Two Birds in a Cage, 2/?
Title: Two Birds in a Cage
Rating: T
Characters: alt!Sarah Jane, alt!Three, Section Leader Shaw, Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, references alt!Jo
Summary: Miles below the earth, in the most secret and heavily guarded of all their prisons, they keep a man who builds them weapons that are decades and sometimes centuries ahead of their time. Reports come back of the things they bring him: books, chemicals, lab equipment. Young girls.
Notes: An AU for the Inferno-verse, which I guess makes it an AU of an AU. Basically, the Doctor we know never popped in from our universe, but their version of the Doctor has been their prisoner for as long as he has been in exile. Oh, and the world never burned up, obviously.
Warnings: Descriptions of torture (including allusions to sexual assault). A friendship with occasional Stockholm Syndrome overtones. Stockholm Syndrome.
Edited for more accurate warning.
Part One
One guard at the end of the corridor. Walks past cell approx. once per fifteen minutes, with three to ten randomly time approaches as well. To keep the Doctor on his toes, or to ward off boredom? Both possible. Shifts change every two and half hours.
No visible cameras beside the one at the door to the stairwell. Does not mean they are not there.
Have not yet seen Doctor sleep. Presumably does so in green armchair. The bed seems to be mine; he does not come past the curtain. But when I wake up I can always see his shadow where he stands at the counter. Sometimes he mutters to himself; I can’t understand the words. And he must stop when he hears me wake up, but sometimes he is singi
“Miss Smith,” the Doctor says.
SJ stands, comes quickly to his side. She flips the notebook mostly closed with practiced ease, moving from the back pages with her long lists of observations-in alternating ciphers, just in case, though she has been careful not to let slip any detail in her deliberations that might lead back to other members of the resistance-to the front of the notebook, where she keeps the notes the Doctor asks her to take, and her silent side of their conversations.
She is using far more pages in the back than in the front. The Doctor ignores her, mostly, now that she is healed. Most of their interactions consist of him telling her to fetch or hold or take down something, and then dismissing her.
She thinks, though, that he watches her. She has never caught him doing it, but she feels the weight of his eyes on her back.
“Bring this crucible to a boil,” he says. “Let me know the second you see steam, unless you want to lose your eyes as well.”
SJ nods, but he has already turned away from her, wiring copper around flashing lightbulbs and glowing gemstones set in brass. When he is not looking, she pockets a microchip she knows he was planning to use in a laser gun prototype later.
She looks at the crucible, and wonders how many of her friends this mixture will kill.
Learning some of the names of the machines. Some of it rubbish they would’ve thrown away at Eastchester. Some of it more advanced than anything I’ve seen before. Some doesn’t look like it’s made for people with two eyes and five fingers.
Wall of filing cabinets. Locks easily jimmied, and the countertop blocks the camera from the bottom drawers. Not a lot of time to snoop: still seems like he never sleeps. Only left alone when he’s in the bath.
Language in the files very technical. Not any use to me in here. Not sure if any use to me if I could get out.
The water is cold, the soap harsh against her skin. SJ works her fingers through her hair quickly, heart pounding. She only uses the shower when the Doctor is engrossed in some experiment, and she keeps her visits under five minutes. Acceptable risk.
She knows logically that she is hardly any more vulnerable here than anywhere else in the cell. Logic isn’t very persuasive against the freezing water splattering over her, and the memory of his fingertips like ice against her broken vocal cords.
SJ twists the faucet to the right, and with a shriek of pipes, the water complies and turns to a trickle and then nothing. Shivering, she reaches out through the curtain for a towel, dries herself quickly. Reaches out again, this time for her clothes.
They are not there.
“This will simply not do, Miss Smith,” says the Doctor.
She freezes.
“Open the curtain.”
SJ draws the towel tighter around her body. Tries to take hold of the curtain. Her hands are cold and cramped and shaking, a little, and it is hard at first to grasp the slippery plastic. She pulls it aside.
The Doctor is holding her clothing in one hand, the seams of her right sleeve undone. The other hand holds the three razor blades and miscellaneous chemical pellets she’d had secreted away there. She glances towards her notebook and pen at his feet.
He sees. “That will not be necessary. You have nothing to add to this conversation beyond indicating yes or no. Now, I am going to talk, and you are going to listen.”
He steps towards her; she backs up a step automatically, her feet almost slipping on the wet tile. His eyes are searing right through her.
