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If you asked, Ace McShane would say, by and large, that she had settled down. She wasn't traveling through time anymore, after all, and the last time she'd been on another planet had to have been… well, it was years ago, anyway. She had a house now, and a wife, and a career writing pulp sci-fi novels mostly from the imagination. And if she happened to still spend some of her time developing new and more powerful homemade explosives, and a little more of her time tracking down aliens when they happened to land close to home, well, that was no one's business but hers, was it?
And that was how she found the teenage girl.
She'd gotten an email from a man looking for his sister’s killer. It wasn't uncommon, for her to get that sort of email; she'd made sort of a name for herself, in certain communities. He thought the killer was extraterrestrial in origin—he thought they were coming back—and most people would have dismissed these claims.
Ace wasn’t most people.
Sure, loads of the people who emailed her were completely full of it. But if Ace took all her messages seriously, she could find the ones who weren't.
And now she was leaving his shop, mulling over energy signals and atmospheric disruptions, but not too distracted to notice the distinctly lost-looking teenager with a ragged and singed hoodie and long blonde hair that really needed a comb. She was slouched against a wall just outside a street light’s glow, her hair covering her face; as Ace came closer, she looked up, revealing tear tracks down a dirt- and eyeliner-smudged face.
“Are you all right?” Ace asked.
The girl took in a breath, then hesitated, let out the breath, and resorted to a shake of her head.
“Do you need help?” Ace prodded. “You can use my phone, if you need to call someone.”
The girl hesitated, her eyes skating across Ace’s face. Finally, she nodded.
Ace took out her phone. She still used the flip phone she'd gotten in the ‘90’s, although she'd enhanced it quite a bit. She passed it to the girl.
The girl stared at the phone in her hand for a long moment. Just when Ace opened her mouth to ask if she needed help, the girl started to dial. A second later, she lifted the phone to her ear. Ace could hear the faint ringing, one ring, then two, and another and another until the voicemail picked up.
“Mum?” the girl whispered. “I'm sorry. I didn't mean to—” She seemed near tears. “I'm—” She paused, looking around the street, then to Ace. “Where is this?”
“Sheffield,” Ace said.
“I'm in Sheffield,” the girl said. To Ace, she added, “Can you—can you tell me the year?”
Ace raised her eyebrows. “2018. Seventh of October.”
“Okay.” The girl repeated the date into the phone. “Love you,” she whispered. She ended the call, then looked back up at Ace. “Can I try my mama?”
Ace nodded.
The girl dialed again, and again, the phone rang, and again, the voicemail picked up. The girl ran through a similar message, and then when she ended the call, she stared at the phone for a long time.
“I think my dad’s dead,” she finally said, the words just above a whisper. There was another long silence, and then: “I think it's my fault.”
Ace looked at the girl for a long moment. “Would you like a hug?” she asked.
Without a second’s thought, the girl collapsed into her. Ace wrapped her arms around her, halfway sure her awkward embrace would drive the girl away. If you asked for homemade bombs, she could deliver in a heartbeat—a shoulder to cry on? Not so much.
Still, the girl stayed in Ace’s arms for a long time. Finally, she pulled back, sniffling.
“All right, kid,” Ace said, her hands still on the girl’s shoulders. “If I ask you where you live, are you going to have a straight answer?”
The girl bit her bottom lip. “Not really.”
“Right. Then you'd better come home with me. Are you injured?”
It took a moment for the girl to answer. She ran her hands along her face, then her ribcage, looking down at herself. “I don't think so,” she finally said.
“Come on, then. We’ll get you cleaned up, and then maybe we can find your parents.” Ace started walking, glancing back to make sure the girl was following. She was shuffling along behind Ace, and Ace tried to give her a reassuring smile. “My name’s Ace, by the way.”
The girl didn't quite return the smile. “I'm Mia.”
“Nice to meet you, Mia.”
Grace Sinclair was having, if she was being honest, the adventure of her life. Her wife talked about aliens sometimes, aliens and time travel and outer space like they were something you could reach out and touch, but there was still that sense of fantasy to it, that faint shiny tinge of disbelief.
