Archive of Our Own

"Are you alright?"

The Doctor scoffed. "Of course I am, Evelyn. Don't I look alright?"

She took a long look at his face. It was paler than usual, with blueish rings around the eyes. A thin layer of sweat made his skin reflect the dim green light of the cell they had been locked in for the past three days.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you don't look particularly well at the moment," Evelyn said, furrowing her eyebrows. She extended a hand towards his face to move his curly hair to the side and examine him more accurately, but he leaned backwards like a skittish cat, avoiding her touch. "Let me just feel your temperature."

"There's no need," he said.

"You're sweaty. You never sweat."

"I'm not sweaty."

"I'm wearing glasses, Doctor, I can see pretty well."

"Maybe you should change them."

Evelyn gave him a disapproving look. The Doctor couldn't see it, because he had curled up on one side and he had turned his back to her.

"Fine. Be that way," Evelyn muttered. "You know, I don't understand you, sometimes."

"It's the same for me. I'll never get why you humans can't mind your own business. Don't you know that it's dangerous to poke your nose in things you don't understand?"

"This is very unlike you, Doctor. I thought you saw curiosity as a virtue."

"And look where it got us. A cell, in the middle of a revolt, stuck here, forever, or until we both die: you, me, me, me, me, me, me, me and me once again, in that order."

"Have you already thrown in the towel? That's also very unlike you."

The Doctor squirmed uncomfortably, but he didn't reply.

"So you're fine with us just... Withering away in here, or whatever else these people have planned for us. You're completely unbothered by it."

Finally, the Doctor turned around to look at her. His eyes were a bit strange: tired, they glistened more than normal. There weren’t tears in there - the Doctor didn’t cry -, but his eyes looked like a human’s with a nasty fever brewing.

"I'm not unbothered by it, Evelyn. If you think that your death wouldn't bother me, you don't know me at all."

She had gotten used to his straightforwardness, but that hit her harder than what she thought. She had seen the Doctor move on from the death of far younger and lovelier people than she was as if it had been nothing. Why would it be any different when it came to her? She was but a blink in his long life, just one of a long series of humans that to him had to be boring, predictable and, on some level, interchangeable.

"Then," she said, trying to think of anything other than the thoughts that had been festering in her mind for quite a while now, "What do you propose we do?"

"The bars of that cell are pretty resistant," the Doctor muttered. "Maybe I could bend them enough to open the door from the outside, if I were feeling better, but... Yes, I am, as you humans say, a bit under the weather."

Evelyn sighed. "So I was right."

"Ish," he specified. "I'm not sick. Time Lords do not get sick. That was your worry, wasn't it."

"Yes. But then, what's happening to you?"

The Doctor's shoulders drooped. "Nothing unusual. This is perfectly natural for a Time Lord. I haven't eaten anything in weeks."

Evelyn furrowed her eyebrows. She knew that his last statement, for a fact, was untrue.

"But I baked you chocolate cake before getting stuck here. And we've been eating prisoner food. We haven't been starving... Yet."

The Doctor groaned. "As much as I adore your chocolate cake, it doesn't offer me any nutritional value, besides empty calories. I just eat it because it makes my taste buds happy."

"Then... What is it that gives you nutritional value?"

The Doctor took another long, long sigh. "I would rather have kept this from you."

"Why?"

He shook his head. "Because you'll be disgusted by me, if I tell you. Afraid of me."

"Of you? No. Never."

The Doctor let out a little grim laugh. "It's curious how my companions know that there's something wrong with me the very moment in which they see me, but then their brains refuse to believe their instincts. You should listen to those more. Usually, they're not wrong."

Evelyn tried to think of when she had experienced what the Doctor was describing, but nothing came to mind. Nothing but a little shiver down her spine the first time he had taken her hand. But that was just because his hands had been very cold.

"I don't think I've ever been afraid of you, Doctor."

"Hmm."

"Well then. Are you going to tell me something or not?"

"Alright. You see, Timelords need to feed on temporal energy, more known as Artron Energy, from time to time, and living beings usually are the best providers of it. When we don't want to or cannot consume that, we feed on other things, such as someone's emotions. And sometimes... In desperate times, we have to take our nourishment from someone's life force in the most concrete sense."

Evelyn thought about it for a moment, then she frowned.

"Are you trying to tell me that you're a vampire?"

