Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who
…
Breathing heavily, the Doctor quickly turned to face the humans.
"Right, okay, here's the plan. Father, you and your Clerics, you're staying here to look after Amy. Anything happens to her, I'll hold every single one of you responsible – twice. River," He called, "you're with me. We're going to the Primary Flight Deck."
All it took was one distracted glare for River to swallow her questions and stand, swiftly gathering what they'd need for their sprint through the forest.
"Doctor," Octavian interrupted, voice soft but stern, "I'm coming with you. My Clerics will look after Miss Pond. There are my best men. They'd lay down their lives in her protection."
His eyes closed in aggravation. "I don't need you."
"I don't care," The Bishop countered. "Where Doctor Song goes, I go."
A bitter laugh escaped him, "Are you two engaged or something?"
"Yes, in a manner of speaking," Octavian stated, holding his gun close. "Marco, you're in charge till I get back."
"Sir."
"Doctor? Please, can't I come with you?" Amy called a little desperately from where she was sitting on the mossy tree trunk.
Listening to the Bishop's crisp reply, the Doctor barely supressed a growl.
Why were they wasting time?!
"I don't want to sound selfish, but you'd really speed me up," Amy retorted waspishly, drawing a small grin to his lips.
Little Amelia Pond really was very brave.
"You'll be safer here, Amy," He forced all irritation from his voice, knowing, deep down, that she was scared and his less than composed reaction to the Angels' threat wasn't her fault. "We can't protect you on the move. I'll be back for you as soon as I can, I promise."
"You always say that," The redhead muttered under her breath, making him frown.
"I always come back," He reiterated, unable to make himself waste any more time with comforting, yet, useless, words. "Good luck, everyone. Behave. Do not let that girl open her eyes. And keep watching the forest. Stop those Angels advancing. Amy, later. River, going to need your computer!"
With that, he raced down the small hill, catching up with the already moving Octavian and frizzy blonde, taking the outstretched machine with eager hands.
"What's that?"
"Er," More concerned with imputing the readings from his sonic screwdriver than sating River's curiousity, he muttered, "readings from the crack in the wall."
They moved quickly through the forest, the Bishop in the lead, scouting for Angels as they moved over broken tree branches and small bodies of water.
"…What were the Angels talking about back there?" When River finally spoke, her voice was soft, hushed, immediately capturing his attention. "They said you were hiding something in the TARDIS…what?"
He looked at her.
Silent.
Her lips pursed.
"You can tell me, Doctor," She snapped, almost annoyed at his lack of trust. "I only want to help."
But all he did was look back at the machine's results, speeding his pace.
"Here's what I think," He spoke, looking up at the canopies they were speeding under. "One day, there's going to be a very big bang. So big every moment in history, past and future, will crack."
From the corner of his eye, he watched River's face contort with strong disappointment, but she let it go, allowing him to dictate the subject of their conversation without another word.
"How is that possible?"
The Doctor turned, cutting her off.
"How can you be engaged, in a manner of speaking?" He demanded.
Sharp eyes caught the brief flash of panic that darted across the blonde's eyes, the way the skin around her mouth tightened, causing his own suspicion to swell.
What was she hiding?
"Well," The smirk on her lips was tense; "I've always been a sucker for a man in uniform."
It seemed that that comment, though, was one too many for the no-nonsense Father Octavian.
Before he could reply, the Bishop stepped up. "Doctor Song's in my personal custody," His eyes held the Doctor's firmly as he spoke, the seriousness in his voice absolute. "I released her from the Stormcage Containment Facility four days ago and I am legally responsible for her until she's accomplished her mission and earned her pardon…Just so we understand each other."
Eyes wide, the Doctor watched as Octavian turned, resuming their course through the trees.
"You were in Stormcage?!" He squawked, whirling around to face a very unhappy looking River.
But before he could get his answer, the computer beeped in his hands, dragging his attention down.
"What?" The blonde questioned urgently, seeing the look on his face. "What is it?"
