prompts 100 ;; ❝ prison ❞
for: tardytardis
prompt: prison
verse: Verbalize
word count: 2246
spoilers/notes: Spoilers for Sanctuary 2x07 Veritas. It features Will, Kate, and Henry as well!
“So what are we going to do?”
Will looked up at Kate and Henry, both sitting in front of his desk. The Sanctuary Charter sat in front of him and he folded his hands above it. There was no way Magnus was a murderer. On top of it, there was no way that she would have killed the Big Guy. They were friends for who knew how long. Even with all the pressure, she wouldn’t have done it.
“Will?”
“First, we need to prove she’s innocent.” Will said with a sigh. “Henry, you’ll have to hack into her files and see if there was anything up.”
“I can put a few words out to my contacts.” Kate offered. “See if they know anything about what has been going on the last week. What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure about this, Will.” Henry shifted in his seat. “I mean, hacking into the Doc’s files? That’s…”
“I know, Henry, but we have to.” Will insisted and looked at Kate, sighing. “There’s,” he paused to start again, “Magnus gave me instructions that if anything went wrong with her, I was supposed to call this certain number. It’s programmed into her phone, which is in her office. I doubt Declan is going to let me get my hands on it.”
“So then, I’ll swipe it for you.” Kate stood, stretching. “I mean, you said that you would have someone like me behind bars, right? I’m the perfect candidate. You’ll have it by the afternoon.”
Kate kept her promise. She stopped by his office, discreetly dropping Magnus’s phone on his desk. Will held it in his hand for a long time, debating if he should. Did the Sanctuary Heads even know about this guy? Hell, he hardly knew anything about the guy. Sure, he had seen him sometimes with Magnus in the Sanctuary, but… he was hard to read. Was it even the right thing to do?
Will pushed himself out of his seat and moved to Magnus’s lab. That’s usually where the big box parked itself.
~*~
The doors to the blue box were thrown open, and the Doctor popped his head out. He looked around the familiar lab with a smile on his face. He stepped outside, moving around to the other side of the TARDIS to greet his friend. Though the smile dropped as soon as he saw Helen’s protégé standing there, not Helen herself. He blinked once and slipped his hands into his pockets.
“Oh, hello. What was it? Will?”
“Yeah.” Will said, pulling his eyes off the blue box and looking at the man. He looked twenty-eight, in need of a haircut, and wearing something Indiana Jones wore when he was a professor in the movies. Including the bowtie. Weird. Well, the way he stood was like he was older than how he looked.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “A profiler! Helen certainly knows how to pick them… speaking of! Where is she? I got her call. Oddly enough she didn’t say anything. Is everything alright?”
“I’m the one who called you.” Will said as he held up Helen’s phone and watched as the Doctor’s expression turned unreadable. “Magnus told me to call you if something ever happened.”
The man quickly strode over to Will. It was if as in an instant he was angry and scared at the same time. “What is it? Tell me. What’s wrong? Has something happened to Helen?”
Will nodded once before half turning. “She’s in level three isolation. Come on, it’ll be easier to explain there.”
“Isolation?!” the Doctor practically shouted as he followed after the protégé. “You stuck her in isolation?!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Will said sharply. “I came back from a mission and this had already happened. I’m just following orders. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
He pressed his hands to his face and took a deep breath. “Right… yes, yes, sorry. I shouldn’t have--come on then, show me this isolation room.”
~*~
Helen fidgeted in her seat, her hands pressed against her face as she tried to force herself to remember the last week. She couldn’t remember anything other than brief images that made no sense in her mind. Just that morning Declan had appeared and said she was being placed in isolation for something she didn’t even remember happening.
She looked up as the electronic lock disengaged and the door open. Helen stood once Will entered the room, clutching the handkerchief in her hand tightly. The look on his face said he hadn’t found anything yet. Wasn’t he trying to help her at all? Or was he just standing around and wasting time? Someone had deliberately tampered her memories!