“Were these intended for me?”
No. She shakes her head, looking down at the floor. It’s the truth, for what it’s worth. Not that he’ll believe it.
“For you, then?”
A nod.
”Look at me when I address you.”
She makes herself meet the Doctor’s eyes, her only tell the tightening of her jaw, her front teeth piercing her lip. He advances towards her, his steps steady and calculated. She will not back away this time. She will not tremble.
He stops only inches away from her. “You will not do this again.” His voice is low and hard. He cups her cheek with his left hand so she cannot look away. His hand is winter frost against her skin. “Did you know they built this prison around me? I crashed to Earth, through layers and layers of rock until my craft lay smashed on a subterranean cave floor, and they built this cage around me, the chained dragon in his cave with his useless shining treasures. Alone with the machines, and the guards like machines who never speak to me, and do you know how long it took them to bring you here after Josie left? It took them fifty-seven days, thirteen hours, and nine minutes to bring you here and it has been four years and thirty-eight seconds since I have seen the sky and you will not do this again.”
His eyes are ice and fire, and she is drowning in them, and she is burning.
“Do I make myself clear?”
She nods.
“Good.” He drops his hand, the intensity turned off like a switch. Drops her clothes at her feet. “Get dressed. I’ll need you for the next stage of the chemical analysis.”
Doctor back to ignoring me. Acts as though the confrontation never happened. Hasn’t tried to touch me again; even puts things down on table rather than handing them to me.
Still feel him watching me. Still haven’t caught him.
Twice he’s mentioned Josie now. No other names.
“Doctor.”
SJ looks up, and nearly drops her pen.
She hasn’t seen this man since growing up in the scientific labor camp. Even Aunt Lavinia didn’t like to anger him.
He didn’t have the eyepatch then.
“Alistair,” the Doctor returns, not glancing up from his notes. Calm as water on cloudless day. “I thought they had shipped you back to Eastchester.”
“It’s a wonder they didn’t,” the Brigade Leader returns dryly, “when one takes into account how very badly you bungled that last order of guns.” His gaze grows hard. “That will not happen again.”
“I’m working with substandard materials,” the Doctor says. He glares pointedly at both the outdated equipment and at SJ, perched on the edge of the bed. “It would be highly irresponsible of me to make promises.”
Lethbridge-Stewart gives her a cool glance, eyes flicking up and down her body. “I suppose you want another blonde.”
“Hair color, Brigade Leader? Really? I was referring to the damage she sustained on her way here.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Doctor,” the military man says, smirking slightly. “In these difficult economic times, we must all learn to adjust to goods that are…pre-used.”
The Doctor’s hand tightens to a fist below the counter. The Brigade Leader can’t see, but SJ does.
“Of course, if she really is impeding your work, I suppose I could have her sent to the firing squads…”
SJ’s heart stops.
“That won’t be necessary,” the Doctor snaps. “She’s better than nothing, anyway.”
SJ’s heart begins to beat again. She lets out a breath that had caught in her throat; it hurts.
“We’d get you another one.”
“I said, that won’t be necessary.” He’s plainly agitated now, his hands fretting at the cogs of his latest project as he tries to fit them together.
“No need to get your knickers in a twist, Doctor. I’m merely looking after your quality of life.”
“How terribly kind of you. Did you actually have anything important to tell me, or could you go now and look after my quality of life from further away?”
The Brigade Leader’s jaw clenches. “I’m here to escort you to the conference room. It seems Section Leader Shaw and I must again have this tedious discussion with you about the terms of our agreement, and the many ways in which you have recently lacked…discipline.”
The Doctor’s eyes flick up at last, but he looks down again just as quickly. “I’m busy.” He picks up a wrench, uses it to tighten a bolt.
Lethbridge-Stewart gestures at the soldiers behind him. “You will recall that this is not optional, Doctor.”
“I’m working on a very intricate and delicate piece of equipment. Surely even your blunted military mind can see the irony in slowing my progress by hauling me off to a disciplinary action for my slow progress.”
His voice is calm and controlled, in contrast to his hands, which are moving very quickly but cannot seem to make anything fit together. His shoulders are hunched. He does not make eye contact with the Brigade Leader.
.
Is he…afraid?
Lethbridge-Stewart gives a long-suffering sigh. “This won’t go well for you if you resist.”
