Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The room is spinning. Or maybe he is. He’s not entirely sure. He’d woken up feeling groggy, not entirely sure what had happened to make him feel so completely awful. As he comes back to himself, he slowly becomes aware of the agony lancing through his wrists, down to his shoulders. He’s hanging. Presumably from his wrists, though his eyes are closed so he’s not entirely sure.

Oh! Well, that solves his previous problem, if his eyes are closed the room can’t be spinning, he is. As if he’s in a microwave. Now that would be something new.

He tries to get his feet beneath him, finding instead that they’re hanging, just barely able to touch the floor with the tips of his converse. Assuming they were still on. He hoped so, he liked those shoes. They feel like they’re still on which is something he’ll hold onto until his eyes clear enough to see.

He scrabbles for a little bit, trying to regain his footing only to find the ground still, annoyingly, just out of reach. Eyes open a little, searching for something but his neck is so tired the most he can see is his chest that it’s resting on and the cement floor beneath him where his blurry feet are still trying to gain purchase on the floor. As his vision clears slightly, he can make out specks of blood which sends shivers down his spine. If anything makes him realise how deeply in trouble he is, it’s that.

He can feel it now. The warm trickle of blood dribbling from his wrists where they’re attached to something high above. His arms taking all of his weight, sharp metal of, annoyingly, handcuffs, biting into his wrists. It would explain the pain, and the blood. Unfortunately, it explains nothing else.

“Ah, he wakes.”

He startles, a jolt running through his body at the sudden noise breaking the silence.

He searches his mouth for words, but all that escapes his lips is a pained groan as the previous jolt returns in a deep shudder and he loses his carefully gained balance on the tips of his toes and falls back, heavily onto his aching wrists.

A hand fists in the hair at the nape of his neck. Grabbing at the shorter hairs and dragging his head back. Pulling his vision from the ground to roof in a matter of seconds and then the room really is spinning in front of him.

When it clears, he’s greeted by a completely normal face in front of him and he is, frankly, rather disappointed. Having been expecting some aggressively hideous monster, or something. But this woman is as normal as they come. Her hair, an obnoxious yellow, as if she’d neglected the toner after bleaching. Her eyes a hard steel as she smiled at him with perfect teeth.

“Hello,” She murmurs, softly, menacingly, silkily. Words evade him, he’s going on a tangent. “It’s so nice to finally meet you.”

He searches for words again, but she places a finger against his lips, “shh, don’t speak. You’re not here to talk.”

He blinks blearily at her, a noise of confusion making its way past her finger. She tilts her head, then takes her free hand and cups his chin, running a thumb along his cheek. Then she wipes the line of blood that had drooled down his chin and brings it close to her face. Then she licks it, a frown on her face as he shivers in her grip. Flexing his hands in their metal binds and searching for an out. Wracking his aching brain for the reason he was here. How did he get here? What had happened? Where was he?

“Blood is fairly humanoid, shame. Means we need to run more tests before we can legally claim you.”

He furrows his brows, claim? This can’t be earth. Can it?

She takes the clump of hair at the nape of his neck and pulls, inciting a gasp of pain as the strands pull and she moves them to her face to study them.

“Normal hair. But you came here in a flying blue box.”

Oh! He had come in the TARDIS, he remembers now, the controls going a little bit wack after leaving from Messaline. He’d had it land once stable and to Donna and Martha’s dismay, sent it off again when he realised, immediately, that the place was hostile.

Then he’d woken up here.

“Who are you?” He asks, except his head has flopped back to his chest now that there’s nothing supporting it, so it comes out more like “oo you?”

The woman gets his point.

“I should ask you the same thing. Flying in our skies, are you using some kind of visual hologram to hide your true appearance?”

“What?”

“Are you cloaking your appearance? I promise if you drop the façade immediately, no more harm than necessary will come to you in order to prove your inhumanness.”

He finally manages to raise his head without assistance, the world spinning around him as he takes a strong grip on the chains binding his arms above him. Hoisting himself a little so the weight is taken a little off of his wrists.

“I am not cloaking any appearance. I’m…” He swallows the lie, “I’m not an alien.”

“Then what was the box?”

He tries to get his brain working at full function again, his sluggish thoughts not quite working. “An experiment. I’m an inventor.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Did you drug me?” his voice is still slurred, and he feels more tired than he’s ever felt in his life.

“No more than we do any other aliens. Common side effects include drowsiness, memory loss, muscle weakness. Etc. If you were human.” She narrowed her eyes, and his blood ran cold. “It would have killed you.” She smiles. She cups his chin again. “And I would like to know why.”

He strains to gain balance, growing terror threatening to overwhelm him. “And that leads me to believe that you’re lying to me.”  It’s fine. Everything is fine, he just needs to hold out until Martha and Donna find him.

“I’m not lying.” He manages after a moment, “I have a really strong metabolism, s’all.”

The woman hummed. “I’m not legally allowed to hurt a human. Purposely at least. I’m giving you one chance to confess to alien charges, otherwise you give me no choice but to test your bone structure, etcetera to confirm your biology.”

He considers this for a long time. If he confesses, they’ll ask what kind of alien he is, and he isn’t sure where he is so he’s not entirely sure how safe it would be to disclose such information.

“And if I am an alien?” He asks.

The woman takes a step back, “foreign entities are ruled illegal on planet earth by bill five million. This is punishable by death after trial, however due to the alien protection act that hasn’t been overruled, it’s illegal to murder you.” She smiles cynically, “we’ve resolved this issue through conditioning and integrating.”

He didn’t have to consider it this time. The answer was obvious, claim being human and drag out the time it would take them to ‘integrate’ him, giving him more time to think up an escape plan. Or for Donna and Martha to find him. Whichever came first.

He shifted his weight, met the woman’s eyes, and smiled a winning grin, “better get testing then.”

The chain holding him up dropped and he found himself hitting the cement floor rather painfully. A yell of agony, maybe his? Then he was being dragged to his knees, cold metal circling around his wrists and forcing them behind his back. A hand cupped his chin and forced him to meet the woman’s eyes.

“I was hoping you’d say that.” She said, her eyes stone cold and he shivered, hoping, desperately that he’d made the right decision.

They dragged him to their next location. He could’ve walked but he was certain they would’ve just kicked his legs from beneath him in order to make themselves feel better. Bigger. Powerful. Besides, he was tired. He’d just spent how long hanging from his wrists? Hours? Days?

God, he hopes it wasn’t days. That would really bum him out too. The longer it’s been the longer it’s taken Martha and Donna to find him which means the longer it will continue to take them to find him.

He wills his eyes to focus as he’s brought into a new room. Stark white with hooks on each wall and in the centre, a table. He had to force himself not to struggle as he was dragged over to it. It was hard, metal, with numerous buckles and straps bolted in various places. Donna will find him, he had to believe in that. No point making whatever this was worse for himself.

But he could stall.

They forced him onto the table, his spine pressing painfully against the metal. Blurry humans moved about above him, passing straps over his chest, hips, arms, wrists, knees, ankles. Felt like overkill but from their perspective, he couldn’t blame them. Here he was, an ‘unknown entity’ breaking into their peace in a flying blue box.

He catches sight of the woman’s face. The familiar one, the one he recognises.

“Hey!” He calls, catching her attention, “surely if harming a human is illegal, this comes under that, right?”

A strap is passed over his mouth, tightly, pressing his lips closed and cutting him off. He grunts indignantly as another is roughly passed over his neck. Twisting his wrists, he finds himself well and truly trapped.

The woman flashes a piece of paper at him, the size of a legal document. “I have an alien investigation permit. Part of the job here at FECOP.”

It’s a terrible acronym and he intends to voice this but the most he can get past his trapped lips is a grunt. He squints at the paper and is horrified to realise that it is blank.

“Foreign Entity Containment Operation for Peace.” The woman says without him asking, not that he’s able to anyway. “I’m legally obligated to investigate any foreign forces for the protection of this planet.”

But…

It’s blank…

A shiver runs down his spine as he realises it’s psychic paper. This isn’t actually legal…

“Only thing I can’t do is submit you for conditioning. That requires proof of alien biology, or DNA, big words. It’s okay if you don’t understand.”

He rolls his eyes and tries not to feel offended… Or look offended. He wasn’t really in the position to be offending anyone.

“You see, the problem is. If you are alien. Mr… oh, whatever. The moment you landed here, you gave up all of your rights. Under the Earth protection act, after a war a hundred year back alien lifeforms were deemed unsafe and, as a deterrence to potential future attacks, a lore was passed and aliens, from here thereon, are sentenced to lifelong slavery. You are allowed to take this decision to court; however, you are not entitled to a lawyer or any kind of defendant. If you have any complaints to make about your treatment, please state it now.”

He furrows his brow, she’s reading from some kind of statement, a speech, a police officer officer? Kind of like that one from the twenty first century, the right to remain silent and all that jazz.

Second… B… was he even listing numbers? He can’t remember. The right to make a complaint was redundant considering they’d taken that right away from him.

“Nothing?” She smiles, “right, we’ll get started.”

‘Getting Started’ it appeared was code for agonising pain. Once the woman had sent everyone out of the room, reassuring them all that all she needed to do was take some blood tests and do some examination and it was against privacy laws for more than one of them to be present.

He might have believed it if he wasn’t strapped to a table, stripped of the decency to talk, or reason. The icing on the cake was when the woman flicked a switch and then electricity was coursing through the straps and into his body.

He convulsed, his entire body contorting in agony, going rigid from the electricity. There was nowhere to run, he couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. It was everywhere, every strap clamping him to the table.

Then, all of a sudden. It ended.

His muscles relaxed aside from the occasional twitch from remaining voltage. He heaved in desperate gasps of air, hands clenching tightly into fists because it hurt so, so, so much.

Even his vision was failing him, blurring into blobs of light and dark. He can’t see, he can’t see.

Something cold cups his cheek and he flinches violently, feeling his limbs bruise as they jerk against his restraints. The one across his neck strangling him as leftover electricity sends a jerk through it.

“It’s okay. It’s okay.” A soothing voice spills over his ears as his vision slowly clears. A hand shaped blur flickers across it.

“How many fingers am I holding up?”

He has to squint, his vision still cloudy but he thinks he can see three. He goes to say this but there’s something preventing movement in his lips and lower jaw. In fact, everything feels numb. All that escapes his lips is a long keening noise that he thinks is a cry of pain.

The face hovering over him smiles as his vision clears some more and he remembers where he is. He rails against the restraints, sending his best glare her way. Feeling more and more like he’d made a terrible misjudgement. He’d thought testing meant examinations, blood tests maybe. He could last that…

Whatever this was. It was not that.

“Nothing? Mmm.” She writes something down and he is so going to throttle something the minute he gets out of this.

The strap across his mouth loosens and then it’s gone, and he can talk, he can bargain, he can get out of this.

His jaw cramps and yet again, all that escapes is a thin wail.

There’re fingers again, yes, definitely three. He’s sure of it.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” The woman asks again, and he can move his lips, he can talk.

“Three.” He croaks out, desperately. “Please, I’ll leave. You’ll never see me ever again. Please, just let me go.”

He’s not sure how legible his words are, they’re slurred and desperate and he’s scared. He’s scared and he doesn’t want to be scared and all his thoughts are running together, and the woman is smiling again and there has to be something he can offer her. Some job he can do, anything. He’s the Doctor, humans love him… occasionally. He’s useful. He can help!

“And waste a good million dollars?” The woman asks, “unlikely. You see, that amount of voltage would have killed a human and yet, you’re still alive.”

The logic is ridiculous. “That kind of electricity would have killed anything.” He counters.

“So why didn’t it kill you?”

He rolls his head backwards and groans, the burnt flesh of his wrists and other bare skin aching. “I can’t… I don’t know…” He trails off before he reveals too much. He can’t tell them he’s a Time Lord without knowing where he is, what’s happened. He can’t risk damaging the timeline. Ruining a fixed point.

Then it clicks.

“You… already know.”

She quirks an eyebrow. “Know what?”

“If that voltage would have killed anyone else, you surely wouldn’t want to risk losing someone for… what do you call it? Conditioning? Therefore, you must know who I am already.” He grunts in pain as he shifts slightly. “Funny though, I don’t believe I’ve ever been here.”

The woman smiles. “The Doctor. You’ve got me. I suppose.”

He smiles, wincing. “So why?”

“You need to admit it on tape so I can do this legally.”

“Legally? What about this is legal?”

“You’re an Alien, it is legal.”

It dawns on him, “you have no proof.”

“I’m getting my proof.”

“That won’t hold up in court,” he argues, “you can’t justify torture on the account that I may have been an Alien.”

“But if you admit to it…”

“I’m not.”

“Not what?”

“An Alien.” He’s getting frustrated. He’s in pain. He wants out. But annoyingly enough, he’s not certain if what comes after would be any better.

Please, Donna, Martha. Any time now.

He hates relying on others. He’s the one supposed to be saving others. Not the other way round. Gosh that was a lot of others…

He’s getting off track.

“I’m not an Alien.” He says, slowly.

“What’s your name then?”

“The Doctor.”

“Your real name. Your human name.”

He winces, wracking his brain. “John Smith.”

“Bullshit.”

He’s playing with fire. “Prove it.”

She grins and it sends ice down his spine. “I will. You just need to cooperate.”

“Wait!” He’s searching his memory. Before the shock. Something she said. “You said I have the right to make a complaint about my treatment! Well, here it is, I’m making a complaint, who can I direct it to?”

Her smile widens, “me.”

Then she’s forcing the strap across his mouth again and stealing his words.

He jerks, panic taking over. Not certain he can survive another bought of electricity, but he’s lost his opportunity to voice that. The bonds are impossible, he can’t move. He can’t move. He can’t move.

She stoops over him, and he can’t move.

“All this stops the minute you give in.” She whispers into his ear, far too close. He wants her away from him. He wants Donna. But that’s not fair. She might end up in a worse situation. Dead. Even. He won’t force this upon her. He can escape on his own.

Hopefully…

“Nothing to say?”

He glares at her.

She shrugs, “This is for your own good, Doctor. It’s this or death. I’ll let you speak after a few minutes. See if you’re feeling more cooperative then.”

She moves out of his vision; he hears the flicking of a switch and then his body is on fire.

Chapter Text

In the end he doesn’t give in. He’s not that daft. It’s when his heart stops and he goes into cardiac arrest that the stupid woman decides to resuscitate him and finds his two hearts. Apparently, that’s enough to prove him an alien and the torture stops.

Kind of.

He’s not sure how long he’d slipped into the endless nothing of death. Wondering why he hadn’t regenerated yet. He’d had this happen before, with Martha back in the hospital. Died of blood loss. Martha had resuscitated him. But he’d never died of electrocution before. He imagined this was what electric chair victims felt like and immediately felt a pang of sympathy for them.

He’d seen it happen. He’d just never imagined himself in such a place.

Then all of a sudden everything came rushing back to him. The agony, the jittery jerkiness of his limbs, bruising against his restraints. The pressure of the strap on his mouth was, thankfully gone and he could heave in desperate breaths of life and taste the mouthful of blood that had introduced itself to his tongue when the voltage had caused his jaw to clamp shut and teeth to go down on his tongue. His gasping breaths very quickly turned into pained whimpers and, although he couldn’t see anything through watering eyes, over the buzz in his ears he could hear whisperings between a woman and a newcomer he hadn’t heard before.

The buttons on his tattered suit shirt were pulled open and something cold was pressed against his chest. A spark of dread shivered its way down his spine, but he didn’t have the energy to speak when the coldness moved to the other side of his chest and inevitably found his second heart.

More murmuring, if he could reach his sonic screwdriver, they would all be toast. Every single one of them.

His sonic.

Where was it?

He can’t remember if he’d even had it on him when he’d left the TARDIS and sent Martha and Donna far away from this place. God Martha and Donna. They can’t fly the TARDIS.

His fingers clench as he realises the slope of his shitty situation has suddenly gotten a lot deeper.

Either he gets himself out of this or it’s the waiting game to see if either of his friends are able to find him and get him out.

More cold against his chest and then there’s the sound of fingers snapping in front of his eyes and his vision clears enough to see that stupid woman hovering over him with a stupid smile on her face.

She has a notebook in her hands, he’s pinned down, and he can’t move.

“So, Doctor.” She pronounces it with an exaggeration of the two syllables. Along the lines of ‘Dock, Ter.’ “How would I spell that?”

He doesn’t bother speaking. His jaw hurts. He wants his TARDIS.

“Dee Oh See? Or does it have a Kay?”

She places a hand on his hip, slipping a finger beneath the buckle, pulling it and letting it snap back. He winces.

“Do I need to offer you some encouragement?” She asks, “I would hate to spell your name wrong, might be the last time its written.” Her eyes glance sideways to where he’s certain the switch to the electricity resides. His hands clench tighter as he swallows around the strap on his throat.

“Doctor.” He croaks, a spasm of pain jerking through his jaw and he raises his eyes to the ceiling. “One See, two Ohs.”

Her eyes crinkle as her smile widens, pushing her face back into his vision and placing a hand over his bound one to balance. “Wonderful. So that’s Dee, Oh, See, Tee, Oh, Ar?”

He blinks slowly before giving a small, jerky nod. As far as the strap will allow.

“Give us a verbal answer for the camera, Doctor.”

Phantom pains surge through his skin and he licks his charred lips with his bruised tongue. “Yes.” He all but spits.

“Awesome! Now, I’ve run a series of tests on your physicality, Doctor.” She blinks down at her notebook, “we’ve been unable to identify your blood type, but it’s similar enough to that of Oh negative that we’ve decided to write that one down. I’ll grab another sample later on to send off to the techs. Bone structure is identical to that of a human. Now, what has proven you’re an alien to me is the fact that during heartbeat checks and such. I’ve found that you have two.”

Yep, there it was. Two hearts.

Traitor. He thinks. His hearts beat solemnly, he hopes it’s in apology.

“Why do you have two hearts, Doctor?”

