The Doctor was still the same, still giddy, still grinning, and still absolutely perfect. The little blonde girl next to him was the shining star in his eye. Miranda hated her.

Apparently her two years with Jack had taught her liver to man up, because this body apparently enjoyed hypervodkas. This body, with its smooth dark skin and its piercing brown eyes, didn't miss a beat, and her eyes watched the way that the blonde woman laughed and tugged on his hand. "Dance with me," she was saying. "Surely the Doctor dances?" She was teasing. She was so young.

She sighed, and the man next to her gave her a questioning look. She'd been in this corner of the bar for a few hours, and already felt like a queen holding court. She'd never had this much power just from men looking at her, and it was a heady feeling. She nodded toward the Doctor's new companion. "I think my cousin can do better than that old gent, don't you?" The man's eyes followed her gaze and landed on the blonde girl.

"Your cousin?" Miranda's lips pressed together in a disapproving line, and the man quickly moved on. "She probably just feels bad for him."

"She'll strand herself with him if nobody helps her out. A beautiful girl like her…" she paused, looking over the man. He was reasonably attractive enough. Practically a god by 21st Century Earth standards. "Why don't you buy her a drink? And don't you dare tell her I sent you. She'd kill me." She played up a guilty, indulgent smile.

"Couldn't hurt." Undertones of if she's desperate enough for that old man practically oozed out of his pores. She wanted to dismiss him, but she kept up the concerned cousin act for a bit longer. She was three millenia out of place, in a galaxy that the little blonde hadn't even known existed. And she could direct men to do things with a smile. It felt… odd.

She watched, sipping the last of her Hyperdriver down to the smooth orange juice finish. The man - had he told her his name earlier in the night? - caught the girl's arm and whispered in her ear. She giggled and drifted away from the Doctor. Miranda waited still.

He watched the blonde go, a giddy smile still on his face, but there was something darker behind it. Something almost… lonely. Miranda, selfish as this body seemed, couldn't help but feel a lurch of pain to match his. Her Doctor… her feet were moving through the mass of people before she could really help herself.

She meandered toward him, trying not to look as though she was making a beeline for the tall man in the black leather jacket. But when she finally reached him, she almost sighed from the familiar touch of that stupid coat. She wanted it off him. On her. Like the scavenger hunt in the TARDIS. She traced her fingers across his shoulder and he turned, still grinning.

"Hello there." He said, his eyes trying to place her. Familiar, and yet not. A foreign element he thought he should recognize.

"Can I buy you a drink, stranger? Don't see many like you around here." She leaned back against the bar, watching him, nervous to her core and yet trying to play it cool. She had never been good at that, but this version of her seemed almost comfortable with this game.

"Like me, huh?"

"Tall, dark, and handsome. That trope fell out a few centuries ago, right? Only a few of us still… appreciate those qualities in a man." As she spoke the words, she felt his gaze wander over her. She ached to touch him, but stood still. After all, she had come here, here of all places, first in this regeneration, to see him. To hold him. And she would not leave without doing exactly that.

"A bit old fashioned then, are you? Well, I know all the old fashions, me." He smiled at her again. "But what are the locals drinking these days?"

She laughed. She liked the low sound of it. "Oh, I'm no local, but I have a penchant for hypervodkas. Though I'll admit they're better quality by the 51st Century." She motioned to the bartender, who brought her two small glasses. "This is the best imitation they've got yet."

"Fifty first century, hm?" His eyes moved over her differently now, intrigued. She was a puzzle to solve.

She smiled and held up his glass to him. "To being at home anytime, anyplace." How could he resist a toast like that? He raised his glass to hers, tipping it back in time with her. "What should I call you?"

It was common, she had learned from Jack, for time travelers to never give out their real names - made it too easy to identify their information. Never ask for a name in such experienced circles. Ask for what to call a person.

"I'm...John Smith."

