"I don't mean to cast aspersions on a dead guy, but uh Mr. Morality? He brought a lot of girls up here. Got more ass than a toilet seat." – Gabriel, Tall Tales

Far From Over

Part Four: Trickster

Springfield, Ohio 2007

It was a quiet little university town, with the typical population consisting of students, faculty, and business owners. However, in a small bar in this unassuming little town, two people were engaging in a conversation that was far from normal.

There were two men sitting at a high-top table in the bar. One of them, a rather depressed-looking college student, was staring steadily at the trio of shot glasses lined up in front of him, each one filled up to the brim with some rather potent-smelling tequila. The other was an older man with messy brown hair that stuck up all over the place, probably somewhere in his early to mid-thirties, wearing a blue suit with red pinstripes, red high-top Converse sneakers, and a long brown duster that the wearer – were anyone to ask him – would stubbornly insist was given to him by Janice Joplin.

The older man gave the college student a long look before he finally spoke, pointedly ignoring all of the noise surrounding them.

"So, what happened, Curtis?"

The younger man shuddered visibly as he picked up one of the shot glasses line up in front of him.

"You won't believe me. Nobody does," he croaked as he stared at the yellowish depths of the alcohol before he downed the shot of tequila in one go. The man – who usually went by the moniker of 'the Doctor' – leaned back in his seat and stared steadily at Curtis.

"You'd be surprised at what I believe in," he said mildly. Curtis looked up suddenly from his avid study of the wooden tabletop, his eyes wide with a slightly wild look in them before he went and jabbed a finger at the Doctor.

"I'm tellin' you the same thing I told those reporters: I do not want this in the papers," he insisted fervently, a slight slur to his words indicating that these shots were not his first for the day, nor would they be his last. The Doctor looked surprised for a moment, briefly contemplating the identity of the reporters that the already inebriated man mentioned, and then dismissed that subject entirely. He wasn't here to find out about tabloid reporters.

"Off the record," he told Curtis reassuringly. The man fell silent for several moments, and the Doctor briefly wondered if his questioning had somehow traumatized the human more than he already was. That line of thought quickly evaporated as Curtis slowly began to relay his experience, halting unsteadily every so often.

"I ah blacked out when they picked me up, I lost time, and… when I woke up, I didn't know where I was."

"Then what?"

"They did… tests on me." Somehow, Curtis managed to keep looking down at the table top while he spoke before he downed another shot glass full of tequila. "They um… they probed me."

For a single moment, a look of pure outrage crossed the Doctor's face at the man's words, before he somehow managed to hide it. He didn't trust himself to speak for a few seconds as he processed this particular piece of information while he tried to keep his temper under control. "They probed you?"

"Yeah, they probed me. And again, and again, and again, and…" Curtis paused long enough to seize another glass of liquor before he swallowed it in a single gulp. "And again and again and again, and then one more time."

The Doctor frowned as he went over what the implications of the man's statement were, and immediately decided that he didn't like them at all.

"Oh."

"And that's not even the worst of it."

The Doctor looked up at Curtis, wincing slightly as he smelled the raw stench of alcohol on the college student's breath. This wasn't the first time that he'd seen a human take an encounter with an alien badly, but that didn't mean that he had to like it. Surely there was a better way for one to deal with trauma than drinking oneself into a stupor?

"What else did they do?"

Curtis paused, apparently gathering up his courage for the final blow to his pride.

"They made me… slow dance."

Corey Matthews blinked as she stared up at the Doctor from her spot where she was lying sprawled on the couch in the TARDIS library, a look of complete and total confusion on her face.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. You're shitting me, right?" she finally asked incredulously as she sat up. The Doctor frowned in response as he sank down into a seat nearby, looking understandably frustrated.

"Unfortunately, no, I'm not," the Time Lord said wearily before he shook his head, reaching up to massage the bridge of his nose as he did so. "But I know Ferulians. They would never do something like that. There were some problems with some adolescents abducting humans and playing on their fears in the 60's and 70's, but they never actually probed them." An uncertain look crossed the man's face as he sighed. "Well, there were a few cases… but still. And the idea of them slow dancing with an abductee… its absolutely preposterous! A Ferulian has two left feet. They can't dance, not even if they tried!"

Corey frowned as she glanced down at the book that she had been reading, Fool Moon, and then snapped it closed before she set it down on the cushions next to her and sat up.