This is stupid, but he can see the red blink of a camera in the corner of his eye. Maybe it’s live, maybe if he yells for help, they’ll hear him.

Or maybe it will simply make things worse. God, mankind. They’re exhausting.

“Why do you think?” He asks.

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”

“Why do you have one heart?” He croaks, “same as that. I’d be dead without them.”

Her hand tightens on his wrist, he can feel his pulse through her fingers. “Why do you have a second? Is it a birth defect? Alien Biology? Difference in species?”

“Birth defect.” He says swiftly, taking the lie in stride. “Had multiple surgeries. It mimics the same action as a normal heart, but it doesn’t do anything. Doctors said it was too dangerous to remove though.”

“Interesting.” She said, “and where are you from, Doctor?”

“London.” He says, that’s where he spends the most time anyway, might as well.

“Do you have a birth certificate?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have it on you?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He lifts his head up and lets it drop back onto the metal in frustration, the action hurts his head and his neck, and it achieves nothing. He does it anyway. “It burned; I don’t have it anymore.”

“But it should still be in government systems. Right? I can’t find any record of a ‘The Doctor’ anywhere on file. You don’t exist.” She removes her hand from his wrist and instead uses it to press against his throat. It’s gentle, doesn’t impact his breathing any more than the strap across it already does. But it’s threatening, it will tighten if he doesn’t choose his words carefully.

“I will ask you again, where are you from?”

He goes silent. He may be stupid, but he knows when to stop. This is one of those times.

“I’ve taken a DNA test, Doctor. It doesn’t match any of the Alien lifeforms we have on file and trust me. We have a lot. But it also doesn’t match any humans either. You’re one of a kind.”

A long pause, her grip tightens, and he swallows heavily. He’s not scared, he’s worried, yes, but he’s not scared. He’s never scared.

“What is your species name?”

It gets tighter, he’s really starting to worry now. But if they don’t have Time Lord on file, then he’s not going to let them have it on file either. Could interrupt a timeline. What if he’s in a time where Time Lords aren’t known anymore and his existence in their minds causes a war. Another Time War. Him, against the world. He doesn’t want that. No one wants that.

He’s getting off track. He can’t breathe.

He can give her one thing though. It won’t mean anything. It doesn’t exist anymore. They won’t even be able to make the connection between it and his ‘species’.

“Gallifrey.” He says, his words strangled and practically unheard because her grip is so tight on his throat.

It loosens and he breathes in a long, long breath of relief. “Where’s that? Not Earth, obviously.”

“I don’t know.” He whispers, “somewhere?”

“So, whatever you are, you live somewhere in space. Am I right?”

He doesn’t answer, she’s got him in a stand still.

“Say it for the camera, Doctor.” Then she moves out of his vision, the red light flicks off and he has just enough time to wonder what happened, if its Donna and Martha come to save him, before his bonds light up with electricity and his body is on fire again.

He contorts in agony, limbs seizing, cramping, he can’t move.

It only lasts a few seconds, barely anything.

When it stops, all he can emit is a strangled yell of pain that is left over from his intake of breath that he took before it started.

“Whoops.” The woman says, not sounding sorry at all. “Forgot to cover your mouth.” She wrings her fingers, and he can tell she’s nervous. It gives him hope, maybe if he yells, someone will hear him.

The light of the camera blinks back on beside him and he loses all hope. They’re filming him but it’s not live. Leaving it free for them to cut and paste his words as much as they like. Either way, he’s doomed.

“Where is Gallifrey?”

He blinks slowly, a shudder running through him. “Gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Nowhere.” He gives up, “just… Gone.”

She writes this down in her stupid notebook and he grits his teeth. Straining at his bonds and wanting nothing more than to give up on the human race altogether. Like he should have a long time ago.

“What happened to it?”

He squeezes his eyes shut; he doesn’t want to go there. She can’t make him.

“Don’t make me be mean again, Doctor. I don’t enjoy this.”

He reopens his eyes, sending a hateful glare her way because she’s smiling. She’s lying and she’s smiling and this, this is humanity. The race he loved so much, tried so hard to save. Wherever he is in time, he’s not certain he wants it to happen. Maybe they’re not worth it.

“War.” He spits, “what else could have happened?”

Her eyes narrow, but her smile widens. “So. Where are the rest of you? The Gallifreyans?”

“Why is this relevant?” He demands, why does it matter. You’ve already gotten your proof, what more do you want from me?”

“Doctor.”

“No!” He raises his voice, hoping someone, anyone might be able to hear him. “Use your torture device again, I dare you. Let the whole world know you’re torturing innocents, using it against humans that have done nothing. I’ll scream louder this time. Someone’ll come running.”

“I can cut that little speech out; I hope you know.”

His chest heaves, “I’m not an Alien. I have two hearts and I’m from a planet called Gallifrey. It’s Earth adjacent.”

“Doctor. I’m cutting your cute little speech out. No one can hear you either. You didn’t yell loud enough.”

He’s not resorting to screaming just yet. But he will, someone’s got to know what these people are doing.

“I’ll ask you one more time, what happened to the Gallifreyans?”

“No.”

“Doctor.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Don’t make me hurt you.’

He sends his most hateful glare her way, relishing the flash of terror that shows in her eyes because she should be scared. The moment he gets out of this place, he’s burning it down. Freeing all the aliens she allegedly has held down here.

“Do it.” He spits. “Kill me, at least I’ll die knowing you’ve broken the law and this whole organisation will get torn down.”

“I’ll dispose of you quietly.” She growls.

“I promise you, that is going to be very difficult.” He shifts, breathing in a sharp breath that very well may be his last. “Do your coworkers know what you’re doing down here? Or is that why you send them away, so you can edit the video down in a way that makes me look like the bad alien and they move on with their lives?”

“What. Happened.”

“Are these rooms soundproof?” He’s yelling, pretty certain this may be his last chance to get someone to hear him. Anyone. If they find him, they’ll find the rest. He’s not afraid to die… Not now.

Not ever.

He’s yelling out everything he can now and she’s rushing at him, fumbling at the gag because he’s going to ruin her life. That’s his final job.

She gives up on reattaching the gag to the table and pulls a different strap instead. It’s the one around his neck. She pulls it tighter, and his airways cut off completely, sending his brain into overdrive and cutting off his yells for help. They turn into wheezing until she finally swaps out the strangulation for the strap over his lips. It’s tighter than before now too. His lip splits from the rough application but surely someone heard him. They’ll come running, any minute now.

“That’s quite enough of that now, Doctor. You’re being ridiculous.”

The strap on his neck loosens and he can breathe through his nose. It’s not enough, but it’s something. At least.

She switches the camera off and stalks back over to him. “I’ll pass the time taking proper tests to send into the operatives. When you’re ready to talk again give me a signal.”

Then she pulls out a needle and he begins to feel incredibly unlucky. The kind of unlucky you feel when you stub your toe against a wall, and it doesn’t just hurt. It breaks.

Maybe that’s too niche, but he does have that kind of luck. Unusual, bad. But never the same as anyone else’s.

It goes into the side of his neck. It’s massive and it goes in deep and the entire time he feels like he’s suffocating, the pressure was awful, and it lingered. As if she was enjoying the look on his face. He couldn’t even voice his discomfort, the groan locked behind his closed lips. If he was anywhere, this was definitely a time he hadn’t been yet.

Something must have happened to the timeline. Or this period of time doesn’t last long because he’s one hundred percent certain that this has never happened in his 900 years of travelling. Either that or he’s hit some alternate parallel universe. Or, once again, another earth adjacent place that everyone looks and thinks like humans, but they actually aren’t.

That would make more sense than a mucked-up timeline.

When the needle was withdrawn, he heaved a breath out he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Pressure that was building vanished and he could do nothing but watch as the woman poured the blood she’d removed from his neck into a cylindrical vial. She frowned before looking back up at him.

“It needs to be full.”

She wasn’t sorry. That was the problem with humans, they never apologised, never admitted to their faults. Just kept going in hopes they would solve themselves.

They wanted more than they were capable of having and he was tired of it.

She inserts the syringe more than he count after that, and he has two hearts to pump out blood, but that vial was huge and he’s still not entirely certain it needs to be full. She’s just taunting him. He feels like crap.

She pats him condescendingly on the cheek and he raises an eyebrow as she stares, seemingly intrigued into the glass bottle of red liquid. He tries not to care. Tries to be beyond caring that a world that is unaware of his presence is now able to use his blood for their own purposes. And who knows what they might discover about what it can do. He doesn’t even know half of the qualities his own blood possesses. He left Gallifrey too early, didn’t stay to figure it out…

She places the blood on a metal table a few metres to his left and he decides, firmly, that he cannot let that blood leave this room. The results could be catastrophic.

Knowing how obsessed humans were with immortality he was one hundred percent certain that his blood was like a gold mine for the timeline to progress way too fast.

“Wonderful, Doctor.” She says, “very good. I’m surprised how well you’re faring considering that was a lot of blood. Sorry, it was necessary.”

He’s really quite certain that it was not.

“Now, are you ready to answer my questions yet?”

He stares at her. Blinks slowly and clenches and unclenches his fists.

“Wonderful! I’ll restart the camera.”

He sighs through his nose, frustration building. He’s been still too long, he needs to move, he’s uncomfortable.

She removes the gag, and he breathes in a deep, unimpeded breath.

“Now, where were we?” She looks down at her notebook and he works on his restraints. They’re leather, however there must be some kind of metal running through them otherwise the voltage wouldn’t work. He breathes in deeply through his nose and then out through his mouth. She hasn’t turned it on again… Yet. He’s okay. He’s not dead. Martha and Donna will be looking for him. He can rely on them. He trusts them.

Doesn’t he?

“Oh yes! You were telling me about your planet, Gallifrey?” She pauses for effect? Waiting for him to answer? He’s not sure. “You said it was gone, does that mean your people are gone too? The Gallifreyans? Are they dead?”

God, he’s going to burn this place down the minute he’s out. He’s not one to kill anyone but he really is considering it.

He’d never…

But…

No.

“Doctor.” The woman warned, “answer me, please.”

He scoffs, the ‘please’ grating on his nerves. As if she was giving him some kind of choice.

“They’re gone.” He croaks, throat sore from his previous strangulation incident. He considers yelling again but his previous bought had done nothing. Maybe no one could hear him. Maybe no one cares.

The woman smiles, “wonderful, so from this, it could be deduced that you’re the last your kind. Correct?”

He closes his eyes, blinking back tears as his head fills with unwanted images of Gallifrey’s fall. Gone. Because of him. His people, his family, his friends.

He envisions the Master, bleeding out in his arms, refusing to regenerate and suddenly can empathise because he didn’t want to go on. Immortality was forever.

He had friends, but he was so alone.

“Doctor.”

“You’re really overusing that.” He mumbles, He’s so tired of hearing his name. His chosen one.

“Doctor.” She emphasises it now.

“Fine. Yes.”

She gives him a look of triumph, “so. You’re something that lives in outer space. You have two hearts, different blood. You took a higher voltage than any other life form we’ve tested like a champ. You are the last of your kind. And you’re still insisting that you’re not an Alien?”

He’s backed into a corner.

Metaphorically of course. He’s actually strapped to a table.

“Doctor.” He hates the way she says his name. Like it isn’t his. “Are you an alien?”

He considers this for a long time. On one hand, it’d be a change from the table and the electrocution. On the other hand, he’s not a huge fan of some things the woman had said previously. ‘Conditioned’, ‘integrated’, and ‘slavery’ were just to name a few.

“I mean.” He starts but she cuts him off.

“It’s a yes or no question.” Her hand hovers menacingly over what he very quickly realises the voltage button for his cuffs. He stiffens, stopping the flash of fear from showing on his face and instead fixes it in something he might describe as indifference.

“Where’s my coat?” He asks after a moment, “I was wearing it when I landed, what did you do to it?”

He makes a quick check of his wardrobe, his tattered blue suit, red converse, no coat.

“Janis-” He cuts himself off, that would give him away, wherever he was, it was the future and Janis Joplin died probably hundreds of years ago. “Someone very dear to me gave me that coat, I would hate if you ruined it.” He swallows around the lump and bruising in his throat. Gosh, he’s had that jacket for years…

“It’s away, Doctor. Evidence, now answer the question.”

It’s not that easy to answer a question when the only reward he’d receive for it was slavery and integration. He’s not looking forward to that. Really needs to stall for time. If they move him, he’s done for.

He stills for a moment, his TARDIS. She homes in on the key, he had the key on him when he’d landed…

Probably in evidence too.

“How…” He starts, eyes flickering nervously to her hand. “How do you even know who I am?”

He’s pushed too far. The button is pressed, and his body is contorting against his restraints again. Teeth clenched so hard he’s certain they’ll break. Agony making it’s way down his spine. His wrists are going to snap from the angle they strain against his bonds. If they're not broken already... Are they broken? He's not sure. All he can feel is pain. He can't localise it...

It’s not short this time either. His eyes are closed tightly enough that he can’t see anything but when it finally ends and his spine is left to thunk painfully back onto the table in the small leeway it was given to arc, the strap is back, firmly over his mouth.

She’d left it long enough to replace it, it’s presence traps the agonised whimper that he emits once he can breathe again.

He was sweating now, beads of it dripping through his hair. Another wave of blood has filled his mouth from his chewed tongue and now he’s certain he’s going to choke if he can’t spit it out or swallow it soon.

The cameras light is off, and the woman is sighing. Dragging a chair over and sitting down she stares at him.

God why is he the one feeling guilty for making her life difficult. She’s the one who strapped him to a table and shocked the life out of him.

If it happens again, he might just die. For real. Regeneration energy isn’t something he wants getting into the hands of these madmen.

“Family history.” She says after a moment, “couple centuries ago, my great, something, grandfather knew you. Became obsessed with finding you again. Ruined my entire family’s life when they finally had the sense to send him to the loony bin. But.” She paused, pulling her chair close enough to press a cold hand against his cheek, pushing his hair off his forehead and fiddling with the buckle of the gag.

“He wasn’t mad. He was right. Because here you are.” She leans forward and gently unbuckles the gag from his face. He shivers.

Then he chooses his words very carefully. “Whoever this man knew. I can promise you. It wasn’t me.”

“It was you.” She insists. “The Doctor.”

“John Smith.” He licks his lips, “My title is Doctor.”

“So, you’re going backwards on all you previous statements of your planet and people dying?”

God dammit. He lifts his head and lets it thunk back onto the table in frustration. “You people never give up, do you?”

“I do pride myself in my persistence. I got an award for how well I protect my planet from people like you.”

People like me?

“I have enough evidence to submit already. But I would hate to leave you rotting in a cell while they look it over and do all the paperwork. Doctor. You ruined my entire family reputation, but I’m trying to be nice. Move the process faster, all you have to do is plead guilty of being an alien and we can move forward to the next step.”

She stands. “Or I’ll just keep going with my previous method. It’s proven effective so far.” She smiles, "we'll just see who breaks first." The camera turns back on. 

“Are you an Alien.”

He takes in a deep breath. He really doesn’t think he’ll be able to survive another bought of electricity.

“Doctor.”

“Fine!” He jerks in the grip of the restraints, “I’m an ‘Alien’ from the planet Gallifrey. A planet that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“So, you’re the last of your kind?”

“Yes.” He spits.

“Anything else you want to tell me before your sentence is submitted?”

He doesn’t dignify her with a response, but she merely shrugs.

“No matter,” she says, “we’ll figure that out in post with DNA samples.”

The camera shuts off.

“Thank you, Doctor. You’ve been ever so helpful.” The camera squeaks as she removes it from where it’s mounted. Reapplies his gag and then locks the door behind herself. Leaving him alone.

Chapter Text

He wakes up in a cold sweat. Phantom pain running through his arms and the metallic taste of blood still lingering in his mouth. In fact, his entire mouth hurts, which is a testament to how tight his jaw had clenched from the aftershocks.

It’s cramping now and he squeezes his eyes closed until it passes. A wave of nausea passing over him as he tries to roll over, only to find that he’s still attached to that godforsaken table. Straps passing over every moveable joint in his body. The strap over his mouth, however, is gone. He licks his lips, they’re dry and he feels like crap.

He reopens his eyes. It’s dark and he shudders feeling the bruises marring his wrists twinge in pain.

The one thing he does know that is different now to when he’d first been awake.

He was alone.

This was good, this was very good. He could do alone. Alone meant he had time to think. Before, there was too much going on. But now. Now, he was in his element, alone.

In hindsight, that sounds rather depressing.

He shifts in his restraints, testing how loose they were. Trying, desperately not to let his confidence waver when he found that they were as immovable as before. He shivers in the cold of the room, suddenly hyperaware of his shirt, still unbuttoned and open to the stagnant air.

Despite the straps over his chest, hips, and knees, he’s able to shift himself ever so slightly so that he can reach his pocket with a finger. He’d been one hundred percent certain they’d taken his screwdriver, but now, he wasn’t quite sure. It had a perception filter on itself, quite like the TARDIS, however it wasn’t something he’d done to it. Rather something it had done to itself. As if, like the TARDIS again, the sonic was becoming sentient.

He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about the notion that his screwdriver was making its own decisions and upgrading itself. But for the moment he was increasingly glad because, even though its perception filter had shielded it from his own mind. He was certain there was something in his pocket.

His finger just managed to brush against something metal and it slid out. Much to his dismay, just out of reach of his straining fingers.

The strap on his neck prevented him from looking down at it, but if he strained his peripheral hard enough, he could see it. Just out of reach, as if it was taunting him.

This isn’t time for games. He scolded, do that any other day. Not now.

The sonic, remained stubbornly out of reach.

He cursed under his breath as his straining achieved nothing but a sore wrist and a headache.

He closed his eyes and breathed, slowly, trying to calm himself down before trying again. His finger brushed the end, just barely and he could reach it!

The door slammed open, light flooded over his unadjusted eyes, blinding him briefly and sending a jerk through his unsuspecting body. His hopeful finger, gripping the sonic turned into a curse as the flinch sent it spinning away, with a clatter, to the floor.

