Only two weeks until we see the 13th Doctor in action for the first time! So excited! I had wanted to get this story finished before the first air date so I've got a lot to do before I can post the next and final chapter. Especially as I keep being distracted by urgent IRL things and other 13th Doctor one shots that I hope to finish before her first episode.
Small reference to 'The Day of the Doctor' but I don't think it counts as a spoiler (but let me know if it is).
The Doctor bounced on her toes as she walked across the grassy landscape, a tall bipedal lizard from the nearby village walking just ahead as her guide. She had been told that nearby there was a lake with crystal clear waters, so deep and clear that you could see a ruined city in its depths. The ever curious Time Lady that she was, she had asked to be taken there. Her guide, a member of the group of aliens from the village who had told her about the nearby wonder, offered his services.
She had left Bill in the village, happily looking through stalls of fabric and nicknacks. The Doctor hadn't seen her before she had left but the rest of the group assured her that she would be informed of her impromptu field trip.
The pair crested over a hill and snaking out from behind another the Doctor spotted the silvery edge of a lake. With the sun glistening off the water it looked quite beautiful.
"We're nearly there, Doctor," growled her guide.
She couldn't wait to get closer and see this promised city.
But as they got closer the Doctor started to feel uneasy, anxiety coiling around her stomach. As they descended the hill the reflections of the sun moved off the glass-like lake and whilst the water was undeniably very clear the Doctor could see that the lake was shallow. No city in sight. And what was that white she could see peeking through the silt at the bottom?
The Time Lady turned to her lizard companion in confusion.
"Is this the lake with the city you told me about? I can't see any buildings in it and I can't see any other lakes around."
Whilst this regeneration's reflexes were faster than her previous few they still weren't fast enough to dodge the sudden flying fist. It hit her on the cheekbone, the force behind the punch reverberating around her skull.
Then, nothing.
Darkness.
Weightlessness.
Wet.
Cold.
It was the sudden shock of cold on her face that brought her back round, gasping in shock then coughing out the water that had just invaded her lungs.
She opened her eyes to see the clear shallows of water, scattered white bones gleaming in the blue-green-tinted sunlight. The silt on the bottom was stirred up around two webbed lizard feet.
She held what little breath she had as she realised where she was: held underwater by her lizard guide, a heavy weight pressing down around her neck and across her shoulders.
Her lungs started to tingle and burn.
She tried to struggle out of the the alien's grip whilst trying to desperately activate her respiratory bypass. Her arms were free so she tried to reach towards the lizard, hands searching for anything to grasp, but the lizard was too big and it was too far away to touch. Her struggles only made the creature grasp her harder, it's thick finger-like digets digging into her flesh.
The urge to take a breath suddenly lessened as she felt her bypass start to work but her lungs still burned.
She searched her pockets as she thrashed around, trying to dislodge the alien's grasping hands by any means, for anything that could help but found nothing. Where was the sonic screwdriver?
She could feel her struggles getting weaker and weaker as she fought to stay conscious, bypass eking every last atom of oxygen out of what air remained in her lungs. Through her increasingly hazy vision she spotted a bone sticking out of the mud below her. She reached out a hand. If only she could reach…
Nothing.
Nothing.
Then pain. Lungs screaming as they voided themselves of water. Coughing and spluttering and gasping for air. She sensed that she was lying on her side, grass pressed against one cheek. She could feel a hand on her shoulder and another rubbing large circles across her back. She lay there limply as her body fought for oxygen.
"Doctor?" She heard. "Doctor, wake up."
That voice. She knew that voice.
"-ill?" She forced her mouth to work properly between her desperate pants, reaching out towards the voice. "Bill."
The hand on her shoulder moved and clasped her searching hand, the other continuing to rub her back.
"Yeah, it's me Doctor. You'll get your breath back in a minute."
More of her senses slowly started to come online again, brain distantly acknowledging the rotation of the planet and the passing of time and nose filling with the scent of grass. She could feel the burning in her throat and lungs settle a little and she became aware of painful bruises on her cheek and chest. But why couldn't she see anything?