The Doctor's expression turned into a frown that reminded her of a scorned child. Maybe he had hoped she would let him go on with his grandiose tale a bit longer, before the big reveal.

"Some sort of it, yes. The Time Lords fought a war against the so called Great Vampires, eons ago. And, in order to defeat them, they incorporated some of our enemy’s characteristics into our own genetic make up. We do not need to feed as often as the Great Vampires did and we usually do not feed onto what they used to feed onto but... Yes. We have this trait in common, even after all this time. Gaze into the abyss long enough, and the abyss also gazes into you. You know the drill."

Evelyn stayed in silence for a while. She could feel the Doctor's gaze on her face, attentively examining her reactions in spite of his poor state.

"Why haven't you fed for so long?" she whispered.

The Doctor opened his mouth and then closed it. He lifted an eyebrow. 

"So, the fact that I've just told you that I can absorb the very essence, emotions and lifeblood of other creatures doesn't bother you at all."

"I-"

"You don't feel any inkling of desire to scream? Hit me with a broom and escape? Anything of the sort?"

"Well, right now, yes, I would like to hit you with a broom, but not for the reasons you've listed. As for whether I'm bothered or not... Maybe I am, just a little bit," Evelyn confessed. "However, I've seen stranger things than this while traveling with you. I'm not entirely shocked. You do seem to have some sort of... Supernatural magnetism that attracts people."

"That's just my charming personality. People can't help but be entranced by my magnificent presence."

Evelyn chuckled. "Of course." 

But maybe, just maybe, there really was something more sinister to the way the Doctor attracted people. The Doctor didn't only fascinate them, he blinded them. Humans were drawn to him like moths to a flame. Even Evelyn herself had become friends with him a bit too quickly than what she would have liked to admit. She got along with him so well that he seemed made in a lab just for her. Not that she wasn't aware of the Doctor's (many) defects, but they only made her like him more, even if she had to metaphorically hit him on the knuckles from time to time, to remind him that some things were wrong.

"So, why haven't you fed in so long?" Evelyn asked, again.

The Doctor grimaced. He had hoped she had forgotten about that.

"I wasn't hungry back then. And we've been very very busy. I just didn't have the time."

Evelyn looked at him in silence.

"Oh, alright!" He grumbled, holding his coat a bit tighter. He was shivering, even if the cell was warm. "The truth is that I used to feed on my companions, in the past." Before Evelyn could comment on that, he lifted a hand to stop her. "Nothing too significant! I've just... It's hard to resist, when people around me are feeling strong emotions, so I take a nibble. But only when it's a lot, only when they won’t notice. I don't want them to be afraid of me, nor to cause them any harm."

He took a deep sigh.

"Time Lords are a cold people. They don't feel as much as humans do. They're like Olympian gods, living on their distant mount, and they're always the same for millennia. Time has slowed down to a crawl for them and everything has fossilized in our society, especially our hearts. And I, even after all this time, am still not used to all your joy, fear and pain. When it's so bright and so close, I can't help myself. Please. Try to understand."

Evelyn swallowed. Then, she nodded.

The Doctor looked at her as if she were the alien - which, technically, she was, at least to him.

"You're not... You're not scared of me," he said. It was a statement, but there was more than a little uncertainty in it. The Doctor was the one who sounded scared. She had never heard him that scared. Not since when... she preferred not to think about that. 

"No. I don't think so." 

"Need I remind you that you should be?"

"Why? Are you planning to hurt me?"

The Doctor's jaw hung open, indignation written all over his face.

"Of course not!" He exclaimed, his voice one octave higher.

"Then, everything is alright," Evelyn said, trying not to smile. She had learned how to push his buttons, with time. "What really worries me, yet again, is how you've reached this point. You should have, um... Snacked earlier. Have I not been a good source of emotions?"

The Doctor fell into a nervous silence, lightly tapping a rhythm on his arm, while trying to warm himself up.

"I'll try to put this in gentle terms, Evelyn, but ... You aren't as young and resilient as the majority of the humans I've travelled with. You're older and frailer."

It was Evelyn's turn to be indignated.

"Older?! I'm not a crone yet!"

"Oh, you know what I mean," the Doctor cut her short. "Try to be objective about it, you're not as young as you used to be."

She loved him very, very much, but he really lacked tact, sometimes, the Doctor.

"I'm merely stating a matter of fact," he continued, having noticed her deepening frown.

"Yes, yes. Fine. Get to the point." 

