Held in Trust: Chapter 13
Title: Held in Trust (13/?)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure! Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE
Case Number: AC-7863/12-312
Section: Field Operations
Agent: Simmonds, J.
Preliminary Case Status Report [excerpt]
Filed 12/12/2012 0830
Field agents arrived on site at approximately 2330 of 11/12/12, with structure fires already in progress in twelve of fifteen buildings (forensics report pending, arson suspected).
Alleged to be present on site were twenty-six members of the so-called Church of the Final Singularity, twenty-four of whom were accounted for by the field team. Two members are missing and presumed dead. Also on site were Rose Tyler (relevant personnel information follows) and Donna Mott (see attachment), both currently in debrief at the Bath field office. Ms Mott claimed responsibility for alerting the civilians living at the compound to the impending danger from fire, and removing them to a nearby orchard.
Ms Tyler was found to be detaining the unknown hostile who identifies as "Gliese" (photographs of the weapon found on her person will be transmitted following clearance by health and safety officers). Said unknown hostile is in detention at the Bath field office, awaiting transfer to London. Transcripts of the preliminary questioning will be sent under separate cover.
***
Crede sighed heavily and observed the man in the strange blue costume from afar for a moment. If he didn't move in and offer assistance, it would certainly get back to his own Proprietor that he'd failed to render service when needed, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what the punishment for that would be.
Of course, this had to happen on his only day off duty in this work cycle. It couldn't have been one of the other ninety-nine days, when he would have been glad to have a break from washing sludge off of coveralls. No, the gods had to send him a wayward Proprietor in need on this day. He made a mental note to visit the work unit altar on a more regular basis.
"Proprietor, sir?" Crede shouted as he approached, not wanting to sneak up on and startle the man. "Sir, are you hurt?" He waved his elongated arms in a friendly gesture, putting on a concerned, servile face for the occasion.
The man, who seemed to be crumpled on the ground--perhaps he had taken a fall of some sort--looked up. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed and he appeared to be wrung-out, as if he'd been there for hours waiting for help. He may be a Proprietor, but something about him, something in his bloodshot eyes, made Crede genuinely want to help. Now watch, he thought to himself, it'll turn out that he injured himself chasing a sixer and I'll be the fool, as usual.
"Proprietor?" Crede called again, slowing his long strides as he approached. "Do you need assistance?"
The man sat up straighter, and rubbed his unkempt mop of hair. He had to be a Proprietor--he bore all the marks of a human raised in terrestrial gravity--but Crede had never seen anyone like him in any of the units that he'd worked in or visited.
"I'm sorry," the strangely-attired Proprietor croaked hoarsely. His voice sounded as dusty as his clothes, which temporarily distracted Crede from the further unexpectedness of hearing an apology. "I don't understand your language. Where's a TARDIS when you...." He trailed off, muttering to himself and looking uncomfortable.
Crede stopped a few feet from him and made a gesture of obeisance, holding his hands out palm-up and dipping his head down between then. "Forgive me, sir. I thought you looked like you needed assistance. With your permission, I'll withdraw."
When a Proprietor was drunk or drugged or just in general talking utter nonsense, Crede had learned the hard way that the best course of action was to bow and act like they are the wisest most well-spoken beings in the universe. And then to beat a hasty retreat and leave them to it, before they start asking ludicrous questions and making impossible requests.
"Do you speak Gallifreyan?" the man asked hopefully, before saying something that Crede's translation disc couldn't make heads or tails of. Perhaps this was simply a matter of faulty translators, though he couldn't accuse the Proprietor of being so stupid as to not recognise such an elementary problem when it cropped up.
Crede tapped at the translator attached to the back of his neck, and turned slightly so the man could see whether the blue or the yellow light was lit.
"I'm sorry sir, my translation disc seems to be malfunctioning. Can you confirm?" he asked, to buy time while he tried to determine if this was some sort of test, or one of those impossible requests that seemed to amuse some of the Proprietors to no end.
Upon seeing the translator however, the man jumped up to his feet, in one fluid motion that bypassed any need for his hands or arms. "Of course!" he said, and Crede's heart leaped at the thought that he had in fact just passed some sort of challenge. He was about to communicate his thanks and bow again, when the man in blue continued to talk and rummage about in his pockets.
