Devastated at what he sees as his own abandonment of Rose, the Doctor finds himself on the streets, hurt and alone, trying to find a way back. Slight Ten/Rose.
A/N: Allons-y!
Chapter 1.
She found him huddled in the corner of some doorway in the early hours of a Sunday morning, trying to keep out the rain and the cold with nothing more than a sodden coat to shield him. His hair was plastered to his face and water ran in rivulets down his face, the shivers silently racking his thin frame. Just one more lost soul.
"How long have you been here?" she asked, kneeling down in front of him slowly so as not to scare him off. He barely even glanced at her before the reply came, the wind taking it so it could only just be heard.
"Rose isn't here yet, so not l-long enough."
"Too long if you ask me," she replied, putting the bottle that had been keeping her warm inside down on the pavement, vowing to come back for it tomorrow. The man needed help, and there wasn't exactly a queue to help others around these parts. She silently moved in and took his arm, trying to pull him up and out of the doorway.
"No, I can't leave, what if she comes? What if the T-Tardis arrives and she steps out and I'm not here? She might n-need me. No, I'm f-f-fine; I'll just s-stay here. I'm fine." His attempts to convince her, however, were quickly dismissed by the shudders in his voice and the tremors forcing their way through his shoulders.
"Look, you're sodden. Stay out in this any longer and you'll freeze to death before the night is through. I'm sure whoever you're waiting for will still be coming in the morning, but you'll be no use to them at all if you don't come in and get warmed up."
His eyes seemed to give in even if his body didn't, and she pulled him up silently before his legs seemed to give way and he collapsed onto her in a heap.
"Sorry," he muttered. "Bit close for a f-first meeting. Particularly for me."
"S'all right, lean on me if you need to. C'mon, let's get you inside and warmed up a bit." She gave a sidelong glance to his left leg, which, on closer inspection seemed to be coated in blood from the knee up.
"I take it that's yours by the limping?" she asked, referring to the blood. His silence told her all she needed to know. "I'm Lisa, by the way."
"The Doctor. Where are w-we going?"
"Little place I've got going. Nothing special, just a place to keep warm on nights like this, and for a bit of safety. Security in numbers. You know the score."
"You're on the s-streets?" compassion seemed to flow through his voice. He must be new around here.
"Course. Aren't you?"
"Tonight perhaps. I d-don't really know after that. I might be homeless after all." The despair that swiftly turned the tone of the night was scarcely hidden, but it was new, like he was only realising it for the first time. The sudden change in the atmosphere scared her slightly.
"Well, tonight you're here with us," she continued, trying to lighten his mood against the depression he suddenly seemed to have fallen into. "Come on, down here." She half-carried him down a ramp, wincing as the shivering continued and she felt his leg muscles contracting in pain at the downhill slope. Passing through a narrow underground passageway covered in graffiti tags, she came to the door at the end and stepped through it into the abandoned concrete storehouse that had become home to her and a few others in recent days.
Lowering the man on her arm gently down against the far wall, she quickly and silently woke up Jake, his dentistry qualification being the closest thing their group had to any medical training, before grabbing all the spare blankets she could muster.
Jake, half asleep, came over and began to examine him closely, only to be met by muffled protests from the Doctor.
"I c-can do it. I'm okay, really." He raised a shaking hand to try and examine his own leg closely under the light of a little lamp.
"Clearly you're not mate, so just sit there and take it for a bit." Jake's voice sounded almost angry, and the Doctor wondered what he had done to deserve his wrath so early after meeting the man.
Five minutes, and a fair bit of groaning, prodding and pushing away of hands later, Jake finished his examination under the close eye of his patient.
"Should we take him to hospital?" Lisa asked, concerned.
"No. I'm not going, it's just a scratch," was the Doctor's quick, almost angry refute. "I j-just need to get warmed up, and a couple of stitches, that's all."
"And to get back to waiting for Rose, yes?" Lisa grunted under her breath. "Mmm." She seemed to know his mind better then even he did right now.
Once again, Jake's eyes pierced the Doctor's own, the rage floating at the surface doing nothing to calm his already fraying nerves.
"You need a hospital," Jake said outright. "You're almost hypothermic, God knows how long you've been out there, and we've got nothing here apart from a few spare blankets and a fire drum that won't light. On top of that, you've already admitted you need a dozen stitches in your leg and probably something for the pain when you warm up and are actually able to feel something."
"I'm n-not going to a hospital, all right and that's final," the Doctor argued, needing to convince them. When they stared at him like he was not in his right mind, he grabbed hold of the wall he was leaning against and pulled himself upright, attempting to walk back to the alleyway where he had come from. He got all of two steps before his leg gave way under him and he fell in a pathetic heap on the ground again.
