Well, I'm officially out of backlog. Whoops. *shakes fist at Patrick Ness for creating Quill, an actual personal attack on my poor gay heart*

But anyway, this chapter is fun and silly and cute and I love it. I hope you guys do too!

"This is risky."

"We're fine."

"Doctor. I can feel that something's off and you know you do too and you know the reason."

"It'll be fine."

Jay looked up from his absurdly huge caramel popcorn smoothie to look at the Doctor and Aliya, who were frowning at each other. The four were the only ones in the large room since the manager had disappeared into the back, meaning that their quiet conversation was easy to overhear.

"Did I hear something about this being risky?" He glanced around the brightly light establishment with confusion. "We're at a smoothie bar. On the moon. What could be risky about that? Since the oxygen shield is apparently top of the range."

"It's the 52nd century," the Doctor said, and Jenny's eyes widened.

"Oh. Shouldn't we have come at like, any other time?"

"But this is the only time they have the banana custard smoothie!" The Doctor told her. "There's no point otherwise!"

"You guys have lost me," Jay said. "Not that that's a new feeling, but still."

Aliya sighed. "On the other side of the moon is the Lunar University. Where his wife is studying. Right now."

"Oh," Jay said, "the dead one?"

"Dead is relative, with time travel." Aliya shot the Doctor a disapproving but resigned look. "I think he's hoping she might waltz in here by happy accident. Who's to say it didn't happen?"

He looked at her with surprise. "How could you possibly-"

"Because I was thinking it too," she said, quietly, "That doesn't mean it should happen. I know she's been on your mind lately, she's been on mine too, but-"

"Look, let's just leave it, alright? Let's just go, remove any risk of damaging the timelines, who needs hope anyway," the Doctor muttered, sliding out of his seat and heading for the door.

"Doctor!" Aliya protested. "You know I just - I didn't-" He left with a spin of the revolving door and she slumped over the counter with a frustrated groan. "Why is he so... impossible?"

"He just misses River," Jenny said sadly.

"Yeah, well, so do I!" Aliya said, propping her chin up with both hands, visibly upset. "But River Song died a long time ago, and as much as we might wish more than anything in the world that we could see her again, it would destroy whatever peace we've managed to find since it happened. And we're too old to try and bend timelines for our own ends."

The way she spoke, it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than them. Jay searched his brain for a cheerier subject, but could only think about how miserable she looked.

Thankfully, as far as distractions went, a fully dressed Roman soldier barreling out of the bathroom and brandishing his blood soaked sword while screaming a battle cry was a pretty good one.

"What the fuck?!" The three travellers yelped in complete unison, scrambling out of their stools.

"For Rome!" He yelled.

"We're friendly!" Jenny said hastily. He gave no reply, his eyes hazy with battle fever. Jay wasn't even sure if he had heard her.

"So, uh, who wants to take this one?" Aliya asked as the trio scrambled to avoid his charge and force him to narrow down his target.

"I'm only passable with a sword," Jenny said.

"I know which end to hold," Jay said helpfully, "But I mean, wouldn't we need a sword for this conversation to have any point?"

"That mop handle is made of 51st century steel, it'll do just fine," Aliya said, nodding at the mop in a bucket near Jay. "Throw it to me, and then run and get the Doctor. It seems that all those fencing lessons he gave me in that time loop are finally going to come in handy."

"Let me guess, I'm the diversion?" Jenny asked. When Aliya nodded, she grinned. "Brilliant."

Jay grabbed the mop and threw it in Aliya's direction before bolting towards the revolving door. Thanks to Jenny grabbing the straw dispenser and hurling it at the soldier's head, Jay was able to make a clean getaway.

Outside the smoothie bar, the Doctor was leaning against the TARDIS and chatting to a red alien with two heads.

"Doctor!"

"Ah, Jay, hello! What's all that noise inside the bar?"

"That would be your daughter and friend trying to fend off the Roman soldier that randomly burst out of the bathroom and started trying to kill us!"