“I will not go!” the Doctor thunders, slamming his fist down on the table. The delicate machinery crashes to the floor, shatters into an infinity of broken glass stars and bolts and ball bearings. He freezes for a second, then forces a bluster: “I have done all that you asked, and my work cannot be interrupted at this critical juncture-”
And yes, there it is, SJ hears it working its way into his voice: panic, and the beginnings of resignation.
The Brigade Leader is smirking again, and she knows he hears it too.
“Very well, then. If you are too busy to attend, we will have the girl relay the message to you.”
SJ’s hands clench involuntarily at the edge of the mattress.
The Doctor’s hands still. “What?”
SJ cannot move.
“Delegation, Doctor. Quite simple really. The girl will attend in your stead, and Section Leader Shaw and I will…impart the usual lessons.” He gives a nod to the soldier behind him, who pulls out a keyring and a set of handcuffs.
The edges of SJ’s vision have gone blaring white, and she can hear her heartbeat pounding through her ears. Run run run nowhere to run run run run nowhere to run-
(The Room with the cuffs the chains the noises and shouting and shouting and can’t move can’t speak and the pain and the pain and the- she’ll tell them anything anything make it stop please God Mummy somebody anybody make it stop-)
The key goes into the lock with the dead scraping sound of metal on metal, and the Doctor’s is at the door in three strides, his hand shooting out to cover the Brigade Leader’s. One of his lackeys hefts a baton, but Lethbridge-Stewart merely raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to dance?”
The Doctor’s voice is so low she almost does not hear it through the roar in her brain. “I find that…I am not as busy as I previously thought.”
“Are you certain? We would not want any delays. It might save time for all if we took the girl instead.”
“I’m certain. I’ll go with you.”
“And as a former terrorist sympathizer, I’m sure she needs a spot of disciplining as well. We could take care of that for you, as you work tirelessly on your research.”
“I said I’ll go with you. I’ll cooperate. I will do whatever you ask.”
They lock gazes for several interminable seconds, and then the Brigade Leader nods, the gesture sharp. His eyes cold. “Do not disappoint me, Doctor. Remember what happens when you go back on your word.”
The Doctor lets them cuff him and lead him away.
So the Doctor’s afraid of the Brigade Leader and the Section Leader. Still baits them, though. Trying to see how far he can push them? Or trying to end it, trying to get himself killed?
He should know he’s too valuable to ever really kill off.
He didn’t have to
Strange how it can take less than a week of little to no pain to make one cling to life again. I was ready to die, back in The Room, and when I first got here. And now…now I don’t know.
Why did he
The Brigade Leader and Shaw have bought me some time, I suppose.
It’s nearly midnight when they bring him back, time enough for SJ to make a complete inventory of the supply cabinets, sweep the shattered remnants of the Doctor’s machine into a pile (he may want to salvage some of it later), and secret two large jagged shards of glass into little nooks and crannies she can get to in an emergency.
(She makes sure to choose places that will look as though the glass might’ve gotten swept there accidentally. Acceptable risk.)
It’s nearly midnight when they bring him back, when they throw him into the cell. He stumbles to his knees, and when he pushes himself up he leaves a bloody handprint on the floor.
SJ starts towards him, a skitter-step, not certain if she’s offering to help him.
His shoulders tense, and she backs away.
The Doctor stands, and limps towards the shower area. It is a very particular kind of limp. Familiar. He begins to pull the curtain aside, and then he turns and glowers at her. “Stay where you are.”
When he turns back towards the shower SJ sees a smear of red above his collar that is not quite the right shade for blood.
She stays where she is. His shower is a full half hour long than usual.
When the water shuts off, it’s still a long time before his hand reaches out for the towel, and even longer before he emerges. His face has gone grey with the effort of standing upright, and the cloth can’t quite cover the bruises on his chest. He kicks his clothes aside rather than deal with them.
“I need the bed tonight,” he says. He doesn’t look at her as he pushes past. “Do not disturb me.”
He collapses onto the mattress with a sound like a sack of meat hitting the ground. Barely manages to pull the curtain shut.
SJ spends the night in the armchair. Her sleep is as disjointed and uneasy as it has been in the bed, but when she wakes, there is only silence.
She cannot even hear him breathe.
Jimmied another file cabinet open. More technical notes. Several files of what looks like star charts.
What was he
It doesn’t mean
SJ wakes again to the sound of the mattress creaking, as he sits up. He walks briskly out of her sightline to dress, and comes back to the lab table. He seems to have entirely regained his energy.