“Magnus.” Will said, grabbing her attention. “Kate, Henry and I are working on this. I promise… but, right now, I’m following your orders to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Helen practically shouted before regaining her composure. “Will, someone has tampered with my memories and you’re standing around doing nothing! That’s not taking care of me!”
Will sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “That’s because I’m solving the case. He’s the one that’s actually going to take care of you. You told me to call him if something went wrong. This is something gone wrong, Magnus.”
Helen stared at him as he stepped aside, letting the other visitor in. At first she didn’t move at all as the Doctor took a glance around the room, inspecting the prison they put her in.
“At least it’s cozy, I suppose.” He mumbled before turning to her. “Right, yes. Helen. Do you mind explain--oh, hello.”
The Doctor looked down as Helen more or less threw her arms around him and clung to him. As if the isolation room didn’t scream enough ‘wrong, wrong so wrong’ at him, now Helen was clinging. Helen never clung. Oh, there might have been times he wished she did, but that didn’t mean she would. Now that it happened it was just… odd. Very odd. He slowly wrapped his arms around her and held her, looking over at Will.
“Right, will someone please tell me what I have missed?” the Doctor said pointedly at her protégé. “Sooner rather than later would be preferable.”
Will shook his head. “They think that she’s killed the Big Guy.”
“What? They? They who? Who the hell do they think they are to accuse her of murder?!” He shouted, feeling Helen hug him tighter. This was so wrong that he wasn’t even sure how many more wrongs he could fit into his thought process.
“I don’t know. We’re working on it.” Will said pointedly. “They brought the Big Guy back from an alleyway, dead in Old City. I got back this morning and they already had Magnus in isolation.”
The Doctor eyed Will before moving Helen over to the couch, easing her out the hold and down onto the couch. She looked up at him, biting on her lip to try and stop the tears in her eyes from falling. He frowned, cradling her head in his hands as he knelt down in front of her. His thumbs brushed away the wetness on her cheeks before pressing his forehead to hers and shutting his eyes.
What the hell was going on?
“They’re telling me that I’ve killed--”
“I know, but they’re wrong.” He said. “They are wrong, and shut up about it. There is no way, Helen, no possible way you could have killed him.”
“But--” Helen stopped to force another wave of emotions down. “What if I did? I can’t remember anything from the past week.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” He shouted. “It means that whoever truly did this has framed you.”
He let his fingers move down her neck, looking for some sort of injury that might have caused the memory loss. Oh, he was well aware that Will was standing by watching still. He didn’t care. His fingers brushed up against the bottom of her neckline then stopped, moving over it again. There was an oddly shaped bump resting at the curve of her hairline. He pressed his finger against it.
It moved.
The Doctor pulled his hands back to stare at Helen. She stared back, scared, confused, and broken. There was something in her head, literally. No one had noticed it because of her hair. That long brunette hair that curled around her face and her shoulders. It all clicked into place. She hadn’t told him this part of the story, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening.
He stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
“What?!” Will shouted.
“No, you can’t just go!” Helen stood up as well, grabbing onto his jacket. “They’re telling me I’ve killed one of my oldest friends and you want to leave? Now? Why?!”
He reached up and took her hands into his, easing them off his jacket. “Oh, Helen. I don’t want to go - really, I don’t. But, I have to. Because I know what is going to happen, and I wasn’t supposed to be here for it. I can’t be here for it.”
“If you know what the hell is going on, then why don’t you just tell everyone so we can be done with it?” Will asked.
The Doctor scratched he side of his head in aggravation. “Because, that’s not how it works! Time is tricky, things like this have to be in a certain order or it’s going to cause problems. Problems I’m going to have to fix because I caused them by being in the wrong place at the wrong time! Helen,” he turned his attention back to her, taking her head in her hands. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
She didn’t need to say what she was thinking; it was so obvious on her face. You always leave.
He pressed his forehead against hers before kissing it gently. “I always come back, Helen. Trust me.” He lingered a moment longer than he should of, turning and quickly bolting out of the room. Will gave an apologetic look to Helen before closing the door behind him and chasing after the Doctor. By the time Will got to the lab, the blue box had already left.
