I don't own Doctor Who.

CHAPTER 2

Taken

"Where are we, Quassus?" One voice asked.

"Perdition." Another voice, apparently Quassus, answered. "The Master's estate is just a few clicks south." A peal of coughing broke up the heavy silence.

"There aren't any runaways this far out. No one's that desperate."

"We have our orders, Corin-"

"We haven't seen a runaway in a week. Please, let's just-" And then his foot fell through the hole, kicking blindly in the air and cutting off all light.

"Woah!" Corin yelled. "What the-" Then the roof gave in, coming down in a great crash of dirt and roots and Timelord. After a moment, when the dust settled, I saw the confused form of Corin. He was lanky and pale, with sweeping brown hair. Half-buried in the dirt, he slowly dug himself out. Holding my breath, I pulled myself deeper into the shadow of my corner.

"Are you alright?" At the lip of the crater, another Timelord, stocky with short blonde hair, stood, apparently Quassus.

"No! Damn it," Corin swore. "What made this hole? Seriously, I mean-"

Eye contact.

"Hey... Hey, Quassus. We got one!' I gasp, tightening my grip on my knife. "Get the chains!" Corin yells up to Quassus, drawing a long, shining knife.

"Come here." Corin steps slowly towards me, his eyes glinting menacingly. "Let's not be any trouble, okay? Come on, good... Boy? Humph." The contempt in his voice makes my face burn with anger, but the fear that comes from his approaching hands overpowers the fear.

"Stay away." My voice feels hoarse and detached. Like another person's. "Stay away from me."

"Come on, boy." He's a few feet away now. "Let's not be any trouble, mhm? Come on." A foot away, his hands reaching, closing in.

My hand reacts before my mind, swiping at his face. I feel the flesh of his ear split, blood squirting my in the face. He screams and pulls back, his hand clutching his bloody ear. In that instant, I kick him in the stomach and, when he double over, stab him in back, my knife burying itself in his flesh.

What are you doing? I scream at myself, panic flooding over me. This is madness, what is-

I scramble up the rubble, grabbing the lip of the crater and pulling myself up the ledge. The night air is frigid on my almost-naked skin, but I ignore my body. I can only think one thing: run.

I take one step and, bam! Something hard and heavy hits my head and I crumple to the ground. The world is warped, the noise muted. My delirious eyes pick up a flash of golden light coming from the pit, something glorious and familiar. I try to push myself up onto my knees, but I fall back to the earth. I feel my heartbeats in my head, a wound pumping out a steady trickle of blood.

After a moment, Quassus and another Timelord crawl out of the pit. The new Timelord is thin, deathly so, with haggard eyes and tousled black hair.

"Alright," The new Timelord says, his voice halting and deep. "Whose the fucking asshole who made me use a regeneration, huh?" He comes over to me, delivering a swift kick to my stomach. I groan inwardly and curl up into myself, pathetic. "Huh? Don't like it so much now, do you- Agh." The Timelord screws up his mouth for a moment, thinking. "New teeth. Damn it.

He regenerated, A voice tells me. It's still the other one. Corin. Just a new face.

"Who are you?" Quassus asks, coming over and kneeling by my head. When I don't answer, he nudges my head with the toe of his boot, painfully close to my wound. "Who. Are. You? Why are you in the woods, this far out? Huh? Are you a Timelord? What chapter are you? Huh?" I remain silent, looking at the quiet delicacies of the grass beneath me and feeling terribly cold.

"Let me-" Corin says, readjusting his grip on his knife.

"No." Quassus commands, holding up a staying hand. "They can get the info out of him in the Citadel. Come on, let's just throw him in the cage and get going." Corin mutters mutinously, but complies. He and Quassus grab hold of my arms and legs, lifting me up easily. I struggle, but I'm so disoriented, it does not good. They roughly toss me into an iron cage, built into an archaic wagon pulled by something like a horse.

What's a horse? I blearily ask myself, bringing a smile to my own face. My bare skin, harshly abused by the horrible cold, scrapes against the old wood of the cage floor.

Quassus and Corin sit in the front, urging the strange beast into a trot. Through the grate of the cage, I can feel the burning of Corin's glare on my skin.

"He's barely anything." He mutters darkly. "Just a twig of a boy. A little pretty, I suppose." A pause. "Let me have hi-"

"No."

"But-"

"No." Quassus' voice is as firm as stone. "You know they don't like the prisoners used before they get them." Corin grumbles about regenerating and not getting any sympathy, later becoming taciturn, plunging the rickety ride down the mountain into silence.

Prisoner. The word never came into my life before; it had no use. Now, it is who I am. I manage to gather the strength to flip onto my other side, to watch Perdition disappear in the distance, gloriously red even in the darkness of night. The aching of my head calls me into a restless, uneasy sleep. Even the dear Doctor can't reach me here.