"I'm so thick! Hang on, let me just get one of these out...why do they always make the packages so bloody hard to get in to?"
Crede went pale. Was that a question? He had to answer, but how to do so? The man had just called himself stupid, but any agreement with that statement would surely cause offence, and what answer did Crede have for how translation discs were packaged, anyway?
"Hang on just a tick," the man continued as he reached behind his head to attach the thumbnail-sized device to the back of his neck, wincing slightly as he did so. "You know, they claim that the nanofilaments attaching to your brain stem are painless, but they always do pinch a bit, don't they?"
Another question that he did not have an answer for. Crede began to despair.
"Now that we've got the language issue sorted," the man said while wiping streaks of dust off of his face with a sleeve, "let's try all this again. It's lovely to meet you, I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"
Crede's mouth hung open in a most unseemly manner, but he simply did not know how to respond. If this was a test, it was utterly mad in every way. He darted his eyes down to his coveralls, where his identification number and indenture year were clearly marked for all to see. He took a deep breath and recited his designation, trying to keep calm and not worry about being stuck in the laundry for the next twenty-four years.
"No, I meant your name--your actual name. Though I'm going to feel a right git if that really is your name, aren't I? But I can't very well go around calling you Two Six Eight Six One Stroke Six. It's a bit of a mouthful, don't you think? And believe me when I say that I know from names that don't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue. What do your friends call you?" The man leaned over and beat the dust off of his trouser legs as he gibbered on about names.
"Crede, sir." He made another bow and waited to be told off for his presumptuousness. He hadn't been left much of a choice however, and he was beginning to feel that this entire situation was a very unfair set-up meant to get him in trouble no matter what he did.
"Look," the Doctor said sternly, and Crede steeled himself for a beating, "I'm not having more of this bowing and scraping, and I don't know who this Proprietor person is, but my name is just the Doctor. And that is what my friends call me." His face softened into a gentle smile. "It's good to meet you, Crede."
"Thank you, sir." Crede mumbled towards the ground.
"That'll be thank you, Doctor. But I was wondering, Crede, if you could help me out here. You're right that I do need some assistance, so well spotted. You see, I'm a bit lost. Can you tell me where I am?"
Crede continued to avert his eyes and locked his gaze on to a nearby red-coloured rock. "About three klicks outside of work unit eighty-seven. I can show you the way back there if you require it, sir...Doctor."
The Doctor ducked his head down a bit to try to catch Crede's eye. "I'm afraid I'm a bit more lost than that."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Can you tell me, please, what planet is this?"
Crede noted the change in the man's tone of voice as he asked this bizarre question, as if he were choking back a great gale of emotion where before he'd been friendly and even somewhat frivolous.
"Cassiel, sir."
The Doctor's hands, which had been at his hips, fell limply to his sides now and he nodded silently. "And are all inhabitants of Cassiel such as yourself?" he asked quietly.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Crede answered, finding himself shedding any reticence towards this man that he'd felt previously.
"Oh, well, I'm a bit stupid, I'm afraid. I'm from a very long way away and I've just sort of wound up here so you'll have to bear with my silly questions. I'm not holding you up, am I?"
Crede couldn't help but let a laugh bubble up and out, a high clear laugh left over from recent years when he'd still been merely a child.
The Doctor laughed as well, just a rueful little snicker. "Like I said, I can be very stupid."
"Today's my day off. I was just getting away from the unit for a few hours, not going anywhere special, really."
"Is it the week-end already? Well, full marks for getting some fresh air and exercise. Very good for a growing boy."
There was an awkward silence and the Doctor traced some complicated circular patterns into the dirt with the toe of his shoe.
"Would you mind too terribly--"
"I'm completely at your--"
They both began talking at once and stopped short simultaneously. Crede couldn't help but permit a grin to lift his features, and dimples popped on both the Doctor's cheeks as he worked to suppress a similar smile.
"You first," the Doctor laughed finally.
"I was saying, I'm at your service. My free time is unimportant when compared to the needs of the Proprietors."