The TARDIS landed in the lab again, in the exact same spot. The doors swung open and he popped his head out again. Helen was sitting at one of the desks, glancing up at him from her work before turning her attention back. He nearly slammed the door shut behind him as he strode over to her desk, pounding his hands on the surface to grab her attention.
“You knew!”
Helen looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. “Pardon?”
The Doctor pointed right at her. “You, Helen Magnus, knew that I would show up then, didn’t you? When you told me about Big Bertha. You knew that I would show up the day you were taken in for supposed murder! You knew that I would find that thing in your head and nearly destroy the plan you had made up!”
“Now, to be completely fair, I hardly knew it at the time.” Helen said and narrowed her eyes. “But, yes, when I told you about the information leak I did know you would show up, because you had. Yet you had no idea of the incident when I brought it up. You are a time traveler, it’s not very surprising you’d fall back on my timeline.”
“What was that in your head?”
“An ozone beetle. They secrete a fluid that acts as a drug, but once it is left in the system for too long, it starts to cause memory loss, paranoia, and sensitivity to light.” She answered his question, not backing down despite the anger on his face. “I’m fine. Henry removed it with no problems at all.”
He hung his head for a moment and shoved the paperwork away, grabbing her hands. Helen looked up at him, eyes widened slightly. He let out a frustrated, angry, and hurt sigh before leaning forward and placing his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes and returned the notion, squeezing his hands. He wasn’t going to tell her how scared he was in that moment he landed. How terrified he had been that something had happened to her and she might have died.
“Despite that, it did hurt.” She said softly. “I had no idea what was happening at the time and you left. I thought you might not come back.”
“I told you I would. How many times will I have to say it until you believe me?”
She gave a small smile. “How long am I going to have to wait until you trust me?”
He knew what she was referring to. All the things he hadn’t told her. He heard her sigh when he didn’t answer her question and she squeezed his hands.
“Helen. Never do that again.”
She laughed. “It’s a good thing I have no intentions of repeating it.”
prompt: prison
verse: Verbalize
word count: 2246
spoilers/notes: Spoilers for Sanctuary 2x07 Veritas. It features Will, Kate, and Henry as well!
“So what are we going to do?”
Will looked up at Kate and Henry, both sitting in front of his desk. The Sanctuary Charter sat in front of him and he folded his hands above it. There was no way Magnus was a murderer. On top of it, there was no way that she would have killed the Big Guy. They were friends for who knew how long. Even with all the pressure, she wouldn’t have done it.
“Will?”
“First, we need to prove she’s innocent.” Will said with a sigh. “Henry, you’ll have to hack into her files and see if there was anything up.”
“I can put a few words out to my contacts.” Kate offered. “See if they know anything about what has been going on the last week. What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure about this, Will.” Henry shifted in his seat. “I mean, hacking into the Doc’s files? That’s…”
“I know, Henry, but we have to.” Will insisted and looked at Kate, sighing. “There’s,” he paused to start again, “Magnus gave me instructions that if anything went wrong with her, I was supposed to call this certain number. It’s programmed into her phone, which is in her office. I doubt Declan is going to let me get my hands on it.”
“So then, I’ll swipe it for you.” Kate stood, stretching. “I mean, you said that you would have someone like me behind bars, right? I’m the perfect candidate. You’ll have it by the afternoon.”
Kate kept her promise. She stopped by his office, discreetly dropping Magnus’s phone on his desk. Will held it in his hand for a long time, debating if he should. Did the Sanctuary Heads even know about this guy? Hell, he hardly knew anything about the guy. Sure, he had seen him sometimes with Magnus in the Sanctuary, but… he was hard to read. Was it even the right thing to do?
Will pushed himself out of his seat and moved to Magnus’s lab. That’s usually where the big box parked itself.
~*~
The doors to the blue box were thrown open, and the Doctor popped his head out. He looked around the familiar lab with a smile on his face. He stepped outside, moving around to the other side of the TARDIS to greet his friend. Though the smile dropped as soon as he saw Helen’s protégé standing there, not Helen herself. He blinked once and slipped his hands into his pockets.
