Sacred Skin - Doctor Who - Amy/Eleven/Rory
Title: Sacred Skin
Pairing: Amy/Eleven/Rory
Word Count: 4500
Rating: NC-17
A/N: Written for the "whipping/flogging" square of my kink bingo card. The whipping is non-sexual, however.
Summary: After they save a planet by destroying its sacred man-eating temple, the Doctor is sentenced to punishment by flogging. Amy is ordered to administer the lashes.
She adjusted her grip on the woven leather handle of the whip. Its tails hung down to her calf, long and wicked, cracks and creases in the material proving its age and use. She pressed red-rouged lips together and looked around at the crowd, inhuman and inhumane eyes staring down at them from the stall, an eager audience.
Before her, kneeling like a penitent at prayer, the Doctor was on his knees. His head was bowed and he had lost his shirt, his jacket, even his stupid bloody bow-tie. He didn't look right like this, bare and exposed.
He looked human.
How could he look so human when she was supposed to hurt him?
Looking up, Amy could see Rory at the forefront of the crowd. He was held in check by guards on either side, spears crossed in front of him to prevent him from surging forwards to their rescue. They were out-numbered by about a thousand to one, and that was being easy on the odds. Even Rory with his red cloak flowing behind him couldn't take them on.
"Doctor," Amy said, speaking between clenched teeth. "A bright idea would be really good right about now."
The Doctor craned over his shoulder to look at her. "I'm working on it," he said.
The crowd jeered, waiting for blood. "Work faster."
"Do it," the Doctor instructed. "It'll be okay. Sort of deserve it anyway."
"Doctor!"
"We did destroy their temple."
"It wasn't a temple; it was a giant space-mouth. It was eating people."
"Eating people in a sacred way."
Amy clutched onto the whip she'd been given and tried to remind herself why doing this would be a bad idea. "There are limits to cultural relativism," she growled.
And then the Doctor started laughing, and from this angle she could see every shift and ripple in his shoulder blades. His back had a faint sun-touched glow, although she had never seen him sunbathing before. Maybe it was an alien thing, despite how desperately human he looked.
"Amy," the Doctor said - and just the shift in his tone made him sound different. It made him sound like he was hundreds of years old, like he really was. It was easy to forget, most of the time. It was easy to look at his daft face and see her raggedy doctor and nothing more. "I'll be alright. It might even be quite bracing."
"Doctor - "
"C'mon, you can't say you don't want to do it some of the time. Remember me, always keeping you waiting?"
"Doctor..."
"Enough!" bellowed the emperor, his face-tentacles waggling. "The sentence has been declared! It will be carried out."
Amy clenched her jaw and wondered how much he'd like it if she turned the whip on him.
"Amy, do it," the Doctor urged, while the crowd roared. Over at the side, Rory was shouting at her too, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. She couldn't hear a thing. "Amy, just -"
The whip cracked down, its tails whistling through the air, before they smacked into the Doctor's back with a sound like gun-fire. Red welts appeared in seconds and the Doctor's words faded to a surprised shout, a bellow that she had never heard from him. Eyes wide, she backed off a few steps, tottering in the over-large heels that the planet had supplied her with. Dolled up like a make-shift dominatrix, she felt out of her depth.
"Again," the emperor insisted, with far too much glee in his voice.
"Doctor?" Amy could feel her hand shaking. She wasn't sure if she could even do it again. "Doctor, are you alright?"
He nodded his head with a long groan, and waggled his fingers at her to indicate that she could continue.
"Again!" The emperor's tentacles wriggled in impatience.
Amy sucked in a deep breath, pulled her arm back, and let the tails fly. They cracked like thunder and then licked the Doctor's back. Blood dripped, this time.
The Doctor howled and fell onto his hands; even if she couldn't see his face from behind him, she could hear his pain and see it in the tightness of his shoulders. Beads of blood were gathering on the wounds that she had made.
"I was sentenced to ten lashes," the Doctor panted, coughing as if the words grated his throat. "Don't stop. Faster it's over the better, I think."
"I'll take your whole back off," Amy said - because she couldn't keep doing this, couldn't hurt him like this, he was the Doctor, her Doctor, and now she was hurting him. "I can't do this. I can't, please, don't make me."
"It'll be worse if you don't. I'm fine. Amelia Pond, I am fine."
His voice quaked with the sound of her childhood. She tightened her grip on the whip and remembered sitting in her back garden, waiting for an adventure that won't come. She wasn't that child any more.
The whip flew, again and again, until the sound of cracking leather and the Doctor's pain were all that she could hear. Blood drooled over the skin on his back; it would scar, she knew it would. He had lived for centuries, untouched and flawless, before she came along.
When she was done the Doctor collapsed onto the ground, his knees unable to hold him up any longer. Beads of blood clung to her whip and she let it drop to the ground, unable to look.
She raised her head to look across the arena at the emperor, safely hidden behind his guards and stone walls. Her vision blurred with tears and fury. "It's done," she shouted. Her chin raised in defiance. "We get to leave now. You said we would get to go."
She needed Rory. He was a nurse; the Doctor was bleeding. He could fix the damage that she had caused.