"The date," He answered softly, confused. "The date of the explosion, where the crack begins."
An annoyed sigh left the woman standing beside him. "And for those of us who can't read the base code of the universe?"
He tapped the screen, looking past her and over her shoulder, into the trees.
"Amy's time."
The horribly tense silence that followed that revelation lasted all of three seconds before he was moving again, mind racing as he followed Octavian's plotted path.
How could it be Amy's time? What were the chances of that level of coincidence? None, his mind whispered. And he knew he was right. In all of space and time, for him to have chosen mere minutes before the explosion that cracked the universe to spirit little Amelia Pond from her too big house, was all but impossible.
It was as these thoughts were flying through his mind, gathering momentum as he became more and more lost to the infinite calculations such chance would involve, that pain suddenly rippled across his mind, making him stumble.
"Doctor!"
Gasping, not even feeling River's frantic hands pulling him upright, the Doctor pressed both palms to his head, eyes clenched shut against the awful pressure suddenly bearing down on an abyss that had been nothing but dead for years now.
"…Hello?"
His body twitched, the small, barely audible call sounding wrong in the absolute silence he'd become accustomed to in the years since the war.
"Hello?! Please! Answer me!"
And suddenly, reason broke though the pain clobbering at his mind, at the shields he'd had to raise to keep his sanity all these years, shields that held back the abyss of darkness that had taken the place of billions of minds, of his people. Protecting him.
Jana.
Supressing the gasping sob that clawed at his throat, the Doctor sunk his teeth into his lower lip, taking no notice of the rising questions being shouted around him, of the familiar voices calling his name.
With single-minded purpose, the Doctor grasped the mental shields he'd built so painstakingly all those years ago…and ripped.
With every ounce of mental strength, he tore, sliced, and clawed at the barriers separating him from the urgent consciousness on the other side, frantic to get free of his sudden prison.
"Doctor! Doctor! What can I do?!" River's voice came from as if a great distance, but he didn't care.
"Why won't you answer me?!" Jana's mental voice screamed.
The mental shield around his mind fell with a soundless crash, energy flaring out towards the only other light in the darkness with purpose.
"Jana!"
All it took was a thought, a wish for her name, and she was suddenly there, the warmth of another Time Lord consciousness making him sag in the arms holding him upright, tears tracking down his cheeks.
"Who are you? Why wouldn't you answer me?"
"Jana…"
"You know me?"
He didn't know whether to laugh or rage at those three little words.
Of course, he knew her.
"Yes," He answered soothingly, sensing the panic in her mind. "I know you're confused-"
"Confused doesn't begin to cut it!" Jana's mental voice snapped, making him smirk. "But I don't have time to get into all that right now."
He could feel his body's arms being lifted, settling onto something as he was moved, but for all the urgency of his own situation, the Doctor refused to cut off the first telepathic communication he'd been a part of since the war.
"What do you mean?" The demand in his question was clear, worried, the Angels' threat replaying in his mind. "What's wrong?"
"Am I in your TARDIS?" She asked instead, and the Doctor sensed the Time Lady retreating from their mental connection slightly, as if her attention had suddenly split between two things.
"Yes," No use concealing the fact. "Now tell me, what's wrong?"
"Where the hell are we?" Again, she didn't answer the question, pricking an age-old irritation he'd felt from the first moment he'd ever directly spoken to the Time Lady in question. "I've got dozens of Weeping Angels on my doorstep and an antique TARDIS in which to use to escape them! What is going on?!"
Antique TARDIS?!
But her words quickly overrode all sense of indignation.
"What do you mean you're surrounded? They can't have reached you yet! They're not strong enough!"
"Well, your kitsch little monitor, here, would disagree!" She practically shouted, the Doctor getting a vague sense of her pushing and pulling levers as she raced around the TARDIS console.
He'd gone too long without telepathic contact to his kind.
It was taking the majority of his concentration to maintain their mental connection, let alone his physical one too!