The Doctor's face barely shifted, his only reaction a blink. "What?" He asked mildly, like he was sure he had heard Jay wrong.

"Roman soldier, in there, Aliya's trying to fight him with the mop," Jay said seriously. "Help?"

Another shout from inside punctuated his point.

The Doctor stammered out an apology to the person he had been talking to and dashed for the diner door without another word. Jay was quick to follow. When they got back inside, they were greeted with the sight of Aliya and the soldier on top of the bar, sword and mop locked with each other.

"We're not your enemies!" She was telling him earnestly. "Why else would I only go on the defensive, not offensive?"

"Honestly, I leave you alone for five minutes," the Doctor said with great amusement.

She snorted. "Oh, do not open that kettle of worms."

"That's not the saying-"

Jay's correction disappeared when the soldier took a swipe at Aliya and she had to jump back to avoid it, because she missed her footing on the narrow countertop and tumbled off. One of the diner chairs was in her path of descent, drawing a loud clang as the metal fit the floor along with the thump her body made on impact.

"Aliya!" Jay and the Doctor both shouted with concern.

That was when Jenny leapt out of nowhere and onto the countertop, clocking the soldier over the head with a large wooden chopping board and knocking him out instantly. He toppled off the counter and hit the floor hard enough to make Jay wince.

The Doctor, meanwhile, was staring at his daughter with delight. "Excellent timing," he said, beaming, "Even if it involved a little more violence than I can approve of. But under the circumstances, well."

Jenny smiled as she hopped off the counter and set the board on top of it. "This stuff is solid, I didn't even need to hit him very hard."

"51st century norm in these parts is Gamma Forest Oak, 100 times harder than Earth oak of Jay's time," the Doctor explained. "He'll be lucky if he doesn't have a concussion."

A groan from nearby reminded them what had happened to the fourth member of their party.

"Aliya!"

They rushed to where their friend was sprawled on the floor against the chair she had brought down with her. Her nose was wrinkled and her eyes shut.

"Aliya, are you alright?" The Doctor asked her urgently.

"Ow," she mumbled as he reached out to haul her to her feet. Her hands travelled over her body experimentally, making her wince several times. "Owww. I'm gonna be black and blue in at least five different places."

"Would my kissing it better help?" The Doctor asked with a grin, confusing Jay until Aliya snorted.

"You can kiss my-"

"Oh, you're fine," he said, chuckling, "Nice job with the mop, by the way. I bet you had a great teacher."

She shoved the mop into his hands. "Yeah, he'd be able to wipe the floor with me," she said, grin widening.

"You did not just say that," Jay groaned, and when he saw the delight on the Doctor's face at the silliness of the joke Jay had to bury his own in his hand. "You guys are the worst."

"You're ridiculous," the Doctor said to Aliya, eyes sparkling, "That was a truly ridiculous joke."

"Well, I have to be occasionally capable of it, or we wouldn't be friends," she replied.

"Fair point."

Jenny coughed. "Could we deal with the unconscious Roman soldier on the floor? Also, where's that manager? She had to have heard all that, you'd think she would be worried."

"As someone who works in the industry, trust me, she will be avoiding dealing with whatever problem might have arisen for as long as she possibly can," Jay said, "Customers are the worst. No offence."

"How did he get here? We're in the future, on the moon," the Doctor said with amazement. Then he looked at Aliya with great interest. "You said something felt off before. Temporally. And, maybe, if I'm being completely honest, I felt it too. But we thought it was because we were too close to River, so I, well, ignored it. But it's not that at all."

"No, tenuous timelines are all sort of...nauseous," Aliya muttered, "this is different. Like a stabbing." She shook her head with exasperation. "Lord, we must be getting old and desensitised, those aren't remotely the same thing."

"Even I could have told you it feels more like a wound," Jenny said, "and I can barely sense it and only because you mentioned it."

Struck again as he so often was by the blunt reminder of how different his friends were to him, Jay found himself considerably less unnerved than usual. It was just... part of who they were. It wouldn't be quite so fun without them baffling him at at every other turn.

