Gasping and in pain, the Doctor opened his eyes to find himself having been thrown and rolled down the enormous hill, landing in a pile of refuse at the bottom. When he sat up his ribs screamed in protest, and then he remembered being kicked several times. After being knocked in the jaw, which was also hurting quite a lot, come to think of it.
"Doctor?" Jack's voice called out distantly, still halfway up the hill, probably searching for him.
On shaking legs he forced himself to stand, attempting to raise a hand over his head and only succeeding in getting it level to his shoulder. "Jack..." he croaked weakly before stumbling into the underbrush. The Time Agent must have heard the bushes crackling, because moments later he was being jostled and untangled from the brush.
"Jeez, Doc, he really got you one, didn't he?" Jack murmured, handling him more gently upon the realization that he was causing pain.
Unable to draw a deep enough breath to make a snide remark, the Doctor merely settled on a glare. "TARDIS," he hissed instead. Nodding, Jack wrapped one of the Time Lord's arms over his broad shoulders, anchoring and supporting him for the trek back to the TARDIS.
"Medical bay?" Jack inquired after the oddest three-legged-race of his life.
The Doctor ripped himself away from Jack's side and stumbled up to the console, pulling at the controls with the door still hanging open. "We don't have time," he grimaced. "We need to pick up some reinforcements and come back for Maggie."
From where he'd hunched over the controls to help in any way he could, Jack stiffened. "Reinforcements?"
-
Being unable to understand the language being spoken to her, Maggie was only capable of staring blankly at Kraxau as he growled gibberish at her. Enormous hands gestured to the servants, who dutifully unrolled the leather package they'd borne along with her to his chambers. Inside was a small collection of weaponry - ones that he was going to use on her? - but no, he was gesturing to her and then the weapons as he spoke. She forced herself to focus on his body language and not his nonsense words, watched him take a stance in the center of the room, equidistant between the door out and the door to what appeared to be his bedroom.
After a moment's thought, it seemed all too clear to Maggie. She had one weapon to use to fight her way to the door to freedom, while he did everything in his power to get her to the other side of the room, where he would then kill her. She turned immediately to the weapons to get a closer look.
It seemed that this planet was beyond guns. Blast. Everything other than a cudgel looked too large for her to wield, and so she closed her shaking hand around its handle, only to find it almost unbearably heavy. Made of some foreign metal, it was either far denser than it appeared or she was simply weakened by the trauma and stress combined with having no food or water since that morning. It took both hands, but she managed to barely lift it the slightest bit, arms shaking with exertion after only moments.
Kraxau flexed his knuckled and smiled with dangerous teeth.
Where was the Doctor?
-
Once the plan had been spelled out, at Jack's insistence, the Doctor hustled to the medical bay to look after himself while the Time Agent called in the cavalry. He cheated, a bit, and simply took something for the pain, something to clear his head for however long it took to get Maggie back, because doing any serious healing could take hours that they didn't have. Instead he stuck his arm into a scanner that would measure how much pain meds he needed and administer them accordingly.
"Listen, Sexy," he murmured through shallow breaths, running a hand tenderly over the scanner. "I know you know me better than I do, but I need you do do this one properly. Please. I can't ruin another one."
There was a soothing hum in his head, though he wasn't sure if that was to reassure him or distract him from the the pinch of the injection.
When he returned to the console it was to find three instead of four additional passengers - the cavalry. "Where's Amy?" he asked on his way to the steering platform.
"With the kids," Rory explained, looking just as befuddled as two of his other companions. "Um, Doctor-?"
"I need your strength behind me on this," said the Doctor before Rory could ask, waiting until the TARDIS was in flight before stepping up and embracing the other two people who had been corralled into helping. "It's still me, Martha. And I'm sorry for taking you like this, but I need help, yours and Mickey's."
The woman before him - older, wiser, and yet still managing to look so innocently surprised by the materialization of the TARDIS in her sitting room - nodded. "Of course, Doctor, we'll do what we can, but what happened?" she asked.
"Yeah, we were having a quiet night in," Mickey added darkly, never having quite released the Doctor from his grudge after Rose left.
He fell into silence at the sight on the Doctor's new face. They all fell silent, awaiting instructions from him like soldiers their general. They were possibly the smallest army in the universe but an army nevertheless, going by the weapons hanging from Martha, Mickey, and Jack's holsters. The Doctor's face twisted at the sigh of them, but this once he did not speak up against them.
Taking an experimental deep breath, he felt the detached discomfort of broken ribs rubbing together, but no pain. "I'm asking you all here to help me," he said slowly. "This is different from most anything I've ever done. We're going to a planet where the law works in almost the exact opposite way as on Earth, and we have to work against it to do what's right." He watched them staring up at him with such open trust and dedication, and felt a lance of disgust for the power he held over them.
Rory saved him, as he was always wont to do, by stepping forward again. "Doctor, where's Maggie? How long has it been since we last saw you?" he asked cautiously. "Is she...is this like Demon's Run?"
"Demon's Run? Like the old poem?" Martha asked, bewildered, then shook her head. "Never mind, that's not important. We'll help you, Doctor, but we need to know what we're up against first."
