Author's Note: Next chapter. Don't know yet if I'll post another one this week or not. We'll see...
Also, don't be surprised if a new fic or two starts up in the near future...
I do not own Doctor Who or any of its characters.
Thank you to everyone who is reading/following/favoriting/reviewing this. It is always greatly appreciated. :)
Chapter Eleven
The Doctor closed his eyes and worked to regulate his breathing. The metal cuffs that Dastari had placed on his wrists were chafing his skin. The sensation intensified the anxiety he felt over being restrained, helpless and unable to move. Nevertheless, the situation he was in was dangerous enough without the burden of his own personal phobias creating unnecessary panic.
He preferred to save his panicking for when he was faced with a more lethal threat.
Using techniques he had learned from the Tibetan monks he had befriended so long ago, the Doctor focused on each breath, drawing them out slower and slower. It had taken him longer than usual to achieve his desired state of calm. He blamed that on the siralanomode that Dastari had pumped into him. Its main side effect was memory loss, but given how much the scientist could have used on him during their journey to Earth, the Doctor imagined that it could also affect other mental processes. Like his ability to concentrate.
The Doctor reopened his eyes and let out a sigh. Siralanomode's effects were usually temporary. Of course, there was the fear that too much could cause long-term damage, but the Doctor hoped that this wouldn't be the case. A few minutes ago, he had tested himself by trying to recall a variety of facts and personal events from across his current and previous incarnation and was mostly pleased with how much he had remembered. Given time and proper care, he was confident that his mind would recover.
That is, if he escaped this cellar and the clutches of Dastari, the Androgums, and the Sontarans intact. It certainly had the feel of his usual jobs for the CIA. Pity he couldn't think of a way out of it this time.
The Doctor frowned, wincing as he did so. His cheek still ached where Stike had struck him, and he suspected that there might be a hairline fracture in the bone. It had been an absurdly risky tactic to goad the Sontaran into a dual, but it was also the best idea he had been able to come up with at the time. At the very least, it would have gotten him out of these wretched restraints. Unfortunately, Stike had an unusual amount of prudence for a Sontaran and had stomped away in a rage without giving in to his battle instincts.
'No point in trying to get anywhere with Shockeye,' he thought. 'Androgums only care about sating their desires, and I've got nothing to offer. Well, nothing I wouldn't mind parting with. Besides, he is completely allied with Chessene. I doubt he cares about what happens to anyone other than himself and her. As for Chessene…I'm sure she has her own endgame in mind. And that fool Dastari refuses to see it.'
Thoughts of Dastari caused the Doctor to slump down against the examining table. He had seen that there was an unwelcome change in the scientist while talking to him at Chimera. However, he had had no idea how just much Dastari had changed until he had opened his eyes in this dank cellar and realized that the man he had once considered a friend had probably played a role in the massacre that had taken place on the space station.
That in itself was horrible enough, but the idea that Dastari also wanted to dissect him on the chance that he might discover the secrets of time travel was akin to a nightmare. While he wasn't unfamiliar with the numerous ways a person's soul could be subsumed by evil, the Doctor could not fathom how Dastari could have been twisted so much. Even as he faced his own death at the scientist's hands, the Doctor found himself lamenting the loss of his old friend. At that moment, he felt completely alone.
'Jamie…..' his mind called out. 'No…no, Jamie's not…. He's….'
The Doctor felt both of his hearts wither. When Chessene had told him that the Sontarans had murdered Jamie, a mixture of anguish and blind fury had overwhelmed him. It was a feeling that he had only a couple times before and hoped to never experience again. For a moment, he had lost all control and had only wanted to lash out at the source of his suffering. However, Dastari and Shockeye had restrained him before he could act and that had given him time to regain his senses and think rationally again.
At first, he tried to reason that it was possible that Jamie was still alive. He had managed to convince the piper to flee at the first sign of trouble and there was the chance that his telepathic message had encouraged him to stay hidden. While others assumed Jamie to be stupid and weak, the Doctor knew him to be resourceful and resilient. The piper had survived a brutal war when he was little more than a boy. It wasn't impossible to think that he could find a way to escape the Sontarans' slaughter.
Those wistful hopes were destroyed in the next moment when Stike leaned toward him.