Eyes. That was why is was dark. She needed to open her eyes.
The sunlight was bright when she managed to fight her eyes open, but she was rewarded by the sight of her companion grinning at her, through she could see tear tracks running down her face.
"Where…?" She tried to remember what had happened to her. "How?"
"You're safe for the moment," said Bill. "But I don't think we should hang around for too much longer, you never know when more of those things might appear and finish the job that that guy," Bill pointed somewhere past her feet, from where she was she couldn't see exactly what had caught her attention, "started, and I don't think you would like that any more than I did."
Memory flashed before her eyes and she suddenly remembered what had happened. Cold water and a weight on the back of her neck. Lungs screaming for air.
Adrenaline rushed through her as she had the sudden overwhelming urge to get as far away from the lake as possible. She forced her sluggish and aching body to do her bidding but she could do little more than shift her weight onto one arm.
"Help me up," she pleaded to her companion.
Thankfully Bill could give her the strength that had deserted her to get her on her feet, despite her protests at the state of the Time Lady's health.
Getting to her feet was a painful experience - the blood rushed from her head, drowning out all sounds and making her now aching head feel like it was filled with lead. She was also finding it hard to breath; the sudden exertion almost too much for her already taxed systems.
After a few moments she lifted her head off Bill shoulder where she hadn't realised where it had fallen and took her first look at the lake where this regeneration had almost ended.
She thought she could hear Bill talking but she didn't pay any attention, too deeply embedded in memories. Why had that alien decided to kill her and why didn't she realise something was wrong until she was knocked out?
It wasn't until her companion nudged her shoulder with her own that the Doctor realised that she had been staring at the dead creature floating in the water. Bill smiled at her and reached out to brush off the grass that she hadn't realised was still stuck to her face.
"Come on, Doctor. Let's get you back to the Tardis."
Most of the journey was a painful blur; her feet were uncoordinated and each breath she took burned down her throat, creating an ache in her chest. She was ever thankful that Bill was there to take her weight; had she been without a companion she probably couldn't have made the trip without several hours in a healing coma (she refused to acknowledge the fact that if she didn't have a companion she would have regenerated in the lake and the journey would have been easy). At one point she caught a faint whiff of wood smoke and looked up to see the smoke coming from the fires of the nearby village hidden by the landscape.
She remembered some of the villagers that she had seen, thin and timid, avoiding her gaze and scurrying away when she tried to approach. She had to help. But Bill wasn't happy when she tried to voice her desire, reminding her of the villagers ill feelings against her.
She resigned herself to not being able to help then remembered that she wasn't the only one that could have gotten hurt. If they had harmed her companion then those villagers wouldn't know what had hit them.
"No, Doctor, you are the one they apparently didn't like."
She calmed her suddenly rising temper, satisfied that Bill was telling the truth and the villagers really hadn't hurt her. But she was reminded that she didn't know why she had been attacked and tried to be killed. Why specifically her and not her companion, who was also on her own on a strange planet? Oh well, she can find out later, once she's had a nice long sleep in the Tardis medbay.
Bill was still looking at her, concerned, so she hurried to reassure her despite feeling exhausted and in pain. Why did it hurt so much just to breath?
'Keep going, Doctor,' she thought to herself. 'The Tardis isn't very far away. Just keep placing one foot in front of the other. Can't let Bill see just how bad off you are.'
The relief at seeing the Tardis nearly caused that Doctor's knees to buckle, she was nearly home and safe. Bill seemed to be equally relieved.
"A few minutes more, Doctor. Then we both can get warm and dry."
She let Bill search her pockets for the key as she lent against the outside of the Tardis, too tired to look for it herself. She assumed it was still in there, but it could have disappeared like the sonic screwdriver, presumably taken by her lizard guide whilst she was unconscious. Oh well, making a new one was another thing to do once she had recovered.
The Tardis hummed in greeting in her head so she patted her wooden shell in return.
"Hello, Old Girl."
Key found and door opened she was ushered through and sat on one of the chairs around the center of the room.
