Golden Midnight, a doctor who fanfic

Intervention on Midnight

by Mitashade

Hello everyone. This is my first fic in a very long while. I'm hoping to get motivated to finish it now that I have a sort of plot-bunny floating around my head. I hope you enjoy it! I won't say no to reviews if you want to get more chapters outta me... I take persuading most of the time. *sigh* I'm so lazy. :P

As the Doctor kneels helpless on the cabin floor, a certain ally is fast approaching. Unfortunately for the passengers, she is not amused.

Chapter 1

Rose.

He had not seen her face on the monitor. He had not seen her desperation as she cried out for his attention. He had not seen her face and remembered their time together; her courage, her strength... how she had saved him from more than just their enemies. And now, as he kneeled on the ground, frozen, face twisted in terror, he has no reason to hope to see her again.

The Doctor is facing away from them, and they can't see the deep-seated panic on his face; his wide, tearing eyes, and slightly shaking frame. It makes it easier to blame him, when they don't have to look at him.

"They've completely separated," says Jethro, now that the others are listening. Everyone has stopped shouting, and the cabin is eerily quiet.

"She's free! She's been saved!" shrieks Val, eager to see a bright side.

As Sky stands and looks about the cabin at the others, the Doctor is staring straight ahead, unable to move, unable to defend himself. "It was so cold," they say, slightly out of sync. "I couldn't breathe."

As she begins to give false comfort to the others, the Doctor finds himself growing frightened as he hasn't been since he was human, and before that, since Canary Wharf. I can't move! Oh, please, don't listen to her... why does she want me, he thinks as the others continue to argue over the situation. Sky has not moved, and the gleam in her eye, giving a not-quite-human stare, seems not to unnerve anyone: they are all so desperately clinging to the hope that someone seems to have come out of this for the better.

"It's inside his head."

"It killed the driver..."

"... and the mechanic..."

"... and now it wants us."

"I said so!" says Val.

Sky continues, the Doctor always repeating. "He's waited so long. In the dark, and the cold. And the diamonds. Until you came... bodies so hot... with blood, and pain..."

The eery mood begins to scare the passengers, and the Doctor grows ever more petrified.

"Make him stop, oh my God, someone make him stop!" Val cowers into the arms of her husband, as Dee Dee takes on a contemplative expression. "But she's saying it," she exclaims.

"And you can shut up!" says Biff.

"I'm sorry, but it's not him, it's her," she points, "he's just repeating!"

"But that the thing does, it repeats!"

As the argument escalates, the Hostess calms the group and Dee Dee manages to leak out her theory, though none of them will have it.

What happened to the human race? I was sure they were better than this, thinks the Doctor, distressed. Could I have been so wrong? Or is it just that I didn't know them as well as I thought?

"...that's exactly what the Doctor said would happen!" finishes Dee Dee.

"What, you're on his side?"

"No!!" For all her certainty, she still distances herself from the Doctor, unwilling to assert anything for fear of attracting similar negative attention to herself.

Their assertions continue, and Sky still stands smug among them, while the Doctor is slowly drained of his voice; of himself. "She's got his voice..." the Hostess becomes uncertain.

"No, but that's not true, 'cause it can't be, 'cause I saw it pass into him! I saw it with my own eyes!" The Doctor is beginning to seriously dislike Val Cane and her husband. But as he cannot move or speak, he'll have to keep the personal commentary to himself. The rest of them aren't that much better as they jump to agree with her.

Jethro seems to retain an unwillingness to make judgements: a sign of courage? Or cowardice? "I suppose... he was right next to her."

No one is listening to Dee Dee anymore; they seems more content to judge and shout, rather than have an educated discussion. Listen to her, someone please! Don't believe it, oh god please, someone help me! The Doctor begins eyes begin to water, a result of terror and the dry cabin air. Sky's face stretches into a smug grin, which no one seems to notice.

"That's how he does it."

"He makes you fight."

"Creeps into your head..."

"...and whispers."

The synchronization between Sky and the Doctor is growing farther apart, and the Doctor's hearts pound faster as he loses more of himself to this unknown being.

"...that's him, inside," they say, seconds apart.

"Don't let him whisper, shut him up, shut him up, get him out of my head!"

As the Doctor's fear makes tremors pass through him, he hears the words he hoped would not come out. "Throw him out! Yeah, we should throw him out!"

Oh no, please, no.