The woman from earlier, her hair now out and messy, as if she’d been asleep, was standing in the doorway. Her eyes narrow. She looked offended.

“What are you doing?” She demanded.

He stared at her. “What does it look like?”

“Don’t be smart with me, Doctor, what were you doing. My alarm went off.”

He thought for a moment. “Escaping.” He said simply. “Clearly, not very well.”

“Mmm.” She hummed, scanning the room and he was able to thank his sentient screwdriver for giving itself its own perception filter because even he, briefly, had forgotten about it.

She seemed satisfied after a moment, tension leaving her body, and with it, he was able to calm down slightly too. The threat of electrocution was now gone, and he relaxed, ever so slightly.

She strode forward, closing the door behind herself and instantly he was on edge again.

Don’t trip on the sonic. He begged silently.

She tripped on the sonic, it rolled beneath her foot. She did not, however, fall over. Instead grabbing onto the nearest object to steady herself.

She studied the floor, the perception filter useless now because she knew it was there. He closed his eyes briefly as she leant down to pick it up.

“What’s this?” She asked, when he opened his eyes, she was studying the thing as if she was Luke Skywalker from Episode IV of Star Wars. End to her eye.

It was times like this he really wished that the sonic was actually a lightsaber. Sentient enough to turn itself on and fly back into his grip using the force so he could unlock his cuffs, find his TARDIS, Donna and Martha, and get out of here.

Funnily enough, he's never actually seen this 'Star Wars'. Much to Donna's dismay. He'd heard of it. And seen the occasional what did humans call them? He'd seen the occasional meme, but he'd never actually seen the films.

And the sonic was not a lightsaber, and the sentience apparently did not extend to movement, and his cuffs and straps remained stubbornly locked.

“Can you hear me? What is this?” The woman repeated.

“No idea.” He feigned nonchalance. “Woke me up, made an annoying clatter, agh.”

The groan was not part of his plan, but the woman had taken a grip of his index finger on his right hand and started twisting.

“Don’t lie, Doctor. I hate liars.”

“I’m not lying!” He broke off in an agonised yell as she yanked, and a crunch filled the air. Her hand slapped over his mouth and held as he tried to get his breathing under control. Pained whimpers filling his breaths.

“What is this?” The woman repeated when he could hear again.

“Screwdriver.” He gasps, “my screwdriver. It’s useless, just get rid of it.”

She tapped him condescendingly on the cheek. “It’s evidence, Doctor. I’ll submit it with the rest.”

He grits his teeth in frustration. They never listen! God damn.

She throws his sonic in an airtight bag before placing it on the counter where the jar of his blood is still residing. “You’ve annoyed me now.” She says, “no one wants to pay for damaged goods. You better be worth it.”

He decided not to dignify her with a response, instead staring blankly up at the ceiling as she fiddled around with his now broken finger and fitted it with a crude splint. This consisted of simply taping his index finger to his middle finger with a strip of medical tape and then calling it a day.

“Now.” She placed her hands on her hips, and he tried not to feel too violated by the speculative, scrutinising, examining look she passed over his prone body. “Since you’ve so rudely woken me, I may as well get some work done in preparation… How tall are you?”

When he didn’t reply she simply sighed and said, “no matter. I have a ruler.” And then spent a good five minutes measuring his body 30 centimetres at a time.

“185.” She mused after a moment, “what’s that, like? Six one?” She scribbled some notes on her notepad, muttering under her breath. “Early thirties, Caucasian male.”

He rolled his wrists in his restraints, biting his lips when the movement sent agony down his arm from his now broken finger, not caring for how she was speaking about him. In fact, it was making him uncomfortable. But he supposed that was the point.

“Blood type, indetermined. Medical examination hasn’t been conducted yet. Ah yes! Hair; brown. Eyes…” She stooped over him, ignoring the indignant stare he sent her way and instead swept his hair out of his face and brushed the moisture from his cheeks that he refused to believe were tears.

“Also brown. Wonderful! Open your mouth.”

He was so startled at being talked to and not at for the first time in a bit that he didn’t fully comprehend what she’d said.

“What?” He managed after a moment of brief puzzling. Wincing at the twinge of pain that shot through his finger as he shifted. He’d been lying on a flat surface in the same position for hours now. It wasn’t doing anything good for his back. The consequences of which were starting to show through the ache that was making itself known down his spine.

“Open your mouth.” The woman repeated.

He stared at her. “Why?”

She scowled at him, “Not your concern. Surely, you’ve learnt by now that you have no choice in this anymore. Confession made; you’re owned by the government now. Any questions you ask, I don’t have to answer.”

He bit the inside of his lip. This wasn’t going to last long. There would be an opening eventually. And then she better say her prayers.

He unhinged his jaw, grunting as she pulled on a set of gloves and pried it open further. Aggravating the cramping that had occurred previously from their little lightning experiment.

She set something between his teeth on either side, tightening some kind of clamp and was horrified to realise he couldn’t close his mouth again around it. A feeling of panic filled his head, the kind he was certain humans felt at the dentist when you were hyperaware of every breath you took through your mouth. There are people moving around you and touching you and he doesn’t want any of it.

“Twenty-eight teeth.” She says after a moment. “Did you have your wisdom teeth removed?”

Wisdom Teeth? He makes a panicked choking sound but all it achieves is a condescending tap on the nose. “Almost done, Doctor, almost done.”

She takes a swab of his saliva and then removes the things from his mouth, letting him close it in relief as he heaves in a shaky breath to still his racing heart.

When he gets himself back under control, she’s writing more things into her notebook and humming.

“You’re not going to get away with this.” He warns her. “I don’t take kindly to abusers.”

She turns to look at him. Actually, look at him and for a moment he feels like a person rather than a slab of meat she’s trying to sell for ten times more than its worth.

“I assure you, Doctor. Everything I’m doing is perfectly legal.”

“I have friends. Colleagues.” He corrects himself, “that will take you down for violating human rights.”

She frowns, “you’re not human.”

“Oh but, you’ve done this to humans.” He licks his dry lips, “haven’t you.” It’s not a question. He knows and she knows he knows.

She rights her expression into something more confident. “And who do you think they’ll believe? Me, or a slave?”

It hits a nerve.

“Also, colleagues?” She asks, “you act as if you’re part of an organisation?” She sniffs, offended. “You’re not one of those alien sympathisers, are you?”

He laughs at his. Genuinely laughs because this is absurd. “Well, I mean.”

She realises the context of her statement and chuckles back, “oh yeah, I suppose that makes no sense.”

He nods.

“Now, where was I?” She glances down at her notebook, “oh yes! Medical examination is a little out of my range, but aesthetics I can handle.” She sips on a mug of something he hadn’t noticed before. Then she sits it down next to her collection of Time Lord Samples.

He shudders, trying not to envision anything that might become of that.

He brings himself back to the present firmly when he feels a strap on his leg loosening. This is his moment! He can easily overpower this woman! Surely.

Maybe not. He corrects himself; he doesn’t know her strength and he hasn’t stood in hours. For all he knows he’ll collapse the minute he stands.

All his plans leave his mind when it’s only the straps on his hips, knees, and ankles that are removed and then the woman is reaching for the zip on his pants and his vision goes white with panic.

He kicks out frantically, trying to get her away from him because this is not where he wants this to go. Electrocution he can handle, a broken finger he can handle, but he’s not going home to Donna a broken mess. He’s not.

“Stop!” He pleads, coughing as his struggling is met with resistance in the strap across his neck, “stop!”

The gag is thrust back over his lips, muffling his pleas and he can’t move, he can’t get out and she’s got his pants off his legs, and he doesn’t want this at all.

His leg connects with flesh, the sharp smack and yell of pain announcing that he’s hit his mark.

Then his head is clocked sideways. Hitting the restraints painfully, he can feel his lips split again.

“Calm down, Doctor.”

Calm down? Calm down? He’s breathing heavily as she snaps her fingers in front of his face, drawing his attention back to her. Enraged by how calm she sounds at the thought of…

“I’m changing your clothes, Doctor. Nothing else. Calm down.”

He’s still hyperventilating, and she stares down at him. Maybe he catches a flash of sympathy but maybe that’s just his panicked brain trying to calm him down.

“I’m going to unstrap your mouth and you’re not going to scream. You’re going to breathe with me.”

He rolls his eyes around the room, his legs curled beneath themselves as he tries to leverage himself away from the table. Uncaring of the pain that lances through his chest, arms, and neck.

“Doctor.”

He turns his eyes back to her; he doesn’t want to.

“Nod if you understand me.”

He manages a short jerk which seems to satisfy her because she takes the gag off and walks him through breathing.

He sucks in a grateful breath, then hates himself for feeling grateful because this woman was a psychopath.

“I’m not letting you taint my portfolio with that ratty suit.” She stares pointedly down at him before turning and grabbing a pair of navy sweatpants that she brandishes in his face. I’m putting these on you. I’m a seller, not a buyer.”

And if that doesn’t have an ominous undertone, then he’s not sure what does. He’s calmed down a lot now, but this is also the first time he’s been even the slightest bit free from the table and he can’t waste it.

“Let me do it!” He speaks.

She stares down at him.

“Please.” He adds.

“You’re really not in the place to be making demands, Doctor.”

His mind is racing, “I’m not! Well. I’m asking, not demanding.”

She considers this. “You promise not to run?”

He bites his lip, feeling it twinge in pain. “I promise.” He lies. “Blood circulation is off; I need to move.” He even goes to the extent of slurring his words slightly, hoping to sell it. He needs to get up. If he can get up, he can grab his sonic. If he can get his sonic…

“Okay.” She narrows her eyes, “I need you sitting for the next part anyway.”

He tries not to envision what ‘the next part’ is and instead grasps onto the hope that she’s untying him from the table.

Such hope vanishes when she pushes the pants over his ankles and then locks a pair of cuffs around them. Then she moves on to unbuckle one wrist. “Don’t fight.” She whispers menacingly into his ear, so close he can feel her lips against his cheek. He shudders as she unbuckles his other wrist and then releases the others that are around his chest and neck.

She takes a step back and he’s free.

He stumbles as he stands, the restrictions around his ankles tripping him and the sudden shift in his blood flow as he moves sends dizziness through his head.

Then he pulls the pants up over his hips. Tightly tying the string into a knot before shuffling over to the table and cautiously sitting down on it.

“Doctor.”

He flinches at the sound, tensing his hands into fists as he tries to gather himself back together. This isn’t him. He’s supposed to be confident, enjoy the potential of danger.

Usually there’s somewhere to run…

He looks over at her. She’s thankfully maintaining a respectful distance from his shivering form. He pushes down feelings of gratitude towards her and lectures himself. He has nothing to be grateful for. This woman doing the bare minimum after torturing him is nothing.

Then he stiffens. Dread making its way down his spine as something clicks. Pain when disobeying. Respect and distance when he’s ‘good’. This. This is the conditioning she was talking about earlier. The worst thing was that it was happening without him even realising. Now that he had realised, there were other things too. He would probably do anything to not risk her electrocuting him again. He would probably beg. She’s got him desperate. There’s nowhere to run.

She chucks a bundle of fabric at him, “shirt.” She says simply and then folds her arms.

The Doctor stares down at it, it’s plain, black, and he’s one hundred percent certain the material isn’t thick enough to block out the cold he can feel settling into his bones.

He glances back at the woman, feels her cold, bone dead stare bore into his skin and sighs. He pulls off his suit jacket first. Wincing as the movement jars his broken finger and then moves on to his t-shirt that had stained a dark red around the collar from blood that he’d probably coughed up.

Then he glances at the jar of his blood on the table in front of him, his sonic, his things.

Where’s Donna?

“Doctor.” The woman warns.

He feels his heart begin to race and hates himself for it. Then he pulls the new shirt over his head.

She’s in front of him in moments, clasping both of his wrists and slipping metal cuffs onto them. He takes a moment of relief to realise they’re at least not behind his back. They’re still accessible.

“Extra precaution.” She says, “I guarantee you’re good money. I’m not losing you.”

He stares back. He’s taller than her, by at least half a foot. But he knows that means nothing, he’s still the one bound and defenceless. She’s got all the cards.

She points somewhere behind him. “There’s a toilet in there. Relieve yourself and we’ll get started.”

He does. It’s awkward, he even finds a window. But it’s too high and too small and he’s shuffling with his ankles bound.

Defeated, he exits. Blinks. And retakes in his surroundings. She’s unbolted the table from the floor somehow and pushed it into the corner. In its place is a metal chair.

He inches away from it. Mind racing. His only plan is his sonic screwdriver which sits on the table a few metres away.

The woman speaks. It’s his name again. She’s growing impatient.

“Don’t make me hurt you.” She says. He glances at the chair, then at his sonic, then at the distance between them.

“Don’t make me hurt you.” He whispers. Then he edges closer to the chair, eyes on anything but his intended direction. She won’t see it coming. She can’t see it coming. He needs to get out of here.

She does see it coming, he notices the change in her expression, feels animalistic terror fill his stomach at the thought of being strapped back onto that table and makes a split second, stupid decision. If Donna was there, she’d probably slap him.

He lunges. He’s still about a metre and a half away from the table and he launches himself across the room, hand curling around the screwdriver a split second before his wrists and ankles light up on fire and he doubles over in pain.

Time slows down. He sees his arms stretch in front of him to break his fall, feels the pain through his broken finger, the buckle of his wrists. The jar of his blood falls, rolls, falls, breaks.

His head hits the bench, and his vision goes black.

Chapter Text

He wakes up. Again. He’s getting incredibly tired of waking up. He feels like all he does is wake up.

There’s shouting above him, he can hear shouting, he can…

Something hurts.

He does a quick check. Finger… still broken. But that he already knew. Muscles… aching. He also knew that. He feels tired, drained…

He pries his eyes open, a wave of dizziness washing over him as shapes move above him, light and dark…

He’s on the ground… His head is pounding… Oh! That would explain what was hurting.

No.

Something else is wrong. His eyes shudder closed, and he has to fight to keep them open.

What happened?

He racks his memory. He fell. The jar smashing.

The jar!

His head pounds as he forces his eyes open again, flinching as they catch sight of one of the dark figures suddenly incredibly close.

“He’s bleeding out.” The voice says, “get him off the floor.”

Arms beneath him, he’s lying in something sticky. Pain pricking into his back, and his arms, and his wrists.

His head screams in agony as something is moved beside him, the shriek of metal on cement and he tries to curl his arms around his head but there’s something stopping them from moving. Something metal catches on his face and he groans.

“What happened?” Someone demands.

“Tried to run.” Someone else replies.

“And?” The first voice sounds incredulous, and The Doctor is in agony.

“Knocked his blood off the bench.”

He’s lying in something sticky.

His stomach drops as he realises it’s blood. He is lying in a pool of his own blood.

It’s like some kind of horror movie made real, and he’s the victim.

Some, delirious part of his concussed brain is certain he’d find that hilarious if he wasn’t so freaking tired.

“Shit, he’s sliced his arms up.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes from the ceiling to his arms. They’re trembling. There’s red. A lot of red.

He’s lifted off the floor, curses and the faint spatter of blood against the floor all that can be heard. His heart starts to race as he feels himself be placed back down on something hard. Metal. That stupid table.

“No!” He groans and he tries to drag himself away. He manages to roll about an inch before a hand on his chest stops him and a mouth is next to his ear.

“That was stupid.”

He flickers his eyes back open and stares up at the woman, stomach clenching as his arms are uncuffed and roughly sprayed down with water. His stomach rolls in unease, sensing he’s made a grave mistake.

“Gotta.” He coughs, his body curling in on itself as some kind of disinfectant is poured over the slices in his arms. He doesn’t remember it happening, but he guesses that’s what happens when you’re concussed and fall onto a broken jar of your own blood. Some distant part of him is certain it should’ve been refrigerated, but for all he knows, Time Lord blood is different. Or, hey. Maybe the jar was refrigerated.

He starts again. “Gotta give kudos for the effort?” It’s light-hearted, staged as a joke, but his wounds light up on fire from the delayed pain of antiseptic doing the opposite job it’s supposed to do, because he’s not human. His humorous sentence is broken off by a scream.

Hands grip his shoulders and legs as his body contorts in agony, the disinfectant eating away at his wounds.

“Keep still.” A voice growls in his ear, “you’re bleeding out. I need to clean the wound before I can stitch it closed.”

He groans as a rough cloth is run over his arm, rubbing the antiseptic in and if he had a fully functioning brain at that current point in time, he would’ve made a mental note to add whatever ingredient was in the liquid to his growing list of human medicines that he cannot use, or do not work. The Official List, written and illustrated by The Doctor.

His back arches in agony as his wounds are disturbed. “Please.” He lets slip. It’s quiet and barely there and he hates himself, but…

The woman hears him regardless and scowls down at him. “Please what? Stop preventing you from dying? Let you go? I’m afraid I can’t do any of that.”

“You’ve had a confession already.” He says carefully, gasping in pain that he’s growing increasingly certain will not stop anytime soon. “Different biology. Your human medicines don’t always aagh.” He breaks off in a yell as something stabs him. He looks down just far enough to see a needle break skin and they’re stitching the worst of his cuts back together. “don’t always work. Sometimes they do the opposite. Whatever germs you’re removing with that liquid might save a human but you’re killing me.”

The woman frowned down at him, worry suddenly creasing her face as she speaks. “You better not be lying to me, Doctor.”

He feels skin tear as his body convulses involuntarily and he groans, a choked scream breaking past his lips.

“Fuck!” Someone yells.

“Why would I be lying?” He pleads, voice hoarse. “What is in that?”

The woman frowns before turning to the other guy, medic, maybe.

He starts listing off ingredients. “It’s an alien drug we’ve been manufacturing for different species. Mainly because most of our others don’t work for them. It’s got pain killers, anti-inflammatories, antiseptics.”

Something sticks out to him, “what pain killers?”

The guy looked confused, “aspirin? Why?”

The Doctor must have paled because the woman shook him and demanded, “what?”

