Two Birds in a Cage, 11/???
Title: Two Birds in a Cage
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.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Breathe in, breathe out.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
A wind whips up-no. No. Her mind is-
Damn.
It will take time. His voice like a light breeze, a breath of cool air across her mind. His fingertips make small circles at her temples. Relax. Concentrate on the mental image.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
xxxxx
Their nights take on a pattern. It is strange, and a miracle, and completely mundane.
She will leave the invitation in his notes. Sometimes he sees her leave it, other times she goes to bed and lies there waiting for him to see it, feeling the stillness of the cold air around her, the warp and weft of the rough cotton beneath her. The seconds tick by and she marks each one, feels each one, feels everything.
Then footsteps, and a knock against the bedpost. Still hesitant after all this time, still willing to be turned away.
It makes it so much easier to sit up, to pull aside the curtain and let him in.
He tucks the blanket over her, fastidious. They put on their shadow play. Lately, he’s taken to humming songs under his breath to time himself-silly nonsense things, skipping rope rhymes and such. She suspects he really does it only to make her smile.
After, he lies down on top of the covers next to her, and tells her a story.
Once upon a time, there was a mountain, and at the top of the mountain lived a hermit who was known far and wide for his wisdom, and at the bottom of the mountain lived a frightened child…
Once upon a time, there was a proud race of warrior women, cruel and beautiful, and a planet they would call their own or destroy…
Once upon a time, there was a young Scottish piper, who stumbled onto the lair of a dragon…
Sometimes, when the story is ended, they will do practice signing, or do the mental exercises. She is improving. She is learning to read the map of her mind from the inside.
But sometimes, she cannot. Sometimes it is already so much having him next to her in the bed, even not touching, even not doing anything. So she reaches over to the box under the bed and hands him a book, and gets a book for herself, and he reads and she reads. In silence, until he decides to abandon his own book and read over her shoulder, which inevitably leads to a running commentary on the action-“well, it can’t have been her if she’s murdered now, so that only leaves the vicar”-or his own bizarre form of literary criticism-“I told Tolstoy not to put that bit in, you’ve got to give the reader some relief, I said”-until she glares at him and he goes back to his own read, pretending contrition.
She falls asleep reading, usually. Sometimes the nightmares still come, even if he’s there. She makes herself wake up. She holds onto him until she can stop shaking. When she can’t stop shaking she asks permission to go inside, and he consents, and she goes to the little room he’s made for her inside his mind, green grass and blue sky and a tree with cool shade, and it’s quiet there, and safe, and he stretches time so that she can stay as long as she needs.
xxxxx
Morning. SJ yawns, stretches. Counts to fifteen slowly as she sits up, savoring these few moments of privacy before she puts on her face and continues the show. Her hand on the curtain-
And then the sound of the door, and the sharp click-click-click of the Section Leader’s heels.
SJ is up and out of the bed before she can even think of how strange this reaction is, how different than it would have been even a few weeks ago. And now that thought is only half an echo, barely heard behind the immediate imperative: get to the Doctor. Protect the Doctor.
He could protect himself against the Section Leader, but SJ already knows-but she doesn’t know why-he won’t.
Their gazes swing towards her simultaneously, the Doctor and the Section Leader. It is not the weight it once would have been.
It is not comfortable either.
The floor is ice against her bare feet as she comes to stand at the Doctor’s elbow. His left hand reaches out, comes to rest lightly on her arm. Acceptable risk.
The Section Leader’s eyes track the movement of his arm, and they narrow, cold and focused. SJ’s stomach is a tight hard pit. She can feel her pulse in the bottom of her feet, fire against ice.
Where are the soldiers? Shaw always comes with soldiers.
“I think you know what this is about,” Shaw says to the Doctor, as if SJ isn’t there. She is dangling a set of handcuffs from her elegant black-gloved fingers.
The Doctor shrugs, a casual gesture so carefully choreographed that it is anything but. “Really, I thought you’d be here earlier. Your masters must really be keeping you jumping for you to have put off such a golden opportunity for needless brutality.”
“Needless? I should hardly think so.” The Section Leader smiles; there is no humor in it. “Creative, on the other hand…”
There is just the slightest bob of the Doctor’s adam’s apple. It is the only sign. He does not remove his fingers from SJ’s arm, does not even vary the pressure. She feels gratitude in every inch of her that he does not move; sudden movements make tigers attack.
The Doctor inclines his head towards the cuffs. “I take it those are for me?”
The Section Leader’s smile widens just slightly, one incisor exposed like a fang. “Hardly. I’ve always taken your cooperation for granted.”
That sally lands harder; the Doctor’s fingers twitch. He clears his throat. “Then why bring them down? Your theatre of cruelty always struck me as rather minimalist with regard to props.”
The Section Leader lets her hand fall against the bars of the cell, leans forward. “For your new friend, of course.”
Faster than the light the Doctor’s hand is clamped around SJ’s wrist, her mouth falls open instinctively before she remembers she cannot cry out. “You will not touch her.”
“Fasten them yourself, by all means,” the Section Leader says, examining the fingernails of her other hand in a show of boredom, a note of acid creeping into her voice. “I’m sure you’ll manage even that with your sanctimony intact; nothing else seems to have dented it.”
“Miss Smith is not going anywhere.”
SJ can feel her bones where his hand is gripping her.
Section Leader Shaw raises an eyebrow. “Did I say anything about going anywhere?” The note of acid in her voice has become an entire symphony. “It seems I overestimated your ability to grasp the situation. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“Explain it to me in small words, then,” the Doctor says between gritted teeth.
The Section Leader sighs as if she is a put-upon schoolteacher only going over material out of the kindness of her heart. As if she has all the time in the world, and merely resents the Doctor for drawing things out. But SJ sees the way her eyes flicker towards the clock on the wall, the too-quick blink and the momentary freezing of that icicles and sleet smile.
There’s a deadline on this conversation.
“Predators attack in response to movement,” she says, a lecturer expounding on a subject below her qualifications. “They attack it quite quickly and ferociously, to satisfy their appetites, and when they have had their fill, they leave. And they don’t attack a gazelle they can’t see.” She waits a moment, and then hisses through her teeth and stamps her foot. She swings around thirty degrees, an odd angle until SJ realizes that now no one watching the camera will be able to read her lips. “He’s coming, you idiot, and he’s not in a mood to respect the letter of the law, so if you care one tenth of what you pretend for your little play-toy, you will get her out of sight and make sure she stays there.”
The Doctor’s hand jerks; SJ stumbles as she is pulled back behind him.
“The Brigade Leader,” he says hoarsely. “You involved the Brigade Leader.”
“I’m not the bloody one who sent him on a goose chase after Admiral Jackson that nearly cut off our supply lines!” the Section Leader snaps. “I might have been able to protect you from even that, but no, you had to try to implicate me in the entire affair!”
“You drugged Sarah,” the Doctor says. His voice hard. “There had to be consequences.”
“Well, now you’ve got consequences,” the Section Leader says through a smile that looks like it’s making her sick, one hand gripping the bar in front of her so hard it trembles. The skin is discolored around her wrists, just peeking out from under the uniform sleeves-bruises? “Going after me would have been business as usual, but you shouldn’t have alluded to the Duchess. I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack, the way he’s been on edge-or found a way to give you one. You know he’s only looking for an excuse. And he’s currently taken a rather Biblical turn of mind, ‘an eye for an eye’-”
The Doctor snorts, but SJ can feel his pulse in his fingers, beating double time. “And how does he expect me to get any work done like that?”
“That was the bit of logic that finally penetrated his brain, yes,” Shaw says through gritted teeth. “So now he’s tentatively committed to not doing you any lasting damage. At the moment he’s so furious I’m not quite sure he even remembers she’s here, but one look at her and I’m sure he’ll recall quite quickly how attached you get to your little pets. Remind me, how many future technologies does she have in her brain, behind that fragile little skull? And how many in yours? Even the Brigade Leader can do the maths.”
The Doctor takes a step towards the bars, almost involuntarily. SJ recoils. He can’t be thinking of-he wouldn’t let the Section Leader-he can’t seriously be thinking-
His hand covers the Section Leader’s on the iron bar. “You’re warning me.”
A humorless, strangled laugh. “Perceptive.”
“Why?”
She glares up at him. “You know why.”
“I do,” he says, and his hand leaves her, reaches out to brush against and cup her cheek.
She stiffens but does not pull away. “That is not the reason.”
SJ is trapped, SJ is pulling away but she cannot, she is pulling away but the Doctor’s hand does not loosen and he does not even look at her, SJ is screaming silently through her skin but the Doctor is a sheer smooth wall in front of her, impenetrable.
“I once knew a woman named Beth Shaw,” the Doctor says softly. “She had a brilliant mind, and a will of granite, and a heart like molten steel. And neither of us realized that she was dying a bit more with every day.”
