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She did not raise her head as the TARDIS roughly rumbled to a halt, deciding to leave her forehead defeatedly pressed against the railing. She did, however, open her eyes, and at her feet -- well, knees, she was on her knees --appeared a pair of black boots. A pair of hands, she assumed they belonged with the feet that owned the boots she was staring at, grabbed her by the armpits.
“You’re scary when you’re quiet, you know that?” she muttered, almost to herself. She thought she had seen scary when the Aerie’s talons had been fast approaching; then when she watched him take up her abandoned sword. He did not drive it through the beast as she had assumed. She didn’t know why she’d ever assume that. No, the blade would’ve been too kind a passing. Then she thought she’d seen scary in his face, as he had appeared above her where she lay in the dark orange sand, yanked her into a quasi-standing position, manhandled her into their ship, letting her drop to her knees and scrabble to cling to the railing beside the console to keep herself from face-planting on the grating as he piloted them immediately into the vortex. The whole journey from There to Home had only lasted perceivable, subjective seconds, with her on her knees beside the console, arms locked around the metal rail, staring at the floor, not realizing that she had no idea yet what scary really was.
His hands under her arms give a mighty tug, with more strength than she would have ever assumed those withered, calloused fingers could have possessed. He wordlessly yanked her on to her feet, simultaneously spinning her towards the door and forcing an arm around her waist, forcing her close to him. That was when she started to recognize her own worry in his actions. Physical proximity was never, never a thing. Not out of inappropriateness, but rather out of non-necessity; they had no reason to be this close. Even now, still dazed, she wasn’t sure she needed to be essentially carried along like a lame partner in a three-legged race, but he needed it somehow. To know she was close, she was safe, that he had her, he needed that, she could sense it.
They broke through the TARDIS doors, she raised her head to be greeted by his dimly cast office. She wondered to herself why, in the very back of her mind, she thought they would go anywhere else. “Ugh!” she exclaims, suddenly doubled over as he briefly lost his grip on her, and she dropped several inches towards to floor before he readjusted.
He said nothing, and after a few moments of struggle, managed to drag her to the bench beneath the steps, which lead to the balcony of bookshelves. The bench faces the dwindling fire in the hearth, and is usually a favorite spot of hers to read whatever physics or fiction or poetry book he picks out for her each day.
As terrible as the aura he’d been giving off was, he lowered her down incredibly gently.
At first, she was content sitting there, but he points to the end of the bench. “Lie down.”
She blinked--she’d admit--rather stupidly up at him and made no move to follow his directions.
He knelt suddenly, so they were eye-level. “Do as you’re told.” As soon as he spat them, he knew those words weren’t for her. He did not know which nook deep in his being the command had come from, but as soon as her look of bewilderment melted into one of fear, he knew he had made a mistake.
His features softened minutely. Softened was not the right word either...unfolded a little, perhaps. “Bill. Lie down. Please.”
This had never, thankfully, been her experience, but she couldn’t help but imagine the intonation of his ‘please’ as similar to when an abusive partner apologizes to his or her victim, vowing it will never happen again.
Still, she tried to oblige, but her body was not yet her own. She managed to lean forward and let out an unwarranted hiss. That was...weird...she didn’t know why her body kept making weird noises. She looked down at her unusually relaxed hands, resting palm-up in her lap, inhaled deeply, and then back up at him, to his stern, unforgiving gaze. She was overcome with the need to reassure him, “I’m alright.”
“You’re in shock.” he retorted quietly. “Here.” With one hand at her back and one below her throat, sandwiching her chest between them, he didn’t push her, but he more or less controlled her relaxed fall to the cushioned seat. Then, with surprising grace, he moved one of her legs for her, then the other, so that she was supine, her feet nearly hanging off the end. She wasn’t sure if she was still so muddled that she hadn’t thought to move her legs on her own, or if she was incapable of doing so.
Shock. That sounded not great. With sudden curiosity, she picked her head up to try and investigate what could have prompted something as serious-sounding as ‘shock’.
“No.” A single word, accompanied by a single finger connecting with her forehead, strong enough to force her back down. This was followed by a familiar, continuous, high-pitched chirping that lasted several seconds.
“‘It makes a noise’,” Bill mumbled absentmindedly of the sonic screwdriver as the Doctor traipsed it above her.