The Doctor sighed. "The point is! I couldn't bring myself to take energy from you. I was too afraid to do it. What if I felt too tempted and took more than what I should? This is not a discipline as precise as maths, you know. I would never forgive myself if I accidentally..." the Doctor paused. Then he took a deep breath and looked at her in the eye. "I usually try to feed on creatures of the malevolent kind, or to steal an ounce of emotion or two from people we meet in our travels, but, unfortunately for me and fortunately for the universe, we haven't run into particularly nasty people the energy of whom I could absorb recently, or into willing donors. So, here we are now."

A heavy silence fell between them. 

Evelyn took a moment to consider something. Then, she gently put a hand on the Doctor's arm. He flinched.

"What is it now? I told you everything, I don't have anymore secrets! Not ones that would need unraveling now, either way," he mumbled, giving her a suspicious look.

Evelyn looked back at him, and the harsh lines around his eyes and brow softened.

"Evelyn, don't be silly. I told you why I have avoided feeding on you. You don't have to feel guilty about this in the slightest, I'm the one who should have been more mindful! I should have... Planned in advance, maybe."

"But-"

"Listen," he said, and he gently took her hand between his. He wasn't shivering anymore, as if he had decided not to, just to reassure her. Evelyn knew that he had control over bodily functions that for humans were involuntary, and that he was silly enough to pretend to feel better than what he really did. "I'll be alright. We will get out of here soon. I'm a Time Lord, besides my brain allowing me to have the richest and most variegated vocabulary in the entire universe, it is also useful to control my autonomic functions. I can keep a good grip on my hunger, as soon as I don’t do anything stupid. We just need to wait until they come to get us. Then, we'll both make it out safe and sound."

Evelyn looked at him in the eye. He seemed so sincere. 

"Alright, then. We'll wait for the rescuers, before trying anything else."

He gently cupped her cheek for a moment, a small but affectionate smile on his face.

"That's the best course of action. Trust me."

She nodded. She trusted him. She trusted him with her life. 

"Now, let me rest."

He then curled up on one side, closed his eyes and became completely still. 

It wasn't the first time Evelyn had seen him do that. Time Lords didn't need to sleep in the same way a human did, but when their organisms needed rest, they could take very deep and refreshing power naps. She wished she could do that. Unfortunately, she had to do it the human way. So, after watching the Doctor sleep for a little while, checking for any signs of distress, she laid down next to him and tried to rest as well. There wasn't much else to do in that place.

More days passed. The resistance should have arrived by that point, they both knew it. The Doctor tried to come up with excuses. 

"They will be here soon, trust me, Evelyn," he would say, even if there was less and less conviction in his voice.

Every day he looked worse. He would take naps to rest and restore his energy, but without any fuel all he could do was spare the little strength he still had.

It was the fourth day, after Evelyn had tried to convince him to eat his rations and failed, that she snapped.

"Oh, come off it!" She exclaimed, putting down the stale bread with more strength than it was necessary. 

The Doctor gave her a strange look. "I told you, Evelyn. Now you know: it doesn't really matter if I eat the rations or not. I can't get anything out of them. You might as well eat them for us both, at least you'll keep yourself strong. At your age it's not as advisable to go without eating for long periods of-"

"At my age! It's always my age. You're much older than me, but you don't see me bringing it up all the time, do you?"

The Doctor smiled a bit. 

"What do you mean with that? I'm barely halfway through my regenerative cycle, I'm still pretty young."

Evelyn looked at him in silence, then she sighed. 

"I know the food doesn't do anything, but are you completely sure you don't want any of it?"

"Yes."

Evelyn sat at his side, and he rests a hand on hers.

"I told you. It will be alright, Evelyn."

"They should have arrived by now."

The Doctor pondered her words.

"Yes," he admitted with a sigh. "They should have."

"What if they won't come? What if we're stuck here until we both die, as you said that time?"

"Oh, Evelyn, I was being dramatic. I shouldn't have said that, I didn't mean-"

"There must be some other way to get out of here," she interrupted him. "If you were in possession of your regular faculties, would you be able to open that door?"

The Doctor looked at the metallic door of the cell and frowned. 

"Maybe. I could also wait for a guard to bring us a meal, grab them and make them open the door for us. But, again, I'm not in top shape, as you can see, nor am I very good at hypnosis. My fourth incarnation was much better at it. I used to be able to hypnotize someone without the need to use any sort of aid, such as a pendant or something to focus the attention."