He can feel his throat closing, “why do you guys even care about painkillers in the first place? You didn’t before.”

“We have a duty of care; aliens might not have rights but-”

“Great so they might be slaves, but at least they’re not dead.”

“I can assure you, Doctor, that our slaves are very happy.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The woman interrupted, “what’s wrong?”

“Wrong metabolism.” The Doctor gasps, “allergic.”

“Shit.”

He nods hysterically, “yeah.”

“Do you need an epi-pen?” Offers the medic but the woman shuts him down.

“We’re not giving him adrenalin, who knows what he’ll do. He’s probably playing us.”

He can feel himself wheezing, his lungs screaming at him to breathe better, and he has to tell them that he can’t because humans are stupid. God. He’s going to die in some unknown time at the hands of a painkiller because some human alien kidnappers didn’t do their research.

God.

Donna and Martha would never know.

He chokes on a breath before breaking into a coughing fit and attempting to roll over. Blood dripping from his lips as his body desperately tries to expel the foreign substance from his body. Topically might have been fine, but that stupid medic had rubbed it into an open wound. It was in his blood stream.

“Doctor, what do you need?” The woman is anxious which is an interesting contrast to the previously sadistic, enjoy inflicting pain kind of person he’d met. He has to resist a laugh to save his failing breath because she needs him alive. She’ll be in big shit if he dies.

He almost considers just dying for that exact reason. Purely out of spite so that her little group of ‘humanity defenders’ can go out as alien abusers.

“Doctor.”

God, this race is so persistent, keep him alive so they can torture him some more.

Although.

Staying alive is his best bet of getting out of here. But also, what had they said earlier? About disposing of him quietly.

He does laugh this time, regrets it. Gasping for air around his swollen throat. She doesn’t care about the law; she cares about money. Ominous, but she did say she wanted to sell him into slavery. She loses him, she not only potentially loses her job and freedom. She loses a sale.

God. Humans are so disgustingly predictable.

“Chocolate.” He gasps.

“What?”

But he could no longer respond, his vision going fuzzy at the edges as he hacked up another mouthful of blood…

He wakes up. Again. Maybe it would be better if he just stopped waking up.

He does the usual checks and is relieved that despite feeling like he’d swallowed a cactus, he can breathe.

He is not, however, relieved to find that he is once again strapped down to that godforsaken table. An uncomfortable itch on his arms and other skin. He’s not sure how much glass he’d fallen on, all he knew was he was bleeding enough for his kidnappers to be worried, therefore it must have been a lot.

“You know. I thought you were taking the piss out of us.”

The Doctor licks his lips, wincing at the cracked, parched feel of them. “Why would I lie?”

“The cure for aspirin poisoning is chocolate?” She sounds incredulous.

“Did it work?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Then there’s no need to question this further. I’m plotting.”

“For what?”

The Doctor swallows heavily, phantom pain lingering in his joints. He glances over at the woman and raises an eyebrow. “What do you think?”

She frowns at him, “it won’t work.”

He twists his wrists in their cuffs, confused to find an extra metal one entwining his left arm. He pushes it to the back of his mind, there’s no time.

“What won’t work?” He asks innocently. He finds himself letting his eyes slip around the room. The blood has clearly been cleaned off the floor already, there’s no trace of it anywhere. His sonic, however is still sitting exactly where it was left before. He sends a silent thanks to the perception filter and begins plotting.

“Escaping.” The woman says, shifting in his peripheral. “I’m not sure you understand, Doctor. But this isn’t like the last time you were here. No one is going to bow to your orders anymore. The constitution changed. You go outside, you’ll be filed as escaped property and be returned in moments. Or killed in moments. Either way, you’ve got nowhere to run. At least with a master, if they’re nice, you’ll have a life.”

His eye catches on another jar of red and his heart skips. Either the jar from earlier didn’t break, or they’ve harvested more. It would at least explain the dizzy, lightheaded feeling he’s got going for him. God… He drags his attention back to the woman, “who says I’m going outside?”

Her lip’s part, “no one. Your conditioning starts soon. But first I’ve been asked to inflict punishment for disobeying.” She sighs as if she cares and the Doctor for the first time in a long time, wants to strangle someone.

“It’ll set us back a few days, but oh well. What must be done, will be done. Can’t send a faulty slave to an unsuspecting buyer. We could be sued.”

“Oh no.” The Doctor gasps sarcastically, “you can’t have that.” She needs to let him stand again. He can’t do anything lying down.

She moves towards him and as his eyes slide towards her movements, he realises in great upset that his shoes are gone.

“Now, I have a list here.”

“Where are my shoes?” He interrupts.

“Doctor.”

“Red converse, I was wearing them earlier. Where’d they go.”

“Stop stalling, Doctor. You cannot delay this.”

He lets his jaw slide open as he considers this, “I’m not stalling.” He counteracts after a moment, “I’m genuinely upset. Where are my converse?”

The woman unbuckles his arms slowly, then his chest, but annoyingly leaves his neck strap. “In evidence,” she says. “We study them for alien biology and then after their use is done, we incinerate them.” She smiles at him, “for privacy reasons, you understand.”

“No, I don’t understand.” Okay, maybe he is stalling. But she’s moving too fast, and he hasn’t come up with a plan yet. “They’re my shoes, I want them back.”

The woman doesn’t respond. Instead, she says, “take off your shirt.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m not ruining a perfectly good shirt; we don’t have the funding to keep replacing them. Take it off.”

The Doctor pales. Bare backed. This could only be one thing if it’s punishment.

“I assure you; my lesson is well learned. You don’t need to go to so much trouble.”

“Oh, I think I do.”

“You surely don’t have the budget to treat any more wounds.”

“Oh, we won’t be treating them. You nearly died last time.”

He stutters on that one. “Oh?”

“Doctor.” She begins methodically dragging his shirt up his chest. “Do me a favour.”

He grabs her hand feebly, but she knocks it away and he really doesn’t want to have a repeat broken finger. “Please don’t.” He says.

“Shut up.”

“Please. I came here by accident.”

“A good accident.” The woman takes a hold of his struggling arm and unhooks it from the sleeve. Then to his dismay, she buckles it down again. She does the same with his other arm and then undoes his neck to pull his shirt the rest of the way off. “You’re going to make me a lot of money. ‘The Doctor’.” She spreads her arms, “’last of his species, one of a kind.’ I think a couple million will suffice at least.”

He lifts his head indignantly, “I’m worth more than that, surely.”

The woman laughs, “sure, but no one would want to pay more without more reason. Why don’t you give me one?”

He grits his teeth. “What’s your name?”

She glances down at him as she unbuckles his wrists one at a time and then cuffs them together. She shrugs, “Alex.”

Alex. Very human. He’s definitely still on planet Earth. Maybe just an intensely corrupt one. “Alex.” He starts. “Is it Alexa? Or Alexandra?”

“Don’t speak.” She keeps a firm grip on his wrists while she unbuckles the rest of his restraints.

“Alex, please. Whatever they’re paying you. It’s not enough. Let me go, I can-” She cuts him off with a sharp backhand across the face. He’s taken so off guard that he would’ve fallen off the table if she hadn’t had such a firm grip on his cuffs.

Then she drags him off the table with impressive strength. Away from his sonic. The Doctor digs in his feet, but there’s nothing he can do with his ankles cuffed and eventually he trips forward, and Alex is able to attach the chain to a hook on the roof. Then she shortens the length until he’s back on his tiptoes. He shivers in the cold air, bare chest shaking as he watches his tormentor crudely pull a whip from a small round bag at her feet.

She strides back over to him; he lifts his chin. If she’s expecting to see fear in his eyes, she’s gravely mistaken. He grew up on Gallifrey, he wasn’t afraid of some whip.

“You’ve been sentenced twenty-two lashes, Doctor.” She pops the t in whatever way makes sense in your head. The Doctor meets her eyes steadily. He’s not afraid… he’s not. “Can you tell me why?” She finishes.

He blinks slowly. “Can I suggest it’s because you enjoy torturing me? I did something to your family history all those years back that caused a domino effect. What did you say? They locked him up because he became obsessed with finding me again. Ruined your reputation. I think this is revenge.”

“Is that your answer?”

“Well!” He stalls. “No! Actually, it was a suggestion.”

The woman raised an eyebrow before tapping the handle of the whip against his jaw. The touch drew an involuntary flinch from him, and she smiled. “I’m sure you’ll think of it after a few lashes.”

He tenses. “Alex, wait!”

But she’s already moving behind him, “Doctor, you are not allowed to scream. These are set instructions, can’t help it. It’s part of conditioning. Every time you scream, an additional five lashes are added to your remaining total. Do you understand?”

“Can I have a bite guard? I’d hate to ruin these teeth.”

“Since this is your first offense, assistance will be offered after three fails.”

Great. So, he screams three times, gets an extra fifteen lashes. Then he’ll get some help… He wraps his trembling hands around the chain holding him up, trying to take his weight off his wrists.

She doesn’t prepare him for the first hit. The rope cuts into his back like butter and the warm spray of blood coats his spine as he keels over, stopped by the cuffs. His teeth sink into his tongue as a pained grunt slips out. But not a scream. He hasn’t screamed.

By the time the third hit comes it’s unbearable, the rope hitting the same spot as the previous two and gouging a hole in his back. He spits out a mouthful of blood from his busted tongue and hangs his head. Shoulders screaming, but not him. He can’t.

The fourth one doesn’t come. Instead, a hand grips his chin and forces his gaze up. “Stop sleeping or I’ll add ten more.”

That wakes him up, and he lifts his head himself. Trembling.

“Have you thought about why you’re here yet?”

He licks his bloodied lips, “because I’m an alien?”

Alex smiles, “good. And why did you lie about it earlier?”

He meets her eyes with a stare he hopes chills her to the bones. She merely shrugs and walks away. The next hit that comes is horizontal. Slicing sideways into his previous cuts and slashing his back open.

The fifth one is the same. He loses his balance after the seventh and is once again hanging from his wrists. His shoulders burst into agony as they catch his fall.

He screams at the eighth. Unintentionally. His back tears open, and the pain is so white hot that he can’t hold it back anymore. A broken yell of agony slips out.

“Come on, Doctor, you had fourteen left. Now it’s nineteen.”

Her voice hides a smile, and he screws his eyes shut in disgust at this species. Taking pleasure in others pain. They’re no better than Daleks.

He can’t hold back a second scream either, the lash hits his shoulder, the end of it slicing open his collarbone and just the shock of it is enough to make him cry out.

“Twenty-three. Doctor what rules did you break?” Then she hits him another four times, back-to-back, no intervals. His knees buckle as he cries out again, blood dripping to the floor, red, so much red.

It stops and then she’s back in front of him. What was her name? In her hand is something rubber and she holds it out in offering. “Open your mouth.”

He does so with little resistance. It wouldn’t make much difference if he did. It slides between his teeth carefully. A bite guard, he realises, his pleas have been met.

He has to hold down a wave of gratitude. He was not feeling grateful to these… sadists. He refuses.

It does help though, something to bite down on and muffle his screams, Alex doesn’t notice any noises until a particularly hard hit slices his lower back. He stumbles, tears streaming down his face as he fights to hold the cry in, but the pain is overwhelming, and his tormentor adds five more.

“Eight to go, Doctor.” She circles around him and comes to face him again; he hadn’t realised how much he’d slumped in exhaustion and agony until she cups a hand beneath his chin and pulls his gaze upwards. She snaps her fingers in front of his face and pulls out the bite guard.

“Can you tell me why I’m punishing you?”

He can hear a pained whine slipping from his lips and cuts it off, “because you want to?”

She taps a thumb against his bloodied lips as he coughs and a mouthful of blood and bile drips to the floor. “I don’t want to. What did you do earlier that made us have to stitch you up and waste valuable resources that we shouldn’t have had to?”

He meets her eyes with what he’s sure is a dead stare. She stares back. Then he laughs, a thin, wet, agonised laugh, but a laugh all the same. “You’re punishing me for bleeding out and using your supplies but making me bleed more and using more of your supplies?”

Alex laughs back, “no, Doctor. Part of your punishment, we won’t be using anymore supplies on you unless necessary. Your alien biology has shown enhanced healing, I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

Okay, cool. No more aspirin reactions then. Great. His back is on fire. Great.

“But that’s not the answer, Doctor. What did you do that caused all that blood loss?”

He winces, another wave of agony rolling over him and he doubles over as far as his restraints allow.

“Doctor?” Then when he doesn’t reply she merely shrugs and lets his head drop back to his chest. “No matter, I’m sure you’ll think of it after a couple more lashes.”

He gets through the last seven without a sound. Eyes fixated on the bite guard she’d left on the floor in front of him, just out of reach. Then he’d relaxed, the eighth one took him by surprise because he’d miscounted how many were left.

Stupid stupid stupid.

His abuser came back around, but all the Doctor could focus on was the growing puddle of blood beneath his feet. Deliriously grateful he was barefoot because this would have stained his converse. Also, painfully aware of the drain a way away that his blood was slowly sliding into which told him that they’d prepared for this… or at least done it before.

“I’ve had to add five more, Doctor. I can overlook them if you can tell me what you’re being punished for.”

He’s so exhausted he can barely think, let alone talk. His back, in agony, flares up all over again as the godforsaken woman trails a finger along it. He whimpers. She clicks against the roof of her mouth in false sympathy before lifting his head again. “Are you ready to speak again?” She asks. He stares up at her but can’t bring himself to say anything.

But then she’s moving away from him and picking up the stupid whip again and he can’t help the broken whimper that slips from his mouth. He really doesn’t want her to hit him again. He can barely keep his feet beneath him to take the weight off his arms let alone waste energy begging for forgiveness that he shouldn’t have to. Realistically, they should be begging for his forgiveness because they were going to need it when he eventually got out of here.

She’s back in his vision, “what was that?”

He blinks slowly at her.

“You wanted to say something?”

“Please.” He lets slip, “I’m sorry.”

A calculating stare, a sadistic smile. “Sorry for what?”

White hot agony shoots down his spine as he shifts in place. His wrists had started bleeding a while back, the metal of his cuffs reopening the slices his fall onto glass had caused and it was trickling down his bare arms like some sort of messed up modern art piece.

“Nothing?” She moves away again, and he can’t take any more pain. Not today.

“Escaping!” He groans, his back hot and moist and in pain.

“Hm?” Alex hums, returning to her vision.

“I’m sorry for escaping.” He whispers, dragging his head from his chest in defiance against her hand moving to do it for him. “Or trying to… escape.”

Alex smiles in satisfaction, she brushes his hair out of his eyes. “Good, good.” Her eyes narrow. “Well done, Doctor.”

And then she moves behind him again to finish off his remaining sentence and all he can think of is that he’d done what she’d ask and gotten a broken promise. And that was humanity. Despite how much he’d done for them, this was what he got.

He passes out after he’s certain he’d counted seven more instead of five.

He wakes… again.

Absolutely everything hurts and he’s on the verge of passing out again. His body deciding no thank you. When he realises exactly what had brought him back into consciousness.

He’s being released from the roof. This is something he definitely needs to be conscious for. He feels his knees buckle beneath him as he’s left to hit the ground. He tries to control the fall, keep himself off his back, but his cuffed feet make it incredibly hard, and he finds himself on his side. Eyes shut tight, hands fisted, trying to stave off another wave of pain.

“Take him back to his cell.” A woman’s voice is saying above him. “We’re done here.”

Then she stoops over him, “you made it fifty-five lashes before passing out, Doctor. That’s a record. Well done. Your punishment is over.”

He blinks at her a little deliriously, offence filling his core. “You said I had five more.” He slurs, “that’s thirteen.”

“Well done, you can do math.” Then she smiles at him sadistically, “next time don’t make me wait.”

He’s dragged to his feet and struggles to get them beneath himself as they drag him forward. His eye catches on his sonic. His sonic! With the perception filter!

He’s filled with sudden adrenalin and finds himself surging forward, sudden strength allowing him to break free of the two humans holding him. He intentionally avoids the blood, his hand closes around his screwdriver before he’s tackled from behind and sent to the floor.

He screams this time. His back hits cement and he can feel all the tiny rock particles grinding into the open wounds on his back and suddenly all he can do is feel and all he can feel is pain.

He’s dragged back to his feet where Alex meets his eyes. “That was stupid. Didn’t we just punish you for this exact reason?”

He huffs out a pained breath of air. “That wasn’t escaping.” He quips. “That was resisting arrest. There’s a difference.”

She blinks, “you’re already arrested.”

He blinks back. “Well.”

She backhands him, his head thrown sideways, and he would’ve fallen again if it weren’t for the hands beneath his arms keeping him steady. Adrenalin gone; he can barely hold himself up again.

“Get him out of here.” The woman waves a hand and they drag the Doctor away.

His final destination is a dark cell where they drop him on his stomach on a ratty mattress in the corner of the broom cupboard sized room…

Chapter Text

It’s dark where they dump him. Not just any kind of dark either, the kind of dark that makes strange patterns appear behind your eyes because your retinas are making up for a lack of visual input.

He’s got plenty of physical input though. His pain receptors working on overdrive to ensure he feels every single bit of hurt that’s been inflicted upon him in what might not have even been twenty-four hours.

His back is on fire, it’s reached the point where the wounds have become itchy, and he has to restrain himself from breaking his arms to scratch it. It’ll only make it hurt more. His broken finger throbs and the lacerations across his arms have decided to start bleeding again because of the tiniest shard of glass he’d found imbedded in one. He has the kind of headache that’s behind his eyes and makes his vision fuzzy. Therefore, the patterns are fuzzy. Therefore, any kind of vision he might have had is kaput.

He might be concussed.

He lays there for a long while. Trying to gather himself together enough to move. He’s on his stomach, on a grimy old mattress where he’d been thrown however long ago. His back stinging in the open air. He shivers. Because it’s cold… Absolutely freezing.