"Ordinarily, I'd say that this guy was screwing with you, but," she hesitated for a moment as she thought about something before she dismissed it with a shake of her head. "It just sounds a little too… weird, even for us. People don't just make stuff up like that."

The Doctor nodded in agreement before he let out a frustrated sigh. "I agree. This Curtis boy was honestly and truly traumatized from his experience, so something did happen to him. The question is, what?"

Corey shrugged in response, and the older man let out yet another sigh as he leaned back in his chair, his eyes sliding shut as he allowed the back of his head to impact with the chair cushion. The girl watched the Doctor as he started to mutter things under his breath, trying to untwist the incredibly skewed tangle of logic from the problem at hand.

That was about when Corey decided to make herself scarce. If she hung around for too long, the Doctor would start bouncing ideas off of her, and then he would get frustrated because she wouldn't have a clue about what in the hell he was talking about. The girl shook her head as she strode down the hallway leading to her room, her book still held tightly in one hand. Two hours ago, things hadn't been half as complicated.

The TARDIS had landed in some little university town somewhere out in the American Midwest in 2007, and the Doctor had gleefully seized the chance to explore. For some reason, the TARDIS seemed to be going to the United States more often than it did usually, but it didn't seem to bother the Doctor at all. He just cheerfully proclaimed that he hadn't seen as much of the U.S. as he had England, and welcomed the chance to explore the New World.

At least until they had heard about the abduction.

They hadn't even been in town for more than twenty minutes, just out wandering around and seeing the sights, before they had heard the whispers about a local fraternity brother claiming to have been abducted. The Doctor had blanched at the term, but steadily ignored it as he hustled Corey on past the group of whispering college students. He had brushed it off as a mere hoax, quietly telling her that humans were very rarely abducted and experimented on, and the vast majority of the claims were usually rather crudely-executed hoaxes.

But when they saw the big hole out in the lawn in front of one of the buildings, looking far too perfect to have been extracted by human hands, Corey knew that they were in some serious trouble.

She hadn't known that they were in trouble because of some kind of psychic premonition, or anything hokey like that. All it had taken for her to realize that some serious shit was going on was for her look up at the Doctor, and see the almost imperceptible narrowing of his eyes, swiftly accompanied by his lips pressing together tightly. The look that he gave the small crater in the grassy ground, somehow impossibly green for somewhere in Ohio in the middle of February, was the exact same look that he usually reserved for a particularly vexing problem.

Corey had been swiftly escorted back to the TARDIS right after that, and then given the firm instructions for her not to even think about leaving the ship until he had come back. It didn't take a genius to figure out what the Doctor was thinking as he closed and locked the door behind him.

They had kidnapped and experimented on one college student already. He was only one man, and he couldn't be everywhere at once. What was going to stop them from kidnapping and experimenting on her?

Of course, anyone who knew Corey at all could testify to the fact that she would not go down easily. Also, she wasn't exactly a college student anymore either. Yeah, she was still seventeen, and aliens weren't exactly people, but still…

In her experience, it didn't really matter what species you were. If you slammed a fist into something's face, or drop-kicked them in the nads, it usually hurt. And it didn't matter if she was dealing with a Quisforth, or a bug-eyed little green man from the planet Zeptron. If someone was suicidal enough to try and abduct her, she was going to go down with her fists swinging.

Once the general feeling of unease and anxiety had faded after the Doctor's departure, boredom decided to rear its ugly head. After a few moments of deliberation, Corey had decided against going exploring – even though she'd been traveling with the Doctor for a while, she still hadn't seen very much of the inside of the TARDIS – and ended up sitting in the library, curled up on the couch with a good book.

Everything after that was history.

"Aliens slow dancing," the girl finally said incredulously with a slight shake of her head as she gently shut the door to her room behind her. Why did that sound so familiar?

The teen shrugged as she approached her bookshelf and slid the novel that she had been reading back into its place. She'd probably remember where she had heard of that before sooner or later, and if she didn't, well, then it probably wasn't important.

Oh, how very wrong she was.

They had stayed the night in the town, with the Doctor going out and looking for clues on the location of the Ferulians so he could negotiate with them, and hopefully get them to leave without severely traumatizing someone else. He had ordered Corey to stay inside the TARDIS, no matter what, and she had used that opportunity to catch up on some sleep, which she desperately needed. For a guy that was almost nine hundred and fifty years old, the Doctor occasionally forgot that humans needed a hell of a lot more rest than he did.

