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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 tiptoes, 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.

Arthur Flannen may have thought he was Dixon of Dock Green, thought PC

John Sparrow, but his nick sheet told a different story. While Sparrow had been itching to get on Kreiner's case, Flannen had called their chief suspect small fry that would keep. He'd insisted instead on tracking down and questioning Teddy Withers's many dubious acquaintances, practically all of whom had stronger motives to knock him off than Kreiner but cast-iron alibis to exonerate themselves.

Back on the trail, he watched the older man tap on the Wolseley's window.

He hated the early shift.

'Excuse me, sir,' said Flannen. 'Would you like to tell me what you're doing sleeping in a car outside someone's private property?'

Sparrow noticed his pale reflection in the car windows, and grimaced.