“Hm?” he responded well after eight or ten seconds of interpreting its reading.
“Nothing.” Bill mumbled again, suddenly feeling strange. Strange? No, stranger. Feeling like a stranger. Backwards, background, back away from here.
“You, awake!” The Doctor commanded her from somewhere behind her, then a little quieter, into the phone on his desk, to someone else, “You, get up here.”
Bill opened her eyes, though she didn’t remember closing them. Her teacher was suddenly stood by her feet. No, not suddenly. It took her seconds to open her eyes, time enough for him to stride from his desk to the end of the bench. One hand was lost in the curls of his own hair, twisting it impatiently, the other was before him holding a stack of...pillowcases?
The familiar creak of the door was succeeded by the appearance of Nardole from behind the Doctor. “Sir? I didn’t realize--” as he came round the Doctor, his eyes fell on the young student lying before them, “Oh.”
The Doctor waited for nothing, shoved the pillowcases at the cyborg, “Your life and hers are darned with the same thread for the next thirty seconds.” With that, he turns and disappears. The sound of a lightweight, wooden door slams, shortly followed by the faithful wheeze and hum of the TARDIS dematerializing.
“Where’s he gone off to?” Bill started to struggle to sit up, to see past the railing of the steps, which partially occluded her view of the rest of the office, to assuage her disbelief that the Doctor had just vanished. Nardole huffed and knelt beside her, carefully forcing her back down before she made any progress, “I don’t know, but wherever it was, he can leave his threats and poor attitude there before he returns. Now,” he suspiciously pulled back a lapel of her denim jacket. She didn’t realize it, but she was laying with her trembling hands hovering above the fabric of the shirt, “What’ve you two gotten into?”
She breathed heavily, and loudly, partially out of anxiety, partially out of ignorance. She felt like she should have stopped him. It wasn’t like she wasn’t wearing a shirt or anything; she didn’t want to stop him out of some strange perversion, but rather she felt like she had done something wrong, like he was uncovering a mistake she had made.
He simply tsked at whatever it was he saw, and drew up one of the pillowcases from its stack. Oh, not pillowcases, you nitwit, Bill noted in the dim light. It was a stack of disposable towels.
“Wha’s that for?” she asked softly, still quite out of touch.
“My apologies, Bill,” Nardole said curtly, then draped the towel across her abdomen and applied pressure with both hands.
Bill made a noise she was sure she couldn’t reproduce if she’d been offered a million pounds; a desperate catch in her breath that transitioned into a brief scream, and tapered to a gurgling stop at the back of her throat. Her vision ebbs, drawn out like the shore before a tidal wave, and she grabbed the sides of the bench like she might miraculously be flung from the stationary position. If asked, she would have said she knew what pain felt like, much like she thought she knew scary, but alas, today was a lesson in language, as she now learned what pain really was; not a burn on her arm from the fryer at work, or the ache in her broken wrist from a skateboard stunt gone awry in an attempt to impress a girl, or the pulsing in her toes from a dropped bookshelf, and anything else she thought, those all shrunk and fizzled and disappeared in comparison, as she wondered if Nardole had actually reached inside her and given loops of her intestine a playful squeeze. Her wheezing decrescendo, synching with the wonted wheeze of the TARDIS, as it rematerialized in the corner of the office; Bill’s anxiety markedly lessened with the sound, as she felt herself begin to blackout.
“Okay, okay, hush now,” it wasn’t Nardole’s somewhat nasal-pitch, but instead a deep, Scottish curl whose tongue wrapped around the beginning and end of words in such a way she thought she’d never grow tired of listening, “It’s fine, now. Open your eyes, look at me.” The words made her resurface, gasping for air.
The Doctor was above her again, becoming clearer with each pass of her lids over her eyes, “That’s it.” he encouraged. She automatically moved a hand to shove away where Nardole was pressing.
“Ah-ah,” the Doctor caught her wrist and gently forced her hand down, “Just relax.” He then shooed Nardole out of the way and quickly resumed his place beside his student.
“What happened?” Bill studied his face. That look in her eyes, even now; it was most endearing about Bill, her curiosity was insatiable.