As Bill went to shut the door the Doctor gathered her remaining energy and stood, leaning on the console heavily as she started to activate the controls in preparation of flight. If she was going to be out for action for a while she was going to do that in the relative safety of the time vortex and not on the planet that had tried to kill her. Bill was understandably annoyed and concerned at her activity but she didn't let that stop her from activating the dematerialisation sequence.
The grinding noises that were so familiar started up and she finally relaxed the tension that she had been holding. But with the the loss of tension went her strength.
Her head suddenly spun and everything seemed to shift sideways, legs turning weak and vision blacking out. She was dimly away of being caught by Bill before she completely hit the ground. Breathing was agony.
It could only have been moments later when she blinked herself awake, finding herself propped up against her companion, head resting on her shoulder.
"Doctor?" She heard Bill ask. "What do you want me to do?"
"Medbay," she sighs. It came out weaker than she would have liked, but with any hope that would stop Bill from moving her quite yet, her legs were still rather unsteady. But that was not to be.
"Come on then Doctor, up you get. I didn't drag your ass out of a lake for you to die in the Tardis. I've only just gotten used to this new face!"
She let Bill manhandle her onto her feet, too tired to protest, but she needed to get to the medbay anyway and wouldn't be able to manage the trip anytime soon without help.
She felt the blood rush from her head, ears roaring and skull aching as she stood. She shut her eyes against the pain and raised a hand to it, partly to try and sooth the pain away and partly to make sure that it was still attached. She hadn't realised she had expressed her pain until Bill asked whether she had hit her head.
"It's only a little oxygen deprivation to the brain."
Bill was not happy with that answer to her question, demanding to know where else she was hurt. She tried to pass off her injuries as minor whilst being truthful, not wanting Bill to worry, preferring for her to meet her own needs before that of the Time Lady's. She also wanted to be able to lick her physical and mental wounds in private. But her companion refused to leave and so started to direct her in the direction of the medbay.
As they walked she remembered Martha. The last time she had felt the twin bruises over her hearts was after they had first met, stranded on the moon with a fleet of Judoon and running out of air. Bill had, like Martha before her, worked out that as she had two hearts she would need CPR a bit different from the human method. Thank goodness her Time Lord anatomy meant that she was only left with bruises, and not the broken ribs that humans often got. Painful.
Martha. Doctor Jones. It had been a while since she had last seen her companion, at least one regeneration ago, from a distance so he wouldn't be seen. She hoped that she was living well with her husband – Mickey had grown up a lot since he had left Rose and her tenth self in the other universe. Eleventh if she counted War, though she had never really concluded whether she should include him in the count - she had spent so long denying his existence but after the events where incarnations War, Ten and Eleven met, her previous selves had agreed that he still was the Doctor.
When they passed the corridor leading to the wardrobe she stopped and nudged Bill in that direction.
"I don't know about you," she said when Bill didn't move. "But I'd quite like to get some dry clothes; these are rather wet and uncomfortable. And cold."
Bill relented.
"Fine, Doctor. But we are sorting you out as soon as you have got some clothes."
She helped her down the corridor, standing in the doorway as the Doctor started rummaging in the racks of clothes and draws. The Doctor emerged unsteadily, carrying a bundle of cloth. Bill took the pile off her with one hand and used the other to draw the Time Lady's arm across her shoulder once more; she looked only a few seconds away from falling over.
"Aren't you going to nip to your room and get some dry clothes?" Asked the Doctor when they passed the corridor that Bill's room was usually on.
"I will when I've got you to the medbay," she replied.
The white walls of the medbay were a welcome sight and the Doctor sank gratefully onto the nearest bed, resting her weary legs. She was amused when Bill, in her determined enthusiasm to help, ended up in the center of the room, looking round in confusion, not knowing what amongst the many shelves and cabinets of medicine would be useful.
She directed her companion towards the oxygen generating equipment and was relieved to find that after a few moments on the oxygen she found it was easier to breath and it was less painful. After a few minutes her ever present headache started to lessen too.
She noticed Bill start to shiver where she had settled herself at the end of the bed out of the corner of her eye; she hadn't been exaggerating earlier when she said that her wet clothes were making her cold and with a human's higher body temperature Bill must be feeling the temperature more than her.