"Again with these Proprietors. If you don't mind my saying, they sound like they could use a bit of loosening up. Am I right?
Crede blushed and stared at his feet again. "I'm sure I wouldn't know."
The Doctor just made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and unbuttoned his jacket. "I would be grateful for your help, though, just for a little while. If you want."
Crede simply nodded and tried to wrap his mind around anyone asking him what he wanted or didn't want.
"Brilliant," the Doctor chirped, and moved to sit down on a nearby boulder. "Just a few questions, and if you don't know the answers, just say so. I don't bite." He patted a spot next to him and motioned for Crede to sit as well--to sit on the same level as a terran -born, just conversing. No one back at the unit would ever believe him if he told them. He folded his long limbs up into a cross-legged posture and sat utterly still, afraid to accidentally break this magical spell.
"Relax!" the Doctor chided, nudging him with a pointy elbow. "My goodness these people don't have you half terrified out of your senses!"
"I'm sorry," Crede muttered and tried to affect a more "relaxed" posture.
"Now, pretend like I'm the stupidest man in the universe. That shouldn't take too terribly much imagination on your part. So tell me, this planet that we're on, Cassiel, what do you know about it?"
"Well," Crede began timidly, "I'm sure I don't know much about it either. Just what they told me when I was sent here, and things I picked up around the unit."
The Doctor nodded attentively. "Go on, then."
"The primary export product of Cassiel is aritanium. There are three-thousand, two-hundred and eighty-two mining work units currently on the planet, down from a high of five thosand and eighty. Each work unit has approximately five-hundred human indentures, and about four times that number of non-human labourers." Crede looked hopefully over at the Doctor to see if this was the sort of statistical information he was looking for, but the man's face was a stony mask save for his eyes, which were dark and unfathomable, like the entrances to the local caves that he was forbidden to enter.
"And the original inhabitants of the planet?"
Crede had to think for a moment--was this a trick question? "Cassiel had no original inhabitants. There were no life forms that could be classified as intelligent or useful to the Empire, and no evidence that there ever were any. That's why all the labourers had to be brought in from other colonies. Normally a planet's original inhabitants are processed and worked, but there were none on Cassiel. If aritanium weren't so important, no one would have bothered with bringing any labourers or indentures from other systems."
"Nearby planets? Suns? Moons? Galactic coordinates?" The Doctor punctuated each query sharply with an anxious tug on a lock of hair at the back of his neck.
Crede shook his head and shrugged. "It's not really something I ever needed to know. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," the Doctor said sadly, folding his hands together again in his lap and staring off at the distant mountain ranges. After a silent moment, he turned to Crede again and gestured to the jagged peaks mantled in snow, tinted orange by the reflection of the sky. "What do you call those mountains there?"
Crede regarded them, feeling like he'd never actually really looked at them before. "We don't really call them anything. They're just mountains."
He watched as the Doctor absorbed his words as if they'd been a personal insult, or news of the death of a loved one. He closed his bright eyes slowly, tilted his head back and let out a shuddering sigh.
"Just mountains," the Doctor repeated to himself, several times. "I went through a period where I thought that too, and I never wanted to see them again. Always be careful what you wish for, Crede. Old as I am, you'd think that I'd have learned that by now."
Crede knitted his brows and tried to make sense of the Doctor's words. The Doctor himself seemed to realise that he'd been merely thinking out loud rather than actually communicating.
"Sorry!" The Doctor shook his head and rubbed his eyes for a second. "I sound like a fortune cookie. Now then, young man, I haven't got much time here and there's a lot of work to be done. I think I do have a job for you after all, if your offer still stands."
(To Chapter 14: Instructions for laundering a blue suit)
Characters/Pairings: Duplicate Tenth Doctor/Rose, alt!Donna, various Tylers and Motts, and several OCs
Rating: Most chapters Teen (Adult chapters noted as such)
Series: Part of the Morris Minor 'Verse
Summary: An Alt!Ten, Rose and Alt!Donna Adventure! Join our heroes as they investigate a mysterious man from the future, an apocalyptic death cult, and the wonders of the internal combustion engine. Romance, action, adventure, sci fi, occasional smut Donna being awesome, as usual all par for the course.
