Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who, though it once belonged to Russell T Davies.
3. Alien
"How exactly are we going to catch one of those?" Harold inquires as the two of them step out of the TARDIS into the dark of night once again. His hands clench around the flashlight in his hand until his knuckles whiten. I'm not afraid, he tells himself. Not of some worm.
"Well!" The Doctor's eyes dart about, surveying the area. Only one lamppost still exudes light, though it flickers at an ecstatic pace. "They like the dark, don't they?" he says, and then grins. "You better keep that flashlight handy."
Harold swallows. "Now, what happens if I don't react fast enough? I'm not exactly..."
"Oh, don't worry about that," the Doctor responds instantly. "We'll be fine."
"Right."
The two proceed down the street, wondering if the turning-off of houselights is simply the routine act of human sleep or the vicious act of an alien worm. A couple times, Harold is tempted to flick on the flashlight, but the Doctor's presence reassures him, and the light stays off for now.
Suddenly, the Doctor grabs Harold's arm. "Quiet now," he whispers. "One of them is nearby."
Harold's jaw tightens as he swivels on his heel, trying to look around (which leads only to him seeing more darkness). "Where?" he mumbles, but his question is quickly answered when the bushes on someone's lawn begin to rustle.
They both tense. Harold's finger dangles over the on button.
Then it lunges from the brush. He stumbles back, arms reeling as his thumb slams down on the button. The ray of light first dances around the shadows before he steadies himself and shines it on the creature, which writhes and stiffens immediately, shrieking all the way. "Doctor!" he shouts, gazing at the stunned worm. Reacting within a fraction of time (as Time Lords always do), the Doctor pulls the switch and lifts up the nozzle of his vacuum. The suction begins to roar, and the whole of the worm is shot down the guzzler, straight into the tank. Gone.
Panting, Harold's vice-grip on the flashlight finally relaxes, and the Doctor grins, patting him on the back reassuringly. "That was good, Harold. Fantastic."
Harold glances at the Doctor, a sheepish smile forming. "Was it? I was worried I'd be too slow."
"Nah!" The Doctor steps back, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looks around, surveying the neighborhood with a lazy, yet critical eye. So this is where he would live, huh? He briskly dismisses the thought and adds, "Don't you ever doubt yourself, Harry—can I call you Harry?—because, believe me, you're stone-cold brilliant. You really are." And not even a Chameleon Arch can hide that fact from you.
Harry (as the Doctor will call him now) laughs timidly. "I don't know about that, Doctor. I'm just some... ordinary guy, working at the prosthetics'." He pauses, then sighs, placing his hand delicately upon the warm, smooth metal of the vacuum container in which the Volsektoid remains imprisoned: an alien from another world, right beneath his fingertips. "Never thought I'd be helping an alien... well... fight other aliens. Well, let alone meeting a real alien."
A sad smile consumes the Doctor's face. "Harold Saxon, you're more important than you could ever possibly imagine. So don't you ever belittle yourself, cause you're so much more than that." You could have been beautiful, he says to himself. You and I. We were going to travel the stars together. "So much more."
After a moment's contemplation, Harry flicks the flashlight off. He wants to believe the Doctor—but haven't they only just met? Maybe for aliens, it's easier to get along with strangers (it's what he tries to tell himself). But for Harold Saxon, the familiarity with which they treat each other is alien to him. Not only the Doctor's peculiar closeness, but Harold's own; he doesn't understand why he's so drawn to this Doctor. And it scares him.
But Harry loves this all the same.
"Let's get back to the TARDIS," the Doctor says abruptly. "A live sample should be much more useful than a dead one."
They quickly proceed back to the TARDIS. While the Doctor begins working away that worm thing, Harold at last gets a chance to give the TARDIS a good poking-about. The TARDIS feels familiar and comfortable to him somehow, as if he had known it before... but he shakes the thought off. That would be impossible, he tells himself. I'm sure that if I had ever seen anything like this before, I'd remember it.
He runs his hand over the controls, getting a feel for the "Time Lord" technology. How strange, Harold thinks. It looks like the Doctor's not the only one who's used this. Who else has he known?
"Doctor," he says, still staring at the vast array of buttons, "am I the first?"
The Doctor doesn't take his eyes off of the panel, continuing his work. In a sort of flat-toned answer, he replies, "No... there were... others."
"Who were they?" Harold asks. I'm not angry about it, if you're worried I will be, he wants to say aloud. I really don't expect you to treat me more special than others, no matter what you might tell me.
"Oh. Well," the Doctor tilts his head to the side. "There was... there was this girl. Well, actually, more than one girl... Oh, that sounded bad, I don't mean it that way..."
Harold smiles. "Were they aliens, too, Doctor? Or were they like me?"
A warm memory touches upon the Doctor's hearts, and he has to suppress his own smile. They weren't aliens, but they certainly weren't like you. "Humans. Ordinary humans," he responds. "Well, I had others before then, but... that was a long time ago." That was before the Time War. Before I became the last of the Time Lords. "The... the last one I knew. Donna. Donna Noble. She... she had to go."
"She had to go? What is that supposed to mean?" Harold isn't so dense that he fails to notice the tinge of grief in the Doctor's voice. Whatever happened... it wasn't pretty.
"Oh, it's complicated," the Doctor breathes. "But I can't ever see her again. Not now, and not ever." He frowns. "It's for her own good."
I wonder how short-lived their friendship was. Will mine be that short, too? And just as Harold's eyes dart upwards so that he can peer at the Doctor's face, an acute pain fills his head. Stumbling backwards, Harry's hand clutches at his scalp as a migraine in four pulses overtakes him, pounding his nerves, threatening to burst his skull open. He gasps. The pain has never been sharper.
The Doctor immediately looks up from the panel. "Harry?" Then he sees him, and his hearts frenzy. "Harry!" He dashes over, instantly upon him. "Harry, what is it? What's wrong?"
"Oh, Doctor... my head..." Harold clenches his teeth. "It's... it's the noise, Doctor... the drumming..." Black dots begin consuming his vision. No, no, no, no! The last thought he holds in his mind before he slips into unconsciousness is the repeated pounding of his own anguish.
A/N: So, I've decided to change the genre of this story from 'Friendship' to 'Romance'. So, yes, that does mean it's going to be slash. I'm sorry if that scares you off, but I'm glad I made the decision to change it now before it got too late. However, I will say that the rating of this story will never enter the 'M' territory; I'm not very good at writing that stuff, so at least you don't have to worry about that, haha. Thanks again for reading, and please drop a review if you're not so busy.