The emperor inclined his head and released them, with the command to go straight to their vessel and never return. The Doctor climbed clumsily to his feet, flailing as if his weight was too much for his gangly legs. Amy reached out for his arm and clung on to keep him upright. Moments later, released from his guards, Rory was there at the Doctor's other side to help them.
They stumbled forward and the audience parted like the red sea to let them past. Multi-coloured eyes watched in disappointment as the blood on the Doctor's back began to congeal and harden.
When they made it back to the TARDIS, the Doctor collapsed against the console, leaning his front against it while his hands caressed knobs and levers to set them into flight. Near the doorway, Amy stood unable to move. Rory rushed forward, careful and quiet, to help the Doctor as best he could.
"Is he okay?" Amy asked. Her hands covered her mouth, only moving enough to let the words out. "Rory, is he? Is he alright?"
"He can talk," the Doctor answered, although the words were slurred as if he was drunk. "And he is absolutely fine. Great, actually. I know just the place to visit next."
"Unless it's a hospital, you'll stay where you are," Rory ordered. "Amy, get a first aid kit." Amy blinked at him. "There should be one near the door."
The Doctor made a muffled sound of surprise. "I didn't put that there."
"I did," Rory sighed. "Running around with you lot, it's a miracle something like this hasn't happened earlier."
Amy didn't point out that, when someone got hurt, it was usually Rory. The Doctor and her stayed out of the pointy side of trouble.
Most of the time, anyway.
Directed by Rory's worried frowns and careful hands, they made it through to the closest bedroom, one that Amy had never even seen before. The Doctor winced and hissed with every step, until it felt like they were torturing him all over again. Amy could still remember what the whip had felt like in her hand: powerful and cruel, like destiny itself.
Rory lay the Doctor on his front on the soft bed, and took a perching seat beside him. "The wounds aren't deep; don't worry," he said after a quick inspection. "Amy must have gone easy on you."
"Remind me not to be around when she decides to go hard. Or - go difficult? What would the right one be?"
The Doctor's head rested on the pillow while Rory looked down at his back, gentle fingers working to clean and cover cuts. Amy hovered in the background, the sense of responsibility on her shoulders dragging her down. She couldn't stop looking at each long red stripe. How could this have happened?
"Did I ever tell you about the time my hand was cut off?" the Doctor asked. His eyes closed as he talked; he sounded half-way to sleep already.
"Don't be stupid," Amy answered automatically. "You have two hands. I can see them."
"Magic hands." The Doctor smiled. "It was the first day of my last generation. The Sycorax. I was still wearing pyjamas."
With a smile, Amy edged closer. "Saving the world in your pyjamas? Sounds like you."
"I had a sword and everything." He sounded far too pleased with himself. "It was Christmas."
He winced when Rory pressed a little bit too hard in the midst of his cleaning. It was difficult not to glare at him.
The Doctor yawned moments later. "I had an orange."
"Do you want one now?"
"It was a satsuma, actually." The Doctor gave a tired laugh, as if he'd just heard a joke that no one else understood. Amy took a seat at the head of the bed, looking down at him and wishing that she was like Rory, wishing that she knew how to help.
It wasn't long before the Doctor drifted off, his back a messy jungle of cuts, bruises and thick gauze bandages.
"I don't think I've ever seen him sleeping before," Amy said. "Not really, I mean. Unconscious occasionally."
"He's going to be fine," Rory assured her. "You were careful. He's not badly hurt, for all his flailing about."
"I wasn't careful at all. I didn't know what I was doing."
Rory reached for her. She could see the smear of the Doctor's blood against his fingers, red and rusty. His fingers closed over her hand. "That was the point, remember. All of this. They wanted to hurt all of us."
"They hurt him."
"And they made you do it. And they made me watch. It wasn't easy for any of us."
Amy swallowed. Rory's hand swept a strand of orange hair behind her ear, as he dipped down to catch her gaze. Her throat felt tight and thick; she hated this, hated feeling tearful and weak. The TARDIS was flying through the universe, warm and protective around them. There was nothing to be scared of. That planet was behind them.
Yet when her husband swept her into his arms, holding her against his slim chest, she wanted to close her eyes and cry in a way that she hadn't since she was a kid. She held on, sniffling instead, and rested her cheek against him. In time, they lay with the Doctor and drifted away to sleep with him, floating through consciousness, space, and time itself.
*
Their next few stops were purposefully quiet things; serene settings and peaceful inhabitants. There was even bird-song in the background, and a thousand new stars twinkling in the sky.
"Rory," the Doctor said, not moving his head from where he had craned it back to look up at the glowing green orb in the sky. "You're staring at me instead of at the sky."
"You're wearing a t-shirt," Rory answered.
Amy glanced towards him. The t-shirt was pink and had a cartoon animal printed on the front. Of all of the items in the vast wardrobe, she wasn't surprised that he'd ended up in the most ridiculous. If he tried to say that it was cool, however, she'd rip it right off of his back.
"Well observed, Rory." The Doctor grinned and finally let his gaze leave the star. "The regular clothes were rubbing a bit. Cotton is nice - why did no one tell me that earlier?"
"If you were allowed to, you'd wander around in pyjamas all day," Amy complained.
"How's your back?" Rory asked. "Does it still hurt?"