"Okay, m-maybe not," he got in before Lisa took pity on him and helped him back to the wall he'd been leaning against. "L-Look," he pleaded, "have you got anything that can b-be used as a suture around this place? Thread, string, anything that's clean and s-strong?"
"Not here, no, but in the morning I can probably find some around. Why?"
"And a mirror of s-some s-sort?"
"Yes, I've got one over her somewhere." Lisa went and rummaged in a measly pile of belongings for a few seconds before pulling out a filthy shard of mirror and bringing it back.
"Good, then there's no need to go to a h-hospital. When it's daylight, you can go and get the sutures and then I c-can sew myself back together. Good as new."
Lisa just stared at him like he was the blob from outer space in a 50's flick, which had lost what little of its mind it'd had when it landed.
She probably wasn't too far off.
"Firstly," she protested, "have you ever actually had any medical training? Putting stitches in your own leg isn't exactly something that I would advise doing. Secondly, I can tell you're still as cold as when I brought you here by the fact that even now you're shaking as much as a kid who's coming down off too many E numbers-"
"Look, Lisa was it? Thankyou for your c-concern, but my medical experience stretches back a long way and putting in a f-few stitches is by no means the hardest thing I've had to do. Also, I'm n-not as cold as you think I am, and even though it is q-q-quite nippy out there, I'll be fine in a few hours if I rest for a bit. Trust me."
"What about painkillers?" Jake asked, satisfied that he'd seen the apparent flaw in his plan. "Putting stitches in is one thing, doing it without anaesthetic is quite another."
The Doctor sighed at the thought of something to ease the agony that was coursing through his body right now and that he knew would worsen when he warmed up, but quickly pushed the thought back down as soon as it arrived. No need to get attached when it would inevitably only lead to more pain.
"I couldn't have anaesthetic even if I did go to hospital. I'm highly allergic to just about every type going around, and that's including a few that haven't quite made it into public use yet."
There was silence as both Lisa and Jake looked at each other and digested the information they'd been given by the peculiar man who sat in a heap in front of them. Lisa in particular was sceptical, not really believing that the obviously injured Doctor didn't need to go to a proper hospital. Besides, who ever trusted anyone who said 'trust me'?
"Okay," she gave in after a few moments. "But you and your leg are staying here for the night where I can keep an eye on you, all right? We'll see how you're going in the morning and if you're any worse, any worse at all, we're going straight to the nearest hospital? You hear me?"
"Oh yes. Loud and clear, ma'am." The Doctor gave her the smile to melt all and managed to raise a hand for a one-figured salute, silently thanking her before settling in for the night against the wall and concentrating on getting the blood flowing through his body again.
He must have fallen asleep at some point, because he woke up abruptly, jumping at the hot touch of a hand on his forehead.
"Shh, s'all right. Calm down now," Lisa hushed as he peeled himself off the concrete wall he had tried to force himself into at her touch. "I'm just checking your temperature. Don't want you falling into a coma on me, okay?"
His breathing calmed at her words, grateful for the soothing tones. He wasn't entirely sure why he was so anxious in the first place as he looked around and rubbed his head from where he'd struck it on the wall, trying to remember.
"Where am I?" he asked, his voice thick with both sleepiness and the pain that was coursing through his defrosting body.
"Somewhere safe. Nothing down here to hurt you, unless you count Jake's snoring. Do you remember why you're here?"
The Doctor looked at her, then down at his own left leg as fragments of a few hours ago came back to him. He took in the blood soaking through his pants, before pressing his hand against the wound and wincing, catching his breath as pain roared down his whole leg and up into his chest.
Lisa obviously noticed the barely hidden pain in his expression. "Hey, take it easy, don't press so hard. You'll just make things worse and the way you are right now, that's definitely not a good thing." Lisa took in his whole appearance before once again pressing her hand to his forehead to check his temperature, trying to convince herself that leaving him to rest here was the right thing to do. "Well at least you seem to be warming up slightly, though from what I can tell your temperature's still way below what it should be."
The Doctor just shrugged off her concern. "What time is it?"
"About six thirty. The sun's not up yet though I don't think, so we can't do anything about that leg. Come on, I'm sorry to wake you, try and get a bit more sleep under your belt. You look like you need it."
And despite everything, that's exactly what the Doctor did.
A/N: The name's a working title, so it's a bit crap. Any suggestions? And reviews are brilliant they are, and would be much appreciated, especially cos this is the first story I've written in over a year.