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He can’t hear. It’s silent. Wait— No, his ears have had their nerves cut off. No, he’s been injected with Alo venom. Yes, Alo venom.
Hallucinations. Mind games. Numbness. Yes, Alo venom. Disjointed thoughts. Fatigue. Confusion.
Disjointed thoughts. The Doctor can really feel that.
Alo venom. Death, blindness, nerve damage. For a single-hearted creature.
Not him, thankfully.
The Doctor can’t hear. It’s not silent, just buzzing. Everything is buzzing.
He’s hanging onto a table. Strange. It’s marble and cold. Funny on his fingertips. No dust.
His legs are feeble. Numbness, check.
Somebody is grabbing at him. By his shoulder.
He turns to look up. No, left. Left. He turns to look left.
Rory. It’s Rory. Right, Amy and Rory are with him. They’re on Chaday. The word circles around his head a couple times.
Serotonin-suckers. Right. Venom’s supposed to make you feel happy.
Not working, so far. Must be a prototype. The Doctor’s mouth lifts up at his own joke.
Rory’s eyes glint with confusion. He’s opening his mouth, and closing it. Rapidly. Humans are brilliant at doing so. Not as well as him, but fairly comparably.
A high whining noise accompanies Rory though. The Doctor grimaces and puts his hand over Rory’s lips. It stops.
He thinks. He needs to get his mind back together. In around 5 minutes, hallucinations are due. Auditory hallucinations are due in 10.
Thoughts back together, thoughts back together. He shuts his eyes.
Alo venom. Venom. Venom.. Antidote! Yes, antidotes. Great thing. Remarkably resistant to venoms. Alo venom. Alo, Chaday. Chaday.
TARDIS. They need to get to New Berlin.. No— New Brussels. 51st Century. Yes. New Brussels, 51st century.
Rory’s mouth is absent, so the Doctor’s hand drops to his side. He grips firmly onto the table and widens his eyes.
Purple sky, blue clouds. Alonians on the ground. Nice going, Ponds. Smashed marble — Goodness, an abundance of smashed marble.
The Ponds are staring at him. Amy’s.. angry? He can’t really decipher her facial expression, since his vision’s a mess. How he’d imagined it would be like to be someone who needed glasses without their glasses.
Both of them are shouting at him. Only whining escapes their lips.
“TARDIS,” The Doctor breathes, not really sure if he made a sound, “Now.”
His hand that’s holding the table to keep himself upright tenses and flops backwards.
The floor’s warm. Like he’s fallen onto the floor of a microwave.
Didn’t they hear him? Avo venom, antidote, Brussels, TARDIS, now.
“TARDIS,” He repeats, hopefully in a more urgent sense, “Rory.”
Rory perks up and glances at Amy, whose boots are storming off. The Doctor’s neck aches with venom, blocking any muscles from receiving the energy to lift his head up.
Thankfully, he’s helped up by Rory, who hangs onto his shoulders and says something to him. He wishes they’d stop doing that.
The whining makes his head hurl. For a man who rarely receives a migraine, this burns. He lets his eyes drift around. The blinks he takes are slower. The Doctor would say he’s falling asleep, but the venom sets off something in his adrenaline glands that fills him with a subtle presence of energy.
The noise continues.
At some point, Rory catches on that the Doctor can’t hear and scoops him up.
A minute until visual hallucinations begin.
“Quicker.” He hisses, only to be met with Rory’s frustrated face looking down and snapping at him in silence.
His chest is on fire. The Venom should be getting to his eyes soon.
He notes that Rory is quite the fast runner. The Doctor’s less groggy, all the venom’s supposedly flooding to his retinas now, and he smiles up at Rory. He returns a stiff one.
He still can’t hear anything, or move his arms, but he can feel his legs.
Hearing would be better, though.
Rory pauses in his quite fierce sprint. The Doctor gazes up at his chin. He’s saying something, looking left and right. nervously. They’re in an alleyway. Purple skies, still. No more clouds.
“Left,” The Doctor spits out. Speaking seems to make his throat itch, “Left.”
Rory nods and runs with the Doctor cradled in his arms.
“Doctor?” Somebody calls. Surprisingly, their voice reaches his ears. He lifts his head up slightly and gazes behind them.