But the way he is moving…what he is doing. Shuffling materials around. Lots of clinking and clanking. Lots of stopping and peering, and making pointed little extraneous“hmm” and “ah” and “yes, quite” noises.
Science may not be her forte, but SJ knows busywork when she sees it.
She gets up, walks to his side. Keeps her head down, eyes flicking up and then back, as she places a piece of paper by his hand.
Are you alright?
He glances down at it, looks away. “You’ll have your bed back tonight,” he says, fumbling with the Bunsen Burner. Not really an answer. “Fetch the sodium chloride; that should stabilize this reaction.”
She does as he says, and when he doesn’t ask for anything else, she steels herself-she does not like standing this close to him for this long, does not like being within arm range-and puts another piece of paper on the table. Thank you.
That startles him into looking at her. “What? What for?”
You could have sent me instead she writes, just below the formulas he had her jot down last afternoon. She feels his eyes on her; she cannot look up or she will be paralyzed. You didn’t. So thank you.
“That-that was nothing-“
IT WASN’T she insists, pen pressing hard into the paper.
“I don’t want to discuss it!” he snaps, stepping backward, away from her, and his emphatically waving right hand (don’t want) knocks the crucible off its perch.
She shoves him, and he’s just startled enough to be off balance and stagger two steps out of the way and so the drops splash only on her arm and oh, her eyes widen as a thousand little teeth bite sharp into her skin, scorching blazing pain burrowing in and slamming into every nerve it can find, and her mouth opens in a scream that makes no sound-
The floor sweeps out from under her before she realizes he’s picked her up like a doll and swung her onto another countertop. He rips open her sleeve and turns the water faucet on full blast. She can feel tears dripping down her cheeks and she can’t stop them, it hurts, it hurts as bad as anything they did in The Room-
“Why did you do that?” he is yelling, and the words are taking a very long time to become words and not just yelling because she is shaking too hard and he is too close and his eyes are flashing and he is filling up her brain with white lights and white noise and panic. She cannot get away. “Foolish girl! It wouldn’t have hurt me, you didn’t have to-why in the name of Rassilon would you-”
The Doctor rips open a packet and pulls out a syringe, grabs her arm; she yanks it away, a sob seizing up in her throat. No sound, she will scream and scream and no sound…
Something happens in his eyes again. The blaze dies down, becomes a dim glow. He takes a step back. “It’s for the pain,” he says softly, and presses the tip of the syringe against his own skin. Pushes down to empty half of it. “See? Won’t even send you to sleep.”
He moves towards her and she scuttles back on the counter but then she is against the wall and there is nowhere to retreat. She goes rigid when he takes her arm, more gently this time, and she twists her head away, shuddering. He’s seen how weak she is, now. There’ll be no more stopping him. No bluffing.
The needle is a tiny jab against the shrieking stinging ache of where the acid ate into her skin, but she cannot stop the second sob either.
And then the pain is going…going…gone?
Somehow its sudden absence is even more shocking. She snatches her arm back, cradles it to her chest.
The Doctor simply reaches out and takes it again, rubbing a white salve into her skin. He focuses entirely on her arm, as if the rest of her didn’t exist, humming intently as he works the white ointment over every burn. After awhile, the humming becomes words: “Klokleda partha menin klatch, haroon haroon haroon…”
SJ feels her shoulders slump, despite her rapid heart rate. Her muscles untensing, bones melting as though she were sinking into a warm bath.
“Klokleda sheenah tierra natch, haroon haroon haroon…”
Her eyelids are growing heavy. No, stay alert, stay-
“Haroon, haroon, haroon…”
You’re doing something to my mind, she thinks, before he reaches up with one hand and touches her temple, stroking away her hair. “Klokeda partha menin klatch…” he whispers, and she falls into his eyes and she can’t remember what she was worried about, she was worried about something…
“Why did you do that?” he asks. His voice is hushed. “Why did you push me out of the way?”
Instinct, she thinks, and it’s almost as if he can hear her, because he’s looking at her as if he’s only just seeing her for the first time, as if she’s someone or something entirely new.
His hand is cold but it is difficult to remember why that frightened her when nothing hurts and everything in her mind is warm and lovely, and he strokes her skin as he murmurs, “Haroon, haroon, haroon…”
I’m not a child. I don’t need lullabies and happily-ever-afters.
It is her last rebellious thought before she drifts off into sleep.
