Chapter Text
“What happened- who did that to you?”
There hadn’t been any anger in the question, not initially. Anger didn’t come quickly to the Doctor (not to this one, not this new, bright and optimistic version) and certainly not as a first response. Curiosity, surprise, and perhaps stubborn denial, those were common fallbacks for her, and all three of them were present in the words she fired at you and Ryan as you two rounded the corner and limped into view.
“Oh my god, what happened?” Yaz echoed the Doctor, looking between you and Ryan. Ryan just shook his head, out of breath and looking quickly over his shoulder.
“We gotta go,” he said in a low, urgent voice.
“Hey? But we only just got here-” Graham, walking up with an assortment of exotic foods in his arms, stopped mid sentence, eyes flicking between you and Ryan. “Ryan?” He stepped quickly towards his grandson, aware immediately that something was wrong. Yaz had moved to you, and was hunched down, trying to get a good look at your face, which you kept averted. You weren’t sure why, it was Yaz, and the rest of Team TARDIS, after all. But your emotions were still turbulent, scraped raw and layered thinly over with a coating of shock, and you just felt like hiding, curling up and vanishing and not thinking about what had happened, just not… not thinking.
The Doctor had been looking between you and Ryan, frozen in some sort of confused indecision, her mind whirring away behind those bright, clever eyes. Then Yaz looked over at her, and whatever the Doctor read on her face made her step towards you, made that telltale crease appear by her left eyebrow. You flicked a glance at her, but you were too raw for the intensity of her regard, and the undefined, sick feeling in your gut that you’d somehow failed, somehow let the team down. You looked away quickly, head ducked, and when familiar brown boots entered your field of vision, you closed your eyes.
Slender fingers touched your chin, and despite your shame, despite your pain, you couldn’t deny them. Couldn’t deny her. You opened your eyes as the Doctor lifted your face, and though her touch was gentle, the change that her expression underwent was anything but. Apprehensive curiosity shifted into shock, and was quickly eclipsed by fury. Her lips pressed tightly together, the Doctor moved your face back and forth, her now blazing eyes sweeping from your bruised, bloodshot eye down to your split lip. Behind her, you heard Graham hiss in a shocked breath, and you closed your eyes again, swaying. Yaz had made a small, stifled sound of mingled outrage and concern, and put an arm around you.
“Who did this to you,” the Doctor repeated, and now there was danger in her voice. You took in a ragged breath; you were too raw, too raw. The Doctor dropped her hold on your face and rounded on Ryan instead, coat flapping in the wind as she strode up to him, asked if he was hurt too. He shook his head, looking again over his shoulder. The absence of the Doctor’s touch left a sudden vacuum for you, and you started to shake. Her intensity had been too much, but without it you were left coldly adrift, reeling and unraveling as the adrenaline began to wear off.
“We should really go,” Ryan repeated.
“Sounds good,” Graham agreed, eyes on you and Yaz. “You can fill us in on the way. Right, Doc?” The Doctor made a low, dangerous sound, and you could feel her eyes on you again. Yaz’s arm on you tightened, gently propelling you forwards, and you began the walk back to the TARDIS, to safety. Home.
Distantly, you could hear the Doctor ahead of you as she dragged the story out of Ryan. How you two had gone exploring the alien city, the aliens so similar in appearance to humans but with such a vastly different culture and landscape, different technology. How everything had been bright, and exciting, and fun, until it hadn’t. How you had seen a child, crying, and approached them, knelt next to them and offered them food you’d purchased earlier. How suddenly a man had appeared, had started yelling and accusing you of interfering with his property. Had tried to grab the crying child, and when you blocked him, had knocked you down. And again, when you tried to get up. Had used his booted foot. Had gotten in Ryan’s face as he got between you and the man, had told Ryan to control you before storming off, child in tow. How the mood in the city had changed, how people had begun to stare at you. Watch you. Follow you.
Graham and Yaz were making suitably outraged, shocked noises as Ryan angrily recounted the tale, but the Doctor was silent. You could feel her anger, however, could almost hear it in the shape of her uncharacteristic silence. You wanted to say something, try and explain or apologize or make up for how thoroughly the trip had been ruined, but your thoughts were starting to slide in and out of your grasp and it was all you could do to keep walking. Were you still walking? You couldn’t always feel your feet, or Yaz’s arm.