This, though—this was real. This was being in the woods with her grandson and a freezing cold blue thing appearing out of nowhere, this was a mess of wires and sparks on a train, and this was a woman in a tattered too-large suit falling through the roof and declaring that she could fix the problem even though she didn't seem to know her own name.
She did fix it, though. The mess of wires and sparks burst and fell into a pile of limp metal, and the strange woman teetered over it for about three seconds, murmured something unintelligible, and then fell to the ground.
It was as Grace was kneeling at her side, about to look her over for signs of blood, that the paramedics came running down the hallway. Two of them stopped at the strange woman’s unconscious form.
“What happened?” one asked, looking up at Grace. She was young, about Ryan's age, maybe, briskly professional with bright eyes.
“She fell through the ceiling,” Ryan said. He looked at Grace. “I mean, you saw that, right? And the thing with the metal tentacles?”
The paramedic raised her eyebrows.
Ryan raised his hands. “I'm serious! That's what happened!”
“He's right,” Grace said. “That's what we saw.”
The paramedic didn't look convinced. “Do you know this woman?” she asked.
“No,” Ryan said. “I'm telling you. She fell right through the ceiling.”
Before the paramedic could respond, her partner, who had been checking the strange woman over for injuries, murmured something, gesturing at the woman's neck. The first paramedic touched two fingers to the strange woman's pulse point and frowned.
“We need to get her into the ambulance,” her partner said.
There was a flurry of motion after that: five people maneuvered the strange woman onto a board and then out of the train, Grace and Ryan following.
“Are either of you injured?” the bright-eyed paramedic asked.
Grace shook her head. “Can we come with her?” she asked.
“I thought you didn’t know her?”
“Doesn’t mean we want her to be on her own,” Ryan said.
“Well, might be a bit tight, but you can come if you like,” the paramedic said. They were at the ambulance now, loading the strange woman onto a stretcher and then into the back. Grace and Ryan took the seats offered to them, and then they were off, jostling down the road. The paramedics were busy sticking EKG stickers onto the strange woman; Grace looked carefully away as they unbuttoned the top of her shirt to access her chest.
And then, just as Grace glanced back at the strange woman's face, her mouth opened, and a cloud of golden mist floated out.
“What was that?” asked the bright-eyed paramedic.
Grace stared at the woman's face. Ace’s stories flashed through her mind— strange storms, blowing up out of nowhere, transporting people through time; a haunted house, far in the past; and people who looked like humans, but weren't.
“Something unexplainable,” she murmured.
Ace was halfway to the bus stop with Mia when her phone rang. The caller ID showed Grace’s smiling face; Ace matched the smile as she picked up.
“Hi!”
“I believe you.” There was a distinct excitement in Grace’s voice.
Ace frowned. “What?”
“I believe you. About the aliens.”
“Back up,” Ace said, glancing over at Mia. “I thought you were going for a hike with Ryan. What happened?”
“This blue thing appeared in the forest— and then something odd happened on the train. There's this woman— she fell through the roof— she's unconscious now. We're taking her to the hospital.”
“What's she look like?” Ace asked.
“Er—white, blonde. Clothes are a mess. Why?”
Ace turned to Mia. “Hey, kid, are either of your mothers blonde?”
Mia stared. “Did you find them?”
“My wife might have found one of them,” Ace said. “Apparently she's unconscious.”
“Yes, that's Mum,” Mia said. “Sometimes when time is wibbly she's out for hours.”
“They're taking her to the hospital,” Ace said. “We could meet them there.”
Mia was quiet. “She's not going to like being at the hospital,” she finally said, her voice small.
“We’ll figure it out when she wakes up,” Ace promised. Into her phone, she said, “Grace, still there?”
“Still here. What's that about someone's mum?”
“I've got a teenage girl with me,” Ace explained. “She's lost her parents. I was going to bring her home with me, but it sounds like we're headed to the hospital instead.”
“We’ll see you there?”
“Definitely.”
“Love you.”
Ace smiled. “Shut up.” She ended the call and dropped her phone in her pocket. To Mia, she said, “Come on, kid. Hospital’s this way.”