Shaw arches an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you’ve been putting arsenic in my coffee?”
Her voice is more breathless than it has any right to be.
“As if you’d let me anywhere near your coffee.”
“Trying to sow dissent against the Brigade Leader then? You’d think after all these years, you’d learn.”
“You’d think,” he agrees. “He is, however, not the culprit.”
“Then who?”
A sigh like it hurts to leave his chest, like it is the last piece of hope leaving his body. “Beth Shaw, of course. To make room for the Section Leader.”
Shaw jerks back as though she has been struck.
The Doctor’s hand is still hanging in the air. His voice is soft, so soft, the whisper of cajoling a wild animal closer.
“She’s not real, Beth. You’re killing yourself for a recruitment poster you saw when you were seven.”
For a second, SJ thinks the Section Leader is frozen, will not respond.
Then her face rips open in a snarl.
“Oh, I’ll show you just how real she is, Doctor. The State may need you alive and in something close to one piece, but I fully intend to extract my pound of flesh.” Her hand snakes out in a slap, fingernails scoring red lines down the Doctor’s face. “The Beth you knew was a lie.” She grins-no, she bares her teeth. “Do not mistake my pragmatism for mercy.”
xxxxx
The Doctor doesn’t look SJ in the eye as he handcuffs her to the bed.
The blood is pounding in her ears. She wants to struggle, she can’t struggle, she has to keep reminding herself that-the Section Leader is watching, and what good would it do, what could she prevent, but she should try, but it will only make things worse, but she is only being a coward-
Look at me, Doctor, she sends. If you’re going to take this decision anyway from me, at least have the decency to do it while looking me in the eye.
His fingers fumble slightly as he lines the cuffs with bandages to keep the metal from cutting into her skin. But he doesn’t look at her.
I know you can hear me, don’t pretend you can’t. Don’t do this, please don’t do this, I can do anything except this, you don’t have to do this alone!
“Stop fussing,” the Section Leader says. Her voice with an edge you could cut granite on. “You’re delaying the inevitable. He’ll be here any second.”
“Try to contain your anticipation,” the Doctor says coldly. But he stands. His fingers leave SJ’s skin, a single thought skittering from them before losing contact: Be still. Be very, very still.
Doctor!
But he cannot hear her now.
Impatient, the Section Leader grabs him by his collar, pitching him forward. SJ hears his knees hit the floor, starts upward towards him before the cold grip of the iron yanks her back with a clatter. The sound snaps Section Leader Shaw’s eyes back to SJ, back to the drop of blood marking a winding path down her arm from where the rough edge of the cuff bit in, the Doctor’s bandages not entirely effective. The Section Leader stares at the drop of blood as if contains vital, intricate information that she must memorize. Then she jerks her gaze to the side to meet SJ’s eyes, gives her a curt nod.
There is a look in her face like…contempt? Recognition? Hunger?
Yes, yes, and yes.
“I’ll be back for you.”
And the curtain falls back into place, blocking everything from view.
xxxxx
The Doctor is trying not to make a sound. She can tell from the sounds that he is making, the muffled through-the-teeth whimpers and strangled-in-the-throat screams. Only the sounds and the shouting of the interrogation and the shadows across the curtain and the Brigade Leader’s voice over and over again, those genteel vowels stretched into howls of feral rage as he brings the whip down again and what if he kills him, what if he hurts the Doctor so badly he can’t be fixed, if he loses control, if the Section Leader can’t stop him-SJ doesn’t want to see and she can’t let herself be seen but she can’t make herself remember that, each time the sounds come her arms jerk and strains at the cuffs, her back arching up off the bed, the metal cutting into her skin and the linen bandages rubbing it raw. She forgets she can’t scream, every sound snapping her mouth wide open in a silent echo, and she tries to bite down on her arm to muffle the sound that will never come out, her breathing so harsh and ragged surely the Doctor will hear it, the Brigade Leader will hear it, she will be lost, she will be dead. She presses the tears back down, can’t let the Section Leader see when she comes, she is supposed to hate and fear and protect the Doctor all at the same time and in a way that tears do not reckon into so she cannot let the Section Leader see but the tears keep coming, the Section Leader is coming soon, SJ needs to have a plan.
A lull. Not quite silence. Feet moving away.
Is it…over?
And then, almost in punishment for the thought, the sound of a whip, the brutal thwack of flesh against concrete-the Doctor’s body hitting the ground-and the sound of-
The sound of a zip being undone.
“Enjoying your little radio play?”
SJ jumps as Section Leader Shaw slips past the curtain, the fabric barely rippling as she slides past the thin fabric with the grace of a cat. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, her face impassive.
SJ is frozen.
Shaw raises an eyebrow. “I asked a question.”
There’s no point in lying; the answer has to be written all over her face. SJ gives a quick, short shake of her head.
The Section Leader’s lips twist in a parody of a smile. “I expected nothing less.” She shakes her head. “You and your kind always think you’re the exception to everything, but you’re still a woman. In the end, you succumb. To the promises, to the sweet words, to your natural place in the order of things.” Her tone manages to be triumphant and disappointed at the same time, all with a vicious edge creeping in. “He knows all about that, the Doctor does. He puts ideas in your pretty little head, twists his words all around to trap you in logic puzzles, talks you into compromises and sacrifices for his own selfish sake until you believe he’s the one doing you a favor. He asks for things you cannot give, and you start to think that after all, maybe you can.” Shaw pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Her tone grows calmer. “This is, as I said, completely natural.” She shifts on the bed, closer to SJ, her arm extending languorously until the red-hot tip of the cigarette is smoldering only inches from SJ’s lips. “It would rather be a shame, though, if you allowed it to interfere with our…understanding.”
Outside the bed, a groan from the Doctor provides an illustration of her point.
SJ swallows, hard. She can take another burn. She can. She took plenty before.
What do you want? she starts to sign, before she remembers that she is chained, before she can remember that he Section Leader cannot sign.
“An assurance of your loyalty,” Shaw answers, and SJ’s heart stops. She understood the hand gestures, she has understood anything the camera has managed to capture for the past- “Or, failing that admittedly optimistic goal, an assurance of your instincts for self preservation.”
Signing: I’ll do anything-
“If you’re going to lie, start small,” Shaw says. “As a sign of respect, if nothing else.”
The cigarette tip burns bright, bright red, hovering in the air. It is everything that SJ can see. It is stealing all the air from her lungs. She can still hear the Doctor, the muffled thump of flesh, the labored cries, each more ragged than the last-
She can take another burn. It’s not as though she hasn’t got them before.
But her face, if the Section Leader gets angry, if she goes for her eyes next-
“Do you love him?” the Section Leader asks conversationally.
SJ starts, shakes her head rapidly.
“Good,” Section Leader Shaw says. She stubs the cigarette out on the edge of SJ’s cuff; SJ tries not to flinch, fails. Shaw goes on as if she hasn’t noticed: “The daft little blonde one did, you know. Not that it did her any good in the end, oh, he washed his hands of her quite quickly once she lost her novelty value. And since she was utterly useless for my own purposes, there was no point in my extending protection.” Her fingers trail around the edge of the cuff, not quite touching SJ’s skin. “I do hope you will remain useful.”
SJ’s fingernails are cutting into her skin. The Section Leader’s eyes are all she sees; her voice and the cries of the Doctor are all she hears.
“I take it you have something for me?” the Section Leader asks.
SJ jerks her head towards the foot of the bed.
Shaw pulls back just enough to reach beneath the mattress, her fingers finding the folder with SJ’s carefully fabricated notations on the Doctor’s health, mood, and state of mind.
“Do you expect me to believe he hasn’t found this yet?” the Section Leader asks casually, not looking up as she flips the folder open, skims its contents. “Do try harder.”
SJ shakes her head, starts to sign then switches to a fist against the headboard, Morse code, he never said anything-
“Shut up!” The Section Leader is across the mattress in a pounce, her hand clamped around the metal of the cuff and pulling it from the headboard; SJ can smell her perfume, floral, faintly acrid. “You are holding still, you are being quiet, you are being a gazelle that does not get disemboweled by the pride of lions today, have you nothing resembling memory?”
SJ swallows, pulling as far back as she can-they can’t touch, matter and antimatter, all the rules are gone if they touch.
The Section Leader’s grip stays firm on the cuff, but with a perceptible effort, she slides her impassive mask once more over her features. “Regardless of whether he’s seen anything, this location is far too obvious; you might as well plant a flag saying’ Covert Operation Here.’ Scatter your reports in your regular notes, since you’re ciphering those as well. Or leave it in English and hide it in the middle of a dreary recollection of boarding school, I don’t care. Just don’t leave coded communications under your mattress like an amateur.” She spits the last word.