Rating: T
Characters: alt!Sarah Jane, alt!Three, Section Leader Shaw, Brigade Leader Lethbridge-Stewart, references alt!Jo
Summary: Miles below the earth, in the most secret and heavily guarded of all their prisons, they keep a man who builds them weapons that are decades and sometimes centuries ahead of their time. Reports come back of the things they bring him: books, chemicals, lab equipment. Young girls.
Notes: An AU for the Inferno-verse, which I guess makes it an AU of an AU. Basically, the Doctor we know never popped in from our universe, but their version of the Doctor has been their prisoner for as long as he has been in exile. Oh, and the world never burned up, obviously.
Warnings: Descriptions of torture (including allusions to sexual assault). A friendship with occasional Stockholm Syndrome overtones. Stockholm Syndrome.
Edited for more accurate warning.
Part One
One guard at the end of the corridor. Walks past cell approx. once per fifteen minutes, with three to ten randomly time approaches as well. To keep the Doctor on his toes, or to ward off boredom? Both possible. Shifts change every two and half hours.
No visible cameras beside the one at the door to the stairwell. Does not mean they are not there.
Have not yet seen Doctor sleep. Presumably does so in green armchair. The bed seems to be mine; he does not come past the curtain. But when I wake up I can always see his shadow where he stands at the counter. Sometimes he mutters to himself; I can’t understand the words. And he must stop when he hears me wake up, but sometimes he is singi
“Miss Smith,” the Doctor says.
SJ stands, comes quickly to his side. She flips the notebook mostly closed with practiced ease, moving from the back pages with her long lists of observations-in alternating ciphers, just in case, though she has been careful not to let slip any detail in her deliberations that might lead back to other members of the resistance-to the front of the notebook, where she keeps the notes the Doctor asks her to take, and her silent side of their conversations.
She is using far more pages in the back than in the front. The Doctor ignores her, mostly, now that she is healed. Most of their interactions consist of him telling her to fetch or hold or take down something, and then dismissing her.
She thinks, though, that he watches her. She has never caught him doing it, but she feels the weight of his eyes on her back.
“Bring this crucible to a boil,” he says. “Let me know the second you see steam, unless you want to lose your eyes as well.”
SJ nods, but he has already turned away from her, wiring copper around flashing lightbulbs and glowing gemstones set in brass. When he is not looking, she pockets a microchip she knows he was planning to use in a laser gun prototype later.
She looks at the crucible, and wonders how many of her friends this mixture will kill.
Learning some of the names of the machines. Some of it rubbish they would’ve thrown away at Eastchester. Some of it more advanced than anything I’ve seen before. Some doesn’t look like it’s made for people with two eyes and five fingers.
Wall of filing cabinets. Locks easily jimmied, and the countertop blocks the camera from the bottom drawers. Not a lot of time to snoop: still seems like he never sleeps. Only left alone when he’s in the bath.
Language in the files very technical. Not any use to me in here. Not sure if any use to me if I could get out.
The water is cold, the soap harsh against her skin. SJ works her fingers through her hair quickly, heart pounding. She only uses the shower when the Doctor is engrossed in some experiment, and she keeps her visits under five minutes. Acceptable risk.
She knows logically that she is hardly any more vulnerable here than anywhere else in the cell. Logic isn’t very persuasive against the freezing water splattering over her, and the memory of his fingertips like ice against her broken vocal cords.
SJ twists the faucet to the right, and with a shriek of pipes, the water complies and turns to a trickle and then nothing. Shivering, she reaches out through the curtain for a towel, dries herself quickly. Reaches out again, this time for her clothes.
They are not there.
“This will simply not do, Miss Smith,” says the Doctor.
She freezes.
“Open the curtain.”
SJ draws the towel tighter around her body. Tries to take hold of the curtain. Her hands are cold and cramped and shaking, a little, and it is hard at first to grasp the slippery plastic. She pulls it aside.
The Doctor is holding her clothing in one hand, the seams of her right sleeve undone. The other hand holds the three razor blades and miscellaneous chemical pellets she’d had secreted away there. She glances towards her notebook and pen at his feet.
He sees. “That will not be necessary. You have nothing to add to this conversation beyond indicating yes or no. Now, I am going to talk, and you are going to listen.”
He steps towards her; she backs up a step automatically, her feet almost slipping on the wet tile. His eyes are searing right through her.
“Were these intended for me?”