"Doctor," River's panicked voice suddenly intruded, distracting him. "Please, come back. You have to come back! The Angels, Doctor. They're gaining on us."
With effort, more effort than it should have taken, he reached back towards Jana.
"Just get out of there," He ordered, images of stone Angels closing in on the blue box flashing through his mind. "Any time, any place, just go!"
"You don't think I've tried?!" Jana cried, angry. "And where do you get off ordering me about, huh?"
"Good Gods, this is not the time!" Even his mental voice was growling now, unwilling to cater to her stubbornness. "Just go!"
"I can't!" She shot back, having evidently agreed with his angry point. "The Angels have locked on to the TARDIS. I can't get out."
His hearts stopped.
But it seemed as though Jana had as little patience for his worry as he did her obstinacy.
"This is your TARDIS, tell me, can she handle a jump into the Void and back?" Jana demanded, distracted. "If I'm quick – and don't bother telling me how dangerous it is, I already know – can she do it? Will she be able to get me back?"
"You can't be serious!" Ignoring her instruction, the level of his concern quickly transforming into fury, the Doctor couldn't stop the flow of words that leaped across their mental connection. "The High Council locked the dimensions away at the start of the War, the Void is suicide!"
"So is waiting here for the TARDIS shields to fall!" Jana screamed back, but he could hear the shock behind her own anger.
Neither of them was used to having to justify themselves.
"Have you tried inverting the sternal lining? Heating up the coils and manufacturing a two-Kinal space pocket?" He roared back, knowing that the only thing that was going to stop her from executing her insane plan was a workable alternative. "Well have you?!"
"Give me a minute!" She screamed, and he knew she was trying just that. "I already tried the sternal lining but the space pocket…hold on," The order was firm, easy, the expectation of obedience absolute.
His teeth ground together.
"…Well?!"
"Tell you what, you can either wait until I have something to tell you, or my sudden mental absence will be answer enough as to the success of your plan. Now, shut up!"
"Gods, you haven't changed at all," He growled.
"Doctor!"
And with that scream, the mental connection snapped, broken.
His eyes flew open.
"Oh, thank god," River breathed, standing over him, eyes closing in relief.
Without a word, unable to even hold the blonde's gaze for fear of unleashing his anger on her – it wasn't her fault. How could she possibly know what her ill-timed yell had caused? What it had dragged him away from? Who it had taken him from? – the Doctor leapt to his feet, eyes darting wildly between the countless visible stone statues now surrounding them.
"Keep your eyes on them!" He shouted, whirling to fact the metal door in front of him, already scanning. "And remember, don't blink! Do not blink!"
"What happened to you?" River demanded; eyes fixed on their approaching enemies. "You wouldn't wake up. Why?"
"Doesn't matter," He muttered, hands fumbling in their effort to adjust the settings on the sonic, his mind in chaos.
"Of course, it matters!" River snarled, almost taking her eyes off the Angels to shoot him a glare before catching herself. "…Of course, it matters."
The door abruptly opened to reveal the Primary Flight Deck.
"Doctor Song, get through, now," Father Octavian ordered, shoving her physically through the opening. "Doctor? Doctor."
But all he could do was shake his head, his mind reaching, frantically, towards the lone light in the darkness.
"Doctor, we have to move."
But he didn't have the strength.
How? How could he fail now?!
"We have to move, sir! The Angels could be here any second!"
Telepathy was like any other skill, any other muscle in the body, you had to use it to improve strength. Being inside mental shields for years now, ever since the end of the War, his telepathic abilities had been crippled. Nothing that other species would notice, but Time Lords? His people lived through a shared mind! It was a way of life perfected over billions of years!
And he couldn't even reach her!
"Doctor."
Something in the Bishop's voice that time made him turn, a tenseness, a…defeat…that had him spinning where he stood.
Oh no.
"Let him go," He ordered lowly, furious to see the Cleric trapped within the embrace of an Angel, its arm at his throat.
"Well," Octavian cleared his throat, "it can't let go of me, sir, can it? Not while you're looking at it."