"Disgusting," the Sontaran said as he glared at the Doctor's face. "It's displays of emotion like this that prove how weak our enemies are compared to the strength of Sontaran resolve."
The Doctor met his glare, but remained silent. He knew that there was little point in arguing with Sontaran rhetoric, and he wasn't in the mood to try.
"Those puny beings at the station cried out like that too," Stike continued. "Including your precious Tellurian, I'm sure. Unfortunately, I wasn't there when it was executed, but I did see the body. Brown hair, a strip of cloth around its neck, and a red skirt…that was what it looked like, was it not?"
Another wave of grief crested in the Doctor's soul. How many times had he made the joke about Jamie's kilt being like a skirt? It had always been a playful jest between friends, but to hear Stike use those same words in such a cruel and flippant way was more than the Doctor could take.
"I took the liberty of carving out its heart as a trophy," the Sontaran sneered. "And I will do the same to you, Time Lord, when your usefulness is at its end. It will serve as a useful reminder of the fate of anyone who dares to oppose the might of Sontar."
Stike looked as if he would say more, but then he looked into the Doctor's eyes and froze. Then, Stike did something so unusual, so rare for a Sontaran that it had only been recorded a couple times in the entire universe's collective history: he took a step back from his adversary.
"You are a slimy obscenity," the Doctor hissed at him.
That same baleful gaze held Stike in silent stillness. In that second, he knew that Stike could perceive the power that lay behind the mythos of the Time Lords and could grasp the reason why they were worshipped and feared in equal measure by many that knew of them. More importantly, Stike now knew, at the most instinctive level, the danger that lie behind those eyes. Eyes that burned with a fire that swept away everything that was unfortunate enough to be in its path.
Eventually, the spell was broken and Stike balled up his fist and growled at him.
"And you, Doctor, are nothing more than a means for our ultimate victory against the Rutans now," he retorted.
Then the Sontaran spun on his heel and left the room with his subordinate following close behind.
The Doctor swallowed hard and blinked at the moisture that had gathered in his eyes. Looking back on it, it was easy to see that he had tried challenging Stike to a dual not only as a way to escape, but also as a way to release some of the wrath he felt toward Stike and every other Sontaran who had played a hand in Jamie's murder. It had been reckless and entirely fueled by rage and grief. Now that he had had a chance to reflect on it, the Doctor was able to admit that, as angry as he was at the Sontarians for what they did; he was just as angry at himself for allowing it to happen.
He had always known that CIA assignments were dangerous. Every mission had the potential of being the one that ended his life, but that really only mattered to him. The Time Lords were treating him as if he had nothing to lose, and in a sense, he didn't. Not with the eventuality of a forced regeneration and exile awaiting him. It was the main reason he had been able to accept not being able to travel with any companions for so many years. As long as he was alone, no one he cared about would be exposed to these unrelenting perils.
If he could discern a tipping point, the Doctor was pretty sure it was after President Borusa had scooped him and the Brigadier out of his time stream and into the Death Zone. Being made to play the game of Rassilon did not feel all that dissimilar from many of his missions for the CIA. The only difference was, this time; he had someone else to think of. The more he thought about it now though, the more certain Doctor became that having the Brigadier beside him had played a major role in his surviving that whole affair.
However, he had not escaped the ordeal unscathed. While he had managed to keep himself in one piece physically, his hearts had not faired nearly as well.
The moment he had entered Rassilon's tomb, the Doctor had begun to look for traps. He knew that many would assume that the game would stop once this point had been reached, and that was a mistake he was determined not to make. He didn't know what form those traps would take, but he would be ready for them. Or so he thought.
What he had not been ready for was the moment when he actually saw Jamie and Zoe standing in front of him. He had missed them, of course, but seeing them there and hearing their voices had stirred other, even stronger, emotions he had not felt in decades. After his shock and initial joy upon seeing them passed, his very next thought had been to free them and to ensure that they could not be taken away from him again. Hearing them sound so scared and pleading with him to go back had almost been enough to persuade him to give up on his quest in the Dark Tower.
However, it was then, as his mind raced to make sense of the situation and reason a way out of it, that he realized the truth. It had taken every ounce of confidence he had in his own genius to ignore Jamie's assertions that he would die and take that final step to prove that his friends were not really there. After that, it was no great surprise to him when the visions of his friends dissolved away.