Corey had just dragged herself out of bed, and was in the process of eating breakfast, when she heard the door to the TARDIS slam shut, followed shortly by the sound of someone swearing loudly as they stalked out of the console room. The girl's eyes widened as she looked up from her cereal; the Doctor pretty much never swore. And judging by the words that he was using, he was really pissed off. The worst words that she had ever heard him use before were 'damn' and 'shit', well, except for the ones that were in languages that she didn't know.

She didn't know what a 'cranak pel casacree salvak' was, but she was pretty sure that it wasn't exactly a compliment.

Quickly, Corey got out of her seat and padded over towards where all of the swearing – well, maybe not swearing, but definitely some very creative, and offensive phrases – was coming from. The Doctor acting seriously out of character was always a cause for concern.

"Doctor?" she began cautiously, getting ready to duck if need be. The last time she'd heard someone that mad, Braden's ex-girlfriend had shown up in front of their house to flaunt her new arm-candy while she had been out helping Braden change the fan belt on his truck. Needless to say, tools had gone flying that day. "Are you okay?"

Before she could reach the door to the room and peer inside to see what was wrong, it was unceremoniously slammed shut right in her face.

"Go away!" the Doctor snarled tersely from the other side of the door. "This doesn't concern you!"

Corey recoiled slightly as she stared at the door, her eyes wide as her jaw fell open in shock. What in the hell had gotten into him?

"Okay, what died and crawled up your ass?" she demanded as she slammed the palm of her hand against the door once just to let her friend know that she was not a happy camper. "All I did was ask if you were okay! Shit, no need to bite my head off."

"I didn't bite your head off. I just want to be left alone!"

Corey scowled in response, clenching her hands tightly as she glared at the door. "Look, just chill out, okay? All I wanted to know was if something had happened. The fact that you came storming in while swearing like a sailor isn't normal. Last time I checked, I was one the one with a foul mouth, not you."

An awkward silence hung in the air for a few seconds before it was punctuated by the sound of someone slamming what sounded like a book down on the table in the room.

"I'm fine!" the Doctor snapped, and it was at that moment that Corey noticed that his voice sounded a little different. It didn't exactly sound like an adult's voice. To be honest, it sounded more like it belonged to someone her age. Or maybe it was just the acoustics of the room. The TARDIS was kind of weird with things like that. "You don't need to-" There was a loud crash in the room, followed by a frustrated groan, as well as the very familiar sound of someone's skull meeting a table of some kind. "Bugger."

Corey cocked an eyebrow and frowned before she shook her head and sighed. It looked like they were going to have to do this one the hard way. With that thought, she turned around and headed for her room. About two minutes later, she returned with a handful of paper clips, and a flashlight.

"Great. Time for my first course in Lockpicking 101," she muttered sarcastically as she knelt down while she set the paper clips and flashlight down on the floor next to her. Quickly, she unbent one of the clips before she set to work on the door. This was going to be just loads of fun. She didn't even know how to pick a lock.

Fortunately for her, the TARDIS decided to intervene before things got nasty. Before Corey could even stick the first improvised lock pick into the door, it unlocked right before her eyes and swung wide open. The girl didn't even have time to offer her thanks to the machine before she caught sight of the sole occupant in the room.

A lanky teenage boy around sixteen or seventeen years old stood there, his brown eyes wide as he held out the sonic screwdriver in front of him stiffly. He had obviously been about to re-lock the door when it had swung open. Corey felt her jaw drop as she sat down hard on the metal grating beneath her and gaped at the boy. She was in so much trouble.

Because the problem wasn't the fact that there was stranger on board the TARDIS. No, the problem was the fact that Corey recognized him almost immediately. Even if the now-baggy blue pinstriped suit and tan overcoat that he was wearing hadn't been a hint at the boy's identity, then the mop of messily gelled brown spikes and ancient brown eyes definitely were.

The Doctor winced as he looked back at the clearly stunned teen, who was still wearing her typical nighttime attire of a t-shirt and black gym shorts, and shuffled nervously in his spot.

"I ran into a… bit of a problem on the way back," he finally said sheepishly. Corey blinked once before she swallowed nervously and buried her face in her hands.