"I can't stop looking at it, it'll kill you."
"It's going to kill me anyway. Think it through. There's no way out of this. You have to leave me."
The guilt was strong. "Can't you wriggle out?"
"No," Octavian tried to shake his head but couldn't, smiling a small smile, "it's too tight. You have to leave me, sir. There's nothing you can do."
"You're dead if I leave you," He told him, holding the Bishop's eyes.
"Yes. Yes, I'm dead. And before you go-"
"I'm not going," The Doctor cut him off, his own guilt weighing heavily now as he watched the man's eyes lose their fight, becoming resigned.
"Listen to me, it's important," Octavian insisted, straining uncomfortably against the Angel's arm. "You can't trust her."
"Trust who?"
"River Song. You think you know her, but you don't. You don't understand who or what she is."
He ran his tongue along the inside of his teeth, hands fists.
"Then tell me."
But the Doctor could already see the answer in the Bishop's eyes. "I've told you more than I should. Now please, you have to go. It's your duty to your friends."
Indecision gripped him.
"Just tell me why she was in Stormcage?"
"…She killed a man. A good man," Octavian stressed. "A hero to many."
"…Who?"
"You don't want to know, sir. You really don't."
He stepped closer now, his concern expanding beyond the Bishop's imminent death, beyond the guilt that was going to hit him as soon as he turned his back.
"Who did she kill?"
"Sir, the Angles are coming," Octavian ignored him, watching over his shoulder, urgency thick. "You have to leave me."
"You'll die," He breathed, heart heavy.
The Bishop smiled though. "I will die in the knowledge that my courage did not desert me at the end. For that, I thank God, and bless the path that takes you to safety."
The Doctor could only shake his head, the man's bravery difficult not to admire.
"It didn't work," Jana's unexpected voice was quiet in his mind, far away, but it was all he needed to hear to turn his blood cold.
"I wish I'd known you better," He told Octavian sincerely, meaning it.
"I think, sir, you know me at my best."
"I'm sorry. I'm out of time."
He swallowed. "Ready?"
Octavian smiled. "Content."
"…I'll try to bring her back in one piece."
Jaw clenched, the Doctor dived, slamming the hatch closed behind him.
…
"Okay, girl," Jana murmured, wrapping both hands around the lever that would activate the complicated calculations she'd inputted into the TARDIS matrix, "you and me."
Hearing the strong hum of agreement from the rotor, she couldn't help but grin, relishing the chance to travel inside a TARDIS once again, despite the deadly situation she was facing.
The War had taught her a lot.
Every small moment of happiness had to be grasped with both hands. No matter the circumstances from which it arose.
With one last glance at the nearly dead shield energy, the image of the Angels outside flickering on the monitor, Jana wrenched down the lever, holding her breath.
The TARDIS shuddered.
Gasping, Jana couldn't help closing her eyes against the horrible feel of the Void, needing nothing more than the tingling sensation on her skin to tell her she'd been successful.
The Angels had made travelling anywhere in time and space impossible, draining the TARDIS of energy. But there was one place that required no movement in time, no movement in space.
The Void was everywhere.
It was only a matter of reaching it.
…And then getting back.
Breathing out slowly, Jana suddenly leapt into action, purposefully keeping her eyes away from the TARDIS energy levels.
There wasn't anything she could do about it.
Grabbing the monitor screen with both hands, she peered closer, pleased to see the evidence of dozens of stone Angels floating chaotically into the Void around them, unable to navigate the space.
Until her eye caught on something else.
Hanging onto the outside of the TARDIS were the same four Angels who had locked onto the machine in the first place, no longer grinning…but angry.
"Damn," She whispered.
…
"Hello? Are you there? Hello?" Amy whispered into the communicator, frowning. "Hello?"
"I'm here," Marco's voice crackled over the radio, making her shoulders sag in relief. "I'm fine. Quite close to it now."
Pressing her hand into her leg, Amy shook her head. "Then come back. Come back now, please."