The Doctor's hands flapped like captured birds. Spinning on his heel, he turned once and walked backwards. "There's a brilliant drink you've got to try while you're here," he said. "It's all frothy and pinky. They say it tastes like sunlight, which isn't actually true (and I would know) but it's still magic. C'mon."
"Doctor," Rory said sternly. "Your back. How is it?"
"Sore." The Doctor gave a waggling-fingered hand gesture and continued walking backwards. "It's fine, really. Almost healed."
Didn't matter, really. It was days later, and any pain was still too much - especially anything caused by herself. Amy felt like there was a needle in her heart, pricking her with every beat.
They continued their journey and sight-seeing, but she could hardly taste the drink that the Doctor procured for them. When they became entangled in an adventure to help a young boy find his missing imaginary friend, she felt a step removed even after they found out that said friend was actually an alien.
"Pond!"
The Doctor managed to corner her as effectively as one could corner anyone in the middle of a field. Further off, Rory was kneeling down in front of the boy and his invisible friend, talking to them too quietly to be overheard. Amy forced her attention onto the Doctor, but she didn't meet his eyes.
His ears instead. Much more interesting. Or maybe the crazy bit of hair sticking out over his forehead. Lots of interesting features to stare at.
"Pond..." the Doctor repeated, with a half-smile playing near the corner of his mouth. It was very nearly adorable; Amy thought that it wasn't at all fair for the Doctor to look like that. "I don't blame you."
She gave a laugh. It sounded as fake as it felt, so she placed her hands against her forehead as if she might be able to physically hold her thoughts in. It didn't seem to work. "I hurt you. I hurt you. If they'd given that whip to you or Rory, you'd have found a way out."
"Some people get whipped for fun, you know," the Doctor said. "I've known a few. Whipped a few, actually. It can be quite good, very swishy. Never been on the receiving end intentionally, but there's a first time for everything. Usually there isn't such an audience. And usually it's all a bit more consensual than that. I think there's usually more dungeons and leathers involved, actually."
"Doctor, are you trying to teach me about S&M sex dungeons?"
The Doctor blinked as if she'd startled him. "Possibly?"
"Right, thought so. Please don't." In all honesty, she probably knew more about them than he did. Kiss-o-gram. She had had friends in dark places, once upon a time. Now, she supposed that she didn't really have many friends left at all. "It's different, y'know. Just because we're friends doesn't mean it's okay."
"I'm saying it's okay. Doesn't that make it okay?" The Doctor bopped forward to prod her arm before dipping out of the way again. He had a smile on his face, the one that usually meant he was feeling childish. It was a smile that reminded her of fish fingers and custard. "Everything is fine and sparkly. There's an invisible imaginary alien friend over there!"
She had grown up with an imaginary alien friend of her own. She wasn't quite sure how that was working out for either of them.
The Doctor, with all his gangly limbs and his stupid pink t-shirt, strode forward to swing his arm around her shoulders and begin to lead them back towards the boy and her husband. "Don't be too hard on yourself," he advised, speaking low into her ear, words just for her. "If I was holding a grudge, you'd know it."
She had seen him defeat alien armies and she had watched darkness itself run from his shadow. The last thing she ever wanted was to be considered his enemy.
She pulled away from his arm around her shoulders so that she could take hold of his hand instead, their arms swinging together as they walked. There was a happy bounce in the Doctor's step, as if the wounds on his back were nothing at all. Maybe, to someone with centuries of defending the universe, they weren't.
Amy squeezed his hand tighter. To her, they were everything.
She would never allow it to happen again.
*
"Stop squirming!"
"Then stop tickling me!"
"I'm trying to check your wounds. You're the worst patient ever."
The Doctor huffed through his nose and allowed his head to drop as Rory carefully removed the strips of tape holding bandages against his back. Lurking by the doorway, Amy didn't dare to walk any further inside. She could see what remained of the wounds, though: they were little more than long, bruised lines now. It had only been a couple of days. He healed quickly.
"There," Rory said, with a smile on his face. "You're almost as good as new."
He leaned down and kissed the Doctor's back just below the nape of his neck. The way he did it was almost absent-minded, the way that he might kiss Amy on the cheek before heading out of the room for a minute. It was natural.
It made them all freeze.
The Doctor very carefully licked his lips. "That's new," he said.
"Yeah," Rory answered. "Not quite sure what happened there." He shook his head like a dog shaking water from its fur.
Amy stepped forward, her arms folded over her chest. "Do it again," she instructed quietly - because she knew her boys well. Without a little bit of outside prodding, the memory would be buried.
They both turned their heads to look at her as if she had been possessed (and, given the lives they led, it wasn't such an outlandish assumption) and it was only when she nodded insistently that Rory did what she wanted. He turned back to the Doctor and lowered his head, brushing his lips against the top of one of the bruises. Air shivered from the Doctor's chest.
Amy walked over to the side of the bed and stood looking down at them. She could see the soft pink of Rory's lips descending over the purpling bruises on the Doctor's back. Reaching out, she was able to thread her fingers through Rory's hair and stroke it as he took personal care of every mark she had left on the Doctor's body.
The Doctor's hand landed on Amy's leg, cupping the inside of her thigh. His thumb traced silent circles and she looked down at him, her lips parted with no words coming forward. "Amy," the Doctor said, toying with the syllables like a cat with a bird.