Evelyn swallowed. "But you'd have better chances to succeed without help, if you were back into shape, right?"

The Doctor's gaze snapped towards her. His expression was unreadable. He was pale and his eye bags had taken a purplish hue. He looked dreadful.

"If you're thinking about what I think you're thinking, the answer is no. Wasn't I clear, before?"

"But Doctor! This is our only chance."

"I said no."

"You're starving. You're not well! And who knows when the others will arrive! It could be days, and you won't last until then. Will you have the strength to regenerate, if you’re too weak? You can’t be sure of that, either!"

"Evelyn-"

"Think about it. If you starve, what will become of me, then? At least, like this, we would have a real chance to make it out alive, the both of us."

The Doctor fell into a cold silence. His face didn't betray any emotion.

Evelyn waited for him to answer. He had to take a decision.

"I avoided doing this precisely because I knew it would be dangerous for you." He took a deep sigh. "Why is cosmic retribution so deeply cruel sometimes?"

Evelyn didn't know what to say. She wasn't happy about this either, but she was relieved. She was tired of seeing the Doctor in such a bad state without being able to do anything about it. She was sick of feeling powerless. At the very least, she was going to be useful now. 

"So, um. How are we going to do this?" She asked.

The Doctor looked at her in the eye for a brief moment. He seemed… tired. Defeated. Definitely not happy about this- the furthest thing from happy, in fact.

"I refuse to feed on your Artron Energy. Besides the fact that humans barely have any of it, if I did, it could shorten your life considerably."

"Oh. Yes, it doesn't sound very good."

Besides, he didn't know she didn't even have a lot of years left, with her heart condition, and she preferred to keep things that way.

"As for emotional energy, I think I would rather avoid it. The only emotion I could feed on in here is fear. Maybe anguish. And, since I would have to enhance such emotions, it would prove very distressful for you."

"So... There's only one thing left. My blood."

"Yes. It is the most basic and, frankly, barbaric way to do this, but I won't have to meddle with your mind, nor with your time stream. Which is good. Well, not good but better than the worst possible outcome, as you have pointed out."

Evelyn took a deep breath in. Then, she tried to prepare herself.

"How do we do this? How does it work?"

The Doctor smiled a bit. "You have seen some vampire movies, I suppose. They may have given you the wrong idea." He gently took one of her hands. "All I require is your wrist. I won’t do any neck bites, don't worry. That would be very uncomfortable. There are very small... Hm, how can I put it... Supplementary retractile teeth in my mouth. My poison will numb the area of the bite. You won't feel anything."

Poison? So, he had poison, too? 

That was another layer of uneasiness, but he made it sound very clinical, and Evelyn appreciated it. She had her fair share of problems with doctors, but this Doctor in particular knew that she needed to understand something in order not to be afraid of it. Explaining her things was the right way to help her rationalize them and make her feel in control.

"Alright. That doesn't sound too bad," she said. She was trying to convince herself, she was aware of it, but it was her best tactic, now. She had seen worse while traveling with the Doctor, a few drops of blood weren't going to scare her. If this was needed to help him, she had to do it.

Evelyn rolled her right sleeve up under the Doctor's watchful eye. He looked like a marble statue. Still undecipherable. Most of the time his emotions were plain to see, loud and explosive, but when he became quiet she didn't know what was going on in his head. 

"Are you ready?" He asked.

"Yes, I think," Evelyn murmured. "As ready as I'll ever be."

The Doctor's cold fingers wrapped around her wrist. 

"Alright then. If you don't feel well or you believe something is going wrong, just hit me, hard. Don't worry about hurting me, I'm made of tough material," he said. His cold breath on her skin made her shiver. Even if this had been her idea, she was as tense as a violin string. "I suggest you not to look, if you're squeamish."

"Squeamish?" She repeated, giving him a crooked look. 

There was a flash of teeth, sharper and smaller than his usual ones. Before she could see them properly, they had already sunk in her flesh. She felt a sting of pain and she instinctively tried to free herself, but he firmly kept her in place. Soon after, the numbing agent the Doctor had talked about took hold of her arm. She couldn't feel her fingers anymore, and she couldn't feel any pain. A couple of droplets of dark blood dripped down her wrist and the Doctor's chin. Evelyn turned around. 

Maybe the Doctor had been right about being squeamish, before.