A/N: Sequel to The One True Free Life. It's not entirely necessary to have read that, but if you're finding yourself at any point going, "Huh?" it's just probably something that was explained in that story.
Previous Chapters: Prologue | Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12
TORCHWOOD INSTITUTE
Case Number: AC-7863/12-312
Section: Field Operations
Agent: Simmonds, J.
Preliminary Case Status Report [excerpt]
Filed 12/12/2012 0830
Field agents arrived on site at approximately 2330 of 11/12/12, with structure fires already in progress in twelve of fifteen buildings (forensics report pending, arson suspected).
Alleged to be present on site were twenty-six members of the so-called Church of the Final Singularity, twenty-four of whom were accounted for by the field team. Two members are missing and presumed dead. Also on site were Rose Tyler (relevant personnel information follows) and Donna Mott (see attachment), both currently in debrief at the Bath field office. Ms Mott claimed responsibility for alerting the civilians living at the compound to the impending danger from fire, and removing them to a nearby orchard.
Ms Tyler was found to be detaining the unknown hostile who identifies as "Gliese" (photographs of the weapon found on her person will be transmitted following clearance by health and safety officers). Said unknown hostile is in detention at the Bath field office, awaiting transfer to London. Transcripts of the preliminary questioning will be sent under separate cover.
***
Crede sighed heavily and observed the man in the strange blue costume from afar for a moment. If he didn't move in and offer assistance, it would certainly get back to his own Proprietor that he'd failed to render service when needed, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know what the punishment for that would be.
Of course, this had to happen on his only day off duty in this work cycle. It couldn't have been one of the other ninety-nine days, when he would have been glad to have a break from washing sludge off of coveralls. No, the gods had to send him a wayward Proprietor in need on this day. He made a mental note to visit the work unit altar on a more regular basis.
"Proprietor, sir?" Crede shouted as he approached, not wanting to sneak up on and startle the man. "Sir, are you hurt?" He waved his elongated arms in a friendly gesture, putting on a concerned, servile face for the occasion.
The man, who seemed to be crumpled on the ground--perhaps he had taken a fall of some sort--looked up. His eyes were swollen and red-rimmed and he appeared to be wrung-out, as if he'd been there for hours waiting for help. He may be a Proprietor, but something about him, something in his bloodshot eyes, made Crede genuinely want to help. Now watch, he thought to himself, it'll turn out that he injured himself chasing a sixer and I'll be the fool, as usual.
"Proprietor?" Crede called again, slowing his long strides as he approached. "Do you need assistance?"
The man sat up straighter, and rubbed his unkempt mop of hair. He had to be a Proprietor--he bore all the marks of a human raised in terrestrial gravity--but Crede had never seen anyone like him in any of the units that he'd worked in or visited.
"I'm sorry," the strangely-attired Proprietor croaked hoarsely. His voice sounded as dusty as his clothes, which temporarily distracted Crede from the further unexpectedness of hearing an apology. "I don't understand your language. Where's a TARDIS when you...." He trailed off, muttering to himself and looking uncomfortable.
Crede stopped a few feet from him and made a gesture of obeisance, holding his hands out palm-up and dipping his head down between then. "Forgive me, sir. I thought you looked like you needed assistance. With your permission, I'll withdraw."
When a Proprietor was drunk or drugged or just in general talking utter nonsense, Crede had learned the hard way that the best course of action was to bow and act like they are the wisest most well-spoken beings in the universe. And then to beat a hasty retreat and leave them to it, before they start asking ludicrous questions and making impossible requests.
"Do you speak Gallifreyan?" the man asked hopefully, before saying something that Crede's translation disc couldn't make heads or tails of. Perhaps this was simply a matter of faulty translators, though he couldn't accuse the Proprietor of being so stupid as to not recognise such an elementary problem when it cropped up.
Crede tapped at the translator attached to the back of his neck, and turned slightly so the man could see whether the blue or the yellow light was lit.