The bright-eyed paramedic who’d been talking to them this whole time turned out to be one of Ryan’s friends from primary school. She'd introduced herself in what Grace recognized as an attempt to distract her and Ryan from the medical crisis, and once Grace heard her name—Yasmin Khan, “but call me Yaz,” she said—she was hit with the memory of little Yaz Khan coming over to play after school got out, a strangely still and solemn kid, albeit one who could from time to time be provoked into a wide smile. She’d sometimes been a little bossy, back then, but Grace had always liked her, and Ryan had grinned wildly when he'd realized who she was.
“You’ll have to come round for tea sometime,” Grace said. “When you’ve got a moment.”
“Not a lot of those,” Yaz said.
Grace opened her mouth to reply, but then, as if to illustrate Yaz's point, the strange woman began to struggle against the seatbelts holding her in place. Yaz turned around immediately to join her team.
“I said no hospitals!” the woman yelled. And then, a second later, in a more thoughtful tone—“Didn’t I? Meant to.”
“You didn't really say anything,” Ryan pointed out. “You just sort of fell.”
“Ma’am, does your heart normally beat this fast?” one of the paramedics asked.
“‘Course,” the woman said. “There’s two of them. Can hardly expect sixty beats per minute out of that, can you?” She started struggling again. “Don't usually get called ma’am, either. Do I look like a woman to you?”
“Er—yes?” Yaz said.
“Oh, brilliant, I’d been meaning to try that out.” More struggling. “Would you just let me sit up already?”
“You really should remain still,” Yaz said. “We don't know if you've hurt your spine.”
The woman scoffed. “My spine’s fine. I'm more worried about—” She broke off. Yaz was blocking Grace’s view, so Grace couldn't see the strange woman's expression, but she heard the change in her voice as she said, “My daughter. Where's my daughter?”
“Your daughter?” Yaz asked. “What’s her name?”
The woman breathed out a jumble of syllables too quietly for Grace to hear. But then she paused for a long moment, and then she said, “Oh, but we’re speaking English, aren’t we? In English she’s called Mia.”
“My wife has her,” Grace said.
Both paramedics turned to look at her; in the process, Yaz moved aside, so now Grace could see the strange woman staring at her, mouth hanging open.
“She’s meeting us at the hospital.”
The strange woman wrinkled her nose. “Could she meet us somewhere else? I can’t be bothered with hospitals. All that poking and prodding. You’d think they’ve never seen a binary vascular system before!”
“You could come to ours,” Grace offered. “It’s not too far.”
“We really don't recommend—” one of the paramedics began, but Yaz cut her off.
“We can't keep her if she doesn't want to go,” she said. She looked at Grace. “Besides, you're a nurse, aren't you? If she needs to come back—”
“I'll get her there,” Grace promised.
Yaz tilted her head to the side. After a long moment, she said, “My shift’s over after this. If you wait at the hospital, I’ll drive you back to your place.”
“I’m not going in there,” the strange woman said.
“We can wait outside,” Ryan said. He looked from the woman to Grace to Yaz. “I mean—can we?”
“Sure you can.” Yaz shrugged. “I won’t be long.”
Halfway to the hospital, Ace’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and frowned at the notification on the screen.
“Your mum’s awake,” she said to Mia.
Mia was still walking along next to her, keeping pace impressively well—very few people could keep up with Ace. Still, she’d been quiet, and now she visibly perked up.
“She is? Will they let me see her?”
Ace gave a wry smile. “She’s refused to enter the hospital. My wife’s taking her to our place.” She glanced at Mia. “It’s not far.”
Mia nodded.
She didn’t say anything for the rest of the walk, and so neither did Ace; she focused on her footsteps and the familiar sounds of the city around her, half-afraid that some alien threat would pop up on their way back. Usually she hoped for that sort of thing, but not when she had a scared teenager trying to reunite with her parents.