"Doctor," she replied, sing-songing at the same rhythm.
He grinned and tugged hard on her leg, forcing her to tumble onto the bed in front of him. Rory's alarmed face popped up from behind the Doctor's shoulders, but he relaxed into a smile at the sight of Amy sprawled and laughing in outrage.
The Doctor leaned down and kissed the inside of her thigh before she could summon a suitably scathing answer to his attack. The kiss was feather-light and questioning, but the contact was enough for a flood to crash over her. A tingle between her legs ignited; she was wet and ready, desperate for him to slide inside her. She'd been waiting for this since she was old enough to know what sex was.
"Rory," she said, looking past the Doctor to him. It had to be them doing this, not her. Her head always clouded when she was with the Doctor; she needed Rory to help her with the fog. He reached over the Doctor to take hold of her hand. "Please."
At her request, the Doctor kissed her again, while Rory folded over the Doctor's back to carry on with his gentle ministrations, each whip mark receiving a careful kiss. She watched them as the Doctor worked down towards her knee instead of up where she wanted him most, his lips a hot trail over her skin.
God, she wanted this so badly.
Her hand tangled into the Doctor's messy hair, and when Rory looked up he joined her, their fingers entangled in the Doctor's wild strands. "Move up," Rory said. "I think my wife wants your real attention."
Wife. She didn't think that she would ever get over the thrill at hearing that word from him. That thrill gave way to delighted surprise when the Doctor surged upwards, guided by Rory's hand, diving under her skirt and pushing her underwear to one side with long, clever fingers.
Her breath caught in her chest, taken by surprise at the sudden flick of the Doctor's tongue. Rory's eyes were beating into her, all of his attention on her alone, but she couldn't even smile to let him know that all of this was more than okay. She could only arch her back, gasping for air as the Doctor licked a clean line against her - and moaned afterwards, as if she was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
Rory cursed beneath his breath. "I can't believe this," he muttered. Amy was right there with him, but with the Doctor manipulating her with expert ease she could hardly voice it. "This is really happening. We're - Jesus, we're really doing this."
They really, really were.
Amy felt like the boys before her were an erotic dream come to life, especially when Rory hurriedly pulled his own t-shirt over his head, leaving both of them shirtless and bare in front of her. She watched them with greedy eyes, and groaned as the Doctor's mouth licked and sucked at her.
Shoving their trousers down, Rory's cock spilled free - as hard as she had ever seen it. The Doctor's was hidden from her view by the lean line of his body, but he moaned when Rory reached beneath him to take him in hand. Amy felt the vibration from his lips all the way through her core.
Rory slotted right behind the Doctor, their bodies flush against each other, his cock sliding between the smooth skin of the Doctor's thighs. The Doctor shifted and pulled his legs more firmly together, the increased tightness making Rory choke and bend over the Doctor's body.
Amy closed her eyes and gasped for air as the Doctor's tongue worked her higher and higher. The muscles in her thighs and stomach started to twitch and spasm as the first tingling heat of her orgasm set in. "Oh, god," Amy groaned, losing her mind as the Doctor finally sent her over the edge, her back arching up from the bed as the orgasm smashed into her.
When the shivers subsided, Rory turned the Doctor onto his back and took hold of them both. With the bruises pressed against the mattress, the Doctor winced in pain; it took only a moment for them to roll over instead, nearly tumbling from the bed in their haste. Amy reached out to grab Rory's shoulder and save him from the fall; the three of them giggled in surprise, before the Doctor ground his cock against Rory's hand and the chuckles faded into moans.
Their faces were red and flushed, and by the time they came, one after the other, they looked utterly wrecked. Recovered by this point, Amy ran her hands over their smooth skin and kissed every mark on the Doctor's back, as if kisses alone might be enough to cure him. With her hands and her lips, she hoped she could make everything better.
*
For every day until the whip marks healed, Amy and Rory applied kiss after kiss like the contact alone was a powerful medicine. The Doctor might squirm and chuckle, but he would sigh happily under their attention and melt against their bed.
He took them to pleasure planets and continent-wide spas, throwing relaxation at them until Amy felt like an invertebrate.
The marks faded. The memories didn't, not quite.
Holding Rory's hand as the three of them wandered down a quiet lane in the thirty-third century, Amy watched the Doctor as he explained the recent details of the future-history of the period to them. "We should probably be on the look-out, though," he said, trying to bury the warning in between a ramble of other tidbits.
"Doctor," Amy growled before he could go verbally spilling into anything different. "What does that mean?"
"What? Ah. Yes. Well..." Not good. She could tell by his face that it was not good. "I may be wanted for arrest. Maybe. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics. They might have forgotten."
Arrest.
Sometimes, Amy thought that the universe really did hate the Doctor. It was probably annoyed that he refused to travel in the right direction, zig-zagging all over the place instead of following blatantly logical straight lines.
She narrowed her eyes. "Are there going to be any whips this time?"
The Doctor's answer came in the form of a slightly manic grin. "Only if we are very, very lucky."
She really was going to strangle him in frustration, one of these days. Walking along under the future sun with the threat of arrest over their heads, she squeezed Rory's hand. She could feel a new adventure brewing on the horizon; held-hands, danger, and a whole lot of running.