“You just fainted for a few seconds--”
“No. No, where’d you go?” There’s something different. Did he change his clothes? Had the wind blown his hair the opposite direction of earlier? Something was different.
The Doctor takes a tentative hold of her jacket front, “To get some supplies.”
It’s her turn to grab him by the wrist, “I don’t like bein’ lied to.”
“Bill, this is a little time sensitive,” he urged, gesturing to whatever she hadn’t been allowed to look at a moment ago.
“If that were true, you wouldn’t ‘ave left.” she half smiled, despite herself, as he clenched his jaw. Though there were fireworks bursting inside her, and though she knew she should be very worried with how her teacher and his assistant were behaving, the Doctor had done something in his thirty second sabbatical--who knew how long he was really gone for--and she needed that addressed first.
It was clear from her grip that he would not be allowed to continue if he did not placate her mind. He conceded, leaning in close, “I’ll explain later. Right now, I need to care for you.”
When Bill frowns, it’s not delicate or beguiling; it involves the whole of her face, distasteful, unhappy with the unknown. It was another feature the Doctor couldn’t help but like, while she was fervent in whatever task was at hand, there was no practiced or refined ways to her responses.
She relaxed her grasp. “Okay.”
He gave a curt nod, like he was thanking her for letting him lie to her. He sprung into action, and turned his attention to her midsection. He was gentle, but firm as he folded back her jacket and peeled away the towel Nardole had covered her with. “God!” Bill surprised herself when she screamed.
The Doctor continued, undeterred. He discarded the towel beside him on the floor and pinched the hem of her shirt between two fingers. “I have to.” He nearly whispers, apologetically.
She was trying to catch her breath, now inexplicably covered in sweat. She gave his arm a fond pat, and exhaled, “I know. S’alright.”
It took almost a full minute for the Doctor to pare the material away from her, as she realized her shirt was in strips. At some point during that minute, Nardole had placed a hand on her shoulder, partly to still her twisting--though she was trying her damnedest to be still--and partly to offer some sort of comfort.
“She doesn’t need babying, Nardole,” her tutor grumbled, leaning in close to her abdomen, “And I need you to fetch some supplies.”
Nardole tutted annoyed, and started to step away.
“Good thing the Doctor just picked some up in the Tardis, then, right?” Bill smiled to the cyborg, who dared to respond with a grin of his own.
“Thank god, your snark is still intact.” The Doctor responded, but met her eyes through wiry eyebrows, and asked quietly, “How do you feel?”
He reached for a new towel as she started to think she had the strangest feeling of hot and cold. She started to realize she was freezing, except where the destroyed t-shirt had been, she felt an uncomfortable warmth. A sensation she could almost...place…
She picked her head up and looked. “Oh, my god!”
The Doctor immediately pressed a new towel against her, but it was too late, she had seen it. Two parallel, impossibly deep...cuts?--They weren’t even cuts, they were something else, like...Bill could only think of a birthday cake a toddler had swiped a hand through the frosting on top, “I feel sick.”
“Rightly so,” the Doctor muttered, leaning on all fours around the bench and snatching a small bin. He set it on the floor near where her head lay, “Are you going to be ill?” In the firelight, she had visibly paled, ashen beneath the layer of sweat, making her a very shiny grey, though he doubted he could tell her that she now looked very similar to the bin beside her.
She shook her head, deciding she didn’t have the strength to follow through with the nausea. The Aeries’ talons had torn through her abdomen, effectively scooping out tracts of skin and muscle and fat, from one side to almost the other, between her navel and lowest ribs. The wounds were casually pulsing blood.
“I did tell you it was better if you didn’t look,” he applied liberal pressure with both hands.
Bill groaned, “Actually, I believe you grunted and poked me in the forehead, you brute.”
“Eh.” was his answer.
She waited a second, “Am I gonna be okay?”
“Oh, don’t be daft,” he dismissed immediately, “Of course.”
After that he had done it again, magically transported from her middle to right in front of her face, without actually having moved.
“Bill!” he growled, only inches from her face.
“Wha’?” she tried to answer with just as much annoyance.
“You passed out again. I need you to focus.”
He had to be lying, she couldn’t believe it was that easy to just let go, without fighting, without even realizing it. Her vision waned a little, but she blinked against it.