"He came from the bathroom," Jenny said, and made her way over to the door. When she pushed it open, the light coming from behind one of the five doors through the entryway was near blinding. "Well - I think I found how he got here."

They hurried to stand next to her and get a closer look. Aliya murmured something in Gallifreyan, to which the Doctor nodded but Jenny just looked confused.

"What? A four-five tear? Did I hear that right?"

"Fourth and fifth dimensions," the Doctor said, shaking his head, "Classic mechanic colloquialism."

"Says the man who understood it," Aliya retorted.

"It's not that difficult to work out." He peered at the tear. "I wonder what made it."

"My bets are on the crappy human time travel they're so fond of in this century. Maybe your wife did it. We know she's been here before and that she likes zapping about with that vortex manipulator."

"My wife never went around punching holes in the universe!" the Doctor said defensively, only for her to scoff. "You know she understands time travel better than any human I've known."

"That's not enough of a benchmark. River is great, but she was no Time Lord."

Jay frowned and leaned in closer to Jenny. "Are they...going to decide on a tense? I get that it's complicated, but it's giving me whiplash."

"To be fair, there's a tense for this in Gallifreyan, it's just that English doesn't have one that fits since she's simultaneously dead and alive and English was never made to properly handle time travel," she replied.

"What, there's a tense for simultaneously dead and alive?" Jay asked sceptically.

She grinned. "There's a tense for past on your personal timeline and present in your current location, yeah. Time Lords have a tense for everything." She made a face. "It makes it horrendous to learn. Literally hundreds of tenses. It's the worst. I probably won't have a decent handle on it for a good century."

"Ew, and I thought Spanish past tense was bad," Jay said, shuddering. "I'll stick to English and Korean."

"Alright, what is going on?" The raspy voice of the manager made them whirl around to look at the alien who seemed as though she wanted to be anywhere but there.

Her name was Blak, Jay recalled, and she was what the others called a Blathereen, from a planet called Raxacora-something. It was an absurd name. Blak towered over them all at a solid eight feet tall, was a similar hue to a Jaffa cake, and should not have been able to pull off the black mini dress she was wearing over her bulky figure but somehow did.

"Ah, Blak, there you are! You must have had your music up pretty loud back there, to not hear everything that was going on in here," the Doctor said, chuckling.

She cast her eyes disinterestedly around the room which was in complete disarray. "I was watching the Daily Update," she said, sighing and twisting her claws together, "Marinus Nova and his husband are getting a divorce. Apparently his synthrock career just didn't leave them enough time together. It's so very upsetting. You have to wonder if love is real at all, when this sort of thing happens."

Much to their alarm, she promptly burst into tears.

"It certainly is, you should have seen this one and his wife back in the day," Aliya said, nudging the Doctor with her elbow, "I literally got cheered up by how happy they were just by being around them."

"Really?" Blak looked tentatively hopeful.

"Hell, I've got pictures if you want-"

"And I have this, um-" Jenny swallowed. "Had this friend, she found out everything in her life had been a lie, and the reason it didn't totally break her was because the one thing she knew was real was her being totally in love with this woman she worked with even though that woman had no idea because she'd just been pining. And when she finally told her, they were basically living together after two days."

Blak's eyes had somehow gotten wider. "Really? And they're still together?"

"They never broke up," Jenny said, with just enough of a hesitation to make Jay realise it was a lie of omission, that something about the story wasn't as beautiful as she made out. He didn't like the implications of the past tense she had corrected herself to, or the way the Doctor and Aliya's expressions had become tight.

But Blak smiled and wiped at her eyes. "Thank you, my dear, I think I needed to hear that. Now, are you going to explain this mess and why there is an odd man unconscious on my floor? Please tell me he's not dead."

"Nope, just unconscious thanks to that ace chopping board of yours," Jenny said with a grin.

"I see. Look, we have a strict policy on personal altercations taking place inside the establishment-"

"It wasn't a personal altercation, he came out of the tear in time and space in your bathroom!" Jay told her. He wasn't completely sure he'd gotten the explanation right but the others didn't correct him so he felt a rush of pride.