SJ nods, but the Section Leader isn’t looking, too busy skimming through the folder-if that’s the rate at which she reads ciphers, no wonder the newsrunners were kept busy coming up with a new one every three weeks.
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” she concludes, slotting them back into the folder with a sound like a guillotine falling in place. She slides them deftly back under the mattress. “Get rid of those. Preferably without arousing his suspicion, if you’re capable. Don’t hesitate to leave a note with the tea things if you’ve got something I can actually use. Only-do be sure it is actually useful. I would hate to have to revise my assessment of your capabilities.”
SJ nods, once. In the unseen cell beyond, the Brigade Leader laughs. The Doctor whimpers.
“Do you know what I enjoy most about these little chats?” the Section Leader asks, just as she turns to go. Her tone musing, contemplative. “The opportunity to prove him wrong.”
xxxxx
The silence is worse.
After the Brigade Leader and the Section Leader leave, there is silence for so long.
SJ holds still in the bed, so still, her uniform not even rasping against the rough cotton of the sheets, she barely dares to breathe, she tries not to hear the hammering of her heart-
Until finally, finally, finally-
The slightly wet, strained hiss of air, in and out.
The Doctor, breathing through the pain.
She breaks silence then, raps Morse code entreaties please Doctor are you all right Doctor can you move do you need me please until her hands are shaking too hard and the words dissolve into a sea of dots and dashes and the tears come, spilling forth hot and relentless until her vision blurs, stupid foolish girl to cry now when it’s all over. Nearly over. The worst part, at least, surely.
Another wet sound, the Doctor’s palm slapping down on the floor. Creaking, shuffling, as he hauls himself to his feet. She can’t see through the curtain and still she sees it exactly, exactly in her mind.
Hesitant steps, then he is at the curtain, pulling it back-the rings screech slowly across the bar, his movements jerky.
His face is covered in blood like a port wine stain.
“You should-see the other fellow,” he says with an attempt at a ghoulish smile. It’s ruined when he nearly pitches forward.
I would have taken this for you, SJ thinks desperately at him as his hands close over hers, her heart an open wound, opening further as his hands come to the cuffs, unlock them. They fall, the metal ringing against the floor like an alarm bell. I would have-
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he says gruffly.
And then he loses consciousness, and topples face-forward onto the bed.
xxxxx
He comes to again soon enough that SJ doesn’t have to drag him to the shower, doesn’t have to worry nearly as much about dropping him, about the pressure on his wounds, the impact on the long stripes across his back.
There are so many stripes.
SJ can hide her face against the Doctor’s side as she supports half his weight, cheek against his blood-stained shirt as they do a careful shuffling two-step across the floor, but she cannot stop the hitch in her breathing, the ragged gasping gulp of it. Unfair that losing her voice should leave it still impossible to hide crying.
Unfair that all her friends keep dying, all because of her.
The Doctor stumbles into the shower, manages to steady himself against the back wall as she enters. His hands find her shoulders and they sit down together, the Doctor’s eyes squeezing shut as if he can shut out the pain along with sight.
There is blood on SJ’s hands now, and on her face.
“It’s not so bad,” says the Doctor, his eyes still shut. “The Brigade Leader merely had to assert his dominance. Typical in many pack animals, such as bureaucrats.”
Still trying to make it a joke. Still trying to reassure her. She wants to hold him close but there is nowhere she could touch that would not hurt him. A sob should be silent, but it makes a choking cough in her throat instead.
She twists the water on instead of touching him, the cold spray like a slap.
At least the sound of it will cover the pitiful sound of her tears on her cheeks, that ghost of human grief.
“It’s all right.” His hand finding hers, his voice soothing as he twists his head up to look at her, his eyes open now, and worried through the pain. “It’s only a body.” He smiles, and she can see now how he could have been that dragon with a hatchling; she can see how he could have been a father, a grandfather even. His voice is gentle, counterpoint to the hiss of the water as it turns red with his blood and slips away down the drain. “You can’t get attached to a body. You can’t live forever in a body, can’t trust them. Poor little humans, you only get the one. Nowhere else to go.”
He’s babbling now. She finds the soap. Can you manage this on your own?
“Largely, I imagine. But-ah- ” He tries to raise his arms, winces as they get to shoulder level. “I may, just possibly, need some help with the clothes.”
Nothing I haven’t seen before. She eases his shirt and trousers off as best she can. Her own are getting soaked; she’ll have to wear a towel or bedsheet later while they dry. Her hands shake a little, but it really is mostly with the cold of the water. She’s fine. The Doctor’s going to be fine. This isn’t the worst thing that has ever happened to either of them.
True to his word, the Doctor manages the soap and the washcloth well enough to take care of most of the ablutions while SJ splits her time between looking away in an attempt to protect his dignity and watching him like a hawk, certain that in the second she has glanced away he has fallen unconscious, slipped, cracked his head open, started to drown…
She takes the washcloth from him when it becomes apparent that he can’t reach his back, eases him away from the wall so she can help. He only gives a half-hearted murmur of protest, and then that slight hiss when she has to touch his wounds. Some of them have clotted and opened again under the water. She goes as gently as she can. Sorry. I’m almost done.
It’s quite all right. Take your time. Wouldn’t want an infection, after all.
There’s mostly just bruising on his scalp, but the one laceration has bled quite heavily, and she has to knead slowly and carefully with her fingers to wash the blood out of his hair, running her fingers through his locks to keep them from getting tangled again.
Thank you, he says. I’m just a bit vain over the hair on this body.
Just a bit? she asks. She tries to make it tart, tries to send the suggestion of a cheeky smile.
The smile she doesn’t quite manage manifests itself on his face instead. Just a bit, he agrees.
And the water runs red down the drain.
xxxxx
SJ gets the Doctor into bed, hangs up his wet clothes. Changes out of her own wet uniform into the towel and grabs one of his first-aid kits before returning to him. The stripes from the whip still stand out red and angry on his back, weeping blood and clear fluid.
She touches his shoulder hesitantly. I don’t know what half this stuff is. This salve here, will that work on you?
“Let me see the ingredients.” He twists his head back at her, squints at the label. “Should help somewhat. Won’t hurt.”
Roll over onto your stomach, then.
“People seem to be asking that quite a bit today,” he says dryly.
Her hands falter. That he can say that-that he can joke-
She wants to say the words ‘I’m sorry’ but they are already dead in her throat, and they die in her hands too. She sits on the edge of the bed next to him and tries to say it in the way she applies the salve instead, warming it with her palms first and spreading it gently across his skin.
For a second she thinks that his skin warming under her hands is only from her touch, and then she realizes.
Don’t, she says. Her eyes have closed, the tears hot and brimming beneath her eyelashes. Her breath caged in her throat. Don’t use up your energy just to keep my hands warm.
“You’ll catch your death,” he murmurs, but the temperature dips from radiator to slightly below human normal. Still too high for him, but he’s stubborn. She can let him keep this little piece of his pride.
There is a line of cigarette burns that starts at the Doctor’s right shoulder blade and curls upward towards his temple. SJ begins working her way upward.
He flinches.
SJ jerks her hands back.
His shoulders are still tense.
She reaches, tentatively, for his hand. Stops. Brings her fingers to the sheet by the side of his head, taps against the fabric:
Did I hurt you?
“No. Not hurt, precisely, only-no.” He sighs, a gust of air expelled as if in irritation at himself. “Neck-a bit sensitive. My people. Lots of nerve endings. More than humans.”
It takes a second before she grasps the full import of what he is saying, and then she thinks she will never be able to touch him again, she will never understand how he has been able to let her touch him.
You must hate us all sometimes, she says. Humans, I mean.
He twists his head up to look at her, his face genuinely shocked. “Not at all.” He takes her hand, his fingers interlaced with hers. His eyes are earnest. “It’s a bad century. It will pass. Half a dozen generations from now, it will all be like a dim nightmare in the world’s memory.”
A bad century? SJ asks. How old are you?
A smile, relieved almost. There they are, sliding back into their old roles, interviewer and reluctant subject. “I’m in the prime of my life, I’ll have you know! I’m just very well-traveled.”
It’s tempting to pursue this new bit of information, but she knows he made it that way on purpose, a red herring. She sticks to her original course. Will you be there, after those six generations?
Shadows in his eyes; she almost wishes she hadn’t asked. But he doesn’t pull away.
Quite possibly, he admits.
Hard to kill?
Fairly easy. He gives a self-deprecating grin. Difficult to make it stick.
She snorts through her nose.
And a real smile breaks across his face, the difference between it and all his previous attempts like comparing gold and pyrite. “You can laugh!” he says, delighted.
She shrugs, suddenly, oddly embarrassed. Don’t twist the conversation back around to me.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he says. Still smiling, but his eyes are serious.
She can’t look at him when he looks at her like that. She looks down at their hands instead.