Nardole reappeared from the ether, a basket in his arms. He got bigger--No, got closer--Bill corrected, he was just walking closer, and surveyed her position on the bench, “Sir, may I suggest a human hospital? For humans?”
“You may not.” The Doctor reached over to him and relieved him of the basket he was carrying.
“Very well,” Nardole quickly surrendered his side of the conversation.
“It will be alright, but I need you awake, just for now.” The Doctor spoke softly, “You have to tell me how you’re feeling. I’m going to ask every few minutes.”
“Weird.”
“Don’t overwhelm me with details.”
“Super weird?”
“Bill.”
“Well, that hurts, for one,” she whined, eyeing the one hand he was still using to press the towel against her abdomen; his other hand is carelessly rummaging through the basket of infamous ‘supplies’ Nardole had gathered, which he had set on the floor in between the bench and his knees, “Dizzy. Not right, like I’m too many temperatures.”
The Doctor paused his basket scavenging and used that hand to touch Bill’s face and neck, then grabbed hold of her fingers. “Hm. It’s from the shock. Nardole, go fetch some blankets.” He took her farther hand and gingerly placed it on her belly, where his had just been, “Light pressure. That’s it.”
He took her other arm and stretched it out beside her, palm up, “You need some volume replacement.” He inspected her forearm.
She found the strength to raise her head again, not oblivious to what he meant, “Like a cuppa?”
He apologetically brandished a liter bag of saline, one of several at the bottom of the basket.
“Um, I’m not the best with needles,” her voice went up a noticeable octave.
“Then this, as the great proverb goes, is not your night.” He unpackaged a disposable needle, and swabbed her arm with the antiseptic square it came with. Unhelpfully, he added, “Relax.”
He had the cannula in and even taped in place before she started vomiting. The only thing they could manage was to partially hang her head off the side of the bench, half-aim and half-pray that she made it into the wastebin. He connected the saline as she continued to be sick, “Alright, alright, done now. That’s over, deep breaths.”
In combination with the wounds and her positioning on the bench, she had to be in agony. He sacrificed one of the disposable towels to wipe her face for her, as she heaved to catch her breath. “Just breathe, Bill. I’m sorry.”
The sound of the door shutting let them know that Nardole had returned. He came round the steps with a down comforter. He looked at the pair, the Doctor mopping the sweat and tears off his student’s face, and nodded. Silently unlacing Bill’s shoes, he tugged them off, placed them behind the steps, and tucked the comforter around her legs, folding it back down when it got to her waist. “Alright?” he finally asked. They answered simultaneously.
“Just fab-”
“-She’s being dramatic.”
“Oi, dramatic? I told you I got a thing about needles,” Bill lightly smacked his arm, it was all she could muster.
Nardole asked before he could stop himself, “Needles? How are you gonna sew her up, then, sir?”
Bill felt like her stomach fell through her open wounds, “Huh?” It hadn’t occurred to her that something obviously had to be done about the wedges of flesh she was missing. She felt the Doctor’s hand on her shoulder press forcefully, as she unconsciously raised herself the few centimeters she could actually manage.
“Ah, stay put, everything is alright. Don’t worry about that now.” He placed another towel over the one she held to her belly, as it had started to soak through, “Nardole, if you can’t think of a way to be less helpful, perhaps you wouldn’t mind standing up here.”
Nardole grimaced guiltily and stepped to the head of the bench.
“Bill,” the Doctor said softly, “This needs cleaned.” He folds his hands around hers where it lay on top of the wound. She felt her breathing pick up with anticipation as he continued to talk, “I can sedate you to suture it closed, once your blood pressure’s back up from the IV drip you’re getting. You’re not hemorrhaging, it can wait a little, but it needs cleaning now. The bacteria that Aerie harbor are not ones you want colonizing your open wounds.”
“Those claws aren’t poisonous or anything, right?”
“Talons, and venomous, I believe you mean. Poison is secreted, venom is injected. Unless you were meaning to ask if the talons are coated with poison, which, for the weapon of a predator, would be a very silly evolutionary mechanism. Either way, no. Just very, very sharp, with some nasty microbiome.”
“You think now is a good teachable moment?” she rolled her eyes.
“You might have a physical wound, but there’s no reason we both need to suffer via your ignorance.”
