Sometimes the darkness seeped from the cracks and those it touched might get hurt. Ace had learned from her own bruises that no one who met the Doctor was left unchanged. Yet he was kind, compassionate, spiky and often angry; vulnerable to all mortal foibles. But that might be deliberate. He embraced them eagerly as if they were toys. Lingering on one world or another, as if to play them out or test their capacity. He was just as dangerous as the evil he attracted and opposed. So what if he did have eyes in the back of his head, had appalling taste in clothes and careered around the universe in a time machine shaped like a police box?