I’m glad, she says, because she has to. That you’ll be here. It’s selfish, but I’m-it’s just that-when I first woke up, I thought being with you for the rest of my life was the second worst thing that could ever happen to me-
“Only the second-worst? I’m flattered.”
She dares a gentle swat at an unbruised patch of skin. Don’t! You know what I’m trying-what I want to say. That was what I felt then. And now, knowing you’ll be here-that you’ll be here, with me, as long as I’m here…it’s comforting. Even if nothing changes.
“It will change,” he insists.
Maybe. In half a dozen generations. I won’t be here to see you proved right or wrong.
There is something caught in his throat as he responds. “I know.”
SJ pretends not to hear the sandpaper scrape of his premature grief, finishes rubbing the salve into his back. Changes the subject. The Section Leader’s probably expecting you to ‘assert yourself’ after this. How long do you think we should give for that, ten minutes?
“You wound me.”
Five, then. She hesitates, then goes on. I can leave you alone after, if you’d like.
“You could stay.” He clears his throat. “If you didn’t mind.”
She looks away so he won’t see her relief. Not at all.
xxxxx
The shadow play is even briefer than five minutes, because SJ cannot stop the tears from coming to her eyes when the Doctor winces in pain, and the Doctor cannot make himself continue once SJ is crying. They lie side by side instead, the tips of their fingers just touching.
What did you do? she asks finally. After she drugged me.
“What I had to, to keep her away from you,” he says. “I do not for one instant regret it.”
You made a choice for me without my permission, she says. It hurts to say it, but she has to. You promised you were going to try to stop doing that.
“I did,” he agrees, his voice heavy. He does not add anything more.
Then the least you can do is tell me how you did it.
He sighs, but does not argue. “You may not have heard of the Duchess-”
Newsrunner, she reminds him with a poke.
“She was the Section Leader’s-sponsor-before Lethbridge-Stewart. Because of course there’s nothing queer about it when you can fit it into a nice little hierarchical structure with a side order of humiliation-” He cuts himself off. “After the Duchess’ fall from favor, Shaw probably would have been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting her escape, if the Brigade Leader hadn’t taken her under his wing. It remains a sore point in their relationship.”
And that bit about Admiral Jackson?
“Ah, good old Ben. Quite difficult to predict that man. I wouldn’t put it past him to really have been harboring the Duchess all this time, for any number of reasons.”
So you sent something to Shaw that made the Brigade Leader think she might be disloyal?
He grins faintly, shades of a mischievous boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “And tied up quite a few government resources in red herrings and dead ends, I might add.”
How did you know it would work?
That wipes the smile off his face. “Because they love each other. And so they hate each other in equal measure. Because that is what humanity has made love in this century-a weakness, a deviance, a perversity. So demonized that the only way its expression can be rationalized is through violence and control.”
SJ is a little thrown by the fervor of his response. Did she do that to his eye, then?
“No. That was me.”
SJ starts, twisting her head up to gaze at him in shock.
The Doctor shrugs. “He hurt Beth.”
As if those words are the only explanation necessary.
Back when she was your assistant? SJ asks. Because that could make sense, that he would be protective of her back then, when he didn’t know she was a monster. Back when you thought she was just a prisoner?
“After.”
A confession in one word.
A pause, then: “She was the first face I saw, when I woke up. She was my friend, and my confidante, and my lover. She was-I thought she was my only ally, and it-is not always easy to forget what she…was. Then.”
There is too much forgiveness in his heart, SJ thinks. He was not made for this world, where there is only punishment and resistance. He is like Sully that way, always believing the best of people. Always giving the benefit of the doubt, until he drowned in it.
She tortures women, SJ says. She seeks them out on purpose. She told me all about how she likes to take us apart.
This is what she says, and it is cruel, because she needs to make him understand that she is not like him. That she cannot turn the other cheek so readily. That he can forgive her or not, but she will never forgive Beth Shaw.
“She is not…the most self-aware woman,” he says carefully. “I believe she has worked very hard to be as unaware of herself as possible.”
She’s a monster, SJ insists.
He sighs, closes his eyes. “I know.”
After a few minutes, SJ interlaces her fingers with him and squeezes tight.
Because he may or may not deserve it, and she may or may not be capable of it-
But she still wants to give him forgiveness.
xxxxx
“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor says, leaning against a strange round countertop with a rising and falling column. “Not unless you make a deliberate effort. You need to be practicing restraint, or we’ll never get you out of my dreams.”
“I had more questions,” SJ says, marveling at the ease with which she speaks in dreams, that she ever took this miracle of moving lips and tongue for granted. “What did you mean, about being easy to kill or hard to make it stick?”
“Precisely what I said,” the Doctor answers. He walks to the door and holds it open for her. Beyond, there is the cell. “Bodies are unreliable things. You have to trade them in occasionally.”
SJ was just at the door, but now she is directly in front of the Doctor, reaching out to touch the side of his face. Memories that aren’t hers are in her mind, flashes of faces that used to belong to her-no, to him. Her? Them? Unconfined to a single shape, a single skin, a single gender. Who he is, who he has been, will be. Possibilities so vast they make infinity look microscopic…
She gazes in wonder up at his face, at her hand on his skin. So many mysteries hidden under his skin, so much knowledge-
And then she is tied down to a table and Beth is leaning over him (her?) and the scalpel is coming down like a paintbrush spreading a long line of crimson paint and she is smirking, “Really, Doctor, for all your talk of pursuing scientific advancement-”
SJ jolts awake. The Doctor’s body is tense against hers, his eyes wary as he looks down at her. A rabbit poised to flee from a predator.
She presses her forehead into an unbruised spot on his arm, baring her neck. See? See, she is vulnerable. She will not hurt him.
I’m not her, she sends. I won’t hurt you.
xxxxx
There is another dream.
She is back in The Room.
Down, down, down being held down in The Room and there is no memory of how she got there, memory is lie, she tried to lie when they started cutting into her but then the pain like a bursting sun and she told the truth and it spilled out of her but they didn’t stop, they never stopped, she can’t remember what was the truth anymore, only that she used to think it was so important but nothing is important now because nothing exists except the screaming and the pain and that is all that will ever exist, the pain and the weight and her legs wrenched apart and the knife in her abdomen-
“Sarah.” Blue eyes, impossibly large blue eyes above her. “Sarah, wake up.”
She lashes out, but her hand is caught, and she thrashes, helpless.
“Sarah, it’s me.”
Me. Him. The Doctor.
SJ nods, short, sharp. Tries to breathe. Tries to slow her heart.
“It was just a nightmare.”
Just a nightmare. Just a phase. Only a few more regenerations and it will be like a bad dream. She and her pain are so small in the scheme of things, are nothing, nothing at all.
They cut something out of her in the dream-
She pulls away from him, curls up on her side, clutching her stomach.
He touches her wrist. Sarah?
Was I pregnant? she asks abruptly.
“What?” He almost lets go, he is so startled.
It could have happened, SJ says, staring firmly at the curtain in front of her. She isn’t going to cry. The curtain doesn’t seem real. Her arms tight around her stomach don’t feel real. They raped me almost every day. They didn’t use anything to stop it from happening. There are weeks where everything blurs together and I wouldn’t remember if they cut something out of me, or I’d remember but not what it was, my vocal cords or something else, it didn’t matter, everything hurt. And that dream-was I pregnant when they brought me to you, Doctor? Was I?
A long pause. His voice, when he does speak, is choked. Is trying to be matter-of-fact, is failing.
“No,” he says. “The damage-there was too much. But-” he hesitates-“I think-this is only a theory, mind you-I think you might have been. Before.”
Oh. The curtain is so unreal. The tears sliding down her face are unreal. Could you tell what they--
“No. It might have been a miscarriage, or an abortion, or a birth. I don’t know.”
She turns then, and lets him pull her to him; buries her face in his chest. He is the only solid thing in her life, the only thing she knows to be real. She feels as though a pane of glass has broken somewhere inside of her; each time she so much as thinks, the sharp edge slides along her heart. Doctor, if I had been--
She can’t finish, but he understands.
“I hope I would have woken you up,” he says. His voice soft, stirring her hair with each syllable. “I hope I wasn’t so far gone that I would-I hope I would have given you that choice.”
She nods against his chest, and holds him tight. Hope-that is all they have. And precious little of that.
“Do you still want to stay?” he asks, his grip loosening slightly. “I can make it to the chair to sleep if you’d rather-”
You’re my friend, she interrupts. I trust you. She holds him tighter still, her hands bunching in the blanket behind his back. Keep the nightmares away for me?
He brushes a kiss to the top of her forehead. “All the ones I can. Always.”
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.
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Breathe in, breathe out.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
A wind whips up-no. No. Her mind is-
Damn.