"Bill, go get changed and warmed up," she said removing the oxygen mask off her face so she could talk clearly.
Bill was not to be dissuaded from her goal of helping the Doctor in anyway she could, seemingly risking her own health in the process; her comment about pneumonia went both ways. Silly, but loyal, human.
But she let her companion help her, hoping that a little compromise now would gain her a little favour later. She also thought that her socks were so soaked that she wouldn't be able to get her boots off on her own. And a little help with her sodden, and to be frank slightly smelly - why had she chosen a woollen coat out of all the materials in available in time and space - coat would be nice.
Once shed of her outer layers she was caught by a large coughing fit, rattling her frame from deep in her chest. That lake water that she had inhaled really hadn't done her lungs any good.
Once the coughs had petered off she realised that Bill had put the oxygen mask into her hand.
"I'm ok, Bill," she panted, getting the breath back that the cough had stolen. She could see that Bill was about to help her undress further but she forestalled her.
She put her foot down on the matter (metaphorically, she wasn't sure she had the breath, strength and balance to do it physically) and refused to let Bill help her any further without looking after herself first. She also didn't want to reveal too much skin in front of her companion - past regenerations may have been fine with it, Eleven specifically, but this one was not - and she didn't want to worry Bill any further. She had already been staring at the revealed bruises on her neck with concern.
She was relieved when Bill reluctantly went to her room to change, and started to take breaths from the oxygen mask as the human's footsteps echoed fainter and fainter down the corridor. Once the ache in her chest had lessened once more she turned to her pile of clothes forgotten in the bed. She pulled out a large black hoodie and pressed it to her face, running her fingers through the fabric and remembering when she used to be tall, silver haired and had enormous eyebrows. That was a good regeneration and is sometimes missed. Sure, she liked this body but sometimes she remembered the past with longing.
But sitting around remembering the past wasn't going to warm her up in her wet clothes.
She shed the last remaining garments, wincing in disgust as the sodden fabrics stuck to her skin. Her breasts caught the corner of her eye as she reached for her dry set of clothes. She may had been in this body for a while but it was going to take longer than that to get used the change in physical appearance from the male bodies that she had had for the last few thousand years. Sometime the change still surprised her.
A few minutes longer and she was dressed once more, rubbing at her hair with a towel from a nearby cabinet with one hand and holding the oxygen mask to her face with the other. It was amazing what a difference changing garments made; dressed in the the hoodie of her previous regeneration made her sit a little more upright and feel a little more settled than she was before, still soaked to the skin and shaken by her near death experience. Sure, she had been near death before, and actually died many times and regenerated, but there was something horrific and traumatising about being powerless as you are held underwater by something stronger than you. She had to admit that it was her companion that had got her out of that one, not her usual wit and courage. And she had been rescued just short of regeneration; it may have just been the feeling of oxygen filling her veins once more but thinking back she thought she had felt the tingle of regeneration energy dissipating just under her skin as she woke up on the lakeside.
She discarded the towel on the floor behind the bed with the pile of her wet clothes and drew the nearby computer screen towards her, tapping on the screen to bring up her medscan sensor readings. As she thought the worst of her external injuries were bruises and thankfully only her lungs had been affected by the prolonged lack of oxygen (or rather the presence of water), and they could be fixed by a medicated nap in the Tardis medbay. All in all she thought that she had been very lucky.
As she was looking at her readings she didn't realise when the hand holding the mask drifted down to rest on her knee; the oxygen was helping her breathing immensely, though it was still painful. It was then that Bill reappeared, dressed in her dry clothes and a little annoyed that the Doctor wasn't using the helpful oxygen.
"The oxygen is helping you breath, Doctor, so keep using it," Bill said when she had placed the mask back over the Time Lady's face. "Wotcha looking at anyway?"
The Doctor tapped at the screen again, changing the language from her native Gallifreyan to Bill's native early 21st century English and pushing the screen towards her so she could read what was there. Bill pushed it back towards the wall once she had finished reading.