"The what?" Blak asked, frowning.

The Doctor beckoned her over and pointed her at the blinding light. "For some reason, there's a hole in reality here in your bathroom. An ancient Roman soldier fell in it. It's very possible that people on this end have fallen through it too and ended up god knows where. Have you noticed people disappearing?"

"Oh," Blak said with surprise, "That would explain why a couple of people haven't paid their bills. And what happened to the last two waitresses."

The four travellers stared at her incredulously.

"And you didn't...think to wonder where they went? Your waitresses?"

Blak shrugged. "We have a quick staff turnover here. All those pretty young things are busy trying to become holovid stars or musicians or at least waiting for some cargo ship to give them a ride to the next galaxy. I figured they just left without giving official notice. They're always in such a hurry."

"Never mind that, we should focus on the two more urgent matters," Aliya said. "We need to do something with this Roman, and work out how we're going to shut this tear."

"We can just take the Roman back to his own time, his clothing is practically a date stamp. As for the tear, best thing we can do is to let it close itself."

"Is there a way to do that?" Jenny asked.

The Doctor nodded, rubbing his hands together. "Feeding it a complex space time event should do the trick. Tried and true method."

Aliya rolled her eyes. "And just where are we going to get one of -" He gave her a pointed look and she blinked, and then sighed at him. "Oh. No. Really? That's your plan?"

"Have you got a better idea?"

"Well, no. It just... seems like a bad idea on principle."

"Feel free to include us any time, guys," Jay said, putting his hands in his pockets.

"Him," Aliya said, frowning, "he's the complex space time event. Our plan is to put him through the tear and pick him up from wherever he ends up."

"Wait, Time Lords are complex space time events? Like, a whole person is a significant event across the dimensions?" Jenny asked.

Aliya snorted. "Of course not. A big enough group of Time Lords, sure. But no, this is down to him. He's the bastard who has gotten involved in practically every significant event to ever happen, anywhere. Hence, he's actually become a complex space-time event himself."

"Jeez," Jay said, eyeing the Doctor with amazement. "Is that….a good thing?"

"No," Aliya said before the Doctor could breathe a word, sending him a disapproving, albeit fond, look. "But it's coming in handy."

"Anyway, with my best girls on the job, I have no reason to be worried," the Doctor said, beaming. "But first, let's get the Roman into a TARDIS containment vortex."

It took all four of them to lug the man's dead weight out of the diner and into the blue box. Once a reassuring haze of blue forcefield energy was surrounding him, the others headed back into the diner, where Blak was waiting for them.

"I'm still really not sure what's going on," she told them, claws knotting together nervously.

"We're fixing your problem, that's all that matters," the Doctor said cheerfully, "and then you can go back to serving wonderful smoothies like the banana custard one which I really do suggest you don't discontinue at any point."

Aliya elbowed him in the ribs.

"But maybe that's getting off the point," he said, wincing. "Alright, so." He took a small device out of his pocket and scanned it with the screwdriver before handing the latter to his daughter. "Sonic is tuned to the beacon, which I'll activate once I'm on the other side. If all goes well, this thing will snap shut the moment I'm through and then you should be able to come right to me."

"I'm hearing a lot of 'if's and 'should's," Jenny said uneasily. "You're sure you're going to be okay?"

"I'm always okay, I'm the King of Okay, remember?" The Doctor told her with a grin as he pocketed the beacon. "Alright. See you on the other side." He gave them a goofy salute before striding through the door and right into the swirling light.

It gurgled and collapsed in on itself until the light was entirely gone and they were all left staring at a group of ordinary bathroom doors.

"It worked," Aliya said, with a sigh of relief.

"That's a good start," Jenny agreed, "Okay, Blak, we're off now. Have a good rest of your day, and sorry about the mess!"

"I think you've more than made up for it," the Blathereen said, shrugging and waving to them as the trio headed out of the diner. "Best of luck finding your friend!"