It will take time. His voice like a light breeze, a breath of cool air across her mind. His fingertips make small circles at her temples. Relax. Concentrate on the mental image.
Her mind is a still, calm pool.
xxxxx
Their nights take on a pattern. It is strange, and a miracle, and completely mundane.
She will leave the invitation in his notes. Sometimes he sees her leave it, other times she goes to bed and lies there waiting for him to see it, feeling the stillness of the cold air around her, the warp and weft of the rough cotton beneath her. The seconds tick by and she marks each one, feels each one, feels everything.
Then footsteps, and a knock against the bedpost. Still hesitant after all this time, still willing to be turned away.
It makes it so much easier to sit up, to pull aside the curtain and let him in.
He tucks the blanket over her, fastidious. They put on their shadow play. Lately, he’s taken to humming songs under his breath to time himself-silly nonsense things, skipping rope rhymes and such. She suspects he really does it only to make her smile.
After, he lies down on top of the covers next to her, and tells her a story.
Once upon a time, there was a mountain, and at the top of the mountain lived a hermit who was known far and wide for his wisdom, and at the bottom of the mountain lived a frightened child…
Once upon a time, there was a proud race of warrior women, cruel and beautiful, and a planet they would call their own or destroy…
Once upon a time, there was a young Scottish piper, who stumbled onto the lair of a dragon…
Sometimes, when the story is ended, they will do practice signing, or do the mental exercises. She is improving. She is learning to read the map of her mind from the inside.
But sometimes, she cannot. Sometimes it is already so much having him next to her in the bed, even not touching, even not doing anything. So she reaches over to the box under the bed and hands him a book, and gets a book for herself, and he reads and she reads. In silence, until he decides to abandon his own book and read over her shoulder, which inevitably leads to a running commentary on the action-“well, it can’t have been her if she’s murdered now, so that only leaves the vicar”-or his own bizarre form of literary criticism-“I told Tolstoy not to put that bit in, you’ve got to give the reader some relief, I said”-until she glares at him and he goes back to his own read, pretending contrition.
She falls asleep reading, usually. Sometimes the nightmares still come, even if he’s there. She makes herself wake up. She holds onto him until she can stop shaking. When she can’t stop shaking she asks permission to go inside, and he consents, and she goes to the little room he’s made for her inside his mind, green grass and blue sky and a tree with cool shade, and it’s quiet there, and safe, and he stretches time so that she can stay as long as she needs.
xxxxx
Morning. SJ yawns, stretches. Counts to fifteen slowly as she sits up, savoring these few moments of privacy before she puts on her face and continues the show. Her hand on the curtain-
And then the sound of the door, and the sharp click-click-click of the Section Leader’s heels.
SJ is up and out of the bed before she can even think of how strange this reaction is, how different than it would have been even a few weeks ago. And now that thought is only half an echo, barely heard behind the immediate imperative: get to the Doctor. Protect the Doctor.
He could protect himself against the Section Leader, but SJ already knows-but she doesn’t know why-he won’t.
Their gazes swing towards her simultaneously, the Doctor and the Section Leader. It is not the weight it once would have been.
It is not comfortable either.
The floor is ice against her bare feet as she comes to stand at the Doctor’s elbow. His left hand reaches out, comes to rest lightly on her arm. Acceptable risk.
The Section Leader’s eyes track the movement of his arm, and they narrow, cold and focused. SJ’s stomach is a tight hard pit. She can feel her pulse in the bottom of her feet, fire against ice.
Where are the soldiers? Shaw always comes with soldiers.
“I think you know what this is about,” Shaw says to the Doctor, as if SJ isn’t there. She is dangling a set of handcuffs from her elegant black-gloved fingers.
The Doctor shrugs, a casual gesture so carefully choreographed that it is anything but. “Really, I thought you’d be here earlier. Your masters must really be keeping you jumping for you to have put off such a golden opportunity for needless brutality.”
“Needless? I should hardly think so.” The Section Leader smiles; there is no humor in it. “Creative, on the other hand…”
There is just the slightest bob of the Doctor’s adam’s apple. It is the only sign. He does not remove his fingers from SJ’s arm, does not even vary the pressure. She feels gratitude in every inch of her that he does not move; sudden movements make tigers attack.
The Doctor inclines his head towards the cuffs. “I take it those are for me?”
The Section Leader’s smile widens just slightly, one incisor exposed like a fang. “Hardly. I’ve always taken your cooperation for granted.”
That sally lands harder; the Doctor’s fingers twitch. He clears his throat. “Then why bring them down? Your theatre of cruelty always struck me as rather minimalist with regard to props.”
The Section Leader lets her hand fall against the bars of the cell, leans forward. “For your new friend, of course.”
Faster than the light the Doctor’s hand is clamped around SJ’s wrist, her mouth falls open instinctively before she remembers she cannot cry out. “You will not touch her.”
“Fasten them yourself, by all means,” the Section Leader says, examining the fingernails of her other hand in a show of boredom, a note of acid creeping into her voice. “I’m sure you’ll manage even that with your sanctimony intact; nothing else seems to have dented it.”
“Miss Smith is not going anywhere.”
SJ can feel her bones where his hand is gripping her.
Section Leader Shaw raises an eyebrow. “Did I say anything about going anywhere?” The note of acid in her voice has become an entire symphony. “It seems I overestimated your ability to grasp the situation. I don’t know why I’m surprised.”
“Explain it to me in small words, then,” the Doctor says between gritted teeth.
The Section Leader sighs as if she is a put-upon schoolteacher only going over material out of the kindness of her heart. As if she has all the time in the world, and merely resents the Doctor for drawing things out. But SJ sees the way her eyes flicker towards the clock on the wall, the too-quick blink and the momentary freezing of that icicles and sleet smile.
There’s a deadline on this conversation.
“Predators attack in response to movement,” she says, a lecturer expounding on a subject below her qualifications. “They attack it quite quickly and ferociously, to satisfy their appetites, and when they have had their fill, they leave. And they don’t attack a gazelle they can’t see.” She waits a moment, and then hisses through her teeth and stamps her foot. She swings around thirty degrees, an odd angle until SJ realizes that now no one watching the camera will be able to read her lips. “He’s coming, you idiot, and he’s not in a mood to respect the letter of the law, so if you care one tenth of what you pretend for your little play-toy, you will get her out of sight and make sure she stays there.”
The Doctor’s hand jerks; SJ stumbles as she is pulled back behind him.
“The Brigade Leader,” he says hoarsely. “You involved the Brigade Leader.”
“I’m not the bloody one who sent him on a goose chase after Admiral Jackson that nearly cut off our supply lines!” the Section Leader snaps. “I might have been able to protect you from even that, but no, you had to try to implicate me in the entire affair!”
“You drugged Sarah,” the Doctor says. His voice hard. “There had to be consequences.”
“Well, now you’ve got consequences,” the Section Leader says through a smile that looks like it’s making her sick, one hand gripping the bar in front of her so hard it trembles. The skin is discolored around her wrists, just peeking out from under the uniform sleeves-bruises? “Going after me would have been business as usual, but you shouldn’t have alluded to the Duchess. I’m surprised he didn’t have a heart attack, the way he’s been on edge-or found a way to give you one. You know he’s only looking for an excuse. And he’s currently taken a rather Biblical turn of mind, ‘an eye for an eye’-”
The Doctor snorts, but SJ can feel his pulse in his fingers, beating double time. “And how does he expect me to get any work done like that?”
“That was the bit of logic that finally penetrated his brain, yes,” Shaw says through gritted teeth. “So now he’s tentatively committed to not doing you any lasting damage. At the moment he’s so furious I’m not quite sure he even remembers she’s here, but one look at her and I’m sure he’ll recall quite quickly how attached you get to your little pets. Remind me, how many future technologies does she have in her brain, behind that fragile little skull? And how many in yours? Even the Brigade Leader can do the maths.”
The Doctor takes a step towards the bars, almost involuntarily. SJ recoils. He can’t be thinking of-he wouldn’t let the Section Leader-he can’t seriously be thinking-
His hand covers the Section Leader’s on the iron bar. “You’re warning me.”
A humorless, strangled laugh. “Perceptive.”
“Why?”
She glares up at him. “You know why.”
“I do,” he says, and his hand leaves her, reaches out to brush against and cup her cheek.
She stiffens but does not pull away. “That is not the reason.”
SJ is trapped, SJ is pulling away but she cannot, she is pulling away but the Doctor’s hand does not loosen and he does not even look at her, SJ is screaming silently through her skin but the Doctor is a sheer smooth wall in front of her, impenetrable.
“I once knew a woman named Beth Shaw,” the Doctor says softly. “She had a brilliant mind, and a will of granite, and a heart like molten steel. And neither of us realized that she was dying a bit more with every day.”
