Rating/Warnings: M for violence/injury description, suicidal thoughts/actions

Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.

Canon/Spoilers: AU to end of EOT, ignores future canon. I'm not familiar with all classic Who so doesn't fully conform to that either. I wrote a kind of prelude to this, called Blood. The lyrics are from "Where will you go", which is a very beautiful song and felt very fitting for this fic (it was very difficult selecting the lyrics for the quote). I've been listening to the album a lot recently (best expensive import I ever ordered) and think I have that to thank for this being posted now.

Recovery

By Alexannah

Where will you go
With no one left to save you from yourself …
No one seems to hear your hidden cries
You're left to face yourself alone
- Evanescence

Chapter One: Taking Arms

Outside, the Doctor returned to the TARDIS. Wilfred let the curtain fall back to the side, tucked the revolver into his belt and turned back to the bed. He was about to shut the suitcase when he noticed something else. Something very small, glowing in a corner.

His heart jumped into his mouth and with a shaking hand he picked it up. A small engraved gold disc, hanging off a chain.

"It's a key. You'll know when to use it."

The only words she had said on the matter. Wilf had almost forgotten with the years, but now the memory came flooding back as the object shone bright gold through the dust. He wiped it clean; at his touch, the glow almost completely faded.

With no hesitation, Wilf hung the chain around his neck and tucked the key out of sight.

They had let him keep the sonic screwdriver.

It wasn't as if it was going to help him, the Doctor thought. The cell door was triple deadlocked. (He had tried.) He had gone through his dimensionally transcendental pockets seven times now. On any other planet, he might have stood a chance of escape. But on Gallifrey?

Even if he escaped the jail—a virtually unheard of feat in itself—he stood no chance of escaping the planet itself in time.

Prisons on Gallifrey were designed to block out all sense of time. He could have been in the cell minutes, or centuries. For a Time Lord, separation from all but the external senses was only just short of torture. Logically, the Doctor knew it couldn't have been more than a day, or he—along with the rest of his species—would be dead. With no chance of escape, the best he had to hope for was the Moment to be activated by his past self before he was called before the Council. Death by that had to be better than Triple Execution.

The Doctor shuddered. He had never witnessed one himself, they were dealt out quite rarely—saved for only the worst of traitors. But he knew how it worked, and he knew that, as the killer of his own kind, there was no way he would get off with anything less.

He didn't want the last thoughts going through his mind to be fear. The Doctor tried to distract himself, tried to force his thoughts on happier memories. It wasn't easy. His thoughts drifted back to his last moments outside the Time Lock, and he remembered Wilfred. He felt as if he'd been punched in the gut as the realisation hit him.

The radiation. Brilliant, wonderful Wilf, was no doubt dead by now. A lump arose in his throat. Another family that he almost called his own, another family he had destroyed. First Donna, then her grandfather ...

"The final act of your life is murder?" Rassilon had sneered earlier. How right he had been. Leading friends to certain death was as bad as taking their lives himself. Maybe he deserved ...

No. The Doctor shook himself mentally. He was not going to go down that road of thinking. If the Council were going to take his life, he was not going to let his mind go too.

"Hello?"

Wilfred's voice rang out through the empty room pointlessly. He swallowed and slid down the glass wall to sit on the floor. The machine was making all sorts of noises, but right at that moment he couldn't bring himself to care. The Doctor had gone.

Wilf didn't pride himself on his understanding of aliens, even after all he'd encountered. But he would guess that the Doctor disappearing along with the other Time Lords wasn't a good thing.

Was he dead? Wilf tried to quell the thought. He couldn't be. Even after he'd told him the prophecy, he couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it.

The machine noises were getting louder. Wilf shook himself, and tried to open the door, but it wouldn't budge.

He took out his mobile, intent on phoning Sylvia. If he was about to die, he didn't want the last words he said in his daughter's hearing to be 'You're not leaving me with her'. Before he could dial, however, someone appeared in the room before him. Wilf almost dropped his phone.

It was her.

"It's you!" He jumped to his feet.

"Wilfred Mott." In spite of the sadness in the Time Lady's eyes, the tiniest of a smile curled the corner of her mouth. "What have you gone and done?"

"The door won't open," Wilf said. "You couldn't—"

"I'll let you out." She opened the other booth, closed the door and slammed the button down. Less than a millisecond later, she had vanished again before his eyes. The booth glowed red, and Wilf hurried out of his. After a minute, she reappeared, this time beside him.

"Thanks," Wilf said.

"You're welcome, Wilfred. And now you must help me."

"What can I do?" Wilf asked. "Where's the Doctor? Is he—"

"He's not dead," she replied. "Not yet. But he was pulled inside the Time Lock. If we don't hurry, he will be dead."

Wilf's breath caught in his throat. "But—what can I do?"

"In case you hadn't noticed, I found my own way in and out of the Time Lock," she said. "I can take you in with me. First, give me your key."

Obediently, Wilf pulled it from under his clothes. The key was still faintly glowing. "How'd you know I had this? What's it do?"

"For the moment," the woman said, taking it from him, "it's our anchor to the here and now. Our way back out." She placed it on the floor and held out a hand to him. Wilf looked at it, and then back up at her.

"I don't even know your name," he said. "Who are you?"

There was a pause while she looked him in the eye, and for a moment, again, he felt a flicker of something in his chest, like he was missing something important. "I'm Pennine," she finally replied.

The cell door slid open, and the Doctor swallowed hard, trying not to shake. So this was how it was going to end, was it? The man who had sacrificed everything—everything—to save the universe, time and time again, was going to be killed like a criminal. A traitor.

A slow, agonising death. No escaping. No regenerating. No-one left to save him.

Dead. The end.

TBC ...