“Uh, Doctor,” Yaz said, maybe. You weren’t sure. The world was tilting, darkening. Yaz’s arm was suddenly the only thing you could feel, an anchor as you sagged. Another presence loomed in front of you, and you caught the familiar scent of vanilla and TARDIS, felt the brush of a long coat hitting your legs, and you knew it was her, knew she was scanning your face, though you couldn’t focus on her. On anything, really.
“What’s wrong with her Doc?” Graham asked, distantly.
“Don’t know,” the Doctor replied tersely, and her voice was a beacon, something that you could focus on, cling to in defiance to the darkness. “Concussion, maybe. Head injuries are tricky.” Anger still commanded control of her voice, but worry threaded audibly through it now, too. Her hand touched your cheek, the unbruised side, and her careful touch was a brand, a blaze of sensation in a rapidly dwindling reality. “Hey, you need to stay with us,” the Doctor said. “You need to keep walking, okay?” You tried to focus on her, on those eyes that shone like so many stars.
“I’m- I’m sorry,” you tried to say. It hurt to move your lips, to speak, but you wanted them to know you were sorry you’d caused this, ruined their trip.
“Don’t talk, just walk,” the Doctor said shortly, moving to your other side and joining her arm with Yaz’s. Anger was still clipping her words, and you weren’t able to see the concern in her eyes as she looked at you. Time passed strangely; at times you were hyperaware of Yaz and the Doctor’s hands on you, of the tense conversation filtering through the group. Other times you drifted, felt reality loosen and warp around you and would lose several minutes of time in one jagged lurch.
One of those times, your legs gave out, and Yaz wasn’t quick enough to catch you. The Doctor was, but suddenly her grip on your arm sent a splintering web of agony through you and you cried out weakly, almost breathless with the pain as red curled around the edges of your vision. The Doctor said something under her breath, lowering you to the ground.
“Hold her,” the Doctor said, and someone -Yaz- propped you up as the Doctor ran her hands carefully down your arm, then shoulder, and then side. You hissed out a breath in another flare of agony. “Ah,” the Doctor said grimly, and lifted the edge of your shirt. Ryan swore quietly at whatever was revealed, and the Doctor made another one of her low, dangerous sounds.
“Broken?” Graham asked, after a tense moment. You felt the Doctor’s hand rest lightly on your side, and even that careful touch was enough to wring another stifled cry from you, though you clenched your teeth around it (that hurt, too.)
“Maybe,” the Doctor said, having withdrawn her hand. There was a rustle, then the familiar buzzing of her sonic as she ran it up and down your torso. A pause, as she deciphered the information. “Cracked. Some bleeding,” she reported. Her voice was very quiet, and all the more terrible for it. She stood up violently, rounding on Ryan. “How could you let this happen?” Her voice was still quiet, still terrible in its fury. Ryan blinked, looked away.
“Hold on, Doc, that’s not right,” Graham intervened angrily, stepping forwards. “He saved her, sounds like! You ought to be thanking him, not blaming him!” The Doctor made a savage sound and whirled away from them, fists clenched and eyes closed.
“She knows,” Yaz said quietly to Graham.
“Well, she shouldn’t be having a go at him then-”
“She knows,” Yaz interrupted, firmly but not unkindly. “But we need to keep moving, and I don’t think you’re supposed to walk with cracked ribs…”
“On it,” Ryan said, sounding grateful for the chance to do something helpful. He darted a wary look at the Doctor, but though she had turned around, she was watching without comment, her face set, hands still clenched.
“Careful,” Yaz and Graham said together, unnecessarily, as Ryan gently picked you up. It still hurt, in about a dozen different ways, and your breathing hitched brokenly around another involuntary cry.
“Sorry, sorry,” Ryan said, agonized but determined. The Doctor’s face had flickered at your cry, then she was striding forwards again, towards the TARDIS with quick, violent steps. Yaz, Graham and Ryan exchanged unhappy looks and followed, and you finally, mercifully blacked out.
You awoke to breath-taking agony, muddled thoughts, and shouting. A lot of shouting. Ryan was still holding you, but not gently- his arms were tight, and he was moving around, almost stumbling. You tried to lift your head, tried to see what was going on. There were a lot of people- too many for just Team TARDIS. The aliens had caught up with you. Alarm shot through your system like a drug, lending you sudden, respective clarity.
“Hey bro, back off, back off-” Ryan was saying. In the distance you thought you could make out Yaz and the Doctor’s voices too.