Pairing: Amy/Eleven/Rory
Word Count: 4500
Rating: NC-17
A/N: Written for the "whipping/flogging" square of my kink bingo card. The whipping is non-sexual, however.
Summary: After they save a planet by destroying its sacred man-eating temple, the Doctor is sentenced to punishment by flogging. Amy is ordered to administer the lashes.
She adjusted her grip on the woven leather handle of the whip. Its tails hung down to her calf, long and wicked, cracks and creases in the material proving its age and use. She pressed red-rouged lips together and looked around at the crowd, inhuman and inhumane eyes staring down at them from the stall, an eager audience.
Before her, kneeling like a penitent at prayer, the Doctor was on his knees. His head was bowed and he had lost his shirt, his jacket, even his stupid bloody bow-tie. He didn't look right like this, bare and exposed.
He looked human.
How could he look so human when she was supposed to hurt him?
Looking up, Amy could see Rory at the forefront of the crowd. He was held in check by guards on either side, spears crossed in front of him to prevent him from surging forwards to their rescue. They were out-numbered by about a thousand to one, and that was being easy on the odds. Even Rory with his red cloak flowing behind him couldn't take them on.
"Doctor," Amy said, speaking between clenched teeth. "A bright idea would be really good right about now."
The Doctor craned over his shoulder to look at her. "I'm working on it," he said.
The crowd jeered, waiting for blood. "Work faster."
"Do it," the Doctor instructed. "It'll be okay. Sort of deserve it anyway."
"Doctor!"
"We did destroy their temple."
"It wasn't a temple; it was a giant space-mouth. It was eating people."
"Eating people in a sacred way."
Amy clutched onto the whip she'd been given and tried to remind herself why doing this would be a bad idea. "There are limits to cultural relativism," she growled.
And then the Doctor started laughing, and from this angle she could see every shift and ripple in his shoulder blades. His back had a faint sun-touched glow, although she had never seen him sunbathing before. Maybe it was an alien thing, despite how desperately human he looked.
"Amy," the Doctor said - and just the shift in his tone made him sound different. It made him sound like he was hundreds of years old, like he really was. It was easy to forget, most of the time. It was easy to look at his daft face and see her raggedy doctor and nothing more. "I'll be alright. It might even be quite bracing."
"Doctor - "
"C'mon, you can't say you don't want to do it some of the time. Remember me, always keeping you waiting?"
"Doctor..."
"Enough!" bellowed the emperor, his face-tentacles waggling. "The sentence has been declared! It will be carried out."
Amy clenched her jaw and wondered how much he'd like it if she turned the whip on him.
"Amy, do it," the Doctor urged, while the crowd roared. Over at the side, Rory was shouting at her too, but she couldn't hear what he was saying. She couldn't hear a thing. "Amy, just -"
The whip cracked down, its tails whistling through the air, before they smacked into the Doctor's back with a sound like gun-fire. Red welts appeared in seconds and the Doctor's words faded to a surprised shout, a bellow that she had never heard from him. Eyes wide, she backed off a few steps, tottering in the over-large heels that the planet had supplied her with. Dolled up like a make-shift dominatrix, she felt out of her depth.
"Again," the emperor insisted, with far too much glee in his voice.
"Doctor?" Amy could feel her hand shaking. She wasn't sure if she could even do it again. "Doctor, are you alright?"
He nodded his head with a long groan, and waggled his fingers at her to indicate that she could continue.
"Again!" The emperor's tentacles wriggled in impatience.
Amy sucked in a deep breath, pulled her arm back, and let the tails fly. They cracked like thunder and then licked the Doctor's back. Blood dripped, this time.
The Doctor howled and fell onto his hands; even if she couldn't see his face from behind him, she could hear his pain and see it in the tightness of his shoulders. Beads of blood were gathering on the wounds that she had made.
"I was sentenced to ten lashes," the Doctor panted, coughing as if the words grated his throat. "Don't stop. Faster it's over the better, I think."
"I'll take your whole back off," Amy said - because she couldn't keep doing this, couldn't hurt him like this, he was the Doctor, her Doctor, and now she was hurting him. "I can't do this. I can't, please, don't make me."
"It'll be worse if you don't. I'm fine. Amelia Pond, I am fine."
His voice quaked with the sound of her childhood. She tightened her grip on the whip and remembered sitting in her back garden, waiting for an adventure that won't come. She wasn't that child any more.
The whip flew, again and again, until the sound of cracking leather and the Doctor's pain were all that she could hear. Blood drooled over the skin on his back; it would scar, she knew it would. He had lived for centuries, untouched and flawless, before she came along.
When she was done the Doctor collapsed onto the ground, his knees unable to hold him up any longer. Beads of blood clung to her whip and she let it drop to the ground, unable to look.
She raised her head to look across the arena at the emperor, safely hidden behind his guards and stone walls. Her vision blurred with tears and fury. "It's done," she shouted. Her chin raised in defiance. "We get to leave now. You said we would get to go."
She needed Rory. He was a nurse; the Doctor was bleeding. He could fix the damage that she had caused.
The emperor inclined his head and released them, with the command to go straight to their vessel and never return. The Doctor climbed clumsily to his feet, flailing as if his weight was too much for his gangly legs. Amy reached out for his arm and clung on to keep him upright. Moments later, released from his guards, Rory was there at the Doctor's other side to help them.