Shaw arches an eyebrow. “Are you telling me you’ve been putting arsenic in my coffee?”
Her voice is more breathless than it has any right to be.
“As if you’d let me anywhere near your coffee.”
“Trying to sow dissent against the Brigade Leader then? You’d think after all these years, you’d learn.”
“You’d think,” he agrees. “He is, however, not the culprit.”
“Then who?”
A sigh like it hurts to leave his chest, like it is the last piece of hope leaving his body. “Beth Shaw, of course. To make room for the Section Leader.”
Shaw jerks back as though she has been struck.
The Doctor’s hand is still hanging in the air. His voice is soft, so soft, the whisper of cajoling a wild animal closer.
“She’s not real, Beth. You’re killing yourself for a recruitment poster you saw when you were seven.”
For a second, SJ thinks the Section Leader is frozen, will not respond.
Then her face rips open in a snarl.
“Oh, I’ll show you just how real she is, Doctor. The State may need you alive and in something close to one piece, but I fully intend to extract my pound of flesh.” Her hand snakes out in a slap, fingernails scoring red lines down the Doctor’s face. “The Beth you knew was a lie.” She grins-no, she bares her teeth. “Do not mistake my pragmatism for mercy.”
xxxxx
The Doctor doesn’t look SJ in the eye as he handcuffs her to the bed.
The blood is pounding in her ears. She wants to struggle, she can’t struggle, she has to keep reminding herself that-the Section Leader is watching, and what good would it do, what could she prevent, but she should try, but it will only make things worse, but she is only being a coward-
Look at me, Doctor, she sends. If you’re going to take this decision anyway from me, at least have the decency to do it while looking me in the eye.
His fingers fumble slightly as he lines the cuffs with bandages to keep the metal from cutting into her skin. But he doesn’t look at her.
I know you can hear me, don’t pretend you can’t. Don’t do this, please don’t do this, I can do anything except this, you don’t have to do this alone!
“Stop fussing,” the Section Leader says. Her voice with an edge you could cut granite on. “You’re delaying the inevitable. He’ll be here any second.”
“Try to contain your anticipation,” the Doctor says coldly. But he stands. His fingers leave SJ’s skin, a single thought skittering from them before losing contact: Be still. Be very, very still.
Doctor!
But he cannot hear her now.
Impatient, the Section Leader grabs him by his collar, pitching him forward. SJ hears his knees hit the floor, starts upward towards him before the cold grip of the iron yanks her back with a clatter. The sound snaps Section Leader Shaw’s eyes back to SJ, back to the drop of blood marking a winding path down her arm from where the rough edge of the cuff bit in, the Doctor’s bandages not entirely effective. The Section Leader stares at the drop of blood as if contains vital, intricate information that she must memorize. Then she jerks her gaze to the side to meet SJ’s eyes, gives her a curt nod.
There is a look in her face like…contempt? Recognition? Hunger?
Yes, yes, and yes.
“I’ll be back for you.”
And the curtain falls back into place, blocking everything from view.
xxxxx
The Doctor is trying not to make a sound. She can tell from the sounds that he is making, the muffled through-the-teeth whimpers and strangled-in-the-throat screams. Only the sounds and the shouting of the interrogation and the shadows across the curtain and the Brigade Leader’s voice over and over again, those genteel vowels stretched into howls of feral rage as he brings the whip down again and what if he kills him, what if he hurts the Doctor so badly he can’t be fixed, if he loses control, if the Section Leader can’t stop him-SJ doesn’t want to see and she can’t let herself be seen but she can’t make herself remember that, each time the sounds come her arms jerk and strains at the cuffs, her back arching up off the bed, the metal cutting into her skin and the linen bandages rubbing it raw. She forgets she can’t scream, every sound snapping her mouth wide open in a silent echo, and she tries to bite down on her arm to muffle the sound that will never come out, her breathing so harsh and ragged surely the Doctor will hear it, the Brigade Leader will hear it, she will be lost, she will be dead. She presses the tears back down, can’t let the Section Leader see when she comes, she is supposed to hate and fear and protect the Doctor all at the same time and in a way that tears do not reckon into so she cannot let the Section Leader see but the tears keep coming, the Section Leader is coming soon, SJ needs to have a plan.
A lull. Not quite silence. Feet moving away.
Is it…over?
And then, almost in punishment for the thought, the sound of a whip, the brutal thwack of flesh against concrete-the Doctor’s body hitting the ground-and the sound of-
The sound of a zip being undone.
“Enjoying your little radio play?”
SJ jumps as Section Leader Shaw slips past the curtain, the fabric barely rippling as she slides past the thin fabric with the grace of a cat. She swings her legs over the side of the bed, her face impassive.
SJ is frozen.
Shaw raises an eyebrow. “I asked a question.”
There’s no point in lying; the answer has to be written all over her face. SJ gives a quick, short shake of her head.
The Section Leader’s lips twist in a parody of a smile. “I expected nothing less.” She shakes her head. “You and your kind always think you’re the exception to everything, but you’re still a woman. In the end, you succumb. To the promises, to the sweet words, to your natural place in the order of things.” Her tone manages to be triumphant and disappointed at the same time, all with a vicious edge creeping in. “He knows all about that, the Doctor does. He puts ideas in your pretty little head, twists his words all around to trap you in logic puzzles, talks you into compromises and sacrifices for his own selfish sake until you believe he’s the one doing you a favor. He asks for things you cannot give, and you start to think that after all, maybe you can.” Shaw pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Her tone grows calmer. “This is, as I said, completely natural.” She shifts on the bed, closer to SJ, her arm extending languorously until the red-hot tip of the cigarette is smoldering only inches from SJ’s lips. “It would rather be a shame, though, if you allowed it to interfere with our…understanding.”
Outside the bed, a groan from the Doctor provides an illustration of her point.
SJ swallows, hard. She can take another burn. She can. She took plenty before.
What do you want? she starts to sign, before she remembers that she is chained, before she can remember that he Section Leader cannot sign.
“An assurance of your loyalty,” Shaw answers, and SJ’s heart stops. She understood the hand gestures, she has understood anything the camera has managed to capture for the past- “Or, failing that admittedly optimistic goal, an assurance of your instincts for self preservation.”
Signing: I’ll do anything-
“If you’re going to lie, start small,” Shaw says. “As a sign of respect, if nothing else.”
The cigarette tip burns bright, bright red, hovering in the air. It is everything that SJ can see. It is stealing all the air from her lungs. She can still hear the Doctor, the muffled thump of flesh, the labored cries, each more ragged than the last-
She can take another burn. It’s not as though she hasn’t got them before.
But her face, if the Section Leader gets angry, if she goes for her eyes next-
“Do you love him?” the Section Leader asks conversationally.
SJ starts, shakes her head rapidly.
“Good,” Section Leader Shaw says. She stubs the cigarette out on the edge of SJ’s cuff; SJ tries not to flinch, fails. Shaw goes on as if she hasn’t noticed: “The daft little blonde one did, you know. Not that it did her any good in the end, oh, he washed his hands of her quite quickly once she lost her novelty value. And since she was utterly useless for my own purposes, there was no point in my extending protection.” Her fingers trail around the edge of the cuff, not quite touching SJ’s skin. “I do hope you will remain useful.”
SJ’s fingernails are cutting into her skin. The Section Leader’s eyes are all she sees; her voice and the cries of the Doctor are all she hears.
“I take it you have something for me?” the Section Leader asks.
SJ jerks her head towards the foot of the bed.
Shaw pulls back just enough to reach beneath the mattress, her fingers finding the folder with SJ’s carefully fabricated notations on the Doctor’s health, mood, and state of mind.
“Do you expect me to believe he hasn’t found this yet?” the Section Leader asks casually, not looking up as she flips the folder open, skims its contents. “Do try harder.”
SJ shakes her head, starts to sign then switches to a fist against the headboard, Morse code, he never said anything-
“Shut up!” The Section Leader is across the mattress in a pounce, her hand clamped around the metal of the cuff and pulling it from the headboard; SJ can smell her perfume, floral, faintly acrid. “You are holding still, you are being quiet, you are being a gazelle that does not get disemboweled by the pride of lions today, have you nothing resembling memory?”
SJ swallows, pulling as far back as she can-they can’t touch, matter and antimatter, all the rules are gone if they touch.
The Section Leader’s grip stays firm on the cuff, but with a perceptible effort, she slides her impassive mask once more over her features. “Regardless of whether he’s seen anything, this location is far too obvious; you might as well plant a flag saying’ Covert Operation Here.’ Scatter your reports in your regular notes, since you’re ciphering those as well. Or leave it in English and hide it in the middle of a dreary recollection of boarding school, I don’t care. Just don’t leave coded communications under your mattress like an amateur.” She spits the last word.