Evelyn waited patiently, looking everywhere but in his direction.

Then, she wondered: how much blood does he need to take from me? Should I say something? Ask him?

Evelyn swallowed. Her mouth was dry, and she was starting to feel really thirsty. Her head was a bit too light for her liking, as if it were about to float away.

"Doctor?" She called. Her voice was feeble. "Doctor, are you done?"

He didn't react. He seemed too absorbed by his activity to hear her. 

Evelyn tried to wriggle out of his hold, but his fingers were like iron claws on her wrist. There was something feverish about the way he was holding her, he was trembling.

"Doctor!"

She tried to pull away with more strength this time, and he emitted a low, rumbling sound. Evelyn needed a couple of seconds to realize what it was.

Had the Doctor just growled at her?

"Alright. No. Let me go, now!" she said, in a tone that, she hoped, was categorical. 

The Doctor still wasn't budging. She needed to do something. Something a bit more drastic, because she was starting to feel very weak. The Doctor had said to hit him, if it was necessary, right? 

She grabbed the first thing that she found (the plastic tray they had brought the food on), and she lifted it in the air. That's going to leave a bump, she thought. Sorry, Doctor.

However, before she could act, he lifted his gaze, meeting hers. 

Her mind emptied in an instant, as if it had been a blackboard covered in writings and the Doctor had thrown a bucket of water on it. Evelyn didn't know what she had wanted to tell the Doctor that badly anymore, nor why. The tray slipped out of her hand, and she leaned forward. He caught her with his free arm, as if he had been waiting nothing but. He made her head rest on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, a quick, wild tribal drum. She found it deeply soothing, and she thought that it made perfect sense that she was giving her own lifeblood away so that the dance of the Doctor’s heart could continue.

Everything was so calm and lovely. Everything made sense and there was nothing to worry about. The Doctor, her best friend, was there and nothing bad was every going to happen to her ever again. It wasn’t a bad way to die. Better than anything that had been awaiting her, either way.

She dreamily drifted into darkness for a brief moment.

Then, she felt hands squeezing her arms, shaking her. Someone patted her cheek with a certain roughness. They were almost slapping her, when she floated close to the surface of her consciousness.

"Evelyn, look at me", a voice said. The tone was that of a general, someone who was used to being obeyed. But she was too tired to do whatever he wanted her to. She just wanted to rest. "Please?", the voice added, softer, now.

Evelyn sluggishly thought about it. She liked respectful and kind students. Even if this one wasn’t a student. She missed teaching. It would have been so nice to go back to those days, but there was no use to living in the past. They were gone. She was doing something else, now. Traveling. Traveling with-

She slowly opened her eyes, only to find a blurry face looking at her. It was the Doctor's.

"Thank Rassilon. Are you alright?"

Evelyn let out a weak sound. She tried to speak, but her lips were a bit too clumsy to form words, and her lungs a bit too empty.

The Doctor shook his head. He had cleaned his face, but there was a reddish smear next to his mouth. "I told you this was dangerous. I was more than hungry, I was ravenous. Not a good idea... A terrible idea, in fact, to offer me anything while I was in such a state. I should have been more stern, I should have..."

He looked much better now. His face was recovering its usual rosiness, and he looked a bit plumper. Evelyn hadn't realized how deflated he had become. Even his curls had become shinier, now.

"... Evelyn?"

She blinked. The Doctor seemed upset.

"Have you heard what I just said?"

She furrowed her eyebrows.

"You need to stay awake," the Doctor said. "Until I can get us out of here."

But I am awake, she thought. I am… I’m…

Evelyn stirred in the blankets. Her cheek was resting on a pillow. The Doctor had been staring at her for a while now. Almost a day. He hadn't dared leaving her side. 

She was very weak and her body was still metabolizing the poison. He needed to be there at all times in case she felt ill, even if it made it impossible for him not to think about what had happened. He would have liked to forget about everything, but he had been cursed with the gift of having an exceptionally accurate memory. His mind kept replaying the moment in which he had probed Evelyn's mind, just so that she would be nice and quiet while he ate. He had thought of himself as merciful, in the moment. The bite of a vampire wasn't unpleasant, and she still had the gall to try to hit him with that tray? Shameful. Disrespectful, too. After all he had done for her, she was being so inconsiderate. They were friends, weren’t they? And she had offered. So, he wasn’t doing anything wrong.