"So what do we do now?" She asked.
The Doctor wanted to be rid of this painful breathing as fast as possible, though she wasn't looking forward to being completely out of action for any length of time.
"There is some medicine that'll help heal my lungs but it'll knock me out for a few hours. My Time Lord physiology could heal on its own but this way is quicker and less painful."
"How long?"
"4 or 5 hours. Six if the damage is really bad. Without the medicine it would take me a day or two to be fully fit. I've done it before but I'd rather skip the long recovery this time, it feels like I'm breathing through treacle."
"That's so not fun." Understatement of the decade. In the quiet that followed the Doctor went back to breathing in the oxygen, calming the fire in her lungs.
She was confused a few moments later, when she heard Bill's amused snort and felt her companion's hand stroking down her hair. It took a second but she realised that it must have been standing up after her rough toweling of it earlier; she still wasn't used to this length of hair and it's wild behaviour. Men's short hair was so much more manageable and she didn't know how some women could keep their hair so much longer than hers. How did River manage to never have a curl out of place, no matter what adventure they were having?
She felt Bill's gaze and looked to see what had caught her attention. She seemed to be staring at the hoodie she had on. Her previous regeneration's hoodie. Remembering what she had taken from the wardrobe, and why, made her feel a little self conscious.
"It belonged to the previous me. It's… familiar." Another understatement but it was hard to describe the feeling of nostalgia. Thankfully Bill knew exactly what she was trying to say.
"You don't have to tell me about comfort clothes. I've got a jumper of Mum's, I used to wear it all the time when I was a kid. I still wear it sometimes on bad days, just to feel that little bit closer to her."
There was a second pause as Bill seemed to prepare herself for asking a question, perhaps fearing the answer. "Do you ever miss the people you were?" She twists her fingers in nervousness as she tries to explain her question. "I know you are the same person, but each time you are a little different than the last. Sometimes I can't believe that you used to be grumpy and Scottish!"
The Doctor was a little surprised at her question but could see the thought pattern behind it - the plain black hoodie had made the both of them think of the man she used to be.
"Sometimes I miss them," she said, a little wistfully. "Regeneration is essentially the death of that personality. I still have the memories but they almost feel like they belonged to other people." Determined to inject a little more humour into the now solemn conversation she let her mind and mouth turn to more happy memories. Most clothes-wearing species she had met went through periods of bad taste in clothing when they were younger, herself included! It was nice to see Bill smile again after the rather traumatic day they both had had and if that meant reminiscing about her rather colourful outfits then so be it.
She ignored the building ache in her chest, hiding coughs behind laughs, trying to keep the inevitable question from being asked.
"So what happened back on the planet? What did you do to those lizard people to make them try and drown you?" And there it was. Bill's lovely smile had disappeared again.
"I didn't do anything!" The Doctor threw up her hands in agitation, then gave Bill the short version of events. "Perhaps they didn't like the colour of my hair. Things get a bit hazy after that until I find myself underwater."
"What about that Time Lord breathing thing you told me you had used at Chasm Forge? When you gave me your spacesuit helmet." 'Time Lord breathing thing'? After a moment of indignation she remembered that he hadn't really explained what had happened, concentrating more on diverting Bill's attention from the fact that he had gone blind at the time and later when the treatment failed to restore his sight.
"My respiratory bypass," she explained, not going into detail but hopefully explaining to her companion that it wasn't the magic, life prolonging process that some companions thought it was; Time Lords may be harder to kill than humans but they are not indestructible. "Whilst I did get it working in the end I think I inhaled a lot of water in the process. And the air I managed to keep didn't last very long." The memory of that moment rose to the surface of her mind and she fought it down, not wanting to remember the feeling of panic and the burning of her lungs, desperate for air. "How long do you think it was before you got me out of the water?"
"You were still fighting that alien when I first saw you but you stopped fairly quickly after that, that must have been when you passed out. From then until I got you out must have only been a few minutes. I'm not quite sure, I was in such a panic I wasn't paying attention to the time."