They made it safely, and before Grace and Ryan. Ace brought Mia into the living room; Mia sat down at the end of the sofa and on the very edge of the cushion, her spine straight, her expression alert. She declined a blanket. Ace hovered for a moment, and then she decided Mia was unlikely to relax until and unless she was reunited with her mum, and there was nothing Ace could do to make that moment come any sooner. So she did what she could: she brought in a washcloth and water so Mia could wipe the dirt and makeup off her face, and found an unused hairbrush in the depths of a closet, and, once Mia was occupied pulling the brush through her tangled hair, Ace went into the kitchen to put the kettle on.
The strange woman was no less strange for being awake. Sitting on a bench just outside the hospital, she was talkative, bordering on chipper—asking all sorts of questions in a perfectly curious voice with her head tilted to the side, starting with, “Where are we?” and progressing to, “How did you meet your wife?” and “Have you always wanted to be a mechanic?” And when the questions were turned on her, her answers were vague, sometimes nonsensical. She remembered her daughter’s name, but not her own; when asked where she was from, she waved a hand in the air and said, “No time for all that. Can you tell me more about the thing that attacked you on the train?” and when asked how she’d come to be falling through a train ceiling to begin with, she froze for five whole seconds, mouth open in surprise, and said, “My TARDIS! I’ve lost my TARDIS!”
Grace frowned. That sounded familiar. “Is that your ship?” she asked.
The woman stared at her. “Yes! Do you know where it is?”
But before Grace could say anything, Yaz’s car pulled up next to them on the sidewalk, and the strange woman had a new person to interrogate.
By the time Grace and Ryan got back, Ace had been sitting in the living room for fifteen minutes, trying to figure out what to say to the scared teenager on the sofa. At first, she’d erred towards saying very little while Mia cleaned herself up—but then Mia had started to loosen up a bit and look around, and had nodded over to a trinket on the windowsill and asked, “Is that a moon rock?”
Ace glanced over. “Yep,” she said. “Gathered that one myself, even.”
Most people, when Ace said things like that, took them as jokes, or sometimes asked a few follow-up questions, received completely honest answers, and then took those as jokes. Mia, though, just gave her a curious look. “You’ve been to the moon?”
“Sure I have.” Ace raised her eyebrows. “Have you?”
“My dad took me once.” Mia shrugged. “But there’s nothing there. It’s sort of boring.”
“Not when I’m there.” Ace grinned. “There are six whole craters named after me by the year five thousand. Big ones, too.”
Mia glanced around the room, fidgeting with the singed hem of her hoodie. “So… you’re a time traveler?”
Ace hesitated. She had been, but—“Not anymore.” She eyed Mia. In every way, she looked like a typical human teenager: slouching against the sofa cushions, arms crossed, still fidgeting. But she talked like she took trips to the moon for granted, and what had she said about her mum and time going wibbly?
Ace leaned forward.
“You wouldn’t happen to know a man called the Doctor, would you?”
Mia’s eyes widened in surprise. She opened her mouth to respond, but before she could, the door opened, and Grace came in, supporting a blonde woman in an oversized and tattered suit. Mia whipped her head to look.
The blonde woman looked back.
For a long moment, they held each others’ eyes, mirroring each other in sheer force of emotion.
“Dad?” Mia whispered.
Ace exchanged a look with Grace.
“You’re alive,” the blonde woman breathed. “You made it.”
Mia nodded, a little shyly. The blonde woman launched herself forward and pulled Mia into a tight hug.
Ryan was coming in now, and a girl about his age was behind him—some part of Ace wondered vaguely who she was, but that question was so far behind all the other questions she had that it practically fell out of her head. They stood next to Grace, watching the scene unfold.
“You look different,” Mia was saying to—her dad? They’d stepped out of the hug, but they hadn’t really separated.
“Not a bad different, I hope,” the blonde woman said.
Mia shook her head. “I don't think so. What happened?”
The woman made a face. “I'm still remembering.” And then her expression expanded, mouth opening, eyes widening. “You died! You—you were shot—Mia, you should've stayed in the TARDIS.”
“I couldn’t,” Mia said. “People were going to die. You would’ve done the exact same thing.” She raised her eyebrows. “Looks like you did do the exact same thing.”
The woman held up a hand, looking at it as if she’d never seen it before. Ace followed her gaze, staring as tendrils of golden mist coalesced just above the woman’s skin.