"I'm sorry sir, my translation disc seems to be malfunctioning. Can you confirm?" he asked, to buy time while he tried to determine if this was some sort of test, or one of those impossible requests that seemed to amuse some of the Proprietors to no end.
Upon seeing the translator however, the man jumped up to his feet, in one fluid motion that bypassed any need for his hands or arms. "Of course!" he said, and Crede's heart leaped at the thought that he had in fact just passed some sort of challenge. He was about to communicate his thanks and bow again, when the man in blue continued to talk and rummage about in his pockets.
"I'm so thick! Hang on, let me just get one of these out...why do they always make the packages so bloody hard to get in to?"
Crede went pale. Was that a question? He had to answer, but how to do so? The man had just called himself stupid, but any agreement with that statement would surely cause offence, and what answer did Crede have for how translation discs were packaged, anyway?
"Hang on just a tick," the man continued as he reached behind his head to attach the thumbnail-sized device to the back of his neck, wincing slightly as he did so. "You know, they claim that the nanofilaments attaching to your brain stem are painless, but they always do pinch a bit, don't they?"
Another question that he did not have an answer for. Crede began to despair.
"Now that we've got the language issue sorted," the man said while wiping streaks of dust off of his face with a sleeve, "let's try all this again. It's lovely to meet you, I'm the Doctor. And you are...?"
Crede's mouth hung open in a most unseemly manner, but he simply did not know how to respond. If this was a test, it was utterly mad in every way. He darted his eyes down to his coveralls, where his identification number and indenture year were clearly marked for all to see. He took a deep breath and recited his designation, trying to keep calm and not worry about being stuck in the laundry for the next twenty-four years.
"No, I meant your name--your actual name. Though I'm going to feel a right git if that really is your name, aren't I? But I can't very well go around calling you Two Six Eight Six One Stroke Six. It's a bit of a mouthful, don't you think? And believe me when I say that I know from names that don't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue. What do your friends call you?" The man leaned over and beat the dust off of his trouser legs as he gibbered on about names.
"Crede, sir." He made another bow and waited to be told off for his presumptuousness. He hadn't been left much of a choice however, and he was beginning to feel that this entire situation was a very unfair set-up meant to get him in trouble no matter what he did.
"Look," the Doctor said sternly, and Crede steeled himself for a beating, "I'm not having more of this bowing and scraping, and I don't know who this Proprietor person is, but my name is just the Doctor. And that is what my friends call me." His face softened into a gentle smile. "It's good to meet you, Crede."
"Thank you, sir." Crede mumbled towards the ground.
"That'll be thank you, Doctor. But I was wondering, Crede, if you could help me out here. You're right that I do need some assistance, so well spotted. You see, I'm a bit lost. Can you tell me where I am?"
Crede continued to avert his eyes and locked his gaze on to a nearby red-coloured rock. "About three klicks outside of work unit eighty-seven. I can show you the way back there if you require it, sir...Doctor."
The Doctor ducked his head down a bit to try to catch Crede's eye. "I'm afraid I'm a bit more lost than that."
"What do you mean, sir?"
"Can you tell me, please, what planet is this?"
Crede noted the change in the man's tone of voice as he asked this bizarre question, as if he were choking back a great gale of emotion where before he'd been friendly and even somewhat frivolous.
"Cassiel, sir."
The Doctor's hands, which had been at his hips, fell limply to his sides now and he nodded silently. "And are all inhabitants of Cassiel such as yourself?" he asked quietly.
"I'm sorry, I don't understand," Crede answered, finding himself shedding any reticence towards this man that he'd felt previously.
"Oh, well, I'm a bit stupid, I'm afraid. I'm from a very long way away and I've just sort of wound up here so you'll have to bear with my silly questions. I'm not holding you up, am I?"
Crede couldn't help but let a laugh bubble up and out, a high clear laugh left over from recent years when he'd still been merely a child.
The Doctor laughed as well, just a rueful little snicker. "Like I said, I can be very stupid."
"Today's my day off. I was just getting away from the unit for a few hours, not going anywhere special, really."
"Is it the week-end already? Well, full marks for getting some fresh air and exercise. Very good for a growing boy."
There was an awkward silence and the Doctor traced some complicated circular patterns into the dirt with the toe of his shoe.