“Step back, come on now, Ryan, go, get inside-” that was Graham. Ryan turned, and your vision was suddenly filled with the most welcome, glorious blue. The TARDIS. You were almost there, you were almost safe- and then something hit Ryan, hard. Graham yelled a warning, but it was too late. Ryan stumbled, and dropped you, and the world exploded in a red haze. Time and space fragmented around you, splinters of sound and sensation. You thought maybe you were dead. You tried to lift your head, tried to breathe.
“DOCTOR,” someone screamed.
A face loomed. It was not the Doctor’s, and in that expanding, crystalline moment you knew, horribly, that you were not dead.
“Got you, you filthy human,” it said. You stared back blankly, almost numb with horror and pain as he- the man from before, the one who’d attacked you and Ryan, it was him and you were alone- seized your arm, jerked you towards him. The pain that ripped through you didn’t even leave you enough breath to scream, but you tried to resist, tried to lean away, to do anything, but he had your arm and was pulling you in, and you couldn’t- you couldn’t even scream-
A swirl of lilac-grey fabric and brown boots appeared in your vision, and the hold on your arm was released as the Doctor shoved her way bodily between you and the man. She was much smaller than him, but it was he who staggered backwards from the aggressive contact. The Doctor was a pillar, boots planted firmly with one slightly in front of the other, ready to pivot at a moment’s notice.
She was so close to you that the edge of her coat brushed your side, and one of her hands was dropped towards you, fingers splayed protectively. You knew instinctively that the other hand gripped the sonic. It wasn’t a weapon, not in the conventional sense, but it still had a cautionary effect on most beings. As it should. The TARDIS, so frustratingly close, gave a sudden and booming toll, a sound felt as much as heard. There was a moment of shocked, ringing silence. The Doctor swept her blazing eyes across the frozen assembly.
“Yaz, Graham, get her inside,” she ordered.
“But-” Graham began, wary eyes on the crowd of alien men around the Doctor, “Doc-”
“Now,” the Doctor said, her eyes fixing on the man she had pushed away from you. “Ryan, with me.” Ryan’s legs joined the Doctor’s in your hazy field of vision. You tried to speak, tried to say the Doctor’s name, but your vision was darkening and you still couldn’t catch you breath, and Yaz’s hands were suddenly on you, you could hear her voice but it was muffled, fading in and out- and then you were unconscious again. Yaz carried you into the TARDIS, flanked by Graham. The Doctor didn’t move, didn’t look away. The TARDIS door clicked shut.
Yaz carried you to the TARDIS medical bay, and stayed with you while Graham loitered nervously at the console, watching the screen and ready to rush out and help Ryan and the Doctor if things went badly. You wouldn’t find out for several days what had gone down outside the TARDIS, the Doctor and Ryan facing a dozen angry aliens.
Ryan would tell you and Yaz later, in tones of hushed awe, how the Doctor had asked the group how they dared to hurt her friends, how she had listened to a dozen different mumbling replies while her dark eyes had never left the first man, the one who had hurt you.
How she had waited quietly until he spoke, until he dared to open his mouth and justify what he did. ‘This one?’ she had asked Ryan, without turning her head. ‘Was it him?’ How when Ryan had nodded, she had then shouldered her way into his space, nose to nose, and how she had followed him when he tried to step away, a clear predator for all that she was more than half a foot shorter and armed with a screwdriver.
The Doctor had stalked him until he fetched up against a tree, and then she had leaned in, said something too quietly for Ryan to hear. ‘I wish I knew what she said, man,’ Ryan told you and Yaz, shaking his head. ‘He went so pale, I thought he might faint- I mean, he was sweating.’
He went on to say how the Doctor had stepped away, so that she could regard the entire group again. ‘You are not the best you can be; you are so- much- less,’ she had said, and though the words had been mild, the tone had been so devastatingly furious that it had swept through the semi-circle like the swing of a weapon, sending the aliens away into the gathering night. The Doctor had not waited to watch; she had merely turned her back, and strode to the TARDIS. They had been dismissed; they were prey, not worthy of a predator’s attention.
‘Absolutely mad,’ Ryan had said, rubbing his face. ‘Never seen her lose it like that before. Scary, almost.’
But all that had come later, when you were up and moving about the TARDIS again, when some of the horror had faded and everyone was starting to itch for the next adventure…