“Suppose I did, then, didn’t I?” And then her expression changed, and she seemed to remember there were more people in the room. “Right. Suppose I’d better ask where we—” She broke off. She’d turned her head, her eyes had met Ace’s, and now she was frozen, mouth open. Finally, she said, “Give me a second. Not great with the memory, right about now. We’ve met, haven’t we?”
“Don’t know,” Ace said. “Got a name?”
The woman frowned. “I don’t know. Have I? I’m sure I have.” She glanced at Mia. “You would know, wouldn’t you? Have I got a name?”
“I don’t know,” Mia said. “I’d sort of rather watch you try to guess.”
The woman glared at her.
“Fine.” Mia rolled her eyes. “You’re called the Doctor.” The words slapped Ace upside the head. She’d figured, of course, when she’d found the time traveling teenager, that the Doctor wouldn’t be that far off, and of course she’d recognized her old friend in this strange woman’s haphazard speech and air of concentrated oddity. Still. It was different to have the evidence right in front of her.
“Oh! I knew it was something medical. ‘Surgeon’ didn’t sound right.” She looked back at Ace. “I have got a name. It’s ‘the Doctor.’”
“I do know you, then,” Ace said, slowly. “We used to travel together.”
“What, so you weren’t joking?” Ryan asked, and suddenly Ace, too, remembered there were other people in the room. “I thought you said the Doctor was a man.”
The Doctor turned to look at him, perfect curiosity on her face. “Aren’t I?”
“Er—” Ryan stammered. “I mean—I suppose you could be.”
“Mums are going to love this,” Mia said.
“Oh, do you think so?” The Doctor grabbed at her hair, pulling a lock in front of her face. “Never had hair like this before.” She squinted at the hair, then yanked her whole head forward to hold it next to Mia’s. “Look! We match!” She jumped back again. “Not important. What’s important is, where am I, how did I get here, what was that on the train, and where are my wives?”
Grace couldn’t help but stare. This was the Doctor. The Doctor. Ace’s Doctor. Ace’s Doctor was real.
They'd had the argument in the earliest days of their relationship: were aliens real? Grace had always sort of enjoyed speculation about aliens and UFO’s, but when it came down to it didn’t quite believe; Ace, on the other hand, had revealed on their third date that not only did she believe in aliens, but she'd spent a good part of her adolescence and early adulthood traveling with one, and now she poked around for signs of alien life in between writing “fiction” stories that were way closer to truth than the public suspected. And when Grace had been skeptical, Ace had shown her photographs, souvenirs, materials that were definitely not of this Earth (or at the very least, not of this time). Presented with the evidence, Grace had believed her, for a given definition of belief, but it was one thing to hear about your wife's eccentric alien friend and another thing to see him—or her, or them—in your living room, with a “new face,” teetering like they might pass out at any minute and shooting questions rapidfire at anyone who might be nearby.
“Will you at least sit down?” Grace asked. “Have a cup of tea?”
“Oh!” The strange woman—the Doctor—almost fell over with the force of her excitement. “Tea! Yes! Tea’s good! Good for the—whatsit.”
“Healing the synapses,” Mia said, rolling her eyes. “We know.”
“Well, then, love, let's get you a cup.” Grace turned towards the kitchen, but through the doorway she saw Ace already in there, pouring hot water into mugs. So she sat down instead, gesturing for Ryan and Yaz to do the same—there was just barely enough space on the sofa next to the Doctor and Mia for them to sit comfortably, although Grace noticed Yaz kept her back straight.
Ace came back in with a tray of tea, milk, and sugar, which she set down on the coffee table. Ryan added his usual sugar, and Yaz easily splashed in just a bit of milk, which left the Doctor to kneel in front of the coffee table, inspecting the remaining two mugs at eye level. She tipped a bit of sugar and a splash of milk into one and handed it to Mia, who sipped it, made a face, and said, “Too sweet.”