They stumbled forward and the audience parted like the red sea to let them past. Multi-coloured eyes watched in disappointment as the blood on the Doctor's back began to congeal and harden.
When they made it back to the TARDIS, the Doctor collapsed against the console, leaning his front against it while his hands caressed knobs and levers to set them into flight. Near the doorway, Amy stood unable to move. Rory rushed forward, careful and quiet, to help the Doctor as best he could.
"Is he okay?" Amy asked. Her hands covered her mouth, only moving enough to let the words out. "Rory, is he? Is he alright?"
"He can talk," the Doctor answered, although the words were slurred as if he was drunk. "And he is absolutely fine. Great, actually. I know just the place to visit next."
"Unless it's a hospital, you'll stay where you are," Rory ordered. "Amy, get a first aid kit." Amy blinked at him. "There should be one near the door."
The Doctor made a muffled sound of surprise. "I didn't put that there."
"I did," Rory sighed. "Running around with you lot, it's a miracle something like this hasn't happened earlier."
Amy didn't point out that, when someone got hurt, it was usually Rory. The Doctor and her stayed out of the pointy side of trouble.
Most of the time, anyway.
Directed by Rory's worried frowns and careful hands, they made it through to the closest bedroom, one that Amy had never even seen before. The Doctor winced and hissed with every step, until it felt like they were torturing him all over again. Amy could still remember what the whip had felt like in her hand: powerful and cruel, like destiny itself.
Rory lay the Doctor on his front on the soft bed, and took a perching seat beside him. "The wounds aren't deep; don't worry," he said after a quick inspection. "Amy must have gone easy on you."
"Remind me not to be around when she decides to go hard. Or - go difficult? What would the right one be?"
The Doctor's head rested on the pillow while Rory looked down at his back, gentle fingers working to clean and cover cuts. Amy hovered in the background, the sense of responsibility on her shoulders dragging her down. She couldn't stop looking at each long red stripe. How could this have happened?
"Did I ever tell you about the time my hand was cut off?" the Doctor asked. His eyes closed as he talked; he sounded half-way to sleep already.
"Don't be stupid," Amy answered automatically. "You have two hands. I can see them."
"Magic hands." The Doctor smiled. "It was the first day of my last generation. The Sycorax. I was still wearing pyjamas."
With a smile, Amy edged closer. "Saving the world in your pyjamas? Sounds like you."
"I had a sword and everything." He sounded far too pleased with himself. "It was Christmas."
He winced when Rory pressed a little bit too hard in the midst of his cleaning. It was difficult not to glare at him.
The Doctor yawned moments later. "I had an orange."
"Do you want one now?"
"It was a satsuma, actually." The Doctor gave a tired laugh, as if he'd just heard a joke that no one else understood. Amy took a seat at the head of the bed, looking down at him and wishing that she was like Rory, wishing that she knew how to help.
It wasn't long before the Doctor drifted off, his back a messy jungle of cuts, bruises and thick gauze bandages.
"I don't think I've ever seen him sleeping before," Amy said. "Not really, I mean. Unconscious occasionally."
"He's going to be fine," Rory assured her. "You were careful. He's not badly hurt, for all his flailing about."
"I wasn't careful at all. I didn't know what I was doing."
Rory reached for her. She could see the smear of the Doctor's blood against his fingers, red and rusty. His fingers closed over her hand. "That was the point, remember. All of this. They wanted to hurt all of us."
"They hurt him."
"And they made you do it. And they made me watch. It wasn't easy for any of us."
Amy swallowed. Rory's hand swept a strand of orange hair behind her ear, as he dipped down to catch her gaze. Her throat felt tight and thick; she hated this, hated feeling tearful and weak. The TARDIS was flying through the universe, warm and protective around them. There was nothing to be scared of. That planet was behind them.
Yet when her husband swept her into his arms, holding her against his slim chest, she wanted to close her eyes and cry in a way that she hadn't since she was a kid. She held on, sniffling instead, and rested her cheek against him. In time, they lay with the Doctor and drifted away to sleep with him, floating through consciousness, space, and time itself.
*
Their next few stops were purposefully quiet things; serene settings and peaceful inhabitants. There was even bird-song in the background, and a thousand new stars twinkling in the sky.
"Rory," the Doctor said, not moving his head from where he had craned it back to look up at the glowing green orb in the sky. "You're staring at me instead of at the sky."
"You're wearing a t-shirt," Rory answered.
Amy glanced towards him. The t-shirt was pink and had a cartoon animal printed on the front. Of all of the items in the vast wardrobe, she wasn't surprised that he'd ended up in the most ridiculous. If he tried to say that it was cool, however, she'd rip it right off of his back.
"Well observed, Rory." The Doctor grinned and finally let his gaze leave the star. "The regular clothes were rubbing a bit. Cotton is nice - why did no one tell me that earlier?"
"If you were allowed to, you'd wander around in pyjamas all day," Amy complained.
"How's your back?" Rory asked. "Does it still hurt?"