He finds himself slipping in and out of consciousness for a while. Letting himself slip away from the agony for few minute intervals before it wakes him back up again seconds later and he has to curl in on himself or roll sideways to clear his airways of blood. Could potentially be internal bleeding, although he’s not entirely certain how that would have occurred, unless the aspirin poisoning had side effects…

He’s not sure how much time has passed by the time he’s able to peel himself off the floor and into a sitting position. It sends a wave of dizziness through his head, and he has to reach out a hand to steady himself. It sends a twinge of pain through his broken finger, and he bites a bloody lip to hold back a whimper.

He squints through the unrelenting darkness, picks at his fingers for a while and attempts to plot an escape plan. It’s when he lays back on his side that he remembers his sonic, because it digs uncomfortably into his leg and he has to force himself upright again with a groan and a choked off breath of pain.

Then he reaches into the pocket of his borrowed pants, relieved to find that he had actually succeeded in his last violent escapade. His sonic is cold against his hand which soothes the bruises, and he heaves out a long breath before aiming it at the cuffs on his wrists. They fall open with a clatter to the floor. The second, extra metal band is more stubborn, deadlocked. Why do they always deadlock things? He gives up and makes for the ones on his ankles.

Then he throws them into the corner of the room as far as he can and lifts his knees to his chest. Shivering in the cold and staving off a wave of nausea and panic.

He points at the ceiling in hopes of a light and is relieved to find that there is one, dim and practically useless but it lightens the room enough for him to take in his surroundings. The first thing he sees is a security camera which he quickly disables with a press of his sonic and a hammering heart.

He doesn’t have long.

It’s small. Barely bigger than the mattress he’s lying on. There’s a small sink and bucket to his left and directly in front of him is a heavy metal door.

On the mattress with him is his discarded navy t-shirt that Alex had taken from him because they had too little a budget to keep giving him shirts. He considers it for a moment and then decides on the hard option. He’ll blend in better if he’s not bleeding everywhere.

It’s a slow and agonising process but he manages to slowly pull the fabric over his head. Gritting his teeth as the movement strains his injuries and groaning as the fabric rubs against his back. But it’s done and he needs to keep moving.

He starts by very slowly dragging himself to his feet. Unsteady, he hugs the wall as he makes his way over to the door. Fumbling with his sonic with numb fingers he unlocks the door and swings it open.

The hall outside is dimly lit by some futuristic lightbulbs and laden with other doors, he feels himself shudder in the cool air as he takes his first few steps away from his prison. Leaning heavily against the wall, he gets to a corner, checks behind him then in front of him before turning…

He comes face to face with Donna Noble.

“Doctor!” She gasps, her eyes searching and concerned as she takes him in and he’s increasingly glad he pulled the shirt on before escaping because her reaction would have been this but amplified ten times more if she’d seen his back.

“Donna!” He tries to sound excited, but his voice comes out a rasp, he tries not to dwell on the damage screaming may have done to his throat. A wave of nausea rolls over him and he has to grab back onto the wall to stop from doubling over. “How’d you find me?”

She pushes her hair out of her face. It’s in a ponytail but the little wispy bits had fallen out and framed her face. “TARDIS. Didn’t think it’d let me drive it since you sent us away.” Her eyes widened. “I still gotta reprimand you about that. How dare you!”

The Doctor pressed a finger against her lips, steadying himself against the wall, “later. What happened next?”

“I gave her a good walloping about how much of a freaking martyr you are and you’ve a hundred percent gotten yourself into some kind of pickle and if she didn’t turn us around right that very instant, I would egg the wooden outside of her stupid blue walls.”

He grimaces. “Brilliant, and?”

“And then she turned us around and took us right back. Uh… relatively.”

“What do you mean, relatively?”

“Couldn’t pinpoint the exact location again because of whatever you did to the controls.” She squints at him. “Another point I need to slap you for.”

“Donna.”

“So, we ended up a few days late. But hey! It worked out! You’re okay!” She seems to focus on him a little more and he can feel her gaze worryingly cover every nick and bruise that probably marred his face. “You’re okay right?”

He pushes himself off the wall and runs a trembling hand through his hair. “Just peachy, you’ve come at the best time. You’re my escape plan.”

“Escape plan? What’re we escaping from?”

His knees buckle as a wave of nausea washes over him, Donna catches him under the arms and pulls him up again.

“Doctor!” Donna’s voice grows even more concerned. “You better not be lying to me, Spaceman. What are we escaping from? Who? What did they do?”

He has some delirious urge to smile at her, “Oh, Donna Noble, I’ve missed you.”

“Great!” She says, “now answer my question.”

“Doesn’t matter.” He says, “what matters is we need to get out of here. Where’s Martha?”

“Back at the TARDIS.” Donna says, she cups his face hesitantly. “Doctor.”

“Really overusing my name, Donna. Which way?”

She takes his hand; he looks at her for a long moment. As if they’re sharing thoughts and she’s trying to read his mind. “I’m okay,” he says, “I promise.”

Donna squeezes his hand and points down the hall, “you better be.”

She starts down the way she’d pointed, hand still clasped around his and he tries to follow as fast as she is, but he stumbles, her hand breaks away as he leans heavily against the wall. Vision blurring as he fights to stay conscious. He must have lost a lot of blood, even two hearts struggle with compensating for blood loss. He tries to recollect the past, apparently, few days… Glass, whipping, blood drawing (twice)…

He slides down the wall carefully to his knees, keeping one hand to his side and the other clutches his head as his headache worsens.

“Doctor.” Donna murmurs, her voice is soft now… too soft… it’s unlike her. Really, unlike her. He lifts his eyes to meet hers as she crouches down beside him.

“Donna.” He says back. Her name is comforting on his lips. Makes him feel less alone.

Her face swims in front of him and he blinks, hard, to try and clear it.

She brushes a gentle finger against the split in his lip. Her eyes softening in concern before pressing the back of her hand against his forehead. She pulls it away a second later. “You’re burning up!”

“Might’ve.” He cuts off with a pained groan as a wave of pain rolls through his back at the movement. “Might’ve lied.”

“About what.” But she already knows. He knows she already knows. He replies anyway because he can see the cogs turning in her mind. Begging to be wrong.

“Being okay.”

Dread fills her eyes, “Doctor, what happened?”

He pulls himself back up, using Donna’s shoulder as a crutch. “We don’t have time; we need to get out of here.”

“Why?”

He grabs her wrist and pulls her forward, “let’s go!”

They get about three metres before the lights overhead flash red and alarms start blaring.

‘Code Blue, all alien lifeforms please return to your cells with a human escort. Code Blue.’

Donna’s terrified eyes turn to his as he slows down. He feels her panic. He feels his own panic.

“Doctor.” She says slowly, “where are we?”

“Walk and talk?” He asks. She nods and he explains the necessary bits to her. About the organisation and their cultish talks about alien slavery and all that jazz.

Guilt embeds itself deep in his chest as he watches her face grow even more panicked by the second.

“I have a feeling you’re not telling me everything, Doctor. But I won’t push if you don’t want me to.” She squeezes his hand as they walk. “Just… it would help to know. So, Martha could help. She is a doctor… a real one I mean.”

He smirks, although it quickly turns into a grimace. “Ha. Ha.”

“I mean it, Doctor.”

He tries not to flinch at the all too familiar way Donna pronounces his name, “Drew blood. A lot… although I suppose that was my fault.”

“How so?”

“Oh… well.” He has to pause to catch his breath and steady himself as the world begins to spin again. “Was free at one point. Saw an opportunity and…” His mind fills with horror as he remembers the metal band around his wrist and why exactly his first escape attempt had failed. It’s clearly deadlocked for a reason…

He jerks his hand away from Donna’s merely seconds before it’s set off. Clearly, he has some kind of premonition for bad things happening. Alex must have just remembered she had the ability to disable him from a distance and put it to good use.

His body contorts in agony as he goes down, limbs seizing, teeth grinding, toe curling… he might be going too over the top, but it’s hard to explain without doing so. Imagine that time static electricity stores itself in your fingers waiting for you to touch something metal and then zaps you. Then amplify that pain and shock by at least a billion and place it in your wrist.

Got it?

Awesome. Now disregard all of that information because there is no definitively possible way to describe how much pain the Doctor was in when, unable to change the direction of his fall, he falls onto his back.

Pure, unadulterated pain sends itself through his exhausted body, lighting his pain receptors on fire as he convulses on the floor. He can’t even scream because of the electricity surging through his funky little bracelet accessory he’d neglected to care about removing… Or disabling… God, he’s so stupid. His jaw is clamped shut, teeth almost cracking under the pressure, hands fisted, a shriek bubbling in his throat but unable to free itself because it’s closed over. He can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

He can’t breathe.

Then, as quickly as it started. It ends. He has to laugh because despite all he’s been through, he still has the upper hand because they want him alive.

He doesn’t laugh. It comes out as an agonised, choked yell as his body relaxes and sends his whip lacerations back into flames.

Donna’s hovering over him, he’d recognise her red hair anywhere, blurred, tear stained vision or not. Her hands are shaking as she appears unable to decide how to help.

He jerks away when she reaches to touch him. Not yet. Humans are conductors of electricity. He may be fine, but he may still be harbouring it. That much voltage would kill her. He can’t lose her.

“Doctor!”

“Don’t touch me,” he begs. “I’ll kill you!”

Donna, being Donna, touches him anyway. Her hand brushing his ear as she checks his pulse. “I’m okay!” She draws her hands away, “I’m okay. See? You need to get up, Martha will know what to do.”

He feels tears leak from his eyes and he bites the side of his mouth at the betrayal. He’s The Doctor. He’s not supposed to be like this in front of his companion. He’s never the damsel.

“I can’t.” He croaks, the words a harsh sob. Because the minute he moves, he knows, everything is going to hurt again, and he’ll just end up right back on the floor.

“You can.” Donna says and he can see tears in her eyes which makes him feel awful because travelling with him is supposed to be fun. “You said it before, we need to get out of here. We need to get that,” she points at the band on his wrist, “off of you.”

“I can’t…” He repeats, “they’ll just set it off again, if you’re touching me, you’ll die.”

“So be it, Doctor. We’re getting out of here.”

“Sonic.” He mumbles. “Try the sonic.”

“Where is it?”

“Pocket… pants.”

She pulls it out, adjusts the settings and points it at the cuff. Nothing happens.

He groans, “try disabling it, not removing it.”

She adjusts and points again. Nothing happens, but there’s no way of knowing.

“Okay.” She shivers, “okay.”

She takes his hand despite his mumbled, incoherent pleas for her to stop and pulls him to his feet.

He’s a hundred percent certain he does crack a tooth trying to restrain another scream. It comes out as a keening moan as he leans heavily on his friend, exhausted. He could use a coma or two.

“Okay,” he says after a moment, hoping against hope that the reason he’s not convulsing on the ground again is because the sonic worked and not because Alex is trying to instil a false sense of hope in him. “We can move now, Donna.”

She doesn’t reply. “Donna?”

He turns slowly to see what she’s looking at and grimaces as his eyes fall on the smear of blood his back left on the ground. It must have seeped through his shirt, a small triumph, he supposes, sorry, they’ll need to use more of their budget to buy a new one.

“Doctor.” Donna says slowly.

He takes her hand in his and grits his teeth as he shifts. “Donna, worry about it later. We need to go.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Worry about it later.”

She turns to meet his eyes. “Don’t collapse on me again, Spaceman.”

He smiles and gestures to their escape route with his head. “I won’t Earthgirl.”

She returns his smile hesitantly before readjusting his grip on her so that she’s supporting most of his weight. She doesn’t make any snide remarks or try to speak to him and for that he’s grateful.

It’s slow going, they make their way carefully down the halls, stopping at minute intervals to give him a break any time it becomes too much. He resplits his lip from restraining any noises that Donna’s arm against his bloodied back try to evoke from him.

When they pass a room labelled evidence, he stops.

“What?” Donna asks, “Doctor, we’re running out of time.”

“In there.” He says, nodding at the door.

“That’s backwards, Doctor. There’s no time.”

“My stuff is in there. My blood, I can’t… Donna, I can’t let them keep my blood.”

“Forget about it, Doctor. Your life is more important.”

He grits his teeth, “Janis Joplin gave me that coat… and my converse.”

She stares at him for a long time before it becomes evident, he’s not budging before unhooking her arms from him and placing them against the wall. “I’ll be back, what are you missing?”

He slides carefully down the wall, no doubt leaving a smear of blood behind because Donna’s eyes flick up at it. “Coat, suit, converse, blood.” He grits his teeth, “and any other evidence you might find of me.”

She nods and then for extra measure, “stay.” She vanishes behind the swinging door while The Doctor is left alone.

It gets uncomfortably quiet as he leans. After a few moments his eyes close ever so slightly and he finds himself unintentionally drifting off. His exhausted body deciding that now, despite the inconvenience, would be the best time to sleep.

He wakes up (again.) with a start to the sound of a gun clicking. His eyes startle open to find himself at the end of its barrel, the smell of gunpowder against his lips as it moves down to settle on them when he tries to speak.

He focuses on the hand holding it, before travelling up the arm and deciding on her face. He stiffens as he realises it’s his long-time tormentor and auctioneer, Alex Whatever her last name is.

“Doctor.” She says.”

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t want the gun on his mouth let alone inside it.

“I told you, less than half a day ago that escaping was pointless. Did you not listen?”

He did listen. He just hadn’t listened. If that makes sense.

He replies with a short shrug, she must see his exhausted, exasperated amusement behind his eyes because the metal of the gun presses harder against his mouth. Then, a few seconds later, she removes it and presses it against his temple instead. Crouching down uncomfortably close.

“I knew you’d come here. Didn’t expect to find you passed out before you could even enter the room. What’s so funny?”

“You can’t kill me.” He says shortly. “I’m not worth anything dead.”

She presses the barrel of the gun against his leg, and he actually does laugh this time, it’s painful and choked and not nice sounding. “No one wants a useless slave either.”

Frustration shows itself in her eyes for a split second before her mouth splits in a sneer. “Did your first punishment not teach you a good enough lesson?”

“Well,” he says, “it wasn’t a great one.”

She backhands him, sending his head into the wall behind him and a gasp of pain bubbling from his throat. “You’re coming back down the hall, with me. And I don’t care how injured your back is, conditioning starts today.” She grabs his wrists.

He twists in her grip, “nuh uh.”

She slaps him again and he groans as she wrestles his hands into another set of handcuffs, “are you a toddler, Doctor? I’ve heard toddlers speak like that.”

Then. Quick as lightening, she was grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him in front of her. He couldn’t stop the scream that bubbled from his lips then as her knees dug into a particularly nasty gash in his back and the cool barrel of the gun was pressed bruisingly hard into the soft, fleshy part of his neck.

When his eyes clear from the hazy wetness that was not tears, he sees why.

“Oi, that’s my alien!” Donna is standing in the doorway, in her arms, a cardboard box. “Leave him alone.”

“Who is this?” Alex snarls in his ear, the gun pressing hard enough to cut off his air supply.

“No one.” He chokes, “definitely not an alien.”

“Donna.” Donna says, “and I think what the Doctor has neglected to say is that he’s mine.” She blinks. “Not literally… figuratively.” She sighs. “You know what I mean.”

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Alex starts.

“Are you the one who hurt him?” Donna asks, “because I hope you know, that man is my only ride home because his stupid box doesn’t like me driving it.”

The Doctor meets her eyes for a brief second, pleading with her.

Save yourself. He tries to tell her.

She glares back at him. And go where, Genius?

Not the heartfelt not without you, he was expecting. But oh well. That was Donna.

“Here’s what’s going to happen.” Alex repeats, “I’m going to throw you another set of handcuffs. You’re going to put them on and then, you’re going to come with me to the lab as my prisoner and we’re going to figure out more steps from there.”

“She’s not an Alien!” The Doctor gasps before the gun is pressed harder against his windpipes and he stops. Frustration filling his gut because this was his speciality. Talking his way out of things. Or at least saying enough big and interesting words that it confuses the living daylight out of people, and he has enough time to escape while they puzzle things out. Sort of like a literary smoke bomb.

“In your dreams.” Donna sniffs, “how about, you let the Time Lord go, and I won’t use my super-secret weapon.”

The Doctor’s blood chills to the bone at the mention of his species, and he can tell the moment Donna realises she’s made a mistake as well.

They didn’t know that. His eyes tell her.

Her eyes tell him. No shit, Sherlock. What do we do?

He blinks back at her. He doesn’t know.

“Time-Lord?” Alex asks, “so that’s what you are? The Last Time-Lord?”

He can’t reply so he settles on a short grunt that was meant to say figuratively.

He can feel her smile against the back of his head before she says. “Oh, that’ll definitely hike the prices up.”

Donna snarls in exasperation. “You are not selling him. He’s a person.”

Alex’s motive changes, he senses the change immediately as her grip loosens. She releases The Doctor, moves the gun to aim at Donna and pulls the trigger.

Chapter Text

The Doctor lurches forward with a yell.

Time appears to slow down. Donna Noble can see things moving in slow motion. Her ears buzz with adrenalin as her hands fly to cover her face. The cardboard box of the Doctor’s stuff clatters to the floor. The jar of blood, thankfully, does not break.

The gun fires, then it fires twice more. Her body jerks all three times in response. Expecting the pain of metal ripping through her flesh. The Doctor to scream. Something climatic.

Nothing happens.

She recovers after a few seconds, drawing her hands away from her eyes and brushing her hair away from her face. Her heart is hammering in her chest, hands shaking violently as she focuses on what is occurring in front of her.

Dust is raining from the ceiling where a gaping hole has announced itself as a result of metal hitting the wooden support beams. The Doctor is gripping the woman’s hands in his, the gun pointing upwards. A look of shock on both of their faces.

She recalls how awful the Doctor looks. The bags under his eyes, his pale clammy skin. The screaming…

The other woman recovers faster than him which is understandable considering how The Doctor looks.

What isn’t understandable is the twisted look on her face when she takes the butt of her gun and slams it into the side of the Doctors head.

