Sometimes I forget that Erimem’s a princess. She’s my friend. She tells me the dirtiest jokes, she’s saved my life more than once, she’s been there when I’ve needed a friend. How do you begin to explain how someone becomes your friend? It just happens. When you go through so much with someone the way Erimem and I have—the Doctor, too—it just kind of happens.

You know how it is. No, of course you don’t. You’re a machine. How can you? She’s a chocoholic too, did you know that? Even more than me.

Erimem and I eat together, we laugh together, we’ve been drunk together. God, we’ve been so drunk together. Like that time we downed three bottles of Denebian wine sitting outside a bar on Riga, just watching the four suns set into the sea. We didn’t talk much. We just enjoyed the time together. We’ve had the best times together. And the worst. We’ve even cried together. She’s my friend. I don’t see her as a princess. And it’s hard to think of someone as royal when you’ve seen her running barefoot along the TARDIS corridors because she’s forgotten—again—that she has to turn water faucets off and she’s worried the Doctor will find out she’s flooded her bathroom again. But sometimes, like then with the old woman, she does seem royal. No, regal is a better word. But then when you look in her eyes, you see that it’s a show. Something she does to make people feel better. I saw her do it the first time we met. She had been chased by mercenaries outside Thebes. She was terrified and looked like she was in shock, but when the Doctor drove our chariot into Thebes, she stood up and put on a performance for her people, waving like everything was fine and nothing had happened. But it’s all a show.