She flashed him a smile. Oh, she remembered him using that alias. That obvious British Earth alias. She loved it. "I'm Eve." She slid her arm around his, watching him, feeling each muscle move as he adjusted to the feeling. "And it seems to me that this type of dancing isn't really our speed. Walk with me?" She was already propelling them across the floor, sparing a glance for the blonde girl who was busy having the time of her life at the center of a group of men and women who were laughing and dancing. This body was selfish, yes, but not evil. The girl would be just fine.

He walked with her in silence for a bit, but eventually he couldn't help himself. He started to explain the plants in the hanging gardens (she had only to smile at the bouncer and he'd let them in). He'd explained the new cultural fascination with garbage heaps ("The things this century thinks it's learning!). He'd talked about the music, with duplicate notes in a variety of frequencies to appeal to several different species. And then he'd talked about the 51st Century, trying to get more information out of her.

"What about you, John? Are you a 51st Century kind of guy?" The tone was teasing, playful, but also an offer. This was a tete-a-tete between time travelers, and that sort of question was all but a proposition.

"I've lingered there for a bit, but it never really took." He looked at her in the dimness of the street light. "But you're not really either, are you?"

She was weak and selfish and she knew it. "No. But that doesn't mean I can't be tempted." She stood up on her tiptoes, putting them face to face. "Or tempt." She placed a kiss on his lips. It felt different - she was different - but it was familiar and good, too. Maybe that was what he felt, or maybe this was the kind of situation the Doctor had insinuated when they'd fought on Woman Wept, but he kissed her back. Enthusiastically.

"I'm staying just upstairs." She saw his eyes cast back to the entry to the dance club, and she slid her hand up through his hair, touching that spot on the back of his ear that she shouldn't admit she knew about. "Stay for now. You can come back and pick her up with your ship, or however it is you travel. She's having a good time." She leaned up and kissed the spot at the base of his jaw. She was playing dirty. Selfish body. "You should have one too."

When he slept, however briefly, she held him. She tried to touch his mind without giving herself away. She tried to memorize every angle, line, and curve of his body. Something told her this would be her last encounter with those beautiful big ears and nose and grin. At least in an intimate space like this.

A few minutes before dawn, before things would get complicated and answers would have to be made, she slipped away. Wrapping her hair into a braid as she descended in the elevator, she paused near the entry to the dance club. The blonde girl - Rose, something echoed from his mind to hers - was chatting animatedly with a young couple about some concert they wanted her to go to, and wasn't she just the most interesting, old-fashioned girl they'd met. Her 21st Century style was so authentic. Her accent so delightful. Miranda sneered. The couple was thinking she was a country bumpkin from some backwater planet that hadn't really evolved to know to do these things ironically.

She approached and dismissed them. It only took an eyebrow raise. She had been at this complex every night for months, and she all but owned it. These small-time party-goers knew her. Knew she was someone they couldn't match, and they slunk away. She loved and hated it. She turned to Rose, who was giving her a rather disgusted look. "Who are you, then?"

Miranda didn't engage. She wasn't there to play nice with the Doctor's… whatever she was. She had been selfish, and the Doctor was still asleep where she had left him, exhausted despite his respiratory bypass system. "Your friend told me to ask you to meet him back at the ship. He got detained."

"My friend? What mess is he in now?"

"Nothing he can't handle. He's nearly finished anyhow. Saving the world seems pretty mundane for him." She pressed a card into Rose's hand. "Take the cab. You know where the ship is parked, yeah? Because I don't want to know."

She turned to leave, her hearts thundering in her chest. "Who are you? Where's the Doctor?"

"I used to be a friend of the Doctor's. He saved me, once. So I owe him this, at least. I owe him just walking away. Don't ask me to do anymore."

She was selfish and stupid and needed off this planet. To anywhere. Maybe another resort planet. Maybe Midnight - she'd heard good things. It didn't matter. Her Doctor wasn't hers anymore. And she had millennia more to wait.