"Dear God, why?" she groaned before she removed her hands and agitatedly ran them through her hair, pulling her bangs away from her face. The Doctor's eyes widened as he noticed that the action accented certain portions of his companion's anatomy, and he immediately turned away as his now-teenaged body's hormones kicked into overdrive. Fortunately for him, Corey's agitated shout was enough to distract him. "Does the weird shit just follow us around?"

He couldn't help himself. Honestly, he couldn't. "Yes."

Gray eyes narrowed into a warning glare, and the Time Lord fell mercifully silent as Corey stood up and pinched the bridge of her nose in an obvious sign of stress. An awkward silence stretched between them for several seconds, and the Doctor shifted uneasily from foot to foot as he stared apprehensively at Corey. He didn't know why he was so nervous, but he was.

"Give me a bit to get dressed, and then you can tell me what the hell happened," Corey finally muttered as she sighed and shook her head. The girl turned around and started to head off towards her room, only to stop when the Doctor spoke.

"Corey?"

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him, a single pale eyebrow raised questioningly as she tilted her head to the side. The Doctor hesitated, and then winced as a hint of exasperation flashed through her eyes. Right now, he was behaving like a complete and utter idiot. What on earth was wrong with him?

"The clothes in the wardrobe… they probably won't fit me," he hedged nervously. The Time Lord then lifted up his arms to show just how badly his suit hung on him. His body was now that of a teenager, true enough, but it wasn't anything like a full-grown man's body. Where he had been rail-thin before, now he was downright scrawny. And he had shrunk a few inches on top of that.

A look of dawning comprehension crossed Corey's face, and the corner of her mouth twitched up into a wry grin as she nodded once.

"I think I can do something about that," she said before she flashed her friend the shadow of a sarcastic smirk. "I have some shirts that might fit, but I don't know about jeans. You're still taller than me."

"I'll find something that will work," the Doctor insisted as he waved Corey off. "Get dressed. We need to talk."

She nodded before she broke into a jog in the direction of her room. The Doctor watcher her go before he let out a heartfelt groan and sagged against the closest wall, banging the back of his head against the metal wall behind him a few times. He didn't remember ever being this emotional, even when he had been a teenager the first time around. It was incredibly disconcerting, especially since he was used to being able to control his emotions fairly well. After all, Corey had done nothing that had warranted him yelling at her the way that he had.

"Why did you open that door, old girl?" he quietly asked as he pressed his hand against the wall, feeling the TARDIS's concern over his current state. "I could have figured it out."

A wave of scoffing amusement washed over him, and the Doctor frowned as he pulled away from the wall and started to head towards the wardrobe room. Even his own ship didn't believe him when he said that.

The sad thing was, he didn't blame her.

The TARDIS was conspiring against him. That was the only logical explanation. It had to be. Why else would he have had a pair of slightly worn-looking dark wash jeans thrown right in his face as soon as he had opened the door to the wardrobe, followed shortly by a gray Henley?

"Oh, come on!" the Doctor protested as he tugged ineffectively on the door, which had slammed shut and locked itself as soon as the clothing had been launched at his face. "You can't honestly expect me to wear this!"

A mechanical huff met his ears before the door snapped open once again, and the Time Lord was forced to duck as a battered leather jacket was flung at him.

"Now is not the time for you to get in one of your moods!" he bellowed irritably as he straightened up and glared at the door, which was once again firmly locked. He was not a child, and he did not need to be treated as such! He was perfectly capable of picking out his own clothing, thank you very much.

"O-kay." The Doctor turned around and saw Corey standing behind him, a look of slightly disturbed amusement on her face before she shook her head and flashed him a teasing grin. "Having a lover's spat?"

"No, the TARDIS is just being… difficult," he growled as he stooped down and picked up the articles of clothing that had been launched at him. Corey cocked an eyebrow as he straightened up, and then tossed a plaid maroon and white flannel button-down at him, which he managed to somehow catch without dropping any of the other garments.

"It's cold out there," she offered without any other explanation before she headed off towards the library. The Doctor frowned as he watched her go before he shook his head and sighed.

"Humans," he muttered wearily as he stepped into the bathroom across the hall. "Always stating the very, very obvious."

Corey didn't hear him as she entered the library, waiting until she was out of sight of anyone walking down the hall to sag against the wall before she slid down into a sitting position. The girl promptly let out a low groan as she folded her arms over her knees and stared up at the ceiling. This was way too freaking weird, even for them. As it was, it was all she could do to keep from freaking out.