No. She shakes her head, looking down at the floor. It’s the truth, for what it’s worth. Not that he’ll believe it.
“For you, then?”
A nod.
”Look at me when I address you.”
She makes herself meet the Doctor’s eyes, her only tell the tightening of her jaw, her front teeth piercing her lip. He advances towards her, his steps steady and calculated. She will not back away this time. She will not tremble.
He stops only inches away from her. “You will not do this again.” His voice is low and hard. He cups her cheek with his left hand so she cannot look away. His hand is winter frost against her skin. “Did you know they built this prison around me? I crashed to Earth, through layers and layers of rock until my craft lay smashed on a subterranean cave floor, and they built this cage around me, the chained dragon in his cave with his useless shining treasures. Alone with the machines, and the guards like machines who never speak to me, and do you know how long it took them to bring you here after Josie left? It took them fifty-seven days, thirteen hours, and nine minutes to bring you here and it has been four years and thirty-eight seconds since I have seen the sky and you will not do this again.”
His eyes are ice and fire, and she is drowning in them, and she is burning.
“Do I make myself clear?”
She nods.
“Good.” He drops his hand, the intensity turned off like a switch. Drops her clothes at her feet. “Get dressed. I’ll need you for the next stage of the chemical analysis.”
Doctor back to ignoring me. Acts as though the confrontation never happened. Hasn’t tried to touch me again; even puts things down on table rather than handing them to me.
Still feel him watching me. Still haven’t caught him.
Twice he’s mentioned Josie now. No other names.
“Doctor.”
SJ looks up, and nearly drops her pen.
She hasn’t seen this man since growing up in the scientific labor camp. Even Aunt Lavinia didn’t like to anger him.
He didn’t have the eyepatch then.
“Alistair,” the Doctor returns, not glancing up from his notes. Calm as water on cloudless day. “I thought they had shipped you back to Eastchester.”
“It’s a wonder they didn’t,” the Brigade Leader returns dryly, “when one takes into account how very badly you bungled that last order of guns.” His gaze grows hard. “That will not happen again.”
“I’m working with substandard materials,” the Doctor says. He glares pointedly at both the outdated equipment and at SJ, perched on the edge of the bed. “It would be highly irresponsible of me to make promises.”
Lethbridge-Stewart gives her a cool glance, eyes flicking up and down her body. “I suppose you want another blonde.”
“Hair color, Brigade Leader? Really? I was referring to the damage she sustained on her way here.”
“Beggars can’t be choosers, Doctor,” the military man says, smirking slightly. “In these difficult economic times, we must all learn to adjust to goods that are…pre-used.”
The Doctor’s hand tightens to a fist below the counter. The Brigade Leader can’t see, but SJ does.
“Of course, if she really is impeding your work, I suppose I could have her sent to the firing squads…”
SJ’s heart stops.
“That won’t be necessary,” the Doctor snaps. “She’s better than nothing, anyway.”
SJ’s heart begins to beat again. She lets out a breath that had caught in her throat; it hurts.
“We’d get you another one.”
“I said, that won’t be necessary.” He’s plainly agitated now, his hands fretting at the cogs of his latest project as he tries to fit them together.
“No need to get your knickers in a twist, Doctor. I’m merely looking after your quality of life.”
“How terribly kind of you. Did you actually have anything important to tell me, or could you go now and look after my quality of life from further away?”
The Brigade Leader’s jaw clenches. “I’m here to escort you to the conference room. It seems Section Leader Shaw and I must again have this tedious discussion with you about the terms of our agreement, and the many ways in which you have recently lacked…discipline.”
The Doctor’s eyes flick up at last, but he looks down again just as quickly. “I’m busy.” He picks up a wrench, uses it to tighten a bolt.
Lethbridge-Stewart gestures at the soldiers behind him. “You will recall that this is not optional, Doctor.”
“I’m working on a very intricate and delicate piece of equipment. Surely even your blunted military mind can see the irony in slowing my progress by hauling me off to a disciplinary action for my slow progress.”
His voice is calm and controlled, in contrast to his hands, which are moving very quickly but cannot seem to make anything fit together. His shoulders are hunched. He does not make eye contact with the Brigade Leader.
.
Is he…afraid?
Lethbridge-Stewart gives a long-suffering sigh. “This won’t go well for you if you resist.”