Ultimately, it was a hollow victory. True, he was able to see through the trap and continue on with the Brigadier, but the damage had already been done. Listening to Jamie and Zoe scream as they disappeared had been the final blow. The sound haunted his dreams for years afterwards, their terrified faces never left his thoughts. The Doctor wasn't entirely sure which was worse: having to watch two of his dearest friends dissipate into nothingness as they screamed or the fact that that could end up being the last memory he would have of them.
In the end, he simply had been unable to cope, the isolation had become too much to bear. It was changing him. And not in a good way or even in a way his peers would have preferred. It was shaping him into something else, something that even the Time Lords unconsciously feared even if they couldn't put a name to it. The process was measured and would have been fought at every juncture, but it was happening all the same.
The Doctor suspected that the Time Lords' fears of what this change could mean had been the impetus behind the CIA's decision to have Jamie's memories restored and to allow the piper to travel with him again. It was his own weakness that had enabled him to brush aside the danger he was putting Jamie in and focus on the relief and joy he felt over having his dear friend back at his side.
Granted, it did not make the missions any less complicated, grueling or hazardous. In fact, in many ways, additional complications had risen due to his now having to worry about the piper along with everything else. On top of all this, the work often tested the limits of his and Jamie's fortitude and patience. This would occasionally put a strain on their friendship and on their ability to co-exist amiably as near-constant companions.
Still, the Doctor couldn't bring himself to care too much about any of that. The comfort he drew from Jamie's company could only be described as blissful after the years of solitude he had endured. It sustained him and kept him sane in the midst of the bureaucracy, duplicity and corruption that he had been pulled into. It gave him the strength to weather the moments when his soul was drawn toward the abyss and had teetered at the edge. Moments when he had almost given in to all the things that were attempting to crush him from without and from within.
But now, the Doctor would have to live with the knowledge that Jamie had paid the ultimate price to give him this solace. He knew the piper well enough to know that Jamie would not have hesitated to join him even if he could have known his eventual fate. However, the Doctor found no consolation in the idea that his friend was always willing to make such a sacrifice.
The Doctor blinked hard again and looked up at the ceiling. A part of him still couldn't accept the idea that Jamie was dead, even though the reality of it was undeniable. This loss was sure to create a void in his world that could never be filled. All he would have now was his memories. He would just have to hope that that would be enough.
Stike's words came back to him, but the anger he had felt before had faded into something far more somber. He found himself wondering what the piper's last moments were like, his hearts constricting painfully in response. He knew that the Sontarans took as much pleasure in being slow and meticulous in their executions as when they were swift and efficient. The fact that Jamie had been specifically targeted meant that the former was the more likely method they had used in disposing of him. He knew that Jamie would have been brave and defiant to the very end, but that was no comfort to the Doctor. Not when he would spend the rest of his lives imaging what could have happened to Jamie and visualizing all of those possibilities in graphic detail in his mind.
He also thought about Jamie's body lying in the still, shadowy wreck of Chimera. Eventually, the space station's fate would be discovered by others. The corpses would be found and disposed of in an appropriate manner. But the Doctor could not allow Jamie's remains to be treated in such a sterile way. He was determined to take care of Jamie himself. He owed the piper that much at the very least. He would take Jamie back to Scotland, back to his home. There, he would make arrangements for a quiet memorial and return his companion's body to the land he loved so much.
The Doctor took another deep breath and pushed those thoughts out of his mind. As potent as his sorrow was, this was not the time to wallow in it. Jamie had offered his life in the hope of preserving his, and he would not dishonor his friend's memory by simply giving up without a fight. He had to find a way to escape.
He also had to stop Dastari and Chessene and find some way to get them and the Sontarans off this planet before people were hurt. The entirety of space and time were at stake, and the Doctor knew that he needed to concentrate his efforts on thwarting their plans.
After this was over, after he got away and made sure that Dastari, Chessene and the rest of them could no longer pose any threat, then he would be able to think about other things. Then he could focus on completing his final duties to his friend and on finding a way to continue on in this barren existence while awaiting his final punishment from the Time Lords.
Then he would have plenty of empty hours to mourn.