The Doctor's hands flapped like captured birds. Spinning on his heel, he turned once and walked backwards. "There's a brilliant drink you've got to try while you're here," he said. "It's all frothy and pinky. They say it tastes like sunlight, which isn't actually true (and I would know) but it's still magic. C'mon."
"Doctor," Rory said sternly. "Your back. How is it?"
"Sore." The Doctor gave a waggling-fingered hand gesture and continued walking backwards. "It's fine, really. Almost healed."
Didn't matter, really. It was days later, and any pain was still too much - especially anything caused by herself. Amy felt like there was a needle in her heart, pricking her with every beat.
They continued their journey and sight-seeing, but she could hardly taste the drink that the Doctor procured for them. When they became entangled in an adventure to help a young boy find his missing imaginary friend, she felt a step removed even after they found out that said friend was actually an alien.
"Pond!"
The Doctor managed to corner her as effectively as one could corner anyone in the middle of a field. Further off, Rory was kneeling down in front of the boy and his invisible friend, talking to them too quietly to be overheard. Amy forced her attention onto the Doctor, but she didn't meet his eyes.
His ears instead. Much more interesting. Or maybe the crazy bit of hair sticking out over his forehead. Lots of interesting features to stare at.
"Pond..." the Doctor repeated, with a half-smile playing near the corner of his mouth. It was very nearly adorable; Amy thought that it wasn't at all fair for the Doctor to look like that. "I don't blame you."
She gave a laugh. It sounded as fake as it felt, so she placed her hands against her forehead as if she might be able to physically hold her thoughts in. It didn't seem to work. "I hurt you. I hurt you. If they'd given that whip to you or Rory, you'd have found a way out."
"Some people get whipped for fun, you know," the Doctor said. "I've known a few. Whipped a few, actually. It can be quite good, very swishy. Never been on the receiving end intentionally, but there's a first time for everything. Usually there isn't such an audience. And usually it's all a bit more consensual than that. I think there's usually more dungeons and leathers involved, actually."
"Doctor, are you trying to teach me about S&M sex dungeons?"
The Doctor blinked as if she'd startled him. "Possibly?"
"Right, thought so. Please don't." In all honesty, she probably knew more about them than he did. Kiss-o-gram. She had had friends in dark places, once upon a time. Now, she supposed that she didn't really have many friends left at all. "It's different, y'know. Just because we're friends doesn't mean it's okay."
"I'm saying it's okay. Doesn't that make it okay?" The Doctor bopped forward to prod her arm before dipping out of the way again. He had a smile on his face, the one that usually meant he was feeling childish. It was a smile that reminded her of fish fingers and custard. "Everything is fine and sparkly. There's an invisible imaginary alien friend over there!"
She had grown up with an imaginary alien friend of her own. She wasn't quite sure how that was working out for either of them.
The Doctor, with all his gangly limbs and his stupid pink t-shirt, strode forward to swing his arm around her shoulders and begin to lead them back towards the boy and her husband. "Don't be too hard on yourself," he advised, speaking low into her ear, words just for her. "If I was holding a grudge, you'd know it."
She had seen him defeat alien armies and she had watched darkness itself run from his shadow. The last thing she ever wanted was to be considered his enemy.
She pulled away from his arm around her shoulders so that she could take hold of his hand instead, their arms swinging together as they walked. There was a happy bounce in the Doctor's step, as if the wounds on his back were nothing at all. Maybe, to someone with centuries of defending the universe, they weren't.
Amy squeezed his hand tighter. To her, they were everything.
She would never allow it to happen again.
*
"Stop squirming!"
"Then stop tickling me!"
"I'm trying to check your wounds. You're the worst patient ever."
The Doctor huffed through his nose and allowed his head to drop as Rory carefully removed the strips of tape holding bandages against his back. Lurking by the doorway, Amy didn't dare to walk any further inside. She could see what remained of the wounds, though: they were little more than long, bruised lines now. It had only been a couple of days. He healed quickly.
"There," Rory said, with a smile on his face. "You're almost as good as new."
He leaned down and kissed the Doctor's back just below the nape of his neck. The way he did it was almost absent-minded, the way that he might kiss Amy on the cheek before heading out of the room for a minute. It was natural.
It made them all freeze.
The Doctor very carefully licked his lips. "That's new," he said.
"Yeah," Rory answered. "Not quite sure what happened there." He shook his head like a dog shaking water from its fur.
Amy stepped forward, her arms folded over her chest. "Do it again," she instructed quietly - because she knew her boys well. Without a little bit of outside prodding, the memory would be buried.
They both turned their heads to look at her as if she had been possessed (and, given the lives they led, it wasn't such an outlandish assumption) and it was only when she nodded insistently that Rory did what she wanted. He turned back to the Doctor and lowered his head, brushing his lips against the top of one of the bruises. Air shivered from the Doctor's chest.
Amy walked over to the side of the bed and stood looking down at them. She could see the soft pink of Rory's lips descending over the purpling bruises on the Doctor's back. Reaching out, she was able to thread her fingers through Rory's hair and stroke it as he took personal care of every mark she had left on the Doctor's body.
The Doctor's hand landed on Amy's leg, cupping the inside of her thigh. His thumb traced silent circles and she looked down at him, her lips parted with no words coming forward. "Amy," the Doctor said, toying with the syllables like a cat with a bird.
