Evidently, they've got a greenhouse on this station somewhere. When I am no longer necessary below, and lots of big burly types have taken possession of the Scholar, I take Jessica upstairs to breathe fresh a… well, a generated atmosphere. A lot better than the deathly smog of our enemy's nihilium farm at any rate. The stairs are a chore. Really, somebody ought to have a stern word with the people who gave her that skeleton; if not for that I could carry her.

All the while, we're having to press against the wall, out of the way of the people coming and going past us. The ones I instructed before. Every one of them carrying great bouquets of flowers. I can't help myself muttering, "Can't believe nobody thought of checking out plants when that element was discovered. They evolve sentience, you know, trees do. Flowers too, somewhere, probably. I met a big flower once that wanted to eat River. She was unconscious at the time. I carried her, as I recall. And there was another me and I jumped off a cliff and… This is the story I tell to Jessica to make that long, spirally, head-turning trip back up to light seem less arduous. I'm not entirely sure it works, or if she's even able to listen.

Wish Clara was here. She ran on ahead. Said she wanted to see how things were upstairs. Clara would have responded to the story, asked questions I was about to come on to anyway, made little noises of derision when she didn't believe me even though I only ever speak the truth and whole truth. Clara would have been amusing, and everything would have felt a little bit less…

Scary, I suppose. The idea of the Scholar below, living and breathing, surrounded by flowers, to be guided out in a haze of flowers, the flowers withering with every second in proximity. It could have been so much happier all this time and how many people suffered simply for want of a daisy or two. How easily solved it was. It could have been dead. And I don't just mean its suffocation, I mean it could have quite easily been dead. It's not the only one either.

"So anyway, it followed us all off the cliff on its roots, fell into the salt water and thrashed itself a bloody tsunami in its dying throes but if you think that was the end of, you'd be Jessica, I'm very sorry you couldn't breathe."

For the longest time she doesn't respond. It's nerve-wracking, when it could be hate, when forgiveness could be reluctant, when maybe she's trying to decide what to say. But when she finally reacts it's with a confused, sudden lift of her head. This is what happens when you change topics in the middle of a sentence. Even if you can't help yourself, it might take someone a little while to figure out what just happened.

"Breathes now," she says. Clearly she finds my question utterly ridiculous. "Not harms is no foul. Am being right in phrase, Doctor?"

"Close enough."

"Doctor does right, and wins, and saves. Not to be having any worry for her. Tells more flower story now."

"…I mostly just can't believe nobody thought to even test flowers. Did nobody get bored in the laboratories, even? When they discovered the Jikiri Panacea, that's how that happened."

"What am being… that thing?"

"Oops…"

The top of the stairs, while a most welcome sight to me, puts Jessica off a little bit. She turns her eyes away as we come up through the floor. Maybe something to do with the great big hole in the floor off to the left that came down into the hourglass. "What's the matter?"

"Is bad damage. Doctor not tells Jessica does. Professor-persons is not to be letting her returns."

On the one hand, it is definitely big damage. It might even be structural damage, requiring major work to repair. On the other, people could have been seriously injured tonight, and worse than that again, so I can't see them holding it against her. I'd tell her so, but skirting it brings us out from under the stage and I rather have my breath stolen by what's going on up there.

Naturally there was a stampede for the doors after all the crashes and explosions and implosions and such below. The once beautiful hall is in disarray, table cloths dragged away, streamers pulled down from the walls, abandoned in the midst of revelry. That's usually a very sad and lonely sight. There is, however, a rather charming centrepiece to it all that I am only too happy to relate to you in detail.

Professor Carling, when he ran from me, did not escape. He was apprehended, here, in this room. He has been kept here too, awaiting judgement and apprehension by greater authorities than mine. Just so you can visualize it, he's being held down across one of those lovely round tables, amongst the forgotten half-glasses and scattered place-holders. He can go absolutely nowhere and, it would seem, has given up even struggling.