“I will not go!” the Doctor thunders, slamming his fist down on the table. The delicate machinery crashes to the floor, shatters into an infinity of broken glass stars and bolts and ball bearings. He freezes for a second, then forces a bluster: “I have done all that you asked, and my work cannot be interrupted at this critical juncture-”
And yes, there it is, SJ hears it working its way into his voice: panic, and the beginnings of resignation.
The Brigade Leader is smirking again, and she knows he hears it too.
“Very well, then. If you are too busy to attend, we will have the girl relay the message to you.”
SJ’s hands clench involuntarily at the edge of the mattress.
The Doctor’s hands still. “What?”
SJ cannot move.
“Delegation, Doctor. Quite simple really. The girl will attend in your stead, and Section Leader Shaw and I will…impart the usual lessons.” He gives a nod to the soldier behind him, who pulls out a keyring and a set of handcuffs.
The edges of SJ’s vision have gone blaring white, and she can hear her heartbeat pounding through her ears. Run run run nowhere to run run run run nowhere to run-
(The Room with the cuffs the chains the noises and shouting and shouting and can’t move can’t speak and the pain and the pain and the- she’ll tell them anything anything make it stop please God Mummy somebody anybody make it stop-)
The key goes into the lock with the dead scraping sound of metal on metal, and the Doctor’s is at the door in three strides, his hand shooting out to cover the Brigade Leader’s. One of his lackeys hefts a baton, but Lethbridge-Stewart merely raises an eyebrow. “Are you asking me to dance?”
The Doctor’s voice is so low she almost does not hear it through the roar in her brain. “I find that…I am not as busy as I previously thought.”
“Are you certain? We would not want any delays. It might save time for all if we took the girl instead.”
“I’m certain. I’ll go with you.”
“And as a former terrorist sympathizer, I’m sure she needs a spot of disciplining as well. We could take care of that for you, as you work tirelessly on your research.”
“I said I’ll go with you. I’ll cooperate. I will do whatever you ask.”
They lock gazes for several interminable seconds, and then the Brigade Leader nods, the gesture sharp. His eyes cold. “Do not disappoint me, Doctor. Remember what happens when you go back on your word.”
The Doctor lets them cuff him and lead him away.
So the Doctor’s afraid of the Brigade Leader and the Section Leader. Still baits them, though. Trying to see how far he can push them? Or trying to end it, trying to get himself killed?
He should know he’s too valuable to ever really kill off.
He didn’t have to
Strange how it can take less than a week of little to no pain to make one cling to life again. I was ready to die, back in The Room, and when I first got here. And now…now I don’t know.
Why did he
The Brigade Leader and Shaw have bought me some time, I suppose.
It’s nearly midnight when they bring him back, time enough for SJ to make a complete inventory of the supply cabinets, sweep the shattered remnants of the Doctor’s machine into a pile (he may want to salvage some of it later), and secret two large jagged shards of glass into little nooks and crannies she can get to in an emergency.
(She makes sure to choose places that will look as though the glass might’ve gotten swept there accidentally. Acceptable risk.)
It’s nearly midnight when they bring him back, when they throw him into the cell. He stumbles to his knees, and when he pushes himself up he leaves a bloody handprint on the floor.
SJ starts towards him, a skitter-step, not certain if she’s offering to help him.
His shoulders tense, and she backs away.
The Doctor stands, and limps towards the shower area. It is a very particular kind of limp. Familiar. He begins to pull the curtain aside, and then he turns and glowers at her. “Stay where you are.”
When he turns back towards the shower SJ sees a smear of red above his collar that is not quite the right shade for blood.
She stays where she is. His shower is a full half hour long than usual.
When the water shuts off, it’s still a long time before his hand reaches out for the towel, and even longer before he emerges. His face has gone grey with the effort of standing upright, and the cloth can’t quite cover the bruises on his chest. He kicks his clothes aside rather than deal with them.
“I need the bed tonight,” he says. He doesn’t look at her as he pushes past. “Do not disturb me.”
He collapses onto the mattress with a sound like a sack of meat hitting the ground. Barely manages to pull the curtain shut.
SJ spends the night in the armchair. Her sleep is as disjointed and uneasy as it has been in the bed, but when she wakes, there is only silence.
She cannot even hear him breathe.
Jimmied another file cabinet open. More technical notes. Several files of what looks like star charts.
What was he
It doesn’t mean
SJ wakes again to the sound of the mattress creaking, as he sits up. He walks briskly out of her sightline to dress, and comes back to the lab table. He seems to have entirely regained his energy.
