Summary: Good faith, bad faith, dead worlds, fake gods, and what happens when you stop believing in yourself.
Notes: Title translates loosely to 'how much time'. This is my attempt at a multi-part story, with a plot, that does not tie into any existing episodes/plot holes/missing scenes.
Rating: T for one minor swear, and morbid themes/disturbing imagery later on.
Characters: Four, Sarah, OC.
Disclaimer: There are things here that are owned by the BBC. I do not own these things.
combien du temps
It was cold.
He was used to it by now; Cold was one of the constants, like silence and the dim half-darkness of twilight and boredom. There was no measure to time without ticking clocks or a passing sun, and there had been no clocks for a very long time, no difference in the light to indicate day passing on into night. Hundreds of years? Or thirty seconds?
An oily blackness crawled up behind his eyelids, whispering in a voice like rotted straw, instructions, unwilling truths, assurances that drank like poison. He gave in to it, falling into someplace deep and dark, a place where he could pretend to exist, pretend that he had breath to stir the dust motes or a beating heart to break the silence.
This was all very normal, very regular, the clockwork of his existence, now. This was, he supposed, what it meant to be dead.
.o.
An explosion from the center console ripped the Doctor's veneer of false confidence to shreds as the room pitched and bucked, the lights failing and sparks running along the controls everywhere he touched them, chasing him around the console as he struggled to find the right button or switch, to route around the problem or initiate an emergency landing or just bloody something, anything to get them out of immediate danger, deal with the consequences later…
"I suppose," he said loudly, over the din of combusting circuitry and alarms and the faraway tolling of cloister bells, "I should have said that I had the situation mostly under control."
Sarah clung to one edge of the console, white-knuckled in the flickering lights, and there was not a trace of even the driest, blackest humor on her face. "We're going to crash. Probably die. And your jokes are getting worse."
"Crash and die, nonsense. Come now, do have a little faith in me," the Doctor chided, ducking around and reaching across in front of her to pull another switch, then three buttons in quick sequence. He moved on away from her to reach to a bank of levers just under one edge of the console - moving fast, faster than she'd ever seen him. He wasn't laughing at the joke either.
There was no response – just a breath-holding moment, Sarah tightening her grip on the console and pressing her eyes shut, the Doctor still in a furious blur of motion around the console, hitting controls at complete random now, frantic and lost for options –
And the TARDIS settled out of the vortex and onto dry land with an anticlimactic, if wrenching, thud. A moment of tentative, hopeful silence – then the controls under the Doctor's stilled hands exploded.
.o.
There was a noise suddenly, from Outside, and it drew him back to the surface of consciousness like a rusty hook on a rusty cable, grinding its way through the muck with explosive insistence and leaving him blinking and confused in the shimmering half-light of his waking world.
The voice that came was the kinder one, the one that sounded like warm honey seeping between the cracks and crevasses of his brain. Wake up, it said. There are people coming. If they find you, you'll have to start over. You'll have to start the pattern again, from the beginning. Do you think you could do that?
That made no sense. People couldn't see him and he couldn't see them – they came and went all day, walked through him and around him with a chill of presence but no physical signs of passing. People couldn't find him unless… unless they were dead, too. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were others like himself, come to steal away his mind and his progress, to get a head start on the peace that he knew wasn't far away now, not long now, and they couldn't take it from him, not this close to the end. It wasn't fair.
No, the voice said. It isn't fair. You might have to strike first, to protect what's yours.
He shivered in the cold, and waited.
.o.
He kept a fire extinguisher on board. Sarah ran that thought over and over in her mind, but it somehow refused to take root. She'd never seen the console on fire like that, didn't realize metal could burn, was completely unprepared for the smell of something very much not-metal burning just under the shining surfaces to hit her in the face only seconds after they'd managed to land. Something alive, and screaming, as it burned.
The Doctor didn't say a word as she doubled over on the decking, body heaving with revulsion for all that she'd had no breakfast this morning for it to bring up – just made sure the fire was out, set aside the spent extinguisher, and folded himself to perch on the balls of his feet next to her, one hand settling on her back.
He kept a fire extinguisher on board, and handy. This had happened before. She almost wanted to laugh, breath hitching around her stomach's betrayal in something like a strangled sob. What was that smell? Could it really be what she thought it was?
"We're all right, Sarah," he finally said, hand rubbing small circles on her back, supportive and soothing. "Just breathe."
"Don't want to," she managed to choke out. "It's like… something dying."
The Doctor tilted his head up to regard the darkened room, sparks jumping sporadically from one control to another, faint lights blinking out diagnostic patterns as the ship began piecing itself back together. The light from the time rotor reflected eerily in strained and empty eyes, when she dared to glance up at him. He looked like he was listening to some faraway voice that she couldn't hope to hear.
"No, she's not dying," he finally replied, eyes still fixed on the room around them. "Not in good shape, by a long shot. But not dying, I made sure of that." A forced smile, all teeth and uncertainty, as he looked back down to Sarah. "I do occasionally live up to my name, you know."
"What happened?"
The Doctor frowned, thoughtful. "Well obviously we've…" Another glance around the room, then he pushed one hand into his hair, as if shocked and disconcerted by some realization. And he was. "…you know, I don't honestly know."
Sarah did laugh that time, a harsh, short bark of absurdism and weariness as her bearings came back to her. "Let me guess. Only one way to find out?"
He nodded, hesitantly, curly hair bobbing round his head. Sarah could swear it was singed in places. "Something reached into the vortex and tripped us into falling through time. Personal motivations aside…" And they were hard to put aside, as he glanced around the room again, at the chaos and the damage and his poor beautiful ship hanging onto life only because he'd been just fast enough with that extinguisher. "…Anyone with that sort of technology and a tendency to be that terribly impolite about it really does need to be stopped." Eyes narrowed in second though. "Or at least talked to."
"Sure," she said, rocking back onto her heels and pulling herself to stand; he followed her with considerably less effort. Her voice was rife with sarcasm, but it was playful, and that was a good sign. "Let's just sit them down for tea. Ask them politely why they tried to kill us. That ought to work wonders."
.o.
No, the ragged straw-voice insisted, the sound echoing in empty spaces. This is right. You don't deserve peace any more than the others did. They're coming to take away something you never earned. You should let them. It might redeem you.
Hasn't he earned it? asked the honey-voice, petulant suddenly, seeping out one of his ears to drip heavily into the gravel, make it shimmer with gold. If he had ears anymore. He didn't, he thought. They had to be somewhere in orbit by now. Haven't we held him here long enough?
No. No, we haven't.
.o.
"All right then, where are we? Or do we not know?"
The Doctor shook his head, standing over the scorched and silent console. "We don't know," he conceded grumpily, pressing a few buttons with no useful result. "The radiation and atmospheric sensors are passive, thankfully. So we do know that stepping out the door won't kill us."
Sarah turned to eye the doors in question, unused to seeing the white and metal-bright room in such darkness. Flick of the switch and they came open on their own. "Wait," she said, hesitating. "Shouldn't we fix the TARDIS first?"
The Doctor was already halfway to the door, pulling his hat from the miraculously still-upright coat stand. "She'll fix herself, given enough time. The damage is too far into the organics; nothing for it but to let her heal. Come on," he said, grinning widely under the brim of his hat. "New world to explore."
"Mad scientist and/or petty tyrant and/or old enemy to topple," she added cheerily as she joined him, composure much improved now that the console room had ceased smelling like a charnel house.
Too bad that that was exactly what the landscape looked like, when they stepped out into it.
tbc. (c) ricebol 2007