The Doctor huffed and passed a hand on his face. It was distressing to look back on his own thought patterns in a moment of hunger. No matter how much he had changed, when he was very hungry, the old urges and ideas would emerge. Ideas about superiority, about lower beings being nothing but food (an honor, really), and about their natural right to hunt… all made to justify feeding on others, of course.

It has been a pretty grim life on Gallifrey. Not much to look forward, besides the next meal. Living with humans... Made things different. They lived in the realm of change, whereas the time lords lived like flies caught in amber: close to immortality, but not truly alive either.

Traveling with humans had helped him see the world in a different way. Very different. He was grateful for that.

"Doctor?" 

His gaze snapped to Evelyn's face.

She was looking at him. Her eyes were a bit foggy, but she was aware of herself and her surroundings.

He had rehearsed what to tell her many times, but now no words seemed to spring to mind. He was used to being the one with all the words, high quality ones too, but he didn't really know what to say now, when he needed it the most.

"Evelyn," he managed to say. "How are you feeling?"

She blinked a couple of times, as if she were thinking about it. 

"Strange. Fuzzy," she said, slurring her words a bit. "How did we get back to the TARDIS?"

The Doctor's breath got stuck in his ribcage.

"You don't remember?"

Evelyn frowned slightly. Then, she shook her head. 

"I remember that you and I were in a damp cell. Awful for my bones, really," she said, her frown deepening. "We weren't doing very well. You, in particular... Weren't doing very well."

The Doctor stayed in silence, just looking at her.

"And?" he encouraged her.

"And..." She thought about it for a moment, then her eyes widened. "You- you got worse. I wanted to help, but you wouldn't eat. You're always stubborn like that, all because I'm a frail old lady, you thought you needed to protect me and give me your rations too." As she said that, Evelyn gave him a pointed look that she had mastered during her time as a history professor. "We were waiting for the resistance, but they weren't arriving. Either way, if we're here, it means that they did, in the end."

The Doctor swallows. "You don't remember anything else?"

"No. Just... Being very tired. Maybe they put something in our food. I suppose you weren't affected, since you're a Time Lord."

The Doctor nodded. She had forgotten what he really was. Probably a result of the stress they had been under, and then the... well, the blood loss and the subsequent shock. 

Did he really have to sour her day once again, with such an unpleasant reveal? She would have been better off not knowing.

However, she hadn't been afraid of him. She had reacted surprisingly well to his little secret, and he didn't know how angry she could be in the future if he kept it from her and she discovered it in a bad situation or she simply remembered about what had truly happened.

The Doctor looked down at her wrist, delicately wrapped in bandages, and he took a deep sigh.

"Evelyn?" he said, in a solemn tone, the same he used when he needed to make a big announcement to a crowd or to impart a lesson to the latest nogoodnik in his way. "There's something I ought to tell you."

She lifted an eyebrow, a bit amused by his sudden shift in mood. She was one of the few creatures he had met who found his mercurial nature endearing - and a bit funny -, instead of irritating at best and threatening at worst.

"I’ll be brief. The fact is that I am a vampire. I had told you before, while we were in the cell, but you forgot."

Evelyn lifted her other eyebrow as well.

"Oh. This is... Not what I was expecting. I-" she started.

"The weakness you’re feeling at the moment is a result of the fact that I have drunk a considerable amount of your blood. A dangerous amount, to be entirely honest. I’ve supplied you with a transfusion while you were unconscious, so you needn’t worry about that."

Evelyn's mouth opened to say something, but he cut her short again.

"Luckily, the resistance arrived soon after you passed out. We only had to wait for a couple of hours more before making that extremely stupid attempt at an escape. And we didn't.“ He took a deep sigh. ”I told you Evelyn, I told you that we should have waited. You tempted me." The Doctor frowned. "But it's rather unfair to shift the blame on you. You were just trying to help a friend. It's I who is but a villain, a piece of gum glued to the bottom of a shoe, an old boot forgotten in the heart of a smelly dumpster, I who took advantage of–"

"Doctor. Please, stop," Evelyn said. She hadn't raised her voice, but he immediately fell quiet. 

She didn't seem angry. It seemed that she were feeling a bit sorry for him. That was out of place, he wasn't someone to be sorry for.

The Doctor would have preferred if she were angry, that would have made a lot more sense. He deserved it, after what he had done. 

