"What?" The Doctor murmured to himself, taking another uncertain step into the room, feeling more alert than he had since he stopped counting the yesterday's.

The Time Lord reached into the pocket of his jacket to find his Sonic Screwdriver before realising that he hadn't worn the jacket he kept it in for months, doing so just brought back the aching in his hearts. It was an ache he could feel building in his chest already, this had already happened. A girl zapped into his TARDIS with no explanation until he investigated and became invested. It was Donna all over again and he wasn't ready for it, losing her like that was still raw on his hearts. Part of him wanted to get the TARDIS to jettison the ship out into the wastes of space so he could dose himself with the black crystals he had become so reliant on and forget it even existed.

But no, he couldn't do that. The itch was already there, that insatiable curiosity to find and who she was and where she came from and how she had even managed to dock with a TARDIS mid flight in the vortex in an unused docking bay. It was there, niggling away in his mind, that unstoppable desire to help and protect and discover that had been buzzing inside him since he was merely a little loomling on Gallifrey. He reached for his jacket pocket, forgetting again that his jacket was being worn by some shady backstreet dealer in favour of two Stardust packets.

"Damn it," he snarled, resolving to pop the hatch on the ship manually.

Whilst he didn't strictly recognise the design if the craft or the bright orange 'Overwatch' logo on its side he knew that almost any ship with an exterior cockpit had safety releases on the outside as well as the inside, basic safety and logic dictated it. A ship entering the docking bay of a TARDIS in mid flight should have been impossible, but then, he was used to impossible. He cleared the room in a few wide strides and laboriously climbed atop the craft, his well trained eyes quickly locating the release switches on the cockpits hull. They detached with a heavy clunk and a long hiss of air before the glass like material folded neatly back on itself and back into the ship.

Now that the steamed up glass was out of the way the Doctor had a better view of the ships occupant. She was clad in an orange and blue flight suit from head to toe with a helmet over her head, all of which would have been very fine if it wasn't for the damage her gear had sustained. As it stood there were several tears across the front of the woman's jumpsuit and the little tube that should have been supplying her helmet with oxygen had come disconnected, which would have been worse if not for the cracks in the front of the helmet letting in a slither of air. Nevertheless the Doctor tugged the helmet off of her head. The first thing he noted was the woman's hair, it was much like his own, if not even longer and more unruly. The second thing he noted was a trickle of blood seeping from underneath that long, unruly hair. He cursed again under his breath and scooped the woman up, she would need to be looked over in the med-bay, he could wonder how she got into the TARDIS after she was in a more stable condition. He struggled with the weight of the woman. Whilst she wasn't exactly heavy the Doctor hadn't eaten or slept for a while, the nightmares in his head and the churning in his stomach making it impossible to do so, and he had become much weaker than he was used to.

The TARDIS had moved the med-bay so that it was directly next to the hanger he was in, there would be no long heavy walks involved, which was a good thing considering how much just maneuvering the young womans body down from the cockpit of her ship and back onto the ground had taken out of him. The medical room was wide, open and unlike other rooms in the TARDIS it was completely clean from the Doctor's messy ways. He didn't use the room much both because he hated to admit when he was feeling ill and the six identical beds lining the walls just served to remind him that he was the last Time Lord and no one would ever arrive to pilot his ship alongside him. So many beds that would never be used and he was to blame. The Doctor dismissed the morbid thoughts and staggered over to the closest bed before gingerly laying the mystery woman down, being careful enough not to hurt her.

A thin piece of glass like material rose up and from the side of the medical bed and arched over the girl as soon as The Doctor gave it the room to close. The process from there on was automatic, the TARDIS medical systems would scan her body, figure out what species she was and then inject her with a shot of nano-probes that would have been specially designed to combat both her unique injuries and her unique physiology. Nevertheless the Doctor couldn't help but want to watch over her. It was that damn need to protect, to serve the innocent, to make sure that anyone in his care was okay. With his companions he always felt it, that duty of care, the instinctual desire to make sure that anyone around him never came under any harm. He couldn't help but let out a derisive snort at that point, he hadn't ever been very good at looking after those he cared about the most. They all ended up irreparably damaged some way. Maybe this girl would be the first he would actually heal, maybe this time he could live up to his name… The Doctor.

There was a subtle pull at the back of his mind. He knew what it was, he felt it often, the TARDIS trying to get him to slip into one of the beds as well where she could look after him like she was designed to do. It would be easy of course, easy to give into his hunger and fatigue and depression and let the TARDIS look after his beaten form. In a way it felt like giving up, he was the Doctor after all. He was meant to be the healer not the one being healed. The tug became more insistent, a yanking right at the base of his skull where it met the spine so hard that the time lord couldn't help but give a hiss of pain. She wasn't happy with him, well, she hadn't been happy with him for a very long time. In all their years of travelling the TARDIS had never known the Doctor to be so completely and utterly lost, so unwilling to accept her help. He hadn't used the Zero room in years. The TARDIS felt completely justified in her shock when her thief finally allowed himself to collapse in the bed next to their mystery guest.

AN: Now, you may have noted that this chapter is shorter than the last. Well done you! Basically, I want each chapter to be in a nice bite size easily readable chunk. Reading this here chapter should take you anywhere between 5-7 minutes if you read at an average pace (no, I dont know what that means but hey the internet said it so it must be true) and that's about exactly what I want for each chapter. So, I hope you enjoyed. I'm trying to get one of these out a week or more. Not sure yet. Hopefully or more. I live a busy life you know, and Overwatch competitive just came out. So that. We're still the only OverWho fic by the way, which is just absurd.