He crumples, his head hitting the ground again with a painful smack and Donna is angry. Donna is scared. Donna is running on adrenalin and self-preservation.

She takes the distraction as her chance and launches herself forward, hands closing over the gun herself. A vice grip. The woman pulls away, shouting words at her that Donna cannot hear over the blood rushing in her ears.

I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die.

The woman hooks her leg under Donnas, and they go crashing to the ground. She yells in pain as they land on top of her, her spine crushing under the weight, their arms all tangled around the gun. Fighting for their lives.

However, Donna has an advantage. Her secret weapon she’d mentioned earlier. These were rich future bastards. With their new fancy technology and alien slaves as the Doctor had mentioned. Donna had her advantage.

She wasn’t afraid to fight dirty.

She leans forward and bites the woman’s hand. The woman screams in outrage and tries to shake her off, but Donna merely bites down harder. She has amazing jaw strength if she does say so herself. When it gets to the point that she can taste blood in her mouth, she uses another secret weapon and knees the woman in the groin.

Now… There isn’t any comparison between kneeing a woman in the crotch and kneeing a man in the crotch, however, she does know that both hurt like a bitch, so the satisfaction that shines through her body as the woman finally lets go of the gun in response to the pain in her lower regions is unmatched.

Donna yanks the gun towards her body and scrambles to her feet as the woman struggles to recover herself.

Donna pulls the safety off and aims the gun at the woman’s head. Seeing her face drop as her eyes move upwards to Donna’s face and she pulls herself shakily to her feet.

“Didn’t expect that, did you?” She laughs, keeping a steady aim on the woman in front of her. Her eye travels to The Doctor in her peripheral though. He hasn’t moved since he’d fallen from the gun to the head. She tries not to think too hard about the pool of blood that was trickling from the wound the metal had left. He’s a Time-Lord, surely the different physiology meant he could survive losing more blood. Surely.

The woman smiles and Donna tightens her grip on the gun in response. “You’ve lost. I won.”

“You won’t shoot me.”

Donna loads the gun, “try me.”

“Alex.” The Doctor speaks and Donna turns her head to him, a breath of relief palpable on her lips because he’s alive. His eyes are half open now and he’s managed to prop himself up on his forearms. Scanning his face, desperately making sure he’s alright. No, she doesn’t care that much about him. She’s worried about her ride home dying.

“Alex, you don’t need to do this.” He breaks off in a choked gasp as Alex? sends a kick into his stomach.

“Hey!” Donna shouts, resisting the urge to lunge forward and ruin her stance of advantage, “leave him alone! I’m the one with the gun here. You’re treading on thin ice, lady.”

“Yeah, but,” Alex pulls something out of her pocket and smiles. “I’m the one with this.” She holds up a remote that Donna doesn’t recognise.

“What’s that?”

Alex smirks, presses the trigger and before Donna can react, The Doctor is convulsing on the floor. His back arching as his teeth grind in agony.

Donna starts forward just before Alex says, “don’t! Or I’ll turn the voltage up.”

She freezes in place. Hands still clenched tightly around the gun in her hands. Eyes fixated on the Doctor’s body as it finally relaxes and a noise she can only describe as choking followed by a long keening sound, comes from his lips.

“We’re at a standstill I believe.” Alex says. “You shoot me, I’ll turn this back on. Full voltage. There’s a passcode lock on it that only I know. He’ll be dead within the hour.”

Donna adjusts her grip as The Doctor meets her eyes briefly. “So will you.”

Alex shrugs, “oh well. My job is my life and it’ll continue without me.”

“Donna!” The Doctor gasps, “don’t worry about me, I’ll regenerate, do what you need to— agh.” He writhes on the floor again as the metal is set off on his wrists once more. Sweat, blood, and saliva mingle on the floor beneath him, and Donna is beginning to worry about the long-term effects this might have if she doesn’t do something soon. She needs to do something. She needs to think.

“Stop it!” She yells at Alex. Legs itching to run forward, fingers itching to shoot the woman. But she doesn’t move, she can’t risk the threat. The stakes are too high. She can’t shoot the woman; she would never be able to come back from that. The Doctor wouldn’t want that. She needs to think, and she can’t do that with The Doctor writhing in agony on the floor.

Alex lets up after a few moments, rolling the Doctor onto his back with a foot. A wet moan leaves his lips as he stares up at her through half-lidded eyes. They’re glassy and feverish and his expression is scarily blank.

“You speak when you’re spoken to.” The woman snarls. “Each and every time you speak without permission, this goes off. Do you hear me?”

The Doctor gasps in a shaky breath, the restraints on his wrists jangling as he shifts his body.

Alex kicks him. “Do you hear me?”

The Doctor nods, “yes.”

Donna screams as Alex sets the cuffs off again, lunging forward, but the woman jerks a finger towards Donna. “Don’t move or I won’t turn it off.”

She clutches the gun in her hands, shaking with rage. “You don’t have all the cards here.” She threatens, “I will shoot you.”

“Then why haven’t you done it already?”

There’s a thud sound as the voltage turns off and The Doctor’s spine hits the floor again. Breathing heavily as he stares up at his tormentor through half-lidded eyes. Then he turns his head to Donna, a resigned look in his eyes, a confirmation, but she can’t shoot Alex, she can’t, he’ll die. Sure, he’ll regenerate, but he won’t be the same and she can’t lose him.

Actually, as she does the math in her head, the chances of The Doctor even being able to regenerate are becoming increasingly slim, because what if the voltage causes it to fail? What if he just dies over and over again until he’s out of regenerations and she’s left alone in the future with no way home.

There’s too many ‘what ifs’ that she’s working with.

What will she tell Martha? Martha who she’d left in the TARDIS with the assurance that she’d be back with the Doctor in a few minutes because she’d probably find him gallivanting with some alien and lost track of time and he didn’t mean to send them away. What will she tell the TARDIS? The freaking sentient box whom she knows will know immediately when her owner dies. Will it take her home or will it just vanish and condemn Donna to whatever these crazy future people have cooked up for her?

She has a long list of what’s and what ifs… It’s too long and Donna needs to make decision. Needs to make a choice. She needs to do something!

I can’t. She tells him with a look. You’ll die.

Please. He says back. And she knows what he means. She hates that she does. The Doctor would rather die than become an accessory to abuse. And if this was a slave factory, and they did this to The Doctor. Then they’ve done it to others.

It sends another wave of rage through her body. She kind of feels like if she gets any angrier, she might actually explode.

Now that would be a sight. Maybe The Doctor would be better off surviving an explosion.

She wouldn’t… That’d be disappointing.

Then she remembers that it probably isn’t humanly possible for her to explode and disregards that idea altogether.

She wonders if The Doctor can explode. Although in all honesty, she’d be dead in both scenarios, which isn’t exactly the rescue plan she had planned.

She’s startled back to the real world when the Doctor jerks again and Alex is looking down at his agonised body with that sadistic smile of hers because she knows Donna won’t shoot. She knows Donna can’t shoot. Alex looks up and meets Donna’s eyes. “He looked at me.” She says simply. “He knows the rules.”

“You’re sick.” Donna replies, her throat closing over in disgust as she stares desperately at the Doctor’s seizing body. Tries not to read into the implications of his movements becoming smaller. Not because he’s in less pain but because he’s getting weaker…

“Give me the gun.” Alex says, “And I’ll consider letting you live. Maybe I can sell you both as a duo. It happens, occasionally. You can be the cook and he can be… Other uses. It’ll be fun.”

The Doctor gasps as the voltage is turned off again. His eyes are rolling around the room, sweat dripping from his head.

“Might have to dye or cut your hair though. Red heads aren’t as popular as brunettes. I mean unless someone really just wants a Time-Lord. They might just get rid of you afterwards. Oh, Time-Lord sounds cool. I need to make sure to include that in the advertisement.” Her eyes go distant for a split second… “Time-Lord duo. Submissive, conditioned for your convenience at no extra price. Three free follow up sessions…”

Donna pulls the trigger.

It’s not a conscious decision she makes. More a spur of the moment fury. The world explodes in the sound of close quarters gunfire, and she stares in shock as Alex crumples. Blood spraying from her thigh. Her blood seeping into the cement and staining it red.

She stares in shock for a long while, ears ringing, hands shaking, before she comes to her senses and lunges for the trigger on the ground where Alex had dropped it.

She reaches it without too much complaint. Alex, while desperately reaching for it from the ground, is too busy clutching her leg and staring at Donna in betrayal. Her eyes wide in shock and her mouth bared in a snarl. “You shot me!” She exclaims incredulously.

“I did.” Donna says absently as she studies the guns now empty magazine and the button on the trigger. “Shame you were too occupied in torturing my friend to notice.”

“Conditioning.” Alex has the gall to correct and Donna stares at her. Eyes narrow as she places the gun down on the ground and kicks it away.

“You had no right.” Donna says after a moment, “there’s no way that was legal.”

Alex grits her teeth as Donna steps over her and skids towards The Doctor’s crumpled body. Relieved to find that he’s still breathing.

“Aliens don’t have rights anymore, time-traveller.”

Donna barely spares her a glance as she checks The Doctor’s pulse. Fingers shaking as her adrenalin slowly abandons her in light of the fact that she won. They can leave now. The Doctor’s eyes are closed, his breathing is short and shallow but he’s alive. And she can work with that for now.

She focuses on the angry red burn marks on his wrists before turning to Alex and snapping her fingers, “keys.”

“I don’t have them!” Alex grits out, her hands bubbling around the blood pooling from her leg. “And I wouldn’t give them to you even if I did. You’re defacing and stealing government property.”

Donna scoffs and merely digs the sonic out of The Doctor’s pocket and points it at the cuffs which come open with ease. “I’ll be putting in a strongly worded letter to this government. Complaining about alien abuse, which I am one hundred percent certain is not legal, despite your claims.”

A flash of fear shows in the other woman’s eyes. Donna feels a spark of satisfaction in herself before she taps on The Doctor’s face. “Doctor.”

His eyes open halfway before his face splits into a tired grin. “Donna Noble! Funny seeing you here.” His voice is wrecked. Hoarse and brittle.

Donna glances back at Alex to make sure the sadist wasn’t getting up to anything. Relieved to find the woman was still fussing over her leg. She turns back to the Doctor and allows herself to smile back.

“Did we win?” He asks.

“Yeah.” She murmurs. “I think so. But there’s still something we’ve gotta do.”

His smile faulters. “Which is?”

“Get back to the TARDIS and Martha. I’d hate to keep her waiting.”

He grimaces, clutching his stomach. His teeth are bloody when he opens his mouth again and he has to turn his head to spit out a mouthful of blood. “That can’t be good.”

Alex begins to sob behind her, and Donna tries to ignore it. “Can you walk?”

The Doctor groans and lets his head drop back to the ground. “Yeah, probably. Could you grab my shoes. Those would help.”

“I have backup coming.” Alex threatens. “You won’t get far.”

Donna and The Doctor, both ignore her. Whatever backup it is can wait a couple seconds while she ensures her Doctor isn’t going to simply keel over and die before they make it back to his box. She tries not to raise an eyebrow before standing and grabbing his box of things. She then digs out his pair of red converse.

Reaching out a hand, she helps The Doctor into a sitting position. Wincing at the way his jaw clenches and his hand tightens around hers. She doesn’t say anything though which she knows he appreciates. Tries to ignore the rawness of his feet, or the deep gash in the small of his left one that is weeping blood.

He pulls them on, and Donna gets busy with giving the loose handcuffs another job. That job was named Alex.

She makes a noise of indignance as Donna grapples her hands behind her back and around a pipe that was exposed in the wall. “You’re going to regret this!” She warns. “You have nowhere to go.”

Donna ignores her and returns to The Doctor’s side as he pulls his navy t-shirt off in favour of digging his ratty maroon one out of the cardboard box. “This one’s too rough.” He tells her, “Budget is shot.”

She tries to advert her eyes, not wanting to make him feel uncomfortable or anything, wanting to give him privacy. But all that is thrown out the non-existent window when she sees the state of his back.

It’s red raw. Deep gashes take up almost every available and visible piece of skin. They’re still bleeding and weeping a foreign substance. His usually pale skin is an angry red and despite the fact that she’s not even sitting that close to him, she can feel heat radiating off of it.

The Doctor catches her eyes, she hears his words without him even needing to say it. Not here. before sliding his own shirt over the top. The Time-Lord practically gouges a hole into his lip from how hard he’s biting down, restraining noises. Then he moves himself slowly over to Alex where the woman is still struggling.

Donna wants to stop him when he begins tearing the spare shirt into strips and binds the woman’s bullet wound with it. Stemming the bleeding. His face is blank, his eyes glassy and feverish as he appears to stare through Alex. Alex who has stopped struggling and is staring at The Doctor in confusion.

“I’m not like you.” He mutters to her before pressing the remaining strips of shirt into her mouth as a makeshift gag. Donna reaches out a hand to him, wanting to help him up but he ignores it and uses the wall to drag himself slowly to his feet. She understands. The need to have some semblance of control in situations out of control.

She does worry, however, when this results in a groan of pain and a lot of curses when he stumbles.

It takes a few moments, but he eventually ends up on his feet. Then, and only then, is when he accepts help from Donna. She takes most of his weight as he shrugs on his coat, a few hitched whimpers escaping between his teeth, but she understands. It’s cold. She pulls her own jacket a little tighter around herself. He finishes up by tucking the rest of his things carefully inside the jacket’s pockets. His sonic, his ratty suit, and the too big jar of his blood.

“Where’s the TARDIS?” The Doctor grits out after a moment, Donna realises the placement of her arm and bites her lip.

“Where can I touch that won’t hurt?”

“Nowhere.” The Doctor groans. “Lead the way.”

It’s a long hobbling journey, a lot of stops along the way to hide in broom closets from patrolling guards. Alarms are still flashing with the occasional loudspeaker alert overhead about escaped prisoners and such but The Doctor and Donna plod on.

She can feel his body sigh in relief beside her as the TARDIS fades into view ahead of them.

Martha has the door open and looks like she’s ready to come charging into battle. A gun in each hand that she quickly drops when she sees them. “What happened to ‘I’ll only be a few minutes’?” She demands. “It’s been an hour and a quarter; I was ready to come rescue you.” Her eyes fall on The Doctor, and she trails off. “What happened?”

Donna eases The Doctor onto Martha’s shoulder as well and the two of them support him until they’re inside the TARDIS. “Long story.” Donna says, “It’s probably better for him to explain because I don’t know all the details but for now…”

She trails off. They let go of The Doctor slowly and he sways for a bit. Fumbling for the TARDIS’ control panel to clutch onto. His half-lidded eyes glassy. “Where’s somewhere safe?” He asks. His voice barely more than a slurred mumble.

Martha interrupts Donna before she can suggest her house and suggests her own. “I’ve got more supplies there.” She says when Donna looks in her direction and Donna understands. Doctor stuff. The Doctor needs medical attention and the most Donna can really offer him is a first aid kit that’s half empty save for three band-aids and an empty tube of antiseptic cream. Martha’s, (a doctor) house is the obvious choice. She closes her mouth.

The Doctor nods and begins gearing up the TARDIS. Flicking switches and turning levers. Something Donna usually watches with intrigue. But now it’s painstakingly slow as their window of escape gets gradually smaller. The Doctor is truly trying his best, but she can tell he’s exhausted and from brief mentions of what he’s told her happened and the state of his back, she’s not sure if he’s even fit to be standing… He should be in a bed, with a teddy bear and sleeping. Maybe a cold compress on his head to lower the desert that was his temperature.

All of her suspicions are confirmed when the TARDIS begins its whirring sounds, the Doctor’s face splits into a grin before three seconds later, he keels forward. His exhausted body apparently giving up as Donna feels her own adrenalin drain away. He falls to his knees first, and then on his side, eyes closed and unresponsive to Martha and Donna’s yells of panic.

Matha’s there, at his side before Donna. Checking his pulse and taking count of his visible injuries. Her hands shake as the TARDIS whirs around them, taking them somewhere safe. She studies the metal band on The Doctor’s wrist, accompanied by the angry red burns there as well. Donna considers mentioning his back before Martha turns to Donna and asks the question she’s been dreading.

“What happened?”

Chapter Text

He’d told them they were going home, because he promised Martha, he’d take her home.

Then something had happened to the TARDIS, something Donna tried not to think about afterwards because it was something that should only happen in sci-fi western films. Films she would not name but guarantees everyone would know if she did. She’d only realised it after The Doctor had closed the doors and the TARDIS had started shaking again from an override he’d done from the outside with his sonic.

He'd promised they were going home, to have a cool off period before he, and she quote ‘takes her somewhere cooler.’ She didn’t point out the haunted emptiness in his eyes and the melancholy expression had taken up after losing Jenny.

When the TARDIS had started shaking, however, “your spaceship clearly needs a maintenance, Doctor. It’s crashing all the time.”

Martha peered anxiously over her shoulder at the smoking control dash.

“Well,” The Doctor quipped, “technically it needs six people to fly it, so can you really blame me if we crash occasionally?”

“Occasionally,” Martha pinched the bridge of her nose, “this is the second time in a row.”

The Doctor had simply grinned at her before dashing to the other side of the controls.

Donna saw the shift in his face as he peered down at it, however. The shift from nervously excited, to confusion.

“We better not crash on Mars.” Donna warned him, “I want to see the world. Not Mars.”

Martha grimaced in the corner of her eye as they both cautiously walked towards The Doctor.

“But we’re not crashing.” The Doctor said, his eyebrows well and truly furrowed. “That’s weird.” He pulls a lever and presses a few buttons, and the TARDIS continues shaking.

“Doctor?” Donna warns.

“We’re not crash landing on Mars,” he tells her, not looking up from his screen that reads in a language that Donna cannot read. Time-Lordian, or whatever. “We’re not crash landing at all.”

“Then what is happening?”

The Doctor grabs onto the dash as a particularly violent shake makes the TARDIS creak and Martha falls to the ground. Donna only manages to stay upright because her fall sends her straight into The Doctor, who clearly has enough body strength for the both of them.