This is because another professor is sitting on him. The big lilac fella from physical education. You remember. The Grumpy Keeper Of The Sacred Sandbags. The big one, you remember. Yes. He's sitting on top of skinny, wicked Professor Carling.

In light of recent events, it should not gladden my heart so very deeply to see a soulless academic struggling to breathe. My heart doesn't know this. My heart goes right on ahead and gets gladdened very deeply.

Young Liam is standing next to this table. He is pointing at Carling, grinning from ear to ear. He looks at Jessica and myself with a child's glee and boasts, "I tackled him! He was running and I tackled him. I've never tackled anybody in my life."

"Don't make a habit of it," I tell him. "It's murder on the knees."

Softly, just to me, "Liam was very fast to be teaching Clara how picks locks, so Clara and Jessica could be saving Doctor."

Another wave of flowers goes past us. Jessica reels; growing up without sound left her other senses keen, and I think the scent is overwhelming. Glee and pride fade off Liam faster than mist under the morning sun. He's across to us before I can even start to move her again, taking her other arm. She seems more willing to lean on him. "What happened?"

"Tells him later. Her am sorry too; him was giving her flower and her was breaking it."

"Yeah, not the biggest thing going on right now."

Getting out the doors (once we manage it, through the flower carriers) is blissful. Though by definition of being a space station there is no technical night and day, a standard twelve-hour rotation is carefully observed, so that diurnal and nocturnal students have equal time to work. Currently, we're in a very beautiful, starlit artificial night, cool and clear and with a soft breeze. Jessica just sort of drapes herself off one of the pillars. Looks comfortable. I should get a pillar, where's the next nearest pillar, I want a pillar…

I'm looking for a pillar when my arm is grabbed and I am pulled yelping into a deeper shadow. I turn, only to find Clara. Again. "Will you kindly stop doing that? You're not doing yourself any favours. What if something happens to you? How do you know I'll follow you if you keep dragging me around everywhere? I will always come to you eventually, now just be satisfied with that."

"'Course you will," she breezes. Which is a bit forward of her, like it should be second-nature to me to go traipsing about in her wake like a trained pup, what on earth is she implying? Where does she get off calling me a puppy? Wait, she didn't call me that. I'm overreacting, aren't I? "You know better than to leave me behind. I know too much about you."

That wicked grin of hers. Because it's a joke to her, I try and smile back.

"Anyway," she goes on, "I wanted those two to have a minute."

"What do you mean a minute? I've had minutes. I've been given minutes. I've given lots of minutes. A minute like the kind that you give, that sort of a minute? The minute you could almost spell with a capital letter if you wanted, like a Minute-minute?"

"Oh, you really can pronounce capitals. Can you teach me?"

"Well, it's a very academic thing, you find it in people who do a lot of studying, it becomes a sort of default, really-"

"Are you saying I'm thick?"

"No, I'm doing that thing where I talk about something entirely ridiculous but in my mind something incredible happens…" This time I grab her arm and take her with me. Back inside. Back to that table in the middle of the room where Carling is being most firmly held down. In the interests of diplomacy, I go first to the front of his lilac captor. "Beg pardon, but would you mind awfully if I very briefly interrogated the prisoner?"

"Do I have to move?" he grunts.

"On the contrary, I'd rather you didn't."

"Fire away."

Just so she'll know how it feels, I drag Clara with me, back to the other side of the table. I drag her with me when I crouch to speak to Carling. The willingness with which she goes along with it makes me feel a little bit bad about complaining, actually. "You," I begin, meaning Carling, "You, you were selling off what you intended to gather tonight. You said Jessica was worth millions. You said that with confidence, with honesty. You must have had buyers, bidders. Who was willing to pay millions to get to me, Professor?"

He is silent, turning his head as far as his position will allow, refusing to answer. "More than my life's worth," he mutters.

"See, this is why you should have hung around. If you'd been downstairs when it all ended then, you'd know; it's not. It's not more than your life's worth. It's really not."