The Doctor was a kid! When he had left, he had looked like an adult, she was positive of it. So what on earth had happened to him to cause something like this?

Before Corey could speculate any of the possible reasons why her friend had suddenly become pubescent again, a series of blistering profanities split the air as a door slammed open. Corey jumped, and promptly smacked the back of her head against the bottom of a shelf as she tried to get to her feet. The girl just clamped a hand over the sore spot and rushed out of the library, wondering just what on earth had gone wrong now.

The Doctor had just started to cycle through some truly foul Hungarian obscenities – and those were only the ones that she knew – when Corey skidded to a stop in front of the bathroom.

"What happened?" she asked as she stared wide-eyed at her friend. The Doctor had an expression on his face that she had long ago dubbed the 'Oncoming Storm' look, and Corey flinched as she caught a glimpse of it before he shook his head.

"Put your hand on my chest," he snapped, and Corey just stood there in the doorway before she gave him an incredulous look.

"Are you high?" she finally asked as she took a cautious step backwards, involuntarily glancing at the Doctor's bare – and very pale – chest. Thank god that he was at least wearing jeans, otherwise she would have slammed the door shut in his face while yelling at him about the fact that most polite societies frowned upon flashing people. "Dude, put a shirt on or something, okay? I don't need to go snow-blind from seeing your Casper-ass white chest."

"Corey, just do it!"

The girl flinched at the anger in his tone, but did as he requested, hesitantly placing the palm of her right hand against his chest with her fingers splayed out. After a few seconds she frowned slightly and looked up at the Doctor in obvious confusion.

"I feel your heartbeat, and your temperature, and they both seem pretty normal," she said slowly as she gave her friend an 'okay, now you're acting crazy' look. "I mean, it's not like you exactly have very many muscles on your chest or anything, but that's normal for most teenage boys if they're not die-hard athletics. I don't see what you're getting so worked up over, but-"

"That's exactly what I'm worked up about!" the Doctor shouted as he held up a single finger right in Corey's face, causing her to draw back slightly as she seriously contemplated seeing if the TARDIS had a spare straightjacket stashed away somewhere. "One heartbeat! One! I'm a Time Lord! I should have two!"

The girl pulled a face as she nodded once. "Okay. That's not good."

If looks could kill, then Corey would have been a pile of dust on the floor from the force of the Doctor's glare.

"No, it's not!" he growled a he dragged a hand through his hair angrily. "Also, you said my temperature felt normal. The normal core temperature for a human is 98.2 degrees Fahrenheit. As a Time Lord, my core temperature should be significantly lower than that!"

"And that means?"

"It means that I'm human right now, you stupid ape!" the Doctor snapped.

Before he could continue his rant, Corey let out a frustrated sigh before she punched him right in the face. The Doctor yelped as he reeled backwards, his hand instinctively flying up to his nose to make sure that she hadn't broken it. It wasn't; she had made sure to only hit him hard enough that it hurt, not hard enough to break anything.

"What was that for?" he demanded as he looked up at Corey accusingly. The teen glared back at him, her entire body shaking as she held her arms at her sides stiffly.

"You're freaked out about what's going on," she said in a tone of voice that could only be called dangerously calm, her expression kept carefully neutral. "Okay, I get that. I'm more than a little freaked right now too." Suddenly, the girl shoved him up against the wall behind them as she thrust her face right up into his and looked the Time Lord directly in the eyes, a dangerous glint appearing in the steely depths as she clenched her teeth. "But stop taking it out on me!"

Corey stared at him for a little longer before she let out a frustrated sigh and stepped away from him, dragging her fingers through her hair in an attempt to neaten it up a little.

"Just… get dressed, and then we'll leave," she finally said as she turned away and started to head towards the kitchen area. For a single moment, the Time Lord thought that he saw a pained expression cross her face as the girl walked away.

The Doctor watched her go before he let out a frustrated groan and buried his face in his hands. He needed to get this blasted human temper under control before he either ended up with a fist in his face again – in all honesty, he was surprised that Corey had enough self-restraint to refrain from breaking his nose – or he ended up in an all-out brawl with his companion. The fact that he was now human would explain quite a bit though. Adolescent males of almost any species were incredibly short-tempered, and the sudden surge of hormones in his body was enough to unbalance practically anyone.