Once back in the TARDIS, Jay sat back and let Jenny and Aliya get to work. The former plugged the screwdriver into the console and then they waited for a signal to come through. It took about twenty seconds and the collective breath of relief that escaped them all was audible.

Aliya hit a button and an image came up on the scanner - a volcanic terrain with one familiar figure in tweed perched on a nearby rock. Jenny let out a whoop of triumph and ran for the door, flinging it open.

The Doctor strode in a few moments later, quick to loop his arm around Jenny's shoulders and hug her to his side.

"There, what did I tell you?" He said to them with a grin. "It went exactly as I said it would."

"Which is a first in about a century," Aliya retorted.

"Hey, cut the attitude, you're three hours late, you know. I've lost count of the number of games of solitaire I played in between admiring the scenery."

"Nice scenery," Jay remarked, eyeing the lava through the door before it was shut.

"If we're three hours late, it's because of the shitty signal we were following," Aliya told the Doctor, crossing her arms, "You need to get a half-decent beacon and not one you threw together with the combined parts of a toaster and a curling iron."

"You know, I've missed the constant criticism in these past three hours," he said with mock seriousness as he and Jenny returned to the console platform.

Aliya put her hand over her heart. "I'm so sorry. Let me give it another try. Oh, Doctor, your brilliance has single-handedly saved the day yet again!" She pretended to swoon and even faint, her body properly plummeting until the Doctor caught her at the last second.

It occurred to Jay that it had been a real - if deliberate - fall and that she had to have complete faith that he would in fact catch her.

"My hero!" Aliya exclaimed dramatically, swooning again.

The Doctor rolled his eyes, but they were amused. "Sarcasm is highly unoriginal, you know. And I will drop you."

"No, you won't."

"You're an idiot."

"I learn from the best." She was grinning at him, at least until he let go of her and she hit the floor with a yelp. "Hey! What the fuck?"

"I tried to warn you," he replied, without so much as a glance in her direction as he moved to the controls. She seemed genuinely shocked at what had happened. "Now, where to next? I think it's your turn to pick, Jenny."

"We could get dinner at that place in Space Vegas with all the lanterns," Jenny said hopefully.

"You mean the one we've been to five times already because you have a crush on the waitress with the pink scales?" The Doctor asked, eyebrows up. Jenny turned scarlet and Jay stood up so he could hit her lightly on the arm.

"You don't say? Well, cute waitresses, scales or otherwise, happen to be big area of interest for me," Jay told them with a grin, "so I'm keen. Plus, Space Vegas. I've gotta see that."

"That place has great ice cream, so I'm in," Aliya said, rubbing her elbow absently now that she was back on her feet.

They spent the next few hours laughing at how Jenny turned into a stammering mess whenever the waitress - who the Doctor took care to request - came to take their orders or check on them.

Jay took the role of wingman very seriously. When they were finishing up for the night, he decided to take a chance.

"Hey, you should give my friend here your number," he told the waitress as she turned to leave. "She thinks you're wonderful."

Jenny slid down in her seat and buried her face in her hands. "You're the worst friend ever."

The waitress looked between them with surprise. "Oh. My dear, I'm extremely flattered, but I'm afraid I'm married. My wife and husband do like a little variation, though, if you were interested in joining us for a night or two-"

Jay choked on his drink at the same time Aliya did on hers, while Jenny turned an even deeper shade of crimson and slid further down in her seat with mortification.

"Thanks, but I'll leave you to it," she said weakly.

The Doctor coughed. "Lovely offer, though," he said to the waitress, "We'll have the cheque now, thank you."

The waitress nodded and gave them all a big smile, Jenny especially, before heading off.

"Jun-Young Kim, you are dead," Jenny vowed, whacking him, "I cannot believe you just did that to me! I was quite happy just admiring from afar - metaphorically speaking."

"Sorry," Jay said, but he was unable to keep his entirely unapologetic grin off his face.

"I hate you."

"Nah. You love me."

"Psh."

I hope you guys liked this! Let me know what you thought!

-MayFairy :)