SJ nods, but the Section Leader isn’t looking, too busy skimming through the folder-if that’s the rate at which she reads ciphers, no wonder the newsrunners were kept busy coming up with a new one every three weeks.
“Nothing I didn’t already know,” she concludes, slotting them back into the folder with a sound like a guillotine falling in place. She slides them deftly back under the mattress. “Get rid of those. Preferably without arousing his suspicion, if you’re capable. Don’t hesitate to leave a note with the tea things if you’ve got something I can actually use. Only-do be sure it is actually useful. I would hate to have to revise my assessment of your capabilities.”
SJ nods, once. In the unseen cell beyond, the Brigade Leader laughs. The Doctor whimpers.
“Do you know what I enjoy most about these little chats?” the Section Leader asks, just as she turns to go. Her tone musing, contemplative. “The opportunity to prove him wrong.”
xxxxx
The silence is worse.
After the Brigade Leader and the Section Leader leave, there is silence for so long.
SJ holds still in the bed, so still, her uniform not even rasping against the rough cotton of the sheets, she barely dares to breathe, she tries not to hear the hammering of her heart-
Until finally, finally, finally-
The slightly wet, strained hiss of air, in and out.
The Doctor, breathing through the pain.
She breaks silence then, raps Morse code entreaties please Doctor are you all right Doctor can you move do you need me please until her hands are shaking too hard and the words dissolve into a sea of dots and dashes and the tears come, spilling forth hot and relentless until her vision blurs, stupid foolish girl to cry now when it’s all over. Nearly over. The worst part, at least, surely.
Another wet sound, the Doctor’s palm slapping down on the floor. Creaking, shuffling, as he hauls himself to his feet. She can’t see through the curtain and still she sees it exactly, exactly in her mind.
Hesitant steps, then he is at the curtain, pulling it back-the rings screech slowly across the bar, his movements jerky.
His face is covered in blood like a port wine stain.
“You should-see the other fellow,” he says with an attempt at a ghoulish smile. It’s ruined when he nearly pitches forward.
I would have taken this for you, SJ thinks desperately at him as his hands close over hers, her heart an open wound, opening further as his hands come to the cuffs, unlock them. They fall, the metal ringing against the floor like an alarm bell. I would have-
“I don’t expect you to forgive me,” he says gruffly.
And then he loses consciousness, and topples face-forward onto the bed.
xxxxx
He comes to again soon enough that SJ doesn’t have to drag him to the shower, doesn’t have to worry nearly as much about dropping him, about the pressure on his wounds, the impact on the long stripes across his back.
There are so many stripes.
SJ can hide her face against the Doctor’s side as she supports half his weight, cheek against his blood-stained shirt as they do a careful shuffling two-step across the floor, but she cannot stop the hitch in her breathing, the ragged gasping gulp of it. Unfair that losing her voice should leave it still impossible to hide crying.
Unfair that all her friends keep dying, all because of her.
The Doctor stumbles into the shower, manages to steady himself against the back wall as she enters. His hands find her shoulders and they sit down together, the Doctor’s eyes squeezing shut as if he can shut out the pain along with sight.
There is blood on SJ’s hands now, and on her face.
“It’s not so bad,” says the Doctor, his eyes still shut. “The Brigade Leader merely had to assert his dominance. Typical in many pack animals, such as bureaucrats.”
Still trying to make it a joke. Still trying to reassure her. She wants to hold him close but there is nowhere she could touch that would not hurt him. A sob should be silent, but it makes a choking cough in her throat instead.
She twists the water on instead of touching him, the cold spray like a slap.
At least the sound of it will cover the pitiful sound of her tears on her cheeks, that ghost of human grief.
“It’s all right.” His hand finding hers, his voice soothing as he twists his head up to look at her, his eyes open now, and worried through the pain. “It’s only a body.” He smiles, and she can see now how he could have been that dragon with a hatchling; she can see how he could have been a father, a grandfather even. His voice is gentle, counterpoint to the hiss of the water as it turns red with his blood and slips away down the drain. “You can’t get attached to a body. You can’t live forever in a body, can’t trust them. Poor little humans, you only get the one. Nowhere else to go.”
He’s babbling now. She finds the soap. Can you manage this on your own?
“Largely, I imagine. But-ah- ” He tries to raise his arms, winces as they get to shoulder level. “I may, just possibly, need some help with the clothes.”
Nothing I haven’t seen before. She eases his shirt and trousers off as best she can. Her own are getting soaked; she’ll have to wear a towel or bedsheet later while they dry. Her hands shake a little, but it really is mostly with the cold of the water. She’s fine. The Doctor’s going to be fine. This isn’t the worst thing that has ever happened to either of them.
True to his word, the Doctor manages the soap and the washcloth well enough to take care of most of the ablutions while SJ splits her time between looking away in an attempt to protect his dignity and watching him like a hawk, certain that in the second she has glanced away he has fallen unconscious, slipped, cracked his head open, started to drown…
She takes the washcloth from him when it becomes apparent that he can’t reach his back, eases him away from the wall so she can help. He only gives a half-hearted murmur of protest, and then that slight hiss when she has to touch his wounds. Some of them have clotted and opened again under the water. She goes as gently as she can. Sorry. I’m almost done.
It’s quite all right. Take your time. Wouldn’t want an infection, after all.
There’s mostly just bruising on his scalp, but the one laceration has bled quite heavily, and she has to knead slowly and carefully with her fingers to wash the blood out of his hair, running her fingers through his locks to keep them from getting tangled again.
Thank you, he says. I’m just a bit vain over the hair on this body.
Just a bit? she asks. She tries to make it tart, tries to send the suggestion of a cheeky smile.
The smile she doesn’t quite manage manifests itself on his face instead. Just a bit, he agrees.
And the water runs red down the drain.
xxxxx
SJ gets the Doctor into bed, hangs up his wet clothes. Changes out of her own wet uniform into the towel and grabs one of his first-aid kits before returning to him. The stripes from the whip still stand out red and angry on his back, weeping blood and clear fluid.
She touches his shoulder hesitantly. I don’t know what half this stuff is. This salve here, will that work on you?
“Let me see the ingredients.” He twists his head back at her, squints at the label. “Should help somewhat. Won’t hurt.”
Roll over onto your stomach, then.
“People seem to be asking that quite a bit today,” he says dryly.
Her hands falter. That he can say that-that he can joke-
She wants to say the words ‘I’m sorry’ but they are already dead in her throat, and they die in her hands too. She sits on the edge of the bed next to him and tries to say it in the way she applies the salve instead, warming it with her palms first and spreading it gently across his skin.
For a second she thinks that his skin warming under her hands is only from her touch, and then she realizes.
Don’t, she says. Her eyes have closed, the tears hot and brimming beneath her eyelashes. Her breath caged in her throat. Don’t use up your energy just to keep my hands warm.
“You’ll catch your death,” he murmurs, but the temperature dips from radiator to slightly below human normal. Still too high for him, but he’s stubborn. She can let him keep this little piece of his pride.
There is a line of cigarette burns that starts at the Doctor’s right shoulder blade and curls upward towards his temple. SJ begins working her way upward.
He flinches.
SJ jerks her hands back.
His shoulders are still tense.
She reaches, tentatively, for his hand. Stops. Brings her fingers to the sheet by the side of his head, taps against the fabric:
Did I hurt you?
“No. Not hurt, precisely, only-no.” He sighs, a gust of air expelled as if in irritation at himself. “Neck-a bit sensitive. My people. Lots of nerve endings. More than humans.”
It takes a second before she grasps the full import of what he is saying, and then she thinks she will never be able to touch him again, she will never understand how he has been able to let her touch him.
You must hate us all sometimes, she says. Humans, I mean.
He twists his head up to look at her, his face genuinely shocked. “Not at all.” He takes her hand, his fingers interlaced with hers. His eyes are earnest. “It’s a bad century. It will pass. Half a dozen generations from now, it will all be like a dim nightmare in the world’s memory.”
A bad century? SJ asks. How old are you?
A smile, relieved almost. There they are, sliding back into their old roles, interviewer and reluctant subject. “I’m in the prime of my life, I’ll have you know! I’m just very well-traveled.”
It’s tempting to pursue this new bit of information, but she knows he made it that way on purpose, a red herring. She sticks to her original course. Will you be there, after those six generations?
Shadows in his eyes; she almost wishes she hadn’t asked. But he doesn’t pull away.
Quite possibly, he admits.
Hard to kill?
Fairly easy. He gives a self-deprecating grin. Difficult to make it stick.
She snorts through her nose.
And a real smile breaks across his face, the difference between it and all his previous attempts like comparing gold and pyrite. “You can laugh!” he says, delighted.
She shrugs, suddenly, oddly embarrassed. Don’t twist the conversation back around to me.
“It’s good to hear you laugh,” he says. Still smiling, but his eyes are serious.