He had been incapable of controlling himself, like an animal. Well, no, not like an animal. They had no malice, unlike him. The fact that he had been so quick to hypnotize his best friend just because he has tasted a few sips of her blood... It made him feel like a monster.

“I had offered, right?” Evelyn murmured.

"Yes," the Doctor grumbled. "But that's beside the point. I put you in danger. I lost control."

"You weren't yourself. You had explained to me that it was dangerous.“ Evelyn squinted, as she tried to remember. ”You had told me that it was a bad idea, but we had no other option. We had no idea that the resistance was going to arrive soon after! We had weighed our options and chosen the one with the most likely positive outcome. Right?"

The Doctor gave her one long, baffled look.

"Why are you playing devil's advocate? Why are you so determined to defend the indefensible?"

"I'm not! Also, I don't think you're the devil. That's being a bit too harsh on yourself."

"Evelyn, it seems to me that you're the one who's not truly realizing what happened. You could have died. And you're not a Time Lord. You have one life. There are places not even I can bring you back from."

Evelyn's calm expression falters. For a moment, there's deep melancholy in her gaze, and something twists uncomfortably in the Doctor's chest. Humans don't like to be reminded of their mortality, especially if they recently had a brush with death. Maybe he had been too harsh. He wasn't very good at explaining things kindly in this body, in spite of his intentions being of the kind inclination. 

He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Don't get me wrong, Evelyn. Your help was greatly appreciated, and I know I had agreed to it, so we share the responsibility of that as well. I shouldn't have let you do it in the first place. However, I don't like how easily you're disposed to give yourself up for me. It's just... Not good."

Evelyn gives him a judging look. "Look at who's talking."

He huffs. "Excuse me, but I have more than one chance. You have the one, my dear. I would gladly give one and even more of my lives for you, anytime. I'm old and bored and I drag you to dangerous places to quench my thirst of knowledge and curiosity. The minimum is that I try to give you the safest journey I can. Could we please agree on this, at the very least?"

Evelyn swallows. Then, she takes his hand. "But you're important to me. I wanted to help. I know that I'm not as young as I used to be, but I want to do something useful, before..."

She fell silent.

"Before?" The Doctor encouraged her. "Before what?"

Evelyn shook her head and she looked down, at their hands.

"I'll be more careful in the future," she whispered.

The Doctor looked at her, and he took a deep sigh.

"Oh, Evelyn. What are you really thinking?"

"I'm... Well. You're just more important than I am, you know, Doctor? I'm just an old lady."

The Doctor knew that something like this was incoming, but he always hated it when his companions said things like these. They were the most important thing in the whole universe to him, what made his long lives with no roots and no home to go back to bearable, and they always thought so lowly of themselves. Every time the Doctor thought he understood humans, they said senseless things such as these. 

"You're not any less important than I am, Evelyn. In fact, you're so important that when I'm around you, I forget about my own problems. I see the world through different, more hopeful and kind eyes. It would break my hearts if something happened to you, especially by my hand. So, please, don't think of yourself like this anymore. It saddens me, considerably."

Evelyn looked at him, tears glistening on the edge of her eyelids, and then she leaned towards him. The Doctor sighed and accepted her hug. She rested her head on his shoulder, as he held her close. Her body was warm, alive.

"I'm sorry, Doctor. I’ll try not to think like that anymore."

The Doctor put his cheek on her head and closed his eyes for a moment.

“That’s a relief.”

They stayed like that for a moment, in silence.

“So,” Evelyn said, at some point. “You’re a vampire.”

“Not exactly. But somewhat. However, I just might have played a part into defining some traits vampires have in your popular culture.”

Evelyn gently undid the hug to look at him. Her eyes were still a bit red, but she looked more confused than sad now, which was a good thing.

“What?” she asked. “What have you done this time? Are you allergic to garlic? To wooden poles?”

“Allergic to wooden poles, Evelyn? I bet you would also be allergic to them, if you were stabbed by one in the chest.”

Evelyn smiled a little bit. “I suppose you’re right. What about garlic?”

“Not my doing. My crumb of responsibility relies in the fashion department.”

Evelyn took a deep, deep sigh, and she pretended to be annoyed. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I’ll let you know that it all started with my third regeneration, who really, really loved capes… so, technically, it’s not my fault. If it were for this me, vampires would have an entirely different fashion sense. A better one, in fact.”

That finally made her laugh. That was much better. He liked the way her eyes would lighten up when she did.

“Oh, dear. That would have been interesting.”