“Oh, hello. What was it? Will?”
“Yeah.” Will said, pulling his eyes off the blue box and looking at the man. He looked twenty-eight, in need of a haircut, and wearing something Indiana Jones wore when he was a professor in the movies. Including the bowtie. Weird. Well, the way he stood was like he was older than how he looked.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “A profiler! Helen certainly knows how to pick them… speaking of! Where is she? I got her call. Oddly enough she didn’t say anything. Is everything alright?”
“I’m the one who called you.” Will said as he held up Helen’s phone and watched as the Doctor’s expression turned unreadable. “Magnus told me to call you if something ever happened.”
The man quickly strode over to Will. It was if as in an instant he was angry and scared at the same time. “What is it? Tell me. What’s wrong? Has something happened to Helen?”
Will nodded once before half turning. “She’s in level three isolation. Come on, it’ll be easier to explain there.”
“Isolation?!” the Doctor practically shouted as he followed after the protégé. “You stuck her in isolation?!”
“I didn’t do anything!” Will said sharply. “I came back from a mission and this had already happened. I’m just following orders. Don’t shoot the messenger.”
He pressed his hands to his face and took a deep breath. “Right… yes, yes, sorry. I shouldn’t have--come on then, show me this isolation room.”
~*~
Helen fidgeted in her seat, her hands pressed against her face as she tried to force herself to remember the last week. She couldn’t remember anything other than brief images that made no sense in her mind. Just that morning Declan had appeared and said she was being placed in isolation for something she didn’t even remember happening.
She looked up as the electronic lock disengaged and the door open. Helen stood once Will entered the room, clutching the handkerchief in her hand tightly. The look on his face said he hadn’t found anything yet. Wasn’t he trying to help her at all? Or was he just standing around and wasting time? Someone had deliberately tampered her memories!
“Magnus.” Will said, grabbing her attention. “Kate, Henry and I are working on this. I promise… but, right now, I’m following your orders to take care of you.”
“Take care of me?” Helen practically shouted before regaining her composure. “Will, someone has tampered with my memories and you’re standing around doing nothing! That’s not taking care of me!”
Will sighed and dragged a hand down his face. “That’s because I’m solving the case. He’s the one that’s actually going to take care of you. You told me to call him if something went wrong. This is something gone wrong, Magnus.”
Helen stared at him as he stepped aside, letting the other visitor in. At first she didn’t move at all as the Doctor took a glance around the room, inspecting the prison they put her in.
“At least it’s cozy, I suppose.” He mumbled before turning to her. “Right, yes. Helen. Do you mind explain--oh, hello.”
The Doctor looked down as Helen more or less threw her arms around him and clung to him. As if the isolation room didn’t scream enough ‘wrong, wrong so wrong’ at him, now Helen was clinging. Helen never clung. Oh, there might have been times he wished she did, but that didn’t mean she would. Now that it happened it was just… odd. Very odd. He slowly wrapped his arms around her and held her, looking over at Will.
“Right, will someone please tell me what I have missed?” the Doctor said pointedly at her protégé. “Sooner rather than later would be preferable.”
Will shook his head. “They think that she’s killed the Big Guy.”
“What? They? They who? Who the hell do they think they are to accuse her of murder?!” He shouted, feeling Helen hug him tighter. This was so wrong that he wasn’t even sure how many more wrongs he could fit into his thought process.
“I don’t know. We’re working on it.” Will said pointedly. “They brought the Big Guy back from an alleyway, dead in Old City. I got back this morning and they already had Magnus in isolation.”
The Doctor eyed Will before moving Helen over to the couch, easing her out the hold and down onto the couch. She looked up at him, biting on her lip to try and stop the tears in her eyes from falling. He frowned, cradling her head in his hands as he knelt down in front of her. His thumbs brushed away the wetness on her cheeks before pressing his forehead to hers and shutting his eyes.
What the hell was going on?
“They’re telling me that I’ve killed--”
“I know, but they’re wrong.” He said. “They are wrong, and shut up about it. There is no way, Helen, no possible way you could have killed him.”