“Oi, watch it, old man!” She knew on some level he was joking, but she wasn’t in the mood. She brought her IV-free arm up, covered her eyes with her hand, and said very quietly, “Man, I feel terrible.”
“It’s the adrenaline and other associated hormones. Blood loss isn’t terrible, but it certainly is not helping, either,” He produced two small foil packages from the basket, one with a blue label, one green. He ripped them open and showed her what looked like a pair of children’s plasters, “This one’s an analgesic, this one an anxiolytic.”
“A ‘what’-ic?” she asked as he stuck the colored squares to her upturned forearm.
He busied himself with opening a packet of cotton swabs, and dipped them into a steel test tube he seemed to conjure from thin air, “One will help the pain, one will help the nerves.”
She dropped her head back, defeated, “Just let me bleed t’death on an ottoman.”
“Again, dramatic. And it’s actually a pew.”
“Wha’, from like a church?”
“From a retired temple on Ba’hrhir. Exquisite architecture, questionable hygiene. The pew was a gift from a Middle Priestess after a lightlice infestation I helped clear up. I was grateful for the honor, though it took weeks to get out the stench of fish.”
“You just make sentences up word by word and hope they reach an end, or what?”
“You’re becoming irritable.”
“Well I’m assuming dying on a church pew where aliens sat their fish-arses is a bit o’ bad luck.” She forced a smile, despite her words.
“Shut up, you’re not dying.” and with that, he expectantly held a rolled length of cloth up to her face, “Bite.”
She tentatively took the cloth between her teeth as he spoke, “This’ll not take long, but it won’t be pleasant. The microorganisms from those talons can proliferate quickly, and penetrate deeply. These wounds just barely failed to pierce your peritoneal cavity, but the bacteria can migrate.”
Bill wondered if she was meant to understand what he was saying, and mumbled against the rag.
Nardole leaned over, “Germs from those cuts are too close to your insides. Doctor’s gonna wash them out.”
Bill started breathing harder as the Doctor advanced, Nardole’s hands began applying pressure to her shoulders. Her teacher leaned so that one arm traversed over her hips, she realized to help hold her down.
Thanks to Nardole, Bill could not crane her head to see what the Doctor was doing, but whatever it was coincided with a violent burst of pain so intense she thought he might actually be burning her. She gagged against the cloth she was biting down on and saw fireworks burst behind her eyes, whole body writhing unconsciously to escape as the Doctor more or less scoured the wounds with cotton swabs; it wasn’t so much the contact he was making with the wound edges--though it was rough and causing secondary damage--but more so whatever the hell liquid he had soaked the cotton in beforehand, which had her convinced her skin was actually on fire.
He didn’t lie, it only took him about sixty seconds to finish his gruesome task. Bill made the first forty of the those seconds with benign writhing and retching against the bite-block. The last twenty of those seconds saw her vomiting over the side of the bench once again.
The Doctor finished scrubbing the lacerations, discarded his tools, pressed a new towel to the now-fresh-edged wounds, and started to reassuringly pet Bill’s arm. “Easy, easy, all done. Breathe, Bill, try to relax.”
She devolved into dry-heaving, and eventually into just panting for air; Nardole stood over her head, resting his hands on her shoulders, the Doctor knelt beside her, one hand on her arm, one still gently soaking up the lazy stream of blood from the wounds. The Doctor eventually asked, “You alright?”
“Fat lotta good these were,” Bill lazily brandished the forearm that had the medicated patches, “What the hell was in that test tube?”
The Doctor swiped the sweat off her forehead with his sleeve and gave his signature right-sided, devious grin, “Peroxide two-point-oh. More or less.” He waved his sonic screwdriver over her again with his free hand, “Keep awake for now. Nardole, go make some tea, with ginger for her.”
Nardole scooted away, the Doctor began replacing the now-empty bag of saline with a new one.
“Where did you go before?” Bill muttered suddenly.
“I said I would explain later.”
“It’s later now.”
“Would you like me to walk you through how wrong you are?”
Bill refused to be playful, “You didn’t hurt them, right?”
The Doctor chewed his bottom lip a little, “No.”
Bill couldn’t help but push a bit further, “You wouldn’t lie to me...would you?”