The Doctor nodded, more to himself, and moved back to the controls while he explained. "We're fighting a monster. Not in the sense that you're thinking. He has Maggie. It's nothing like Demon's Run, because all they wanted at Demon's Run was to manipulate, to control, and to kill Amy. This is...I don't know if this is worse. But the man who has Maggie is a monster, more of a monster than I've ever seen, and he's stronger than five of us put together and he's in a position of power and could have us all killed if we're captured."
He closed his eyes, waiting for someone to object and almost hoping for it. Where was Mickey, bringing up how he was the Tin Dog for so long? Why wasn't Martha railing at him about the hopeless year she spent under his thumb while he prattled on about how iRose would know what to do/i? Shouldn't Jack have hit him by now? Shouldn't Rory have stayed home while he still had two children to go home to?
"Always knew that poem was about you," Martha muttered with a wry smirk. "Now get a move on, we're wasting time and we've got housebreaking and a theft ahead of us."
Relief and guilt and an almost unbearable love for Martha Jones-Smith welled in his chest - why had he never seen her like this when she needed him to? - as he landed the TARDIS on the most level plane of land near Kraxau's manor. He turned on the invisibility boosters before stepping out ahead of the others. Night had fallen since they left, and he felt a twinge of fear. He hoped it was only because night fell very quickly on Wilforumdvar IV, rather than the TARDIS having another wobbly.
"Depending on what state the girl's in, you ought to add manslaughter to that list," Mickey murmured back, earning himself a slap on the arm but no protests from any of the other passengers. Rory was watching the Doctor with barely-concealed worry on his face, even over ten years later remembering the dangerous anger of the good man.
It was child's play to open the back door with the sonic screwdriver, and once they were all sequestered in the servant's entrance Jack, Martha, and Mickey pulled out their weapons. Rory was supplied one, along with a quick introduction to the couple. "Jack, go find Maggie; take Martha with you in case - if she needs medical attention. Mickey Mouse, Roranicus, with me."
They broke apart, grim determination written across their faces. The Doctor deliberately made as much noise as he could, dragging his feet, knocking things over, to attract attention to them rather than the intruders in the cellar. Mickey was practically hugging his enormous gun, eyes darting to every shadow, but it wasn't with the same boyish urgency he'd held when the Doctor had first encountered him. Now it was the steadfast caution of a soldier.
After countless disturbances that would have woken the heaviest of sleepers, the search party ended in a parlor, where Kraxau was seated facing away from them.
"Hello, Doctor," he greeted airily, "I was wondering when you would find me again."
With a single gesture from the Doctor, Mickey and Rory raised their guns to aim steadily at the alien's head, while the Doctor himself went round front to face him. "Shall we do this the civilized way or the way of war?" asked the Time Lord as though debating where they would like to have lunch.
Kraxau straightened in his seat as though the whole affair was boring him. "It's of no use," he drawled. "I've already used her up, the girl. You've been idays/i." The light from the fireplace fell upon his face to reveal a long, ugly bruise marring the entire left side of his face. "She fought so beautifully. I've even kept a lock of hair to remember her b-"
His voice was choked off by the Doctor's hand wrapping around his throat. It wasn't so much that the Doctor's grip - weakened by injuries and drugs - was affecting his leathery skin, but he was surprised by the small man's audacity. "iWhat have you done?/i" shouted the Doctor. Rory and Mickey never wavered for a moment, but moved around to have a clearer aim at Kraxau.
"I did nothing but use my property the way I wish," stated the other man clearly, his airway not even the slightest bit obstructed by the Doctor's hand. "But you know how fragile humans are, don't you, Doctor? I knew it was time to put her down when I felt her ribs break under my hands, like twigs."
There was something rabid and vicious in how heavily the Doctor was breathing as he held out a hand to Rory, begging off his gun. Uncertainly, he handed it over and the Doctor slung the strap over his own shoulders. It looked almost comical to see the Time Lord bearing such a weapon, but then there was a surge in the air, as if the entire universe had given a small shudder of fear, and any hint of comedy was stripped away.
"Where is she?" he growled.
A revolting smile settled over Kraxau's lips. "Dead."
There was a flash of white light that filled the room for a brief second, then the Doctor yanked the gun from over his shoulders and practically threw it at Rory with disgust for himself. Kraxau's body had hardly moved but to relax into the loose posture of death. Mickey clenched his jaw and lowered his weapon, but didn't flinch. Rory looked like he was going to be sick.
The only sound in the room was that of the Doctor's labored breathing, fighting for control of himself when there was no satisfaction to be found in killing Kraxau. Then the sound of approaching footsteps filled the corridor and Jack burst in, breathless. "Doctor, we - you killed him?" he gasped, staring at the alien body.
"I did," the Doctor nodded, and that seemed to take even more of Jack's breath away. "He killed Maggie."
The other man shook his head. "No, he didn't; he was provoking you. Quite successfully, I guess. But the authorities are going to be crawling all over the place soon; let's get Maggie and get out of here!"
The Doctor looked almost dizzy with horror and relief as he tailed Jack out of the parlor.