“But--” Helen stopped to force another wave of emotions down. “What if I did? I can’t remember anything from the past week.”
“That doesn’t mean anything!” He shouted. “It means that whoever truly did this has framed you.”
He let his fingers move down her neck, looking for some sort of injury that might have caused the memory loss. Oh, he was well aware that Will was standing by watching still. He didn’t care. His fingers brushed up against the bottom of her neckline then stopped, moving over it again. There was an oddly shaped bump resting at the curve of her hairline. He pressed his finger against it.
It moved.
The Doctor pulled his hands back to stare at Helen. She stared back, scared, confused, and broken. There was something in her head, literally. No one had noticed it because of her hair. That long brunette hair that curled around her face and her shoulders. It all clicked into place. She hadn’t told him this part of the story, but it wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening.
He stood up. “I’ve got to go.”
“What?!” Will shouted.
“No, you can’t just go!” Helen stood up as well, grabbing onto his jacket. “They’re telling me I’ve killed one of my oldest friends and you want to leave? Now? Why?!”
He reached up and took her hands into his, easing them off his jacket. “Oh, Helen. I don’t want to go - really, I don’t. But, I have to. Because I know what is going to happen, and I wasn’t supposed to be here for it. I can’t be here for it.”
“If you know what the hell is going on, then why don’t you just tell everyone so we can be done with it?” Will asked.
The Doctor scratched he side of his head in aggravation. “Because, that’s not how it works! Time is tricky, things like this have to be in a certain order or it’s going to cause problems. Problems I’m going to have to fix because I caused them by being in the wrong place at the wrong time! Helen,” he turned his attention back to her, taking her head in her hands. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
She didn’t need to say what she was thinking; it was so obvious on her face. You always leave.
He pressed his forehead against hers before kissing it gently. “I always come back, Helen. Trust me.” He lingered a moment longer than he should of, turning and quickly bolting out of the room. Will gave an apologetic look to Helen before closing the door behind him and chasing after the Doctor. By the time Will got to the lab, the blue box had already left.
The TARDIS landed in the lab again, in the exact same spot. The doors swung open and he popped his head out again. Helen was sitting at one of the desks, glancing up at him from her work before turning her attention back. He nearly slammed the door shut behind him as he strode over to her desk, pounding his hands on the surface to grab her attention.
“You knew!”
Helen looked up at him with her eyebrows raised. “Pardon?”
The Doctor pointed right at her. “You, Helen Magnus, knew that I would show up then, didn’t you? When you told me about Big Bertha. You knew that I would show up the day you were taken in for supposed murder! You knew that I would find that thing in your head and nearly destroy the plan you had made up!”
“Now, to be completely fair, I hardly knew it at the time.” Helen said and narrowed her eyes. “But, yes, when I told you about the information leak I did know you would show up, because you had. Yet you had no idea of the incident when I brought it up. You are a time traveler, it’s not very surprising you’d fall back on my timeline.”
“What was that in your head?”
“An ozone beetle. They secrete a fluid that acts as a drug, but once it is left in the system for too long, it starts to cause memory loss, paranoia, and sensitivity to light.” She answered his question, not backing down despite the anger on his face. “I’m fine. Henry removed it with no problems at all.”
He hung his head for a moment and shoved the paperwork away, grabbing her hands. Helen looked up at him, eyes widened slightly. He let out a frustrated, angry, and hurt sigh before leaning forward and placing his forehead against hers. She closed her eyes and returned the notion, squeezing his hands. He wasn’t going to tell her how scared he was in that moment he landed. How terrified he had been that something had happened to her and she might have died.
“Despite that, it did hurt.” She said softly. “I had no idea what was happening at the time and you left. I thought you might not come back.”
“I told you I would. How many times will I have to say it until you believe me?”
She gave a small smile. “How long am I going to have to wait until you trust me?”
He knew what she was referring to. All the things he hadn’t told her. He heard her sigh when he didn’t answer her question and she squeezed his hands.
“Helen. Never do that again.”
She laughed. “It’s a good thing I have no intentions of repeating it.”