“There’s no right answer to that question, now is there?” In that he had a point; either claim honesty and rely on faith, or admit to being a liar and abandon trust. He laid the back of his hand on her forehead, letting his rhetorical question bench their conversation.
Bill sighed, and fell into a stint of silence while the Doctor busied himself with picking through the supply basket. “I’m going to give you an antimicrobial, a medicine, to help combat any residual organisms. You’re not fevered or showing signs of sepsis, but better safe than dead.”
“So help me god, if it’s another needle--”
“Relax, I’ll add it to your drip. It tastes of oranges.” He brandished a small, yellow-tinged vial.
“Oranges? Am I meant to drink the drip, or have you forgotten how humans work?” Bill teased, watching as he broke off the glass bulb at the end of the vial and twisted it into the port of the cannula in her arm.
“The drug just causes you to have a citrus taste in your mouth, it only lasts a few seconds. Be grateful you are not getting the Dijorean antitoxin, that one tastes very strongly of bicycle tire.” He smiled, broadly, though she wasn’t convinced that was a joke. “How do you feel?”
“Exhausted, and I could do with a toothbrush, but the pain is okay. M’I still bleeding?”
His hand had returned to resting on her belly nearly a minute prior. He glanced at the padding of towels and states matter-of-factly, “Not at a concerning rate. Get through that bag of saline, and I’ll re-check your blood pressure. I’ll close the wounds when you’re sedated. I have several salves for you to use, but I’m afraid it will still scar.”
She considered what he said for a moment before blowing out an animated breath, “Ah, well. Chicks dig scars, anyway, I suppose.” She didn’t say it flippantly, but she could see the guilt beginning to shine through on his face as he, too, began to realize she would carry a battlescar for the rest of her life from what was supposed to be a brilliant little trip to the beaches of the Aerial Seas, so he could show her how three moons could affect a single tide.
“You look sad.” She didn’t mean to say it. It flitted across her mind, and then naturally, for Bill, right out of her mouth. She wasn’t sorry she said it either, even though the briefest look of embarrassment followed on his face. The firelight was casting long shadows across the hills and valleys that surrounded his eyes. He looked...old. Which was silly to think, her teacher always looked old, hell he was old, millenia old, but this was different. This was worn, the kind of age that was inflicted by experience rather than time.
“I just watched my student get semi-impaled by an evolutionized beast of prey on an alien planet I took her to. Am I not allowed some grief?” He spoke softly, glancing down at the dried blood painting his hands. There was no way to explain to her what it was like to anticipate loss, constantly. That’s all this life had become, a cycle of adventure and guilt. Surprisingly he admitted, “I think...I’m sorry for leaving earlier. I was upset, and somewhat irrational. I shouldn’t have gone.”
Nardole shuffled back into the room carrying a tea tray as Bill searched for a response.
The Doctor shook his head and muttered down to her with a coy half-grin, “Anyway, you’re the one who should be sad: you’ve got Nardole as a nurse.”
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She had been in and out of sleep for an hour or so, if she’d had to guess. She had a watery memory of the Doctor scanning her with the screwdriver as Nardole helped her finish her dreadful ginger tea--she hated ginger, but the cyborg promised it would help settle her stomach. The Doctor then knelt beside her, saying she was going to sleep, and she’d feel better in a little while. Then, wordlessly, somewhat unceremoniously, he connected another vial to her drip, and she had the strange, unwelcome taste of grass in her mouth, then...nothing.
For a little while, or a long while, or no while at all, she couldn’t be sure. She semi-awakened to a lanky figure standing with his back to her, staring into the hearth.
When she blinked there was Nardole, a cold hand on her cheek, assessing for fever.
Then again, there was no one in front of her, but the distant sound of pages of a book being turned somewhere else in the room. And now…
Her eyes were closed, but she wasn’t quite sleeping, when he placed a pair of fingers along her throat, and it was quiet. He was taking her pulse, she knew, but Bill was overcome with how intimate the moment was. Not intimate in a depraved way, but in a way that she felt she was seeing a depth of care that not many others were awarded. The Doctor cared, she knew, God, his love of others would be the death of him, but to be receiving the focused custody she was now, she felt, well, special.
She feels his hand migrate from her neck to her forehead. The interaction is brief, his palm skates across her forehead and fondly pats her hair. She couldn’t help but open her eyes.