"I'll tell the Department, when they ask, when there's a lawyer."

A lawyer. He's asking for a lawyer. He won't say another word until he's seen a lawyer. "Not good enough!" Carling's captor starts to look over his shoulder again. This time, when Clara pulls me back, it's with more force and better reason. Pulls me away from that table and right out of the room again. On the steps, with her voice hushed so Jessica and Liam won't hear, "What happened in that basement?"

"Nothing to get wound up about."

"You know I'll just ask Jessica."

"She won't tell you."

"Then you tell me, Doctor. What happened that you can't even tell me?"

"Nothing. I'm angry, that's all. There was another room. Full of… they'd been drained, withered alive, it was… Came very close to being one of them. I'm just angry." Lying hurts. It hurts even more when Clara accepts it. Her face folds in on itself, sweetly sad for me. She hugs me, tightly, turning her head against my shoulder. Just to make it stop, I start to make promises. "Clara? Remember when you were at me about excitement and intrigue and fun and how you'd like more of it?"

Both hands up, fending me off, "I'm all full up on excitement, thanks…"

"Oh, alright then…" I turn away from her, shuffle a couple of steps, stick my hands nonchalantly in my pockets. Yes, that's the word. 'Nonchalant'. I am the very picture of nonchalance. "But look, if you're ever stuck again, just bear in mind, somebody out there is trading illegally in other people's souls."

Silence for one, two, three seconds. Then footsteps, rushing back up to walk at my shoulder. "I just meant full up like tonight. In the morning, I probably won't be full up anymore."

"No, no, I wouldn't want you glutting. You'll make yourself ill."

"Really. I'm just satisfied right now. Satisfaction never lasts all that long. It won't be long."

We'll probably continue in this vein for a while. Clara and I can keep up a conceit for, oh, hours at a time. It's fun for us, but you wouldn't like it. You'd be bored. Anyway, it's our thing. It's not necessarily for you to listen in on. Luckily for you, I am perfectly capable of keeping up a conceit with Clara whilst simultaneously thinking about something else.

So how to end it, then. How to round it up. How to bring everything full circle and make it neat so you can go away happy, satisfied, all full up…

The simple answer is that I can't. Some things are simple. Here are some simple things. Both Dooblevay Carling and the Scholar, whatever it turns out to be, will be going to prison. Carling's buyers will be very disappointed. The students here are safe. A cancer is to be cut out of the heart of this institution. These are simple things. Other simple things are that we are all still alive, and relatively well. Simple things are happening over by that pillar, when the last of the flowers are being carried inside and something falls from one of the bunches. Not a rose this time. I can't tell in the dark. Violets, maybe. They fall unnoticed. From behind the pillar, one hand picks them up and passes them into another. That's a simple thing. Much as it might fill me with an overwhelming desire to grab the little… scamp by the scruff and issue some very strong warnings what'll happen if anything unnecessary happens to Jessica and… Much as all that, that's a simple thing.

Less simple is the fact that there are parties in the universe who would have paid vast sums to scrape out the inside of a mind that knew me.

That is a danger to me.

It is a danger to people who have known me.

So how to end this? How to round it up? How to bring everything full circle and make it neat so you can go away happy, satisfied, all full up? I can't.

How can I possibly end a thing when you and I both know it isn't over yet?

[A/N – He could always have tried the words 'The End', but that would be just too simple for him. I can do it, though. The End. There. I hope you've had a blast with this. If you liked it or didn't, please do drop me a line now – what I'm doing right or wrong, what you'd want to see in the future. It's been a while since I wrote a long DW fic, so maybe I've lost my touch? Anything you want to tell me could help me out.

On another note, some of you probably already know that there's an auction this week on Livejournal. This is to raise funds for DashCon next year. You can bid on fiction by me and loads of amazing authors (but also me), and basically commission your own incredible piece of fanfiction to spec! Please, please, please check it out, so DashCon can get great DW guests and events. You'll find it under 'dwcommittee' over at LJ. Please?]