From the look on Bill's face as she spoke it looked like she was trying not to be overtaken by the memory of her version of events, sounding as if watching her friend being drowned was almost as terrible experience as being the one held under the water. She tried to assure her companion that she wasn't as close to death as Bill had thought that she was, continuing her basic overview of Time Lord physiology, though she knew that that was a bit of an exaggeration of the truth. Regeneration had been closer than she dared to think, but she wasn't going to tell Bill that.
"I'm just glad you're ok," said Bill, now sounding more confident that she had a minute ago. "Stay away from any lakes in the future, I don't want a repeat of what happened."
The Doctor was happy to see Bill's wry humour return and let off a little laugh.
"Neither do I."
As as all was quiet, the Tardis quietly and contentedly humming in the background, it was probably about time to fix her lungs, even if she was dreading being drugged unconscious for several hours.
She drew the computer screen towards her to give the Tardis sensor readings a check, just to make sure that she wasn't going to be needed in the next few hours or so, though as the Tardis was unconcerned she didn't expect the readings to show anything untoward. Neither she or Bill noticed that she was using both hands to manipulate the screen, leaving the forgotten oxygen mask at her side.
She explained her plan to Bill and moved the computer screen back to it customary place against the wall, but made sure that the screen was angled so that Bill could see it - she knew that humans were reassured by screens and readings.
The first step in said plan was completed quickly as Bill, directed by the Doctor, sought the container of medicine amongst the many scattering the shelves and cupboards of the medbay. She brought the yellow striped container back to the Doctor, who checked it was the right one before giving it back to her companion to enter into the oxygen equipment.
"It'll knock me out fairly quickly once it's in," said the Doctor. "So if there is anything you need to do or ask beforehand, now is the time."
Bill wracked her brain for anything, reminding herself that the Time Lord had said that if anything bad happened whilst she was unconscious the Tardis could wake her up. Nothing came to mind.
"There should be a red lever you can pull back to reveal a chamber." Bill took a quick half step backwards and looked down at what she could see of the oxygen equipment under the bed. There was a small flash of red that was mostly out of sight from where she was standing. "It should be near the blue valve you turned earlier. Put the canister in and then push the lever back into position. There should be a click as it engages. Then it's night night for me." The Doctor took a wheezy breath and made sure she had eye contact with her companion.
"Bill," her voice had suddenly swapped from her usual 'cheerfully informative' to serious. "Make sure you get some rest. Don't spend all night here, no benefit can be gained watching me sleep." That seemed to also be a human thing, staying near someone who is unconscious when it was no help, often to the detriment of themselves. "Check I haven't knocked the oxygen mask off as I pass out then leave me. Watching a sleeping Time Lord can't be the most thrilling of entertainment, go do whatever you humans do for fun for a while. After today I think you deserve it." The cough that had been building for the last few minutes erupted from her throat, jarring her tired ribs and her aching head. A simple breath was hard to snatch from between the harsh coughs and she only noticed that she had listed to the side when Bill pushed her back upright again, handing her the abandoned oxygen mask at the same time. The oxygen helped soothe the burning in her lungs and her cough so after a few careful breaths she was able to start getting her breathing back under control.
Breathing normally again after a few minutes she twisted herself so that instead of sitting with her legs dangling off the side of the bed she was now half lying along it, lowering the oxygen mask from her face and adjusting the straps. She saw Bill crouch down to the side of the bed out of the corner of her eye and lent over the side to make sure that her companion looked like she knew what she was doing. She watched the red lever being pulled back and the canister inserted and then sat back up, giving the strap on the mask one last tug.
"Doctor?" Bill asked, wanting instruction to continue.
"Go for it," the Doctor replied, starting to don the mask as she heard the machinery below her clunk, click and hiss. She settled it comfortably over her face and swiped away an annoying clump of hair disturbed by the mask strap as Bill stood.
"It'll take a few seconds," she told the human, waiting for the strange heavy feeling of the drugs to come.
It came only a moment later, hitting her like a heavy, euphoric wave. Her vision went blurry, hazy then started to fade and she was distantly aware of Bill holding her by the shoulders. After that she remembered no more.
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