He lets his hand fall back and gracefully retracts it into his pocket, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“S’alright,” she mumbled.
Bill makes a small move to sit up, stalled by the blunted tugging sensation throughout her abdomen, and the Doctor shook his head disapprovingly, “Can’t you just lie still?”
“Uncomfortable,” was the only word she offered. She was doing what she could to not seem as exhausted as she felt. He moves to help her as she weakly sits up on her elbows. She was grimy, still wearing her bloodied denim jacket over what was now an impromptu crop-top, the lower portion of her torso concealed in a huge rectangle of gauze. Weakly kicking off the comforter, she could see the waistband of her jeans was ruined with blood as well.
Whoa, did she feel weird. Aside from the emptiness of vomiting and the after-effects of whatever that garden-tasting sedative was, she was aware that she was hurt, or at least should be hurting, but the magical plasters must be doing their jobs. The Doctor had done, what he considered, an outstanding job of suturing her back together in what had been four separate layers--muscle, fascia, subcutaneous, and finally skin--but regardless, she was still missing large lengths of muscle and vessels she had originally been held up with, and all the medically advances at their disposal regardless, would not be a perfect substitute.
“Easy, easy,” The Doctor glances behind him to his assistant, who was cleaning the trail of what Bill comes to realize is her blood that tracts from the TARDIS door to across the office floor. “Nardole?”
After much deliberation between the pair, Nardole made a pallet of quilts on the floor in front of the fireplace, and he and the Doctor carefully moved Bill onto it. It was somewhat adorable, at least she thought so, them arguing over how much more comfort the floor would offer over the thin cushion of the otherwise wooden bench. She tried to insist that she was fine where she was, but was secretly relieved once they’d transferred her so that she was no longer draped over the hard, hardly cushioned table.
As Nardole melted into the background to start scrubbing the residual blood off the pew, the Doctor took extreme care in adjusting her position amongst the pile of cloth, covering her with another comforter, fiddling with the drip.
She watched him through bleary eyes, “Why don’t you take deeper breaths?”
He raised his eyebrow, “I beg your pardon?”
“Two hearts and all, you’ve gotta run through more oxygen. You do, like, breathe oxygen, right? It’s not like nitrogen or wha’ever else we have floating ‘round?”
He smiled, even chuckled, “Yeah, Bill, I breathe oxygen.”
“So was the sky on your planet blue, then?”
“What?” He knelt beside her once more, even though his knees were starting to ache from the position.
“You must’a had air like Earth’s; was your sky blue? Or did you not have a sun?”
He laughed, a hearty laugh, and settled even further down on the floor, so that he was seated parallel to her body, his impossibly long legs stretch out in front of him and disappearing in her peripheral vision.
“Wha’?” she asked innocently as he watched her face with something she could not place. Fondness? No, it was more like...familiarity.
“I thought my mind was busy. Were you always so curious?”
“It’s kinda like, I dunno, being in a library, I guess,” she trailed off as she looked up at the rafters, “Big, beautiful, historic library and there’s only one book. One book that has absolutely everything in it, more pages than I could ever read in a lifetime, not in a dozen lifetimes. And I can hold it, and smell it, and I can open it, but I can still only read one page at a time.” She looks back at him, her eyes somewhat watery, “Can you imagine? Holding the book of everything, and knowing it has everything ever written down, and knowing there’s not time enough to read it all? I just...I want to turn every page. Know what I mean?” she chuckled to herself, “Sound like some nutter.”
“Actually, I think you’re a little more intuned than most, Bill.”
She smiled cheesily, “Plus, I am a little more pharmaceutically enhanced at the moment.” She raised her arm weakly under the comforter, referring to the medicinal patches still leeched onto her forearm.
The Doctor smiled somewhat sadly, and says in a low and serious voice, “I’m sorry you were hurt today.”
“Wasn’t your fault. I should’ve stayed off that tribal--thingy--wha’ever it was.”
“No, I should have never--”
“Don’t you dare finish wha’ever rubbish you were about to say,” she cuts him off, “I didn’t listen, I got hurt. That’s that. I should be thanking you. I owe you my life.”
“Hardly.”
“I don’t mean from today. I mean from everything else. You’ve handed me the book.”