But the way he is moving…what he is doing. Shuffling materials around. Lots of clinking and clanking. Lots of stopping and peering, and making pointed little extraneous“hmm” and “ah” and “yes, quite” noises.
Science may not be her forte, but SJ knows busywork when she sees it.
She gets up, walks to his side. Keeps her head down, eyes flicking up and then back, as she places a piece of paper by his hand.
Are you alright?
He glances down at it, looks away. “You’ll have your bed back tonight,” he says, fumbling with the Bunsen Burner. Not really an answer. “Fetch the sodium chloride; that should stabilize this reaction.”
She does as he says, and when he doesn’t ask for anything else, she steels herself-she does not like standing this close to him for this long, does not like being within arm range-and puts another piece of paper on the table. Thank you.
That startles him into looking at her. “What? What for?”
You could have sent me instead she writes, just below the formulas he had her jot down last afternoon. She feels his eyes on her; she cannot look up or she will be paralyzed. You didn’t. So thank you.
“That-that was nothing-“
IT WASN’T she insists, pen pressing hard into the paper.
“I don’t want to discuss it!” he snaps, stepping backward, away from her, and his emphatically waving right hand (don’t want) knocks the crucible off its perch.
She shoves him, and he’s just startled enough to be off balance and stagger two steps out of the way and so the drops splash only on her arm and oh, her eyes widen as a thousand little teeth bite sharp into her skin, scorching blazing pain burrowing in and slamming into every nerve it can find, and her mouth opens in a scream that makes no sound-
The floor sweeps out from under her before she realizes he’s picked her up like a doll and swung her onto another countertop. He rips open her sleeve and turns the water faucet on full blast. She can feel tears dripping down her cheeks and she can’t stop them, it hurts, it hurts as bad as anything they did in The Room-
“Why did you do that?” he is yelling, and the words are taking a very long time to become words and not just yelling because she is shaking too hard and he is too close and his eyes are flashing and he is filling up her brain with white lights and white noise and panic. She cannot get away. “Foolish girl! It wouldn’t have hurt me, you didn’t have to-why in the name of Rassilon would you-”
The Doctor rips open a packet and pulls out a syringe, grabs her arm; she yanks it away, a sob seizing up in her throat. No sound, she will scream and scream and no sound…
Something happens in his eyes again. The blaze dies down, becomes a dim glow. He takes a step back. “It’s for the pain,” he says softly, and presses the tip of the syringe against his own skin. Pushes down to empty half of it. “See? Won’t even send you to sleep.”
He moves towards her and she scuttles back on the counter but then she is against the wall and there is nowhere to retreat. She goes rigid when he takes her arm, more gently this time, and she twists her head away, shuddering. He’s seen how weak she is, now. There’ll be no more stopping him. No bluffing.
The needle is a tiny jab against the shrieking stinging ache of where the acid ate into her skin, but she cannot stop the second sob either.
And then the pain is going…going…gone?
Somehow its sudden absence is even more shocking. She snatches her arm back, cradles it to her chest.
The Doctor simply reaches out and takes it again, rubbing a white salve into her skin. He focuses entirely on her arm, as if the rest of her didn’t exist, humming intently as he works the white ointment over every burn. After awhile, the humming becomes words: “Klokleda partha menin klatch, haroon haroon haroon…”
SJ feels her shoulders slump, despite her rapid heart rate. Her muscles untensing, bones melting as though she were sinking into a warm bath.
“Klokleda sheenah tierra natch, haroon haroon haroon…”
Her eyelids are growing heavy. No, stay alert, stay-
“Haroon, haroon, haroon…”
You’re doing something to my mind, she thinks, before he reaches up with one hand and touches her temple, stroking away her hair. “Klokeda partha menin klatch…” he whispers, and she falls into his eyes and she can’t remember what she was worried about, she was worried about something…
“Why did you do that?” he asks. His voice is hushed. “Why did you push me out of the way?”
Instinct, she thinks, and it’s almost as if he can hear her, because he’s looking at her as if he’s only just seeing her for the first time, as if she’s someone or something entirely new.
His hand is cold but it is difficult to remember why that frightened her when nothing hurts and everything in her mind is warm and lovely, and he strokes her skin as he murmurs, “Haroon, haroon, haroon…”
I’m not a child. I don’t need lullabies and happily-ever-afters.
It is her last rebellious thought before she drifts off into sleep.