She’s blonde, with a top sporting the British flag. Wacky hair. Jeans. A smile that reveals the tip of her tongue and her grinning teeth.
“Hello, Rose.” The Doctor whispers. He feels.. drunk? Goodness, he’s never felt so intoxicated before, never mind drunk. That’s the lowest of lows.
“Fancy seeing you ‘ere, with these new people..” Rose remarks, “Better than me, are they?”
Her voice is angelic. The Doctor’s world is completely silent, no whining, no buzzing. Just Rose. Despite Rory jogging to the TARDIS, she doesn’t move. She stands there and watches, with her hands in her pockets and one foot behind the other.
“‘Course not.” The Doctor replied, a little smirk arising. Even though his vocal box is being torn to shreds, it’s very much worth it.
“S’what I thought. They’re pretty alright, though.. Look at this tosser, ay? Carrying you around like you’re a princess.” She laughs, and his eyes snap shut as he beams at her.
They halt. Right. Alo venom. Antidote, Brussels, 51st century, TARDIS.
“Sonic’s in my pocket,” He mumbles, “Near the bow.”
Feeling Rory snatch it from his jacket, the Doctor opens his eyes and returns back to Rose. Drunk. He is absolutely drunk. He never understood why Amy and Rory would rarely pull out wine, if it makes you feel this fatigued. If it wasn’t for the hallucinations, then he would be much less happy.
Maybe it isn’t a prototype.
Rory sets the Doctor down on the steps — he slopes down them in seconds.
Rose bends over to see him, right in his face. He grimaces at her.
“Not your finest moment, Doctor.” She giggles, straightening up and sauntering to Rory, who’s babbling to Amy. She looks very flustered at him.
In the end, all three of them stare at him. One with pity, one with frustration and one with delight.
The Doctor just fixes his eyes up at the ceiling as Amy rages over to him and begins to yell in his face.
“Are you finished, Amy?” The Doctor quips. Still silent, but he can tell that he said it in the way he intended.
Amy hesitates, lifts her hand up, then drags it down.
“She almost had your ‘ead in there.” Rose retorts from somewhere in the TARDIS. He would reply with something intelligent, but it would seem like he’d be saying it to Amy.
“Right,” He begins, feeling the pain return — Alo venom has quite the mixed bag of effects, “I have 20 minutes before this venom renders me completely, utterly useless. No hearing, no sight, nothing. Already can’t hear anything, thankfully. The antidote isn’t on the TARDIS, it’s at New Brussels, 51st Century. Shouldn’t be too hard to get there, except that I can’t feel my legs nor my arms, and I can’t hear anything but the hallucinations the venom’s given me. She’s wonderful, though, so don’t worry about that.”
Amy glances at Rory, before glancing back at him.
“Looks like you stunned ‘em.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I?” He responds smugly.
“Half o’ what you said was all jumbled up, though.” The Doctor can hear the grin on her face.
“Can somebody please put me on the chair? Because unless you two know how to get from Chaday to Alonia, you need me to see what you’re doing!”
Rory carries him and dumps him onto the chair near the right of the console.
Rose is eyeing him up and down.
“Bossy, aren’t ya? You weren’t always this bossy,” She murmurs,” Well, with me you weren’t.”
The Doctor ignores her. He wants to say a quick, let me concentrate, Rose, or something along those lines, but his throat throbs from his monologue to Amy, which was much more egotistical than he’d care to admit. He needs to save his voice for the more serious things.
“Okay, push that big red lever that you’re near, Amy.”
She does so promptly.
“Now.. Now.. Rory— Rory..”
“Somebody’s a little drunk.” Rose grins.
“Shut up..” The Doctor sighs, before his eyes begin to dart all over the place. He’s about to fall asleep. For one of the first times in the last 700 years, he’s going to fall asleep. Convenient.
Amy stomps up to him, he can make out her fiery hair, and gives him a hand to the face. The Doctor couldn’t feel it.
“Just.. Er— Voice Interface,” He sputters.
A blurry rendition of himself pops up beside Rose.
“Tell this lot how to get to New Brussels 5056, will you..?” He says to himself.
They watch as the hologram informs them.
“Gonna take a quick nap?” Rose dares. Playful.
“Well.. I wasn’t planning.. to..” He stammers, before dozing off.