He feels Biff hauling him up as words of encouragement flow from his own treacherous mouth. He can't believe that the humans he though were brilliant have degraded to such primitive savagery.

"I don't think we should do this!" yells the Hostess. But it was her idea... and as she realizes this, she goes silent and stills, halfway down the cabin.

The professor soon joins Biff after depressingly little coercion, but his body is weak with fear and old age. "...just grab hold of him- not like that, are you stupid!?..."

The passengers can see the Doctor's face now; they can see the tears and the terror, but they mostly refuse to acknowledge it. They're in this deep and, out of something akin to pride, they won't stop now in their certainty.

"Throw him out! Just throw him out!" Val, ever quick with words, eggs on the men. Dee Dee and Jethro have retreated, in tears, to the sides of the cabin, watching uselessly. They have seen the Doctor's expression, and they still do nothing.

Oh god, stop! Just stop it! Not like this, please not like this, the Doctor is screams in his mind. Donna! I'm sorry, it wasn't my fault, I tried... He has come so far, all this way, with a faith in humans so strong he has happily surrounded himself with them most of his life. But now...

Rose...

Until his earlier conversation with Sky, he hadn't thought of his former companion in days. He's been slowly learning to keep her memory away from other, in the secret depths of his heart, where it cannot be tainted or turned against him. And yet she still seems to creep in his life no matter where he goes, no matter who he's with. Rose, he thinks. I'm glad you're not here to see this. To see my shame... theirs too. But I still wish you were with me. I'm sorry, love.

"Cast him out!"

The men are struggling with the Doctor's slight, awkward frame as his foot becomes caught against a seat.

"Cast him out!"

"Into the sun..."

"And the night!"

"And the night!" The Doctor has lost all control over conscious thought. His petrifying fear has taken over, and the only sounds in his mind are the voices of the others and his own mental screams.

Dee Dee and the Hostess are standing back, uncertain, but doing nothing still. As the men's efforts are rewarded with an easing of movement of the Doctor's body from the tangle of the aisle seats, Sky continues to root them on. "Do it! Do it now!" And the Doctor is helpless but to repeat the words that will send him to his death.

And yet, as the noise grows to a fever pitch, a long, muted note sounds suddenly through the cabin, seeming to tune out the shouting. It goes unnoticed at first, but one by one, the passengers start to notice it. First Jethro, then the Hostess and Dee Dee. The men pause, scowl, then freeze, eyes wide. Is it something new, something else come to get them?

The men drop the Doctor to the floor, and the thin man is laid out on his back, still unable to move. He doesn't know what to think of the sound, but he can't help the slight relief he feels at being let go, however temporarily.

The now ear-splitting note has the passengers cowering with theirs hands over their ears. The Doctor, unable to do so, cringes internally at the added pain.

In an intense flash and a bang, the lights blow out with a shower of sparks. Everyone drops to the floor.

Slowly, a glow begins to shimmer around the room. As everyone slowly raise their heads above seat-level, they see a point of light hovering in the rear of the cabin. Even the heretofore unaffected Sky loses her grin as she turns to look at the apparition. The Doctor stares straight up, not able to see anything but the a glow cast across the ceiling.

The cabin starts to shake with short tremors as the shimmering light grows into a fissure. The passengers begin to panic again, but are incapable of doing more than cowering and shading their eyes as the light increases in brightness and takes on a distinct golden hue.

Another, sudden crack of sound, like a sonic boom, shakes the cabin and the light materializes into the vaguely recognizable shape of a human form.

"Wh- what is it? Biff, what is it?!" cries Val, her ruse of righteousness gone in the face of this new addition to an already alarming experience. But her husband is mute for once, staring at the overwhelmingly beautiful, yet somehow pulse-poundingly frightening presence before him.

The shimmer seems to waver, before winking out with another bright flash, making the habitants of the shuttle cover their eyes, except the Doctor, who is now very confused, nervous, yet still slightly glad of a distraction. At least, until he finds out what is going on.

As eyes are uncovered and heads are raised to look to the rear of the cabin, the form of a young woman fallen to the floor becomes the main focus of the newly distressed passengers. Her golden skin is clothed in a long-sleeved black jumper and unobtrusive blue jeans. Her equally golden hair is strewn out over her shoulders and on the floor where her head rests across her arms. Had anyone cared to notice, they might have seen the black trainers on her feet which were strikingly similar to the Doctors.