"Doctor," she replied, sing-songing at the same rhythm.
He grinned and tugged hard on her leg, forcing her to tumble onto the bed in front of him. Rory's alarmed face popped up from behind the Doctor's shoulders, but he relaxed into a smile at the sight of Amy sprawled and laughing in outrage.
The Doctor leaned down and kissed the inside of her thigh before she could summon a suitably scathing answer to his attack. The kiss was feather-light and questioning, but the contact was enough for a flood to crash over her. A tingle between her legs ignited; she was wet and ready, desperate for him to slide inside her. She'd been waiting for this since she was old enough to know what sex was.
"Rory," she said, looking past the Doctor to him. It had to be them doing this, not her. Her head always clouded when she was with the Doctor; she needed Rory to help her with the fog. He reached over the Doctor to take hold of her hand. "Please."
At her request, the Doctor kissed her again, while Rory folded over the Doctor's back to carry on with his gentle ministrations, each whip mark receiving a careful kiss. She watched them as the Doctor worked down towards her knee instead of up where she wanted him most, his lips a hot trail over her skin.
God, she wanted this so badly.
Her hand tangled into the Doctor's messy hair, and when Rory looked up he joined her, their fingers entangled in the Doctor's wild strands. "Move up," Rory said. "I think my wife wants your real attention."
Wife. She didn't think that she would ever get over the thrill at hearing that word from him. That thrill gave way to delighted surprise when the Doctor surged upwards, guided by Rory's hand, diving under her skirt and pushing her underwear to one side with long, clever fingers.
Her breath caught in her chest, taken by surprise at the sudden flick of the Doctor's tongue. Rory's eyes were beating into her, all of his attention on her alone, but she couldn't even smile to let him know that all of this was more than okay. She could only arch her back, gasping for air as the Doctor licked a clean line against her - and moaned afterwards, as if she was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.
Rory cursed beneath his breath. "I can't believe this," he muttered. Amy was right there with him, but with the Doctor manipulating her with expert ease she could hardly voice it. "This is really happening. We're - Jesus, we're really doing this."
They really, really were.
Amy felt like the boys before her were an erotic dream come to life, especially when Rory hurriedly pulled his own t-shirt over his head, leaving both of them shirtless and bare in front of her. She watched them with greedy eyes, and groaned as the Doctor's mouth licked and sucked at her.
Shoving their trousers down, Rory's cock spilled free - as hard as she had ever seen it. The Doctor's was hidden from her view by the lean line of his body, but he moaned when Rory reached beneath him to take him in hand. Amy felt the vibration from his lips all the way through her core.
Rory slotted right behind the Doctor, their bodies flush against each other, his cock sliding between the smooth skin of the Doctor's thighs. The Doctor shifted and pulled his legs more firmly together, the increased tightness making Rory choke and bend over the Doctor's body.
Amy closed her eyes and gasped for air as the Doctor's tongue worked her higher and higher. The muscles in her thighs and stomach started to twitch and spasm as the first tingling heat of her orgasm set in. "Oh, god," Amy groaned, losing her mind as the Doctor finally sent her over the edge, her back arching up from the bed as the orgasm smashed into her.
When the shivers subsided, Rory turned the Doctor onto his back and took hold of them both. With the bruises pressed against the mattress, the Doctor winced in pain; it took only a moment for them to roll over instead, nearly tumbling from the bed in their haste. Amy reached out to grab Rory's shoulder and save him from the fall; the three of them giggled in surprise, before the Doctor ground his cock against Rory's hand and the chuckles faded into moans.
Their faces were red and flushed, and by the time they came, one after the other, they looked utterly wrecked. Recovered by this point, Amy ran her hands over their smooth skin and kissed every mark on the Doctor's back, as if kisses alone might be enough to cure him. With her hands and her lips, she hoped she could make everything better.
*
For every day until the whip marks healed, Amy and Rory applied kiss after kiss like the contact alone was a powerful medicine. The Doctor might squirm and chuckle, but he would sigh happily under their attention and melt against their bed.
He took them to pleasure planets and continent-wide spas, throwing relaxation at them until Amy felt like an invertebrate.
The marks faded. The memories didn't, not quite.
Holding Rory's hand as the three of them wandered down a quiet lane in the thirty-third century, Amy watched the Doctor as he explained the recent details of the future-history of the period to them. "We should probably be on the look-out, though," he said, trying to bury the warning in between a ramble of other tidbits.
"Doctor," Amy growled before he could go verbally spilling into anything different. "What does that mean?"
"What? Ah. Yes. Well..." Not good. She could tell by his face that it was not good. "I may be wanted for arrest. Maybe. I'm not entirely sure of the specifics. They might have forgotten."
Arrest.
Sometimes, Amy thought that the universe really did hate the Doctor. It was probably annoyed that he refused to travel in the right direction, zig-zagging all over the place instead of following blatantly logical straight lines.
She narrowed her eyes. "Are there going to be any whips this time?"
The Doctor's answer came in the form of a slightly manic grin. "Only if we are very, very lucky."
She really was going to strangle him in frustration, one of these days. Walking along under the future sun with the threat of arrest over their heads, she squeezed Rory's hand. She could feel a new adventure brewing on the horizon; held-hands, danger, and a whole lot of running.