Red ⋆ Doctor Who

Chapter Forty

"Hey. You're still thinking about it," Rory says, noticing his wife's foul mood. "Aren't you?"

"Oh shush," Amy shrugs off his accusatory tone. "We saw him die."

Cherry's face falls and Rory places his hand on her shoulder, squeezing it to make her feel a little better. "Yeah, two hundred years in the future."

"Yes, but it's still going to happen," Amy points out and Cherry shakes her head, a grim look on her face.

"Stop. I can't talk about this anymore," she whispers, glancing over to the Doctor. "And he might hear."

Amy goes to talk again but purses her lips when there is a knocking on the door of the Tardis. "What was that?"

"The door..." the Doctor says, drawing closer to the doors as the trio swiftly make their way up onto the glass platform. "It knocked."

"Right?" Rory draws out in confusion. "We are in deep space."

"Very, very deep," the Doctor confirms as the knock comes from the wooden doors again. "And somebody's knocking."

Cherry watches anxiously as he pulls open the doors to deep space, and a small glowing box is floating out amongst the stars. They can't see the Doctor's reaction to the little box, but he talks to the glowing object loud enough for the other three to hear him. "Oh, come here. Come here, you scrumptious little beauty."

"Is that how he talks to you?" Amy asks, cheering up a little as she nudges her cousin, smirking.

"Shut up," Cherry huffs, rolling her eyes at the redhead.

"A box?" Rory questions as the Doctor reaches out to grab it. It soars past him, zooming into the console room and past Cherry's head, prompting her, Amy and Rory to duck down.

"Doctor, what is it?" Amy asks as the box hits him in the chest and knocks him to the floor. He grabs it, scrambling to his feet and holding up the little box of light with a beaming smile on his face.

"I've got mail!" he exclaims, turning it round in his hands and then racing up the stairs. "Time Lord emergency messaging system. In an emergency, we'd wrap up thoughts in psychic containers and send them through time and space. Anyway, there's a living Time Lord still out there, and it's one of the good ones."

He's so excited. Cherry doesn't think she's seen him so excited. Ever.

"You said there weren't any other Time Lords left," Rory says, crossing his arms over his chest.

"There are no Time Lords left anywhere in the universe," the Doctor agrees. "But the universe isn't where we're going. See that snake?"

He throws the cube at Cherry and she fumbles, barely catching it as she turns it round to look at a picture of a snake swallowing its own table. She raises her eyebrows. "The Ouroboros?"

"The mark of the Corsair," the Doctor grins, tapping her on the nose. He loves it when she's smart. "Fantastic bloke. He had that snake as a tattoo in every regeneration. Didn't feel like himself unless he had the tattoo. Or herself, a couple of times. Ooo, she was a bad girl."

He notices the way Cherry's face falls in a mixture of jealousy and disgust at his words. She knows he's nine hundred years old. She knows he's had past relationships, marriages, and even children. He's admitted all of this to her. She's fine with this. She can live with it. And she's pleased at the prospect that the Doctor may have a friend out there, another Time Lord. But she cannot pretend to be overjoyed at his description of the Corsair. Bad girl. That's what the Doctor calls her.

"Don't get jealous," he squeezes her hip as he passes her. "I didn't mean it like that."

He presses a button on the controls and sparks fly off the console as the lights flicker and the ship shakes around them.