"It's weird looking at it. It feels really-"
A pit grew in her stomach the longer the silence dragged, her breathing increasing in speed.
"Really, what?" Unable to keep still, Amy shifted on the ground, "Hello? Really what? Hello? Hello?...Hello?!...Please, say you're there! Hello? Hello?!"
"Amy? Amy? Is that you?" The Doctor's voice crackled over the communicator, dragging a sob from her chest.
"Doctor?"
"Where are you?" Speaking quickly, she could hear the familiar sonic working in the background as he spoke, settling her pulse. "Are the clerics with you?"
"They've gone," She sniffled, determinedly trying to shake off her fear…if that was even possible. "There was a light and they walked into the light. Doctor, they didn't even remember each other."
"No," Even over the communicator, without being able to see him, Amy could still hear the sorrow in his voice. "They wouldn't."
"What is that light?" She heard River ask, slightly softer than the Doctor's voice.
"Time running out," He snapped. "Amy, I'm sorry, I made a mistake. I should never have left you there."
If it were any other situation, she would have laughed.
"Well, what do I do now?"
"You come to us," The Doctor instructed. "The Primary Flight Deck, the other end of the forest."
"I can see. I can't even open my eyes!"
"Turn on the spot," Was the only reply she was given.
"Sorry, what?"
"Just do it. Turn on the spot."
Reluctantly, Amy forced herself to her feet, moving around shakily.
"When the communicator sounds like my screwdriver, that means you're facing the right way. Follow the sound…You have to start moving now. There's time energy spilling out of that crack, and you have to stay ahead of it."
"But the Angels, they're everywhere."
It took a moment for him to answer.
"I'm sorry, I really am, but the Angels can only kill you."
Her heart thudded.
"What does the Time Energy do?"
"Just keep moving," The Doctor ordered, ignoring her question.
But Amy shook her head. "Tell me."
"If the Time Energy catches up with you, you'll never have been born. It will erase every moment of your existence. You will never have lived at all…Now, keep your eyes shut, and keep moving."
Biting her lip, Amy dragged in a deep breath, forcing her feet to move.
He'd told her to trust him, before, and she wanted to, she really did, she wanted to believe that she would survive this, but…
"Amy," She shivered as the Doctor's breath raced across her cheeks, strangely cool, "you need to start trusting me. It's never been more important."
"But you don't always tell me the truth."
Amy could almost see him smile.
"If I always told you the truth, I wouldn't need you to trust me."
"Doctor," She whispered, "the crack in my wall, how can it be here?"
"I don't know yet, but I'm working it out," He assured her, sweeping the hair from her eyes, despite them still being closed. "Now, listen. Remember what I told you when you were seven?"
No.
"What did you tell me?" Amy frowned, trying to remember but unable to.
"No. No, that's not the point." Her entire body stilled as the Doctor pressed his forehead to hers, breathing heavily. "You have to remember, Amy. You have to remember everything. Please. She's all I have left, and it's all down to you…We need you, little Amelia Pond. I need you…to remember."
"Remember what?" She frowned, real concern beginning to tug at her belly. "Doctor? Doctor?"
Amy swallowed, feeling the uneven ground with her feet as she moved forward.
That small conversation with the Doctor had been running in her mind, over and over, ever since the man had left. She was worried, worried because…she'd never heard so much emotion in his voice. He'd almost been pleading, begging, with her to remember.
…But he'd never said what.
"Amy, listen to me," The Doctor's voice suddenly sprung to life, making her jump. "I'm sending a bit of software to your communicator. It's a proximity detector. It'll beep if there's something in your way. You just manoeuvre till the beeping stops, because…Amy, this is important…the forest is full of Angels. You're going to have to walk like you can see."
"What do you mean?" She breathed, frightened.
"Look," The Doctor sighed, "just keep moving."
…And so she did.
…
AH! First contact! Yay! Jana really doesn't take any flack from him, does she? ;D
I'd love to hear what you thought!