She can’t look at him when he looks at her like that. She looks down at their hands instead.
I’m glad, she says, because she has to. That you’ll be here. It’s selfish, but I’m-it’s just that-when I first woke up, I thought being with you for the rest of my life was the second worst thing that could ever happen to me-
“Only the second-worst? I’m flattered.”
She dares a gentle swat at an unbruised patch of skin. Don’t! You know what I’m trying-what I want to say. That was what I felt then. And now, knowing you’ll be here-that you’ll be here, with me, as long as I’m here…it’s comforting. Even if nothing changes.
“It will change,” he insists.
Maybe. In half a dozen generations. I won’t be here to see you proved right or wrong.
There is something caught in his throat as he responds. “I know.”
SJ pretends not to hear the sandpaper scrape of his premature grief, finishes rubbing the salve into his back. Changes the subject. The Section Leader’s probably expecting you to ‘assert yourself’ after this. How long do you think we should give for that, ten minutes?
“You wound me.”
Five, then. She hesitates, then goes on. I can leave you alone after, if you’d like.
“You could stay.” He clears his throat. “If you didn’t mind.”
She looks away so he won’t see her relief. Not at all.
xxxxx
The shadow play is even briefer than five minutes, because SJ cannot stop the tears from coming to her eyes when the Doctor winces in pain, and the Doctor cannot make himself continue once SJ is crying. They lie side by side instead, the tips of their fingers just touching.
What did you do? she asks finally. After she drugged me.
“What I had to, to keep her away from you,” he says. “I do not for one instant regret it.”
You made a choice for me without my permission, she says. It hurts to say it, but she has to. You promised you were going to try to stop doing that.
“I did,” he agrees, his voice heavy. He does not add anything more.
Then the least you can do is tell me how you did it.
He sighs, but does not argue. “You may not have heard of the Duchess-”
Newsrunner, she reminds him with a poke.
“She was the Section Leader’s-sponsor-before Lethbridge-Stewart. Because of course there’s nothing queer about it when you can fit it into a nice little hierarchical structure with a side order of humiliation-” He cuts himself off. “After the Duchess’ fall from favor, Shaw probably would have been arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting her escape, if the Brigade Leader hadn’t taken her under his wing. It remains a sore point in their relationship.”
And that bit about Admiral Jackson?
“Ah, good old Ben. Quite difficult to predict that man. I wouldn’t put it past him to really have been harboring the Duchess all this time, for any number of reasons.”
So you sent something to Shaw that made the Brigade Leader think she might be disloyal?
He grins faintly, shades of a mischievous boy with his hand in the cookie jar. “And tied up quite a few government resources in red herrings and dead ends, I might add.”
How did you know it would work?
That wipes the smile off his face. “Because they love each other. And so they hate each other in equal measure. Because that is what humanity has made love in this century-a weakness, a deviance, a perversity. So demonized that the only way its expression can be rationalized is through violence and control.”
SJ is a little thrown by the fervor of his response. Did she do that to his eye, then?
“No. That was me.”
SJ starts, twisting her head up to gaze at him in shock.
The Doctor shrugs. “He hurt Beth.”
As if those words are the only explanation necessary.
Back when she was your assistant? SJ asks. Because that could make sense, that he would be protective of her back then, when he didn’t know she was a monster. Back when you thought she was just a prisoner?
“After.”
A confession in one word.
A pause, then: “She was the first face I saw, when I woke up. She was my friend, and my confidante, and my lover. She was-I thought she was my only ally, and it-is not always easy to forget what she…was. Then.”
There is too much forgiveness in his heart, SJ thinks. He was not made for this world, where there is only punishment and resistance. He is like Sully that way, always believing the best of people. Always giving the benefit of the doubt, until he drowned in it.
She tortures women, SJ says. She seeks them out on purpose. She told me all about how she likes to take us apart.
This is what she says, and it is cruel, because she needs to make him understand that she is not like him. That she cannot turn the other cheek so readily. That he can forgive her or not, but she will never forgive Beth Shaw.
“She is not…the most self-aware woman,” he says carefully. “I believe she has worked very hard to be as unaware of herself as possible.”
She’s a monster, SJ insists.
He sighs, closes his eyes. “I know.”
After a few minutes, SJ interlaces her fingers with him and squeezes tight.
Because he may or may not deserve it, and she may or may not be capable of it-
But she still wants to give him forgiveness.
xxxxx
“You shouldn’t be here,” the Doctor says, leaning against a strange round countertop with a rising and falling column. “Not unless you make a deliberate effort. You need to be practicing restraint, or we’ll never get you out of my dreams.”
“I had more questions,” SJ says, marveling at the ease with which she speaks in dreams, that she ever took this miracle of moving lips and tongue for granted. “What did you mean, about being easy to kill or hard to make it stick?”
“Precisely what I said,” the Doctor answers. He walks to the door and holds it open for her. Beyond, there is the cell. “Bodies are unreliable things. You have to trade them in occasionally.”
SJ was just at the door, but now she is directly in front of the Doctor, reaching out to touch the side of his face. Memories that aren’t hers are in her mind, flashes of faces that used to belong to her-no, to him. Her? Them? Unconfined to a single shape, a single skin, a single gender. Who he is, who he has been, will be. Possibilities so vast they make infinity look microscopic…
She gazes in wonder up at his face, at her hand on his skin. So many mysteries hidden under his skin, so much knowledge-
And then she is tied down to a table and Beth is leaning over him (her?) and the scalpel is coming down like a paintbrush spreading a long line of crimson paint and she is smirking, “Really, Doctor, for all your talk of pursuing scientific advancement-”
SJ jolts awake. The Doctor’s body is tense against hers, his eyes wary as he looks down at her. A rabbit poised to flee from a predator.
She presses her forehead into an unbruised spot on his arm, baring her neck. See? See, she is vulnerable. She will not hurt him.
I’m not her, she sends. I won’t hurt you.
xxxxx
There is another dream.
She is back in The Room.
Down, down, down being held down in The Room and there is no memory of how she got there, memory is lie, she tried to lie when they started cutting into her but then the pain like a bursting sun and she told the truth and it spilled out of her but they didn’t stop, they never stopped, she can’t remember what was the truth anymore, only that she used to think it was so important but nothing is important now because nothing exists except the screaming and the pain and that is all that will ever exist, the pain and the weight and her legs wrenched apart and the knife in her abdomen-
“Sarah.” Blue eyes, impossibly large blue eyes above her. “Sarah, wake up.”
She lashes out, but her hand is caught, and she thrashes, helpless.
“Sarah, it’s me.”
Me. Him. The Doctor.
SJ nods, short, sharp. Tries to breathe. Tries to slow her heart.
“It was just a nightmare.”
Just a nightmare. Just a phase. Only a few more regenerations and it will be like a bad dream. She and her pain are so small in the scheme of things, are nothing, nothing at all.
They cut something out of her in the dream-
She pulls away from him, curls up on her side, clutching her stomach.
He touches her wrist. Sarah?
Was I pregnant? she asks abruptly.
“What?” He almost lets go, he is so startled.
It could have happened, SJ says, staring firmly at the curtain in front of her. She isn’t going to cry. The curtain doesn’t seem real. Her arms tight around her stomach don’t feel real. They raped me almost every day. They didn’t use anything to stop it from happening. There are weeks where everything blurs together and I wouldn’t remember if they cut something out of me, or I’d remember but not what it was, my vocal cords or something else, it didn’t matter, everything hurt. And that dream-was I pregnant when they brought me to you, Doctor? Was I?
A long pause. His voice, when he does speak, is choked. Is trying to be matter-of-fact, is failing.
“No,” he says. “The damage-there was too much. But-” he hesitates-“I think-this is only a theory, mind you-I think you might have been. Before.”
Oh. The curtain is so unreal. The tears sliding down her face are unreal. Could you tell what they--
“No. It might have been a miscarriage, or an abortion, or a birth. I don’t know.”
She turns then, and lets him pull her to him; buries her face in his chest. He is the only solid thing in her life, the only thing she knows to be real. She feels as though a pane of glass has broken somewhere inside of her; each time she so much as thinks, the sharp edge slides along her heart. Doctor, if I had been--
She can’t finish, but he understands.
“I hope I would have woken you up,” he says. His voice soft, stirring her hair with each syllable. “I hope I wasn’t so far gone that I would-I hope I would have given you that choice.”
She nods against his chest, and holds him tight. Hope-that is all they have. And precious little of that.
“Do you still want to stay?” he asks, his grip loosening slightly. “I can make it to the chair to sleep if you’d rather-”
You’re my friend, she interrupts. I trust you. She holds him tighter still, her hands bunching in the blanket behind his back. Keep the nightmares away for me?
He brushes a kiss to the top of her forehead. “All the ones I can. Always.”