But that wasn't an excuse. He was the Doctor, and the last of the Time Lords. He was more practiced in self-control than most monks. Until this fiasco was over, he would do his best to make sure that he didn't take out his frustration on Corey again. It wasn't fair to her, and he knew that she could only take so much before she snapped.

An encounter involving the Daleks and a crowbar came to mind, and he winced at the memory. No, he definitely did not want to live through a repeat of that incident.

The man, no, boy, grimaced slightly as he looked down at the small pile of clothing that still sat on the bathroom counter. None of them were exactly to his taste, but he would have to deal with it for the time being. With a sigh, the Doctor grabbed the Henley and pulled it on, frowning when the shirt made his hair look even messier than usual once he had pulled his head through the neck hole.

When he looked at his reflection, he failed to suppress a flinch at the sight as he placed both of his hands on the countertop and leaned forward. The boy staring back at him from the mirror looked like he was probably around the same age as Corey, with a lanky frame that strongly indicated that he still had a bit of growing to do. And the clothing made him look like an average teenage boy, probably from a working-class family.

The Doctor roughly shoved any further thoughts about his appearance out of his mind with a soft noise of frustration and grabbed the flannel button-down before he pulled it on. He stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments before he shook his head and left the front unbuttoned the way that Corey usually did. His change in wardrobe was only temporary, and it would do him no good whatsoever to fume about it. With that thought, he grabbed the jacket off of the counter and seized his trainers – the only part of his wardrobe that still remained the same – with his other hand and walked out of the bathroom.

He found Corey standing in front of the small sink in the kitchen, her headphones placed firmly on her ears and the sleeves of her green and white flannel button-down rolled up past her elbows as she scrubbed furiously at her cereal bowl. The Doctor frowned slightly as he placed his shoes and jacket on a nearby chair and approached the girl from behind. Something was wrong, even he could sense that much.

Before he could say or do anything, Corey suddenly threw both the plastic bowl and the scrubbing pad into the hot, soapy water and leaned forwards, her eyes screwed shut as she held onto the countertop with a white-knuckled grip. The boy's eyes widened as Corey's shoulders started to shake, and he heard her make an odd noise that sounded like several shaky breaths taken in rapid succession. It took him a few seconds for him to realize what was taking place, and when he did he could hardly believe it.

Corey was crying.

The odd thing was she still managed to keep a grip on herself even when she was distressed. Where most people would be sobbing loudly and attracting attention to themselves, Corey was so quiet that anyone who didn't know her wouldn't realize that she was crying. She was mostly dry-eyed, except for some tell-tale moisture at the corners of her eyes, and she kept her teeth gritted the entire time, almost as though she was trying to hold back any of the strangled noises that threatened to emerge from her throat.

When Corey Matthews cried, she treated it the same way that she treated most of her problems. It was something that she needed to handle on her own, and she wasn't going to bother anyone else with it.

However, that wasn't the disturbing part. What really unnerved the Doctor was the fact that the girl who hadn't shed a tear when she had gone to visit her parent's graves, who had endured various types of physical harm upon her person without making a sound, was crying. To be honest, he didn't even think that she had cried when she had found out that she could never go back to her reality. The thought that the world might be ending briefly crossed his mind, and the Doctor quickly dismissed it, chalking the thought up to human adolescent idiocy.

But, why was she crying? He hadn't done anything to upset her, other than show up at the TARDIS looking a few decades younger than he should have been, but that-

The reason behind his companion's uncharacteristic tears suddenly hit him, and the Doctor groaned loudly as he clapped a hand to his face. He had called her a stupid ape.

He had done many things with Corey over the past months, including teasing her and scolding her whenever she did something particularly reckless or dangerous, but he had never outright insulted her before.

Not for the first time, the Doctor silently cursed the fact that he couldn't go back and alter his own time-line. It took a lot to make him feel guilty over something – well, not a lot – but making one of his companions go into an unusual display of emotion was one of those things. Actually, this was the first time that he'd upset one of his companions like this in quite some time.

Shame flooded though him as he realized that he was the cause of Corey's distress, followed shortly by an almost overwhelming feeling of profuse embarrassment. Before he could say or do something even more idiotic, the Doctor snatched his shoes and jacket from the chair and hastily retreated from the room.

Because that was all he could ever do when he was faced with his problems. All he ever did was run away from them.

Just like a coward.

Okay, thank you so much to everyone who reviewed. The compliments and criticism are much appreciated.

Just F.Y.I, this particular fiasco is a two-parter.