shoulder and spun him round, his voice rising. 'There isn't going to be a later.'

'All right, all right,' said the Doctor. "There's barely any energy left at all in these circuits, enough for a short range pulse only.'

'The Terminal Solution?' Fitz started. 'But that'll kill us - you, me, Mum, everyone.'

'Enough talk, Doctor,' came Watson's voice from behind the door. 'Come out and face me, now, or I mean it, I'll kill her.'

'I rather think you'll kill her no matter what I do,' the Doctor said.

Lucy decided to join in. 'We want you to see her die right there in front of you.'

'You're not really selling it to me, I'm afraid,' the Doctor called, casually. 'Why don't you just come and get me?'

Watson again. 'I want you to acknowledge yourself that it's your futile love of life that's brought you to your death. Shamed on your knees, before me. Now.'

'Oh, but I’ve just opened a rather cheeky little Chablis,' protested the Doctor. 'Tell you what, I'll pour everyone a glass and meet you up there in a moment.' The Doctor turned to Fitz, his voice low. 'I've changed the wavelengths so it will only affect those carrying the leech.'

Fitz stared at him, hurt and confused, his thoughts thick with too much wine. 'You're going to kill my mum,' he said in a small voice.

'Your mother's already dead, Fitz. She's gone. I know it's difficult, but...'

'You were going to help them,' Fitz argued. 'You said you'd make them better.'

'It's too late!' said the Doctor, his eyes grey shadows on his face. 'Critical mass, "boom", remember? The power build-up, it's irreversible.'

'No! Why should I believe you? The image of his mum throttling the life out of him broke its way back into his mind, driving him crazy. 'And what about Sam? The leech is in her, too.'

The Doctor turned back to his work. 'Fitz, please, if we don't stop them now, they'll -'

'What's with this "we" business?' said Fitz, angrily. 'Don't bring me into this, this isn't "we", this is just "you". It's always what you want, like Maria said before she got killed, isn't it?'

The Doctor said nothing, and Fitz came to a decision. 'She's still my mum, Doctor!'

'I told you, she isn't. '

'How can you be sure?'

Fitz tried to grab the Doctor by the lapels, knocking him back against the wall, just as the pounding started up again on the cellar's heavy oak door. Already, the wood was beginning to splinter. The Doctor held the crystal above his head as he tried to push Fitz away, their struggle pulling them down one of the musty aisles.

'There's no time for this,' the Doctor shouted, twisting free abruptly and sending Fitz sprawling into a wine rack that collapsed beneath his weight. His body crashed heavily to the floor along with several bottles, but the sound couldn't drown out the noise of the banging on the door.

The Doctor checked that Fitz was only unconscious, then studied the crystal again, as shadowy figures began to insinuate themselves from the dark corners of the cellar. Huge, grey monochrome images of Watson and Lucy, looming large with Sam between them, her head bowed, saved from collapse only by Lucy's tight grip on her hair.

'Broadcast live, Doctor,' came Watson's voice from the hallway, though the apparition in front of him mouthed along to the words. 'I wouldn't want you to miss this.'

The Doctor could see Fitz's mother standing behind them, mutely. Presumably Taylor and Russell were beating down the door. And now Sam had been jolted awake. He looked down at the crystals as she started to scream and the door began to rip off its hinges.

Activating the sonic screwdriver, sending a focused loop of energy into the circuits, he closed his eyes.

***

'We're nearly through!' Russell reported, eagerly. 'We're so strong...'

'Only the beginning, lad,' said Watson. 'You hear that, Doctor?' he called. 'We'll hunt you down like a dog!'

'And let's make this little bitch bark louder,' said Lucy.

***

The Doctor looked up in horror. Nothing had happened. The huge projection of Sam, her eyes wide and tears flowing down her stone-grey face, towered over him. He heard the door cave in, and a shout of triumph.

The lattice was dead, not enough energy even for short range. The Doctor held the crystals to his forehead and the screwdriver to the crystals, concentrating, shutting out the din: Sam's loudest scream yet, heavy racks of wine being thrown down the cellar steps, Lucy's wild racing laughter, boots crashing and echoing around the stone walls as they drew nearer, nearer -

***

Lucy's laughter turned to choking, thick, heavy coughs ripping out of her, as a thick gout of blood erupted from the back of her head. Watson turned and saw her black hair frazzle to her scalp like a spark along fuse wire, her eyes fixing his with outraged accusation before they turned milky white and burst all over her face.

The girl fell from Lucy's grasp. As Mrs Kreiner shouted for her son, it was Watson's scream that took up where Sam's had left off.

***

The Doctor looked up to see Taylor and Russell staggering backward away from him, blood pouring from their heads and drenching their bodies, shouting incoherently in their pain and confusion. They gripped each other, convulsing and shuddering like wet dogs shaking water from their coats. Pushing past them, the Doctor sprinted up the cellar steps.

***

'Sam!'

She was lying face down on the floor, Watson hunched over her. He looked up at the Doctor's cry, trembling, less substantial now than his ghost had been in the cellar.

'Doctor -' he began, holding out his hand once more. Begging for help, this time.

The Doctor watched as Watson slowly toppled over, collapsing back on to Lucy's corpse. The captain's head hit the floor and shattered into dust.

