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The Doctor looks at Peri with old eyes and thinks that maybe he can love her. Maybe she can even love him. Yet isn't that impossible? How can she, if none of the others did? None of the others stayed. Jo, and Liz, and Romana, and Tegan, and Nyssa. All gone. The most recent losses were the hardest. Nyssa spurned him; Tegan fled from him. He had thought they knew him better. Thought they understood even just a little. They hadn't.

Can Peri?

Ah, this he doesn't know. And does it even matter, as long as she stays? She asked to come with him. He offered to take her home, fully intended it, yet she asked him. A man she barely knew. Surely, on the basis of solely a few hours' acquaintance she couldn't have grasped the consequences of her request. Unless she wasn't running to him, but rather away from something terrible. That must be the explanation.

Still. He accepted her. Even in the first moments after Turlough's departure, he had known he would be so lonely by himself. She is like a gift, then, a reward. He doesn't have to be content with his own paltry company.

No, he reminds himself, he gets to inflict it on this newcomer instead. How long will she be able to tolerate it? Today she looks at him with dew-bright eyes. How long until that expression changes to horror and disgust and disillusionment? A week, a month, a year?

He considers the alternative, and shivers. He thinks he'll wait to find out, because he can't bear to be alone.

He sets the coordinates for Androzani Minor.