“Really?” The Doctor took the mug back and peered into it. “I did it like I always do.” She stuck a finger in, licked it, and tilted her head to the side. “Ooh, very 2018.” That got her off on a ramble about how the year tasted just a little salty to her, which made for very interesting tea, although the sugar had a bit of a tang—as she talked, Mia slid the other, as-yet-untouched, mug off the tray and took a small sip. After a moment’s consideration, she added more milk and less sugar than the first mug had had before taking another experimental sip. Apparently, that was the right mix: she leaned back on the sofa, the mug cupped in both hands. The Doctor took the opportunity to lean forward and start adding even more sugar to the first mug, talking all the while.
“Dad,” Mia finally said, cutting through a story about how once the Doctor and at least one of her wives had identified a malicious time traveler by their habit of serving guests tea from thirty years in the future. “We don’t have time for this.”
The Doctor’s face immediately grew serious. “Right. Got people to find.”
The next few hours were nonstop chaos.
Ace was living for it.
She hadn’t had a day like this in—well, about thirty years. Running from place to place, facing down aliens, solving problems. They investigated a workshop, met a new (to Ace) species, and finally arrived at a crane-equipped building site, because of course a day like this would end in a confrontation at the top of a crane.
“Think we’re looking at a divide and conquer situation,” the Doctor said, looking up at where the dark red arm of the crane stretched out, silhouetted against the bright work lights. She glanced back at the others. “Anyone fancy a trip up a crane?”
Ace didn’t miss a beat. “Absolutely.”
“Anyone else?” the Doctor asked. “Yaz? Ryan?”
“No ladders for me, thanks.” Ryan stepped back.
“Can I go?” Mia asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“You,” the Doctor said sternly, “are staying safely on the ground until we get back to your mums.”
“You never let me do anything,” Mia grumbled.
“I let you do all sorts,” the Doctor said. “But I am not risking your dying twice before we can get back to your mums. All right?”
“Fine.” Mia crossed her arms. “I’ll stay. But I won’t be happy about it.”
“Didn’t ask you to,” the Doctor replied. She looked around the rest of the group. “Anyone else? Machinery and heights, perfect combination, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’ll do it,” Yaz said.
The Doctor nodded, satisfied. “Brilliant. The rest of you, make sure everyone gets off this site. Clear the area, and get out when you’re finished.” She looked at Grace and Ryan. “And take care of my daughter.”
“Da-ad,” Mia complained.
The Doctor stared her down. Mia glared back with equal—if not greater—determination. The face-off lasted at least ten seconds before Mia huffed and rolled her eyes.
“Fine.”
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Let's get moving.” She flashed a sharp grin at the group. Before the grin could disappear, she was off, running towards the cranes. Ace followed after, with Yaz at her heels. The three of them made their way up one of the cranes as quickly as they could manage. Once at the top, the Doctor went along the crane’s arm, leaving Ace and Yaz and the stolen key ring to figure out how to operate it.
“Have you ever done this before?” Yaz asked.
“Nope. You?”
Yaz shook her head. “I was going to look for the manual online.”
“Right. You do that, and I'll see if I can hot wire a crane.” In theory, it was the same skill set as hot wiring a car, which Ace had done on a few occasions. In practice… well, it was pretty much the same skill set. The crane came to life, and Ace stood up so Yaz could take over the controls.
“I think this will work,” she said, peering at her phone screen. She shot Ace a smile. “Every day’s a learning day, right?”
“Couldn't agree more.”
Yaz moved a lever, and the crane began to turn.
Grace watched from the ground as a figure—the Doctor?—made her way along the arm of a moving crane.
Mia tugged at her sleeve. “Look.”
Grace followed her gaze. It was the mass of wires from earlier—the gathering coil, the Doctor had said. It had been at the base of the other crane, but now it was lashing its way up the one the others had gone up, electricity crackling.
The crane shuddered, then stopped.
The gathering coil kept moving.
“Ryan,” Grace said. “Do you think we can take that down?”
“What, with the thing the Doctor made?” Ryan looked around. “Bet something in that electrical shed could help.”
“I can pick locks,” Mia said.
A short few minutes later, Grace was running toward the crane, dragging meters of cable after the device that had initially disabled the gathering coil. The coil had made it further up the crane—Grace started climbing. She wouldn't win any awards for style, but she managed to get far enough up to fling the device at it. The coil’s tendrils whipped the air as it fell, and Grace moved away just in time to avoid being hit. She watched as it hit the ground and scattered, tendrils skittering across the concrete.