***

Crouching by Sam, the Doctor rocked on his heels, listening to the heavy ticking of Roley's clocks marking the silence. Minutes stretched past. Wisps of foul-smelling smoke drifted about the hall.

'We apologise for the loss of usual cheesy wisecracks,' Sam whispered to the floorboards. Gently, the Doctor eased her round, into his arms. She smiled, her lips chapped and cracked. 'Normal service will be resumed... probably...'

Sam fell unconscious, her head on the Doctor's lap.'Your leech had shut down,' he muttered to himself, sighing with relief.

There was a noise behind him. He turned as Fitz came to the top of the cellar steps, not looking anywhere but at the Doctor.

'Well,' Fitz said, rubbing the back of his head. 'That seems to have worked, then, doesn't it?'

***

They telephoned the police and they left; it was as simple as that. They never hung around anywhere for long. The Doctor was always ready to move on as soon as he could, and Sam always went along with it. This time, however, the Doctor had something he wanted to do before turning his back on the whole affair.

'And now?' he asked.

Sam squinted into the London sunshine of 2134, the sky still blue, half obscured by the colossal buildings reaching up to touch it. People dironged the pedestrianised streets, talking, laughing, going about their business as they had always done. No one seemed particularly bothered by a battered blue police box obstructing their way.

'Unless my sight's gone back to normal sooner than you reckoned it would... No,' Sam said, finally. 'No Beast on any of them.'

The Doctor beamed. 'I thought they'd have to have moved on by now. The Dalek invasion thirty years from now decimated humanity. The feeding needs of the Beast would've killed off the survivors, just as they did the Benelisans all that time ago.'

'But instead, our super fleas got all the energy they wanted and lived to hop another day.' She peered at him. "They've left you, too, by the way.'

'That'll be the TARDIS, I imagine,' said the Doctor. 'When we left 1963, we left the dimensional intersection behind us.'

He closed the doors and flicked a few switches on the console, sending the TARDIS on its way. Sam came over and stood next to him.

'And now there's a cuckoo in our nest,' she said.

'Really?' asked the Doctor, his head cocked to one side. 'Where?'

Sam rolled her eyes. 'You know perfectly well what I mean.'

The Doctor smiled. 'You're worried whether our newcomer fits in?'

'Stop dodging the issue with crap puns,' said Sam. Tentatively, she took his hand. 'Things won't be quite the same, will they?'

The Doctor's shoulders slumped. 'I suppose there will be a longer queue for the bathroom each morning,' he said.

Sam ignored him and stood on tip-toes, looking into his eyes. 'No more just you and me.'

The Doctor looked at her for some time, before the ghost of a smile crept on to his face. His voice was barely more than a breath. 'I didn't want to just leave him behind.'

Sam nodded and took a step back. 'It was a mess, wasn't it? All that, and the only other person left alive has his head scrambled,' she said. 'And he never even carried the poxy leech.'

'Roley will be cared for,' said the Doctor. 'Where there's life, there's always hope.' He paused. 'Hopes . No matter what the likes of Watson may say.'

Sam's looked at him, searching his eyes for some clue as to how he was really feeling. 'Fitz's mum screamed for him when she died,' she said, finally.

The Doctor looked down at the console, 'I know.'

'You told him she never felt a thing.'

'Would it have profited him to have known otherwise? "The Doctor seemed to be putting the question to a couple of dials, still refusing to look up. 'Would it have made it any easier for him?'

'It might have comforted him to know she'd become his mother again before the end.'

'She hadn't,' said the Doctor, firmly, looking at her now. 'Her brain was like the others, a balloon filling with water. It could've burst at any moment.'

'I know...' she said, softly, placing her hand back on his, listening to the whirrs and clicks of the TARDIS. 'I know.' She moved away.

'And you know that, sometimes, we all have to make decisions, Sam,' called the Doctor. Sam turned to look at him, standing forlornly by the console. She nodded, smiling faintly, before walking off to her room. 'I know ', she said.

***

Fitz looked around the room that would now be his. It was pretty bare, at the moment, but that would soon change. The Doctor had the most incredible amount of stuff lying around, there for the taking. In the room where he'd dumped the remains of Azoth, Fitz had already found bags of gold, tape recorders that used tiny little discs, swimming pools and saunas, a 1957 strat signed by Elvis, even a giant double bed with a radio, a clock with no hands and little spotlights built into the headboard. Fab.

There was nothing waiting back home for him now. His mum had been taken from him - by Azoth, Roley, Watson, they all shared the blame. The Doctor had just wound up dealing with it - Fitz had come to terms with that. Now all he had to do was come to terms with what she'd become. Yeah. No problem. For sure.

He focused instead on his situation. No job, after bunking off like that - not that he'd stay around there if his life depended on it. No prospects - well, no change there. The police were still after him, of course - he was, in actual fact, now officially on the run. Well, good luck to them in finding him now. The Doctor had offered him a way out, and he'd taken it. An intergalactic fugitive on a bus that had planets and centuries for request stops. I am Fitz, from beyond the stars. On my planet, it is customary to shag by way of civilised greeting...

He smiled to himself, closing the door and mooching along the corridor to begin a new life.