They awkwardly pull away from each other with embarrassed expressions before Donna repeats herself. “Doctor, where are we?”

He turns to meet her eyes, a maniacal expression on his face that sends a jolt through Donna. “No idea. Let’s find out, shall we?”

A few moments later, Martha, Donna, and The Doctor were ready to leave. However, only The Doctor had managed to get out the door before his excited expression changed to one of confusion, and then the grimmest that Donna had ever seen it.

He’d shut the door in their faces and the last thing Donna had heard from him was the sound of his sonic and then the TARDIS was whirring away again.

Martha and Donna turned to each other in shock.

Donna runs to the controls, relieved to see the location flashing, in English ‘Earth’, with the correct year.

She was tempted to just let it run its coarse and wait and see if The Doctor would show up again. But then his face had flashed in her mind, that grim, almost panicked expression before he’d sent them away.

Why had he sent them away? He’d never sent her away before. Regardless of how dangerous it was, she had saved him several times for Gods sake, it wasn’t like he was worried she couldn’t defend herself.

The only logical confusion she could come up with was that he either wanted to have all the fun by himself, or there was something seriously wrong.

Martha had come to the same conclusion. Once the TARDIS had stopped moving, she’d paced immediately to the controls and tried to start it back up again. “Come on you stupid machine. I don’t care if he programmed you to only respond to him.

Donna stared up at the blinking lights as the TARDIS whirred indignantly. Tried not to wince at the hilarity of the situation if not for the potential direness of where they’d left The Doctor.

She placed a hand on Martha’s shoulder, hoping it was comforting before saying, “hey, we’re in a time machine, remember. There’s no rush.” Then she turned her eyes back to the TARDIS, “regardless of such, Ms T. Mr T. Whatever you want to be addressed as, you will turn us around immediately.”

More annoyed whirring, a denial popping up on the dash, unauthorised user.

“I don’t care if we’re unauthorised, The Doctor could be in trouble. The stupid martyr. You’d feel pretty stupid if he died under your watch. Would you not?”

A speculative whirring noise, but still the TARDIS continued its course.

“I will smear rotten egg on your walls.” Donna threatens. “On a hot sunny day and leave them to bake into your very core if you do not turn us around right now.”

Martha shot her a horrified expression with slowly turned to one of utmost respect as the TARDIS stopped in its tracks and location dot dot dot showed up on the screen.

She watched as Martha scrolled previous locations, annoyed to find the exact date scrambled. There were only a few dates with several question marks scattered across the screen.

“Can never make it easy can you, Spaceman?” Donna muttered.

Martha tapped on the first date, “trial and error?” She muses.

Donna shrugs, “s’pose it’s the best we can do.” And gosh, she was really hoping she’d judged the situation incorrectly and The Doctor was just off partying without them rather than in some deep torture dungeon.

She thought he was okay when she found him. Bruised and a little miffed, but from what she could see when they’d stumbled across each other, he was physically fine.

Oh, how wrong she’d been. Her stomach dropping deeper than the pits of hell when she’d caught sight of the mangled mess of his back. Her heart skipping several beats when he’d collapsed in front of her. Because this was The Doctor. Up until now, in her eyes, the guy was practically immortal. It was a huge reality check under the discovery that even Time-Lords have limits.

She hates herself for assuming he’d be fine. She hates herself for not moving faster, because every adventure she’d been on him as of previously, they’d made it out practically unscathed.

Now here they were…

And The Doctor was dying…

The Doctor doesn’t wake up… His skin is clammy and pale.

There’s nothing Donna can do as she watches Martha fuss over him aside from pass her the occasional strip of gauze, or rinse off a particular washcloth.

She left him on the floor for a long time, much to Donna’s dismay. But it made sense, he might have something broken. It could piece something inside, make things worse. The TARDIS whirred around them until finally, finally it came to a stop in a place Donna desperately hoped was safe.

“Broken index finger,” Martha murmured, hovering over The Doctor’s body. Her voice was laced with anger and Donna couldn’t blame her. She’d wanted to take the time to fill her in the best she could, but with The Doctor bleeding out, there had been little time. Martha had gotten to work assessing his injuries instead, fine to wait until he was out of danger before anything else. “They’ve splinted it with medical tape but didn’t care to straighten the bone. Wonderful.”

Donna winced. Between the three of them on board the TARDIS, she was the only one who was not a doctor. But even then, she was pretty certain she could tell what ‘broken’ and ‘straighten’ meant. And it did not sound good, or pleasant, or kind, or… she was rambling again.

“Anything else?” She said, unhelpfully, but it broke the silence of Martha talking to herself.

The other woman glanced briefly in her direction, “some bruised ribs, one or two might be broken. Which is why I’m hesitant to move him. Was he kicked at all?”

She wracks her memory, “yes.” She winces. “Yeah, he was.”

Martha notes something down in a notebook, “okay.” She says. “Okay. Anything else serious I need to know about immediately?”

“Um.” Donna recalls her time with The Doctor. The woman, um, she electrocuted him quite badly. I’m not sure how many times she did it before I came, but afterwards, it was a lot.”

Martha traces her shaking fingers along the angry red marks circling The Doctor’s wrists. “Here?”

“Yes!” Donna replies.

Martha nods and then gestures for her to come closer. Donna makes her way carefully through The Doctor’s mess of belongings before kneeling beside Martha. She’s got his coat sleeves pushed up to just above his elbow and she gestures at more red marks marring his elbows. Then his neck, and his waist. “Must’ve had him strapped down to something. Medical examination table? I’m going to make a rough assumption that we shouldn’t put him on anything similar if we do move him. I wouldn’t want to cause any kind of flashbacks just now that could result in him hurting himself. He’ll” She breaks off, pinching the bridge of her nose. “He’ll probably insist that he’s fine, but he’s a terrible liar.”

“I know that all too well.” Donna replies, “at this point I just take ‘I’m fine’ as ‘I’m extremely not okay.’

Martha snorted, then her face grew serious. “I don’t think he’s okay this time either. I’ve checked his ankles, same marks there. His wrists are the worst of it, so I’ll take note to fix those first. Before I do though, is there any other life-threatening injuries I need to take care of?”

Donna started shaking her head, but then a sudden realisation filled her with horror, and she nodded, “oh! His back.”

Martha’s lips parted slightly, “what can I expect?”

Donna shook her head, “Oh, I don’t know. Knife cuts? Maybe? It’s bad.”

“And you tell me this now?”

“I’ve only seen it recently, and he said he was okay. But—” she catches sight of Martha’s expression, “now I’m pretty certain he’s not alright.”

Martha nods and then begins bundling The Doctor’s coat up and free from his body before looking back at Donna. “Scissors?”

“He’ll kill you.”

“I don’t care. This is a life-or-death situation.”

“What’s he supposed to wear afterwards?”

Martha blinks at her in confusion, her brain clearly taking a moment to comprehend Donna’s random unprompted thoughts. Donna has trouble comprehending them herself half the time.

“Um.” Martha picks at a nail. “He can borrow some.”

“From you?” Donna tries to imagine The Doctor in a tank top with a leather jacket and skinny jeans. She shudders despite herself. Despite their impossible situation.

“Tom.”

“Who’s Tom?”

“We’re wasting time, Donna.”

Donna mentally kicks herself for getting off track. Her only friend is bleeding out in front of them. She is wasting time. She’s being stupid, of course he won’t care what he wears if he’s dead.

Martha’s readying her scissors, but he loves that jacket. He loves it enough to risk getting himself getting caught again… She can’t help but think about how he might feel, waking up after being through who knows what and finding out his favourite jacket is ruined.

She doesn’t want him to go through more loss… She can’t stand the thought of him like that again. He’s supposed to be…

Well

He’s supposed to be the opposite of Donna. And that isn’t fair for him at all… But…

She winces. “Can’t I just help you get it off? I’m pretty sure you’ll be the one in a life-threatening situation if that jacket gets ruined. She puts on a voice, “’Janis Joplin gave me that coat.’”

Martha sighs, closing her eyes, “I suppose you’re right.” Then under her breath she mutters, “I’m going against every instinct here.” Then louder, “help me lift him.”

Donna gets her arms beneath his and hoists him upwards while Martha carefully manoeuvres his jacket off of him. They place him back down in a heap and Martha brandishes her scissors. “Right. Jacket, saved. Shirt’s not gonna be so lucky.” She cuts it off him methodically and discards it to the side. “Hold his head.” Then she’s carefully rolling him onto his side and The Doctor might’ve been out but the noise he made, made Donna almost certain he should’ve woken up. And maybe he would’ve if he hadn’t been so exhausted and injured and Donna was rambling again…

“Shit.” Martha sucks air through her teeth. “Shit.”

“Can you stop it bleeding at least?” Donna asks.

Martha glances over at her, “yeah, probably. But…”

“But what?”

“These aren’t cuts. Well, they are. But… they’ve been caused by blunt force. Like a hit. See the bruising?” She gestures at the angry black and purple that Donna was doing her best not to look at. Her stomach beginning to feel queasy.

The Doctor… her Doctor…

She should have moved faster.

She swallows heavily, glancing sideways at Martha and trying desperately to ignore the guilt that was pouring into her gut. Despite the fact that it was him who had pushed them away. Despite the fact that it was him who had scrambled the exact date they had left him.

Then Martha pulls a pair of tweezers from her little first aid kit that she’d taken with them ‘just in case’ and gently presses them into one of the wounds. Then she pulls it out, and with it, what looks like a long, thin strip of… of…

“That’s nylon.” She says. Glancing up at Martha.

Martha grimaces, “there’s more than just that in there. I need to get it out before I can do anything else. Is there anything else that might be bleeding? Or just this? Because if it’s just this, he should be okay while I work.”

“What caused it?”

Martha shrugs, “best guess would be a whip, but I’d prefer not to go there. Now answer my question.”

“Oh! Uh…” Donna considers the last hour or so. “He said they’d drawn blood from him?”

Martha’s hands clenched so tightly Donna could hear the tweezers groan. “So, he’s definitely in the woods then. They don’t make it easy, do they?” She gets back to work on the Doctor’s back and Donna is not panicking, she’s not. And she’s not kicking herself, and she’s not letting her mind sink into that bottomless pit of self-hatred that she descends into when her mum tells her how useless she is because she already knows.

And here she was, proving it again, and again and again. She was too late saving Lance; she was too late to save The Doctor. She was useless, she amounted to nothing. If she’d moved faster, if she’d remembered the time they’d gotten there and got him out before it happened.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. Travelling with The Doctor was supposed to be fun. Supposed to be an escape. It wasn’t supposed to end like this.

What if it was her fault?

What if he died and it was her fault?

“Donna!”

Donna pulls herself out of the pit. “Yes?”

“I need you to stem the bleeding for me. I can’t give him a blood transfusion because human blood would probably kill him. So, we need to stop it now, otherwise he has no chance.”

Donna takes hold of the wad of bandages Martha had thrown at her. Staring at the deep gouges in The Doctor’s back. “Which one?”

“Whatever I’m not currently working on cleaning.”

She presses down on the available wounds, wincing at the feeling beneath her hands as the bandages soak up the blood and turn red before her eyes. The Doctor lets out a thin moan and she flinches.

“Don’t stop, Donna.” Martha warns.

“Can’t we give him painkillers? Something to make it hurt less?”

Martha steadies her hand with her other one, “I wish I could, but he’s mentioned allergies before, I don’t want to send him into anaphylactic shock or anything that might make this worse. It looks like he’s worked himself into a healing coma for now. That should numb the most of it.”

Donna tries not to dwell on the concept of a coma, because usually that associates itself with the concept of not waking up. She focuses on putting pressure on The Doctor’s back instead.

She tries not focus on the red dripping to the TARDIS floor, or the amount of sweat wetting The Doctor’s hair, or his pale skin. This isn’t supposed to happen.

She does focus, however, when his breathing starts irregularly speeding up. Now, she’s no Doctor but she’s generally sure that he’s moving close to hyperventilation from his hitched, quick breathing.

Martha doesn’t appear to notice, but she’s not on The Doctor’s front side. Martha’s focussing on cleaning his back with wet wipes and removing any foreign objects so that she can fix it. Martha can’t see The Doctor’s ashen face.

“Martha.” Donna says carefully, placing the back of her hand against The Doctor’s forehead. It’s still hot, and she’s no doctor, but she’s pretty sure a burning temperature is reason to be concerned.

“I’m busy, Donna. What is it?”

Donna winces when she adjusts her grip on The Doctor’s back. Her stomach drops however as the movement does not draw any noise from him. “He’s… he’s breathing quite quickly, Martha.”

Martha pauses in what she’s doing, her eyes widening, almost in panic. “What’s his pulse like?” Her voice is strained, and Donna’s heart is hammering in her chest. She places two fingers beneath The Doctor’s jaw. “It’s fast, Martha. Like he’s just run a marathon.”

“Shit!” Martha moves her hands faster. “I really hope that’s not hypovolemic shock. He needs a blood transfusion if it is, and I don’t have blood we can use. Or the proper equipment… Although I suppose he’s a Time-Lord so he might fare better to the emergency kit I have in my house—”

“Martha!” Donna had just remembered something, “his coat!”

“What about it? Stem this one.” Martha gestures at the gash she’s just finished cleaning. Blood very quickly bubbling enough to soak Donna’s hands again.

“He does have blood!” Donna says, a little hysterically, but to be honest she’s delt with more in the last two hours than she has in her life, so she’ll give herself a little liberty thanks. “They drew it! And he took it with us so they couldn’t use it. Disrupting timelines or something?”

Martha’s eyes light up and some of her stress almost appears to drain from her body. “Donna, you genius!” She stands up and grabs The Doctor’s jacket from where they’d draped it over an empty spot on the TARDIS’ dash. Digging around in the pockets she pulls out the jar of blood.

Donna remembers when she’d first seen it herself, and her own shock is reflected in Martha’s eyes at the size of it. “Shit, no wonder he’s suffering blood loss. That’s at least enough to kill a small human. He’s lucky he’s not.”

Donna nods, “lucky. What do we do?”

Martha considers this for a moment while Donna readjusts her grip on the bandages to gain more ground. “I think we need to move him somewhere else. I can’t do a blood transfusion in here, I don’t want to have to navigate all of his rooms and I know exactly where my gear is in my own house.”

“How do we do that?”

Martha bites her lip, “honestly? With two broken ribs? I don’t know. His biology might be different. He’s got two hearts, two extra ribs, but I’m not sure that corelates to how strong his lungs are, and I really don’t want to risk a collapsed lung on top of hypovolemic shock.”

“We need to make a decision soon, Martha.” Donna glances nervously down at The Doctor’s still body. His breathing is still irregular. Broken at random intervals and his skin has gone clammy and grey and Donna needs to stop overthinking this but she’s so glad that Martha is here because Martha is a doctor and if it were just Donna then…

No. Stop thinking.

Martha blinks. “Okay, one step at a time. We move him carefully, then we focus on blood transfusion, cleaning and stitching him up. It’ll be fine.” She glances down at the jar. “I hope this is enough to hold him over until his body can do the rest of the work.”

“And if it isn’t?”

Martha’s face twists in worry, “we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

Donna pauses to take a deep, deep, breath. Reassuring herself, it would be okay. It has to be okay. Martha is here, Martha is a doctor.

The Doctor won’t die.

“Great.” She grits, hoping she sounds more confident than she feels. “Ready?”

Chapter Text

He’s lying on his stomach. All his senses on red alert because he can’t remember exactly what happened before he’d passed out. Was he still in the slave lab? Still strapped to a table. Or had they made it to the TARDIS?

He does a check of his surroundings, keeping his eyes closed just in case. A shuddering breath of relief releases itself from his lips as he finds his limbs free. Not tied down, just lying beside his head. There is, however, an eerily familiar pressure on them that he can’t shake the panic of.

He can hear a door creaking, and a slight breeze against his face.

He opens his eyes.

He’s on his stomach lying on something relatively soft. His head is sideways, and he stares blankly at the wall in front of him, trying to decipher why it looks familiar. His shirt appears to be missing which leaves his back open to the air. He has to bury his face into the softness of what he has decided is a bed to cut off his panicked breathing for a while at the sight of his elbow, stretched out to his side with a tube taped to it.

Blood transfusion. He tells himself. Nothing more. You lost quite a bit of blood. You’re safe. You’re okay. They’re not drawing any more from you. They’re not.

The pressure on his wrists is soft, not painful straps, bandages, it feels like. Soft fabric, stopping his bleeding wrists from bleeding further. He escaped, he escaped, he escaped.

When his lungs are empty enough to cause him discomfort, and his breathing has slowed down enough for him to regulate it himself. He lifts his head to find a door swinging open behind him. Unwanted tension fills his body at the thought of no longer being alone.

“Doctor?”

The voice is familiar, comforting, and yet he can’t find it within himself to relax.

The bed sinks beside him as someone sits down, he represses a flinch as a set of fingers press against his neck, searching for his pulse.

He feigns sleep. Because if he is still there, he needs some sort of advantage over them. If they think he’s asleep, he has longer to plan, more chance of escape.

He feigns sleep, because if he isn’t still there. And he’s safe, he can’t let them see him like this. He’s trembling, a lump in his throat. Hearts beating at a hundred miles an hour.

“I know you’re awake, Doctor. There’s no way your hearts would be beating that fast if you were asleep, unless you were still suffering severe blood loss. Which you’re not, because I’m good at my job.”

Martha. Of course, it’s Martha. He never could hide from her.

He swallows down his anxieties and unburies his face from the bed. His lungs thanking him for the fresh air he’s now exposed to. His eyes screaming at him when he reopens them and finds the lamp on beside his face, and he’s briefly blinded.

“Ms. Jones.” He croaks, wishing he sounded less broken. “Long time, no see.”

Martha’s eyes soften as they meet his, “think it was longer for you than it was for me, unfortunately.”