She let out an exhilarated whoop before she began climbing back down. Ryan and Mia met her at the bottom.
“We did it!” she cheered.
“Look,” Ryan added, pointing upwards. The alien had disappeared, and three figures were making their way down the other crane.
“Brilliant.” Grace pulled Ryan into a celebratory hug. Upon letting go, she instinctively turned to Mia, but then she hesitated. “Do you hug?”
“Um, okay?”
Grace pulled her into a hug too. Mia clung with surprising strength—until the Doctor got to the bottom of the crane and Mia detached from Grace to make a beeline for her dad. Smiling, Grace walked towards the crane as first Yaz, then Ace stepped off the ladder.
“How's that for a job well done?” Ace crowed, slinging an arm around Grace’s shoulder. Grace planted a kiss on her cheek.
“Home?” she asked. She pointed to the Doctor and Mia. “You two are coming.” And nodded at Yaz. “You too, if you like. We’ll make tea.”
“All right,” Yaz said.
“I've got to find my TARDIS,” the Doctor protested. “And my wives.”
“I'm going to guess you're about five minutes from passing out again,” Ace said. “You're coming with us.”
“Am not.” But the Doctor let herself be shepherded off the construction site and onto the bus all the same.
The Doctor and Mia stayed with Ace, Grace, and Ryan for a week. The Doctor constantly popped in and out, spending most of her time building some sort of teleport out of the garage they’d investigated earlier. Mia went back and forth between helping with the teleport and sitting in the living room reading through Ace’s novels, periodically looking up to ask Ace whether a particular creature had been inspired by a real alien. Curiously, Yaz was in and out too: she and Ryan had exchanged contacts after the whole crane situation, and they seemed to be rekindling their friendship.
Finally, the Doctor ran into the living room, covered in grease and who knew what else, and said, “I've done it. Leaving as soon as we can.”
Mia jumped up from the sofa, where she’d been reading one of Ace ‘s earlier books—not one of her best, but Mia hadn't seemed to mind. “Really?”
“I'll pinky swear,” the Doctor said, with a grave expression—and then was immediately back to her animated self. “‘Course, it's a bit dodgy. Might not work. Might scatter us into atoms.”
Mia rolled her eyes. “You always say that.”
“It's always true.”
“Then why haven't we been scattered into atoms?” Mia asked, eyebrows raised.
“We've been very, very lucky.” The Doctor grinned. “Who wants to watch?”
Grace got the call at work. “They're leaving,” Ace said over the phone. “Can you come?”
Grace checked her watch. Her shift ended in half an hour, and it would take at least another half hour to clock out and get to the garage. “How long do I have?”
“Not sure. I think they’ll wait to say goodbye.”
Grace checked her watch again. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Might be an hour.”
In fact, she managed to get out of her shift a couple minutes early, and the buses were on time: she was at the garage in forty-five minutes. Everyone else was already inside—Yaz and Ryan standing by the door, Mia sitting on a table next to a microwave, and the Doctor standing on her other side, talking animatedly to Ace. As Grace entered, the Doctor turned her head.
“Oh, good! You’re here. Couldn’t leave without saying goodbye.”
Ace scoffed, Mia laughed, and the Doctor gave them both a look.
“Right, then,” she said. “Thanks for letting us stick around. We’ll be off now.”
“You're always welcome back,” Grace said.
The Doctor nodded. Behind her, Ace shook her head.
“Right,” the Doctor said. “Mia, love, are you ready?”
“Yep.” Mia waved. “Bye, everybody. Thanks for the help.” She took the Doctor’s hand.
“Stand back,” the Doctor said, and Ace stepped away. The Doctor pointed her—well, she called it a sonic screwdriver, but Grace couldn't stop thinking of it as a magic wand—either way, the Doctor pointed it, and a bright light flashed.
And then the Earth fell away, and Grace was staring at the Doctor and Mia floating against a backdrop of pin-pricked nothingness.