"Would you mind too terribly--"
"I'm completely at your--"
They both began talking at once and stopped short simultaneously. Crede couldn't help but permit a grin to lift his features, and dimples popped on both the Doctor's cheeks as he worked to suppress a similar smile.
"You first," the Doctor laughed finally.
"I was saying, I'm at your service. My free time is unimportant when compared to the needs of the Proprietors."
"Again with these Proprietors. If you don't mind my saying, they sound like they could use a bit of loosening up. Am I right?
Crede blushed and stared at his feet again. "I'm sure I wouldn't know."
The Doctor just made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat and unbuttoned his jacket. "I would be grateful for your help, though, just for a little while. If you want."
Crede simply nodded and tried to wrap his mind around anyone asking him what he wanted or didn't want.
"Brilliant," the Doctor chirped, and moved to sit down on a nearby boulder. "Just a few questions, and if you don't know the answers, just say so. I don't bite." He patted a spot next to him and motioned for Crede to sit as well--to sit on the same level as a terran -born, just conversing. No one back at the unit would ever believe him if he told them. He folded his long limbs up into a cross-legged posture and sat utterly still, afraid to accidentally break this magical spell.
"Relax!" the Doctor chided, nudging him with a pointy elbow. "My goodness these people don't have you half terrified out of your senses!"
"I'm sorry," Crede muttered and tried to affect a more "relaxed" posture.
"Now, pretend like I'm the stupidest man in the universe. That shouldn't take too terribly much imagination on your part. So tell me, this planet that we're on, Cassiel, what do you know about it?"
"Well," Crede began timidly, "I'm sure I don't know much about it either. Just what they told me when I was sent here, and things I picked up around the unit."
The Doctor nodded attentively. "Go on, then."
"The primary export product of Cassiel is aritanium. There are three-thousand, two-hundred and eighty-two mining work units currently on the planet, down from a high of five thosand and eighty. Each work unit has approximately five-hundred human indentures, and about four times that number of non-human labourers." Crede looked hopefully over at the Doctor to see if this was the sort of statistical information he was looking for, but the man's face was a stony mask save for his eyes, which were dark and unfathomable, like the entrances to the local caves that he was forbidden to enter.
"And the original inhabitants of the planet?"
Crede had to think for a moment--was this a trick question? "Cassiel had no original inhabitants. There were no life forms that could be classified as intelligent or useful to the Empire, and no evidence that there ever were any. That's why all the labourers had to be brought in from other colonies. Normally a planet's original inhabitants are processed and worked, but there were none on Cassiel. If aritanium weren't so important, no one would have bothered with bringing any labourers or indentures from other systems."
"Nearby planets? Suns? Moons? Galactic coordinates?" The Doctor punctuated each query sharply with an anxious tug on a lock of hair at the back of his neck.
Crede shook his head and shrugged. "It's not really something I ever needed to know. I'm sorry."
"It's all right," the Doctor said sadly, folding his hands together again in his lap and staring off at the distant mountain ranges. After a silent moment, he turned to Crede again and gestured to the jagged peaks mantled in snow, tinted orange by the reflection of the sky. "What do you call those mountains there?"
Crede regarded them, feeling like he'd never actually really looked at them before. "We don't really call them anything. They're just mountains."
He watched as the Doctor absorbed his words as if they'd been a personal insult, or news of the death of a loved one. He closed his bright eyes slowly, tilted his head back and let out a shuddering sigh.
"Just mountains," the Doctor repeated to himself, several times. "I went through a period where I thought that too, and I never wanted to see them again. Always be careful what you wish for, Crede. Old as I am, you'd think that I'd have learned that by now."
Crede knitted his brows and tried to make sense of the Doctor's words. The Doctor himself seemed to realise that he'd been merely thinking out loud rather than actually communicating.
"Sorry!" The Doctor shook his head and rubbed his eyes for a second. "I sound like a fortune cookie. Now then, young man, I haven't got much time here and there's a lot of work to be done. I think I do have a job for you after all, if your offer still stands."
(To Chapter 14: Instructions for laundering a blue suit)