A/N: This idea has been one that's been something I can't stop thinking about. What would happen if a companion died? I know nothing of Doctor Who before the 9th Doctor, so I'm not taking that into account. I know the show has dealt with deaths close to the Doctor (Reinette, Jenny, the Master, etc) and that is the creator's interpretation. Here is mine.
I do have a back story to all of this. This isn't really the end, but more of a beginning. The idea grows from here and more happens but I won't continue unless I get some reviews, favourites and such.
Oh, and sorry for any mistakes :)
Read and Enjoy!
A scream. A high-pitched and terrified scream. It shocked the Doctor into consciousness. He sat up fast and the blood rushed to his head and he was dizzy and disorientated for a few seconds. He tried to breathe but immediately began coughing, his lungs clogged with dust and ash. He leaned forward, his chest heaving as he tried to inhale clean air but it was full of the dusty remains of the temple.
"Elle?" The Doctor croaked in between a few more coughs. "Elle?"
He knew that she had screamed. He knew that she must be in danger, possibly hurt and in pain. He looked around, his dark eyes scanning the wreck of the bomb. He could feel the warmth of the two suns on his face and knew the roof was gone, or part of it at least. Most of the walls had been ripped apart and were strewn in piles across the ground. The temple was now a ruin and he didn't feel any regret about destroying a sacred building.
The Doctor tried to jump to his feet but a sharp, stabbing pain in his knee knocked him back down. He winced and rubbed his hand gingerly over the knee before standing more slowly.
"Elle!" he called, his voice stronger. "I'm coming for you! Don't worry, I'm here."
He limped through the wreckage, skirting bricks and glass, noticing a shredded tapestry or the head of a statue, blackened and burned. He didn't go far before he found her, propped against a waist high pile of bricks and mortar. Her face was dirty with dust and ash and a few small cuts covered her cheeks and forehead. She cradled her left arm in her right and her right leg was sliced open, so deep he could see the white of her bone, and her bright red blood steadily streamed down to a puddle pooling at her feet. He was so focused on assessing her injuries he didn't notice the scarlet robed monk standing beside her. His eyes missed the serrated ceremonial knife clenched in his bony hand.
"Everything is going to be okay," the Doctor said, flashing a smile. "We're going to get out of here and into the TARDIS where we'll fix you up, good as new!"
"Doctor," she whispered. It was then, at the sound of her fearful whisper, the terror in her tear-filled eyes, he registered the prescence of the monk and his knife.
"I waited for you," the monk rasped. "I could have spilled her blood while you were unconscious but I thought it would be better with a witness. Don't you?"
The Doctor took a step forward and held back his wince of pain when he put too much weight in his injured leg. He placed a hand on Elle's shoulder, a gentle and reassuring hand. She wouldn't be hurt while he was here.
"It's over," he said, an edge to his tone. "Your temple is destroyed. Everything you held sacred and reverential lies in ruins. Your sacrifice would mean nothing now."
The monk smiled and showed several missing teeth. He inched the knife closer to Elle's throat.
"As you can see, Doctor, none of my cult has survived. Why is that do you think?"
"Bad luck."
"No!" he hissed, his black eyes narrowing into slits. "No! I survived because He allowed it. He shielded me from the blast by holding me in His hands, safe from harm. I must continue the sacrifice if I am to repay His kindness."
A small whimper escaped Elle's lips and the Doctor watched as a single tear rolled down her cheek, mingling with the dirt on her face. She captured his eyes with hers and he could see her unspoken words.
I'm not ready to die.
"You are delusional if you think the bomb would stop us," the monk continued. "It was our intention to destroy the temple after the sacrifice. A terrible accident, it woul be reported. The community would take us in, thinking us only harmless monks, and then we would convert them. Our cult would grow and we would cover the entire planet. He would be so happy with us!"
The monk laughed and the knife nicked Elle's throat as his hand shook. The Doctor felt a darkness surge up, engulfing his hearts. It was rage. A pure and raw anger that he hadn't felt in years. Not since Rose. Rose had saved him, changed him but this monk was undoing all of that by threatening Elle. He tried to control it, squash it back down and lock it away. But he could only make it recede so far.
"Don't do this." The Doctor watched the red blossom on her neck. It was small, it was barely enough to cause pain but it hurt him. It hurt him to know that she was so close to death and he could do nothing. Nothing that wasn't morally right.
"I do not listen to you. I listen to my god."
"What kind of god tells you to murder innocent girls!" the Doctor shouted. "Slice their throats open and revel in their blood!"
The Doctor took a quick step forward, his fingers so lose to the blade of the knife but the monk whipped his own hand back.
"NO!"
A clean, quick cut. It happened so fast, so unbelievably fast that the Doctor hadn't realised it had happened. Until the blood appeared. It snaked and slithered down the pale of her neck, seeping into the cotton of her top. The Doctor looked on helplessly, wordlessly and he caught her eyes for the final time.
A silent plea, a beg for help, a cry for a doctor.
The Doctor dropped to his knees and the pain reverberated through his entire body. Elle slumped to the side and fell over. Her eyes were still open, still pleading.
"No, no, no, no. NO!"
The Doctor crawled on his hands and knees to her. He pulled her onto his lap, his fingers touching her face. She was warm, still warm, she couldn't be dead. But her eyes didn't have their shine, their sparkle that he had grown accustomed to seeing everytime she looked at him. Her skin wasn't flushed with life, excitement, vitality. She was gone.
"She was just a girl!" he shouted at the monk. "An innocent girl!" My girl.
The monk was not watching the Doctor. He was standing still, his legs shoulder-length apart and he was tracing symbols in the air with the knife that was slick and glistening with her blood.
"If it helps, she would never have amounted to much in her life," the monk replied, simply. "Her hopes and dreams lie in the stars, Doctor, the stars you have shown her. When you leave her on her planet when you bore of her, you'll cruelly deny her any chance of them. As you do all your companions."
The darkness surged up again and he had no control over it. It spread through his entire body, coursing through his veins and blackening his blood.
"You're wrong," he said, quietly. His voice was laced with rage. "She have done the most amazing things, been the best she could have been and lived a full and happy life. You ripped that from her. And for what? What reason did you have to take her from me?"
The monk spared him a glance and it tore a holes in his heart when he seen the sheer joy in the monk's black eyes at Elle's death. He gritted his teeth and took in a deep breath, trying to block the images of what he'd like to do to the monk. He was not that man. He never would.
"My god told me that the blood of a traveller from a planet and time far from our own was needed. The blood of a girl who travelled with the Time Lord, the oncoming storm, the Doctor. Only her blood would suffice."
"Why?" the Doctor spit out .
"Her blood would start the storm again. Her blood could start a war. My god needs her blood."
The Doctor caressed Elle's cheeks, his fingers skimming over her soft skin one last time. He gently placed her on the ground, leaving her for only a second.
It was a clean, quick cut. The Doctor didn't think twice about it, nor did he regret it. Scarlet mixed with scarlet and his face was frozen in shock, a whisper drying up on his dead lips. The monk hit the floor at the same time the knife clattered from the Doctor's hand.
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