He forces a laugh; it comes out more as a choked wheeze. His throat is still wrecked then. Screaming really did a number on his vocal chords. God, he hopes it’s not permanent. He’s known for his laughing at inappropriate times. “Unfortunately.” He echoes.

He tries his best to avoid the sight of the drip in his elbow, swallowing bile. It’s hard, because he’s on his stomach with his head to his side. He probably looks ridiculous.

Then he studies his friend’s face closer, sees the exhaustion in her eyes, the worry, the guilt.

“Not your fault.” He tells her. “Will never be your fault. Don’t ever think that, Martha Jones.”

Those worry lines crinkle in sad amusement. “We thought you’d be okay if we were a bit off. Turned right around because we were worried but rationalised the dates because it’s never been bad.”

“Not your fault.” He repeats. “And hey, not that it really helps, but I’ve had worse.”

Her eyes narrow and he squashes down a flash of panic that he’s pissed her off. She’s not Alex, she’s not going to punish him. He’s safe.

“It doesn’t help. If you weren’t already half dead, I’d slap you.”

And he’s in such a terrible headspace, probably still delusional from blood-loss and delirious from adrenalin that the concept of being slapped is all it takes to send him back there. That stupid sterile room.

Back in agony, wrists in agony. A hand squeezing his chin.

Well done, you can do math. Next time don’t make me wait.

More agony, escape attempt. That was stupid.

The resulting backhand. A slap which in the grand scheme of things – with his back bleeding out, and the near-death experience from aspirin – should have been absolutely nothing. But it layered, he’d been slapped so many times before, but this one sent agony down his spine. Every single movement sent agony down his back.

Fifty-five lashes.

Every time you scream, I add five more.

He was fine during the escape. He was fine now.

“Doctor.”

He jerks, panic rearing its head, nausea filling his throat and it’s just Martha. It’s Martha. You’re acting ridiculous. You’re a Time-Lord, you’re a myth, you’re the powerful one, not Alex, not Alex, not Alex.

He swallows. “Yeah?”

Her eyes are creased with concern, and he wants to run a finger along those all too human lines because they shouldn’t be there because of him.

“Are you okay?” She asks, “do you need anything?”

He swallows heavily again. “M’fine.” He mumbles. “Was my fault.”

Martha’s eyes narrow again and he wishes they would stop doing that. “Not your fault.” She says, backhanding his own words back at him.

Back handing.

Back handing.

Slap.

Don’t make me wait.

He’s going to be sick.

He clenches his fists, holding onto the present for dear life. He’s been through worse, he’s fine.

“I put myself there.” He mumbles. “Sent you away instead of trusting you and…” His foggy brain takes a moment to catch up with itself before he realises Donna is missing. “Donna!” He makes to stand up, but Martha presses a hand down on his shoulder. Gently pinning him down.

“Donna’s fine.” Martha soothes, “she’s sleeping. We were taking turns keeping an eye on you. I accidently slept longer than I should have. She’s exhausted, but she’s okay.”

He relaxes at that. Lying still, biting his lip until the pain of his wounds die down again and he can lie still.

“You kept us safe.” Martha continues. “You did what you do best. What use would we have been if we’d been captured too?”

The Doctor considers this. It makes sense… He supposes.

“Do you need anything?” Martha repeats.

He considers this too. “I think I need to get up.” He decides after a while.

A cool hand presses against his neck and he has to fight down that panic again. The idea of being trapped. His throat closes up and he squeezes his eyes shut.

“No can do,” Martha quips, “sorry. But if you could see your back, and the state of your ribs – which I don’t even fully know the full extent of yet – you would agree with me. Do you need anything else that I can do?”

The Doctor twitches, fingers picking at the skin around them nervously. “Can I have some water?” He asks slowly, all of a sudden hyperaware of how dry and cracked his lips are.

Martha smiles softly, “of course. I’ll be right back.”

She stands, leaving the door open on her way out and The Doctor is alone.

He shivers at the thought, and then mentally slaps—

Slaps

Slaps

He bites down hard on his tongue to bring himself back to the present. He’s okay, he’s being ridiculous. He’s The Doctor for god’s sake.

Then he gathers his arms beneath himself, groaning as his forgotten broken finger announces itself and the tube in his arms shifts, and the wounds on his back scream and God.

If there was an English version of the words he was biting back right now, the TARDIS wouldn’t translate them for risk of deeply offending the sun or something.

He hadn’t realised just how stuffed his ribs were, like Martha had said, probably running on adrenalin during their escape, but the pain definitely showed itself now. Screaming out in agony, throbbing.

He finally managed to pull himself into a cross-legged sitting position on the bed. Hunched over, head in hands. Teeth gritting painfully into the side of his mouth as he restrains an agonised scream.

The bag of blood hanging beside him as a makeshift IV is practically empty so he takes it upon himself to remove the tube from his arm, pressing his free hand against the puncture mark left over to stem the blood flow.

Martha is furious when she returns to the doorway and The Doctor has to dig his nails into his arm to force himself to stay in the present. He’s not there, he’s safe. It’s just Martha. She’s not going to hurt you.

“It’s not finished.” She is clearly fighting not to raise her voice. “Are you stupid? Or do you have a death wish? That blood right there is the only reason you’re still alive.”

He tries so hard. But in the end, his resolve breaks and he curls in on himself. Mind flashing with electricity and whips and blood and smiling, sadistic, feminine faces. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Shit, Doctor, no, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—” The bed sinks beside him as Martha sits down. He flinches violently at her touch and then immediately regrets it. He’s not supposed to be like this, it isn’t fair on Donna or Martha for him to be like this. He’s being ridiculous.

Martha pulls him into a hug. Wraps her arms around him and allows him to sink into her. She has that effect on people. Calming them down. “I’m sorry, Doctor. I shouldn’t have shouted.”

He shudders against her, “I couldn’t look at it anymore. I can’t—” He swallows, “I can’t stop seeing her.”

Martha holds him tighter, careful on where she places her hands, for which he’s grateful. “Do you want to talk about it?” And then when he stiffens ever so slightly. “You don’t have to, but sometimes it helps. I won’t tell Donna either, unless you want to.” She adds, “Doctor/patient confidentiality. I’ll check your back while you do.”

He bites the inside of his mouth. Forcing himself to feel better. He’s fine, he’s The Doctor.

“It was a slave, conditioning lab.” He bites out after a moment. Martha trails a gentle hand along his back as he speaks. Checking his wounds, moving bandages and rewrapping them. She doesn’t speak, just listens.

“I—” He takes in a deep, shuddering breath, “I’ve never experienced what they do in those places. Never… There’s more there, Martha. More people, aliens… Like me. And they’re torturing them. I—” He flexes his hand and bites back a whimper, hating himself, when Martha wets a cloth and begins to freshly clean one of his whip wounds.

“I couldn’t reason my way out of it. They wouldn’t listen to me.” There was something about Martha that made her so incredibly easy to talk to. Maybe it was her doctor’s licence. Maybe it was her voice. “Gagged me every time I tried to speak. Or—or shocked me if they thought I was lying.

They whipped me too. I tried to escape and failed. I—” He closes his eyes as Martha lays a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry we didn’t get to you sooner, Doctor.”

“Not your fault.” He replies.

“It’s going to take some time to heal from this.” She continues. “That kind of torture, the mental kind. That takes a bit to bounce back from. What you need to understand, is that it isn’t your fault either. Someone kidnapped you, stripped you of your free will and hurt you. That is what they did. That is their fault. Not yours. Do you understand?”

He bites the inside of his mouth. Feeling horribly week in front of his former companion. But also, incredibly glad she’s there. He’s not sure what he would’ve done without her. What she didn’t understand, is that he was the one who put himself there. It was partially his fault, because he was stupid, and sent away his friends and—

“Doctor.”

He flinches at his name. It’s too… Alex said it like it wasn’t his. It feels tainted. He…

“It was not your fault.”

He opens his mouth.

“Say it with me.”

“It wasn’t my fault.” He concedes finally. Even if he doesn’t fully believe it.

“Good.” Martha says, “now let me grab you a shirt.”

She coaxes him back to sleep eventually, getting him to drink some water and then pulling her ‘doctor’s orders’ card when he wanted to get back to the TARDIS.

“No, I’m prescribing you at least two weeks of bedrest for your back and ribs to heal.”

“I’m a Time-Lord, I heal faster than you do.”

“Not if you don’t sleep. Two weeks. That’s it. One week for healing, one week for mental healing. No arguing. The TARDIS is hidden, my house is under protection. Tom isn’t here at the moment and won’t be for another month for a mission. You. Are. Fine. You need to rest occasionally, regardless of physiology. Doctor,” She meets his eyes, “you’re going to burn yourself out.”

When he wakes up the next time, Donna is sitting beside him. He can feel her anxious eyes watching him even before he opens his own.

He hates himself for the fear that strikes down his spine. It isn’t Alex. He’s safe.

“Donna.” He says.

“Doctor.” She says back. Her eyes sympathetic and he hates it. He hates it. He hates it.

“Long time no see.” He croaks.

She laughs, but her smile doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Are you okay?”

He blinks slowly at her. “I’m always alright.”

She wipes a stray tear from her eyes and his hearts ache for her. He did this. This is his fault.

“You saved me.” He tells her. “I wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for you.”

Her lip trembles, “I should have been faster.”

“My fault.” He says, “I scrambled the location. Knew something was wrong, didn’t want you to get involved.” He pauses. “I’m glad you did.”

Then she hugs him, and he’d been feeling empty since his escape, but Donna makes him feel just a little. Fills a bit of the void.

His physical wounds heal in a few days like he said they would. He’s able to walk around, take care of himself properly. But Martha was right. The mental scars took longer.

Too long.

Even the smallest things would set him off. A noise that sounded too similar to a whip cracking had him huddled in a corner. He accidently zapped himself with static electricity after helping Martha fold clothes to test his healed broken finger.

The incident had him a mess on the floor, begging Alex to stop. Confessing to being an Alien over and over again.

It wasn’t until Alex had faded back into Donna’s face and wrapped him in a hug that he was able to calm himself back down.

He felt disgusting. He felt broken. He felt like a shell of the Time-Lord he needs to be. He was…

Mostly it was embarrassing. It was embarrassing that he was acting like a moron in front of his friends. It was embarrassing that humans, a species that was technically less advanced than he was, was taking care of him and comforting. It was embarrassing that two days, two days of torture had him a broken mess. That Alex had asserted that kind of power over him in two days.

It’s not fair on Donna that she’s stuck in such a situation. It’s not fair on Martha that once again he’s making her drop everything for him. That’s the reason she left him the first time. He can’t… he doesn’t want them to have to deal with this for him.

They shouldn’t have to. He should just suck it up and move on with his life. Like he has done. Like he always does.

If he were still on Gallifrey such weakness would have him punished. Laughed at. Tormented. His family would have sent him away to have him ‘fixed’. Such weakness was looked down upon because it was primitive. They were better than words like trauma and PTSD… Time-Lords don’t get human ailments because they’re Time-Lords.

He gets better.

Slowly.

There’s a day left of his ‘doctor’s orders’ and Martha is at work. He’s making him and Donna a cup of tea each and a bowl of chips so they can settle down and watch a film series that Donna was appalled and offended he’d never seen. Despite the fact that he was from a place where television didn’t exist.

“They don’t have this kind of stuff where I’m from.” He mumbles over a mouthful of chips.

“Still can’t believe you’ve never seen Star Wars, Space Man. Absolutely absurd.”

“Still can’t believe you just used absurd in an everyday sentence, Earth Girl. Who does that?” He enjoys this, their old banter. Like they’re back to normal. Like they can put the stupid incident behind them, because he’s no longer broken. He’s picked up his pieces and moved on with his life.

That’s what he’s good at.

Compartmentalising.

If The Doctor had a middle name, it would be compartmentalisation.

The (Compartmentalising) Doctor.

The Doctor Compartmentalise.

Push it all down, squash it all into a tiny ball and don’t think about it until it sparks up randomly one day and you have to squash it down all over again.

It got harder and harder every time.

‘The Compartmentalise Doctor’ was a mouthful, but it was better than trying to tell humans his real name. They could never pronounce it. The Gallifreyan language was too hard to say with its quirks and punctuation.

Names have power too. He’d rather just a title. He doesn’t like the thought of being powerless.

Feels narcissistic and condescending. But…

It’s true.

“Do you speak English?” Donna asks and it’s such a silly question because of course he speaks English.

He snorts. “Course I do.”

Donna is silent for a moment, “so the TARDIS isn’t just translating your language?”

“Gallifreyan doesn’t translate.” He says back. “Annoyingly.”

Donna hums, “just thought I’d ask, because I did not say absurd.”

He’s walking back to where she’s sitting now. Last bowl in hand. “Yes, you did.”

“When?”

“Just now?”

“Don’t deny it because I made you feel silly.” He says, “it’s not silly, say what you want. It was just something I don’t often hear out loud in regular conversation.”

A pause.

“I did not say ‘absurd’, Doctor.” She pops the T.

Then she shortens the length of the rope binding his wrists, until he’s back on his tiptoes. He shivers in the cold air, bare chest shaking as he watches Alex crudely pulls the whip from a small round bag at her feet. Her eyes narrow, they’re cruel. They’re sadistic. She enjoys this.

He wonders if this is just her side hustle. She does it for fun.

She strides back over to him; he lifts his chin. If she’s expecting to see fear in his eyes, she’s gravely mistaken. He grew up on Gallifrey, they whipped children there for back chatting. He wasn’t afraid of some whip.

He’s tired of this.

“Back again so soon?” She asks, her finger pressing possessively into his cheek as she cups his jaw. “Anyone would think you like it here. Tell me, why do you disobey your owners so much? They take such good care of you?”

He doesn’t respond. He can’t respond. There’s a strap over his mouth, stealing his words from him. He supposes that makes it easier. He’ll scream less.

She trails a finger beneath his eye and then runs a hand through his cropped hair. “They keep you so well groomed.”

He closes his eyes.

“You’ve been sentenced eighty lashes, Doctor.” She pops the t in that way that he hates. She tilts her head mockingly, “what did you do?”

If he gets out of this…

No.

When he gets out of this. He’s considering changing his name. He hates it now. He hates how she makes it sound like an insult. Like it isn’t his. Like it’s the name of a slave, or a dog that’s just done something annoying to its owner and is about to be punished.

He supposes that’s what he is.

An annoyance.

The Doctor meets her eyes steadily. He’s not afraid… he’s not.

She pulls the gag from his lips. “Go on. Tell me why you’re back. I thought conditioning beat that lovely fight out of you.”

He doesn’t speak. He knows better than to speak. Speaking will just make it worse. She might add more lashes.

Alex raises an eyebrow before tapping the handle of the whip against his jaw. The touch draws an involuntary flinch from him, and she smiles. “I’m sure you’ll think of it after a few lashes.”

He tenses. “Alex, wait!”

But she’s already moving behind him, “do not speak. Doctor, you are not allowed to scream. You know the drill. You’ve been here often enough. Every time you scream, an additional five lashes are added to your remaining total. Do you understand?”

She doesn’t prepare him for the first hit. She never does. The rope cuts into his back like butter and the warm spray of blood coats his spine as he keels over, stopped by the cuffs. His teeth sink into his tongue. He can’t scream. He can’t scream.

It hits again, and again, and again.

He comes back to the present with a sharp flare of pain, realising he’s dropped the bowl on his foot. Nausea floods his stomach, and his throat at the sight of broken glass, and his blood. His hearts are hammering in his head and he’s shaking. Breaths coming in too fast and yet not enough oxygen is making its way to his lungs.

“Oh god, don’t move,” Donna warns, “I’ll come to you. I’ll clean it up.”

When she’s done, they’re sitting on the couch together. Donna pulls him close, an action he would have found horrifying if he wasn’t so shaken.

“I thought I was getting better.” He mumbles, “for fucks sake. It was two days; I shouldn’t be like this.” He winces at Donna’s forlorn expression, “sorry, Donna. I shouldn’t swear. I shouldn’t swear. I’m sorry.”

Donna runs a gentle hand through his hair, and he supposes it’s good exposure therapy because this hand isn’t intending harm towards him. It’s gentle and kind, and not gripping or pulling, or hurting.

“They were torturing you, Doctor.” Donna says after a while. “You can’t rationalise torture. You said it yourself. She would hurt you if you did something ‘wrong’,” She makes quotations with her fingers. “Even Time-Lords can have PTSD and trauma. Something you clearly have a lot of already. I’m no therapist, but it makes sense that such a small incident can incite such a strong response, because you already have such a build-up of it. You had to of snapped at one point or another.”

He feels empty. He’s healing, he’s healed. But he feels so empty.

“This is just a blip. It happens.” Donna murmurs. “It’s not a straight line. You know that.”

He runs his own hand through his hair and finds himself staring at the wall. “I know.”

“They got the TARDIS in a tractor beam.” Donna says after a moment. “Didn’t know they could do that.”

“Tractor beam.” He muses. “Is that what it’s called. And yeah. To an extent. TARDIS has its own defences though; you can’t hold it for long.”

They lapse into silence as Donna loads up the TV, brandishing a DVD. He likes the quiet with Donna. It never feels like it needs to be filled. But when it is filled, he doesn’t want it to stop.

“Star Wars has tractor beams.” Donna says after a moment. “Is that okay?”

The Doctor takes a long sip of his tea. “Yeah. That’s okay.”

“Are you okay?”

He hums softly. “Yeah. So, what’s the plot?”

Donna grins, “Harrison Ford goes on a journey with a space wizard to save a princess from an evil tin man.”

He blinks slowly at her. “I’m sorry what?”

“It’s exactly that.” Donna says. “They save the day in the end too. No sad endings, nothing bad happens that they can’t fix. Well.” She grimaces, “nothing bad that’s actually relevant happens.” She shakes her head. “You’ll like it. Promise.”

And The Doctor is content to sit in the calm for a little. And after a while, Martha joins them.

He’ll pick up his pieces little-by-little along the way too. And if it takes longer than expected then…

Then he thinks he’ll be alright.