A/N: Thought I'd get the rest of this story done in one fell swoop so... here we go! The Climax!
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor, so PLEASE DON'T SUE ME!
CHAPTER TWELVE: SLEEPLESS
Sam woke with a start, expecting the dream to be over when he opened his eyes, expecting to be back in his flat passed out in front of the television. No such luck. He was still in the warehouse, still being chased by a bunch of underage aliens, still not dreaming. Damn.
"What's another name for geek, four letters, has a 'd' at the end?"
Sam rubbed blearily at his eyes and sat up. The Doctor was still exactly where he had been when Sam had gone to sleep, only this time the alien was sporting a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles, and was doing what appeared to be a crossword.
"Well?" the Doctor prompted, chewing on the end of his pen as he waited for an answer.
"Wha- oh, nerd."
"Nerd?" The Doctor leant over his crossword, and hastily scrawled the letters into their respective boxes. "Huh, fancy that. Learn something new every day." He returned his full attention to puzzling out the remaining clues, leaving Sam lost for words. Brittany remained oblivious to all this, asleep as she was. A soft snore escaped from her lips, and she rolled over, subconsciously adjusting her makeshift bedspread.
"Couldn't sleep?" It took Sam a moment to realise that the Doctor had spoken, as the alien hadn't even glanced up from his crossword.
"No," Sam replied, twiddling his thumbs absently, "no, I couldn't. You?"
The Doctor dropped his crossword on the table, all the boxes filled with neatly printed letters. "Someone has to keep guard, don't they?"
"You've been up all night?"
"Well, I wouldn't call it all night – it is only three in the morning after all." He returned his glasses to his pocket. "Well?"
"Well what?"
"We can't just sit here in silence all night, can we?" the Doctor explained, as if it should have been completely obvious. "You have to say something. Well?"
"Er…" Sam threw around for something to talk about, his eyes finally resting on the bleeping silver tube that was sitting on the table. "What's that?"
The Doctor reached down and gently picked it up, twirling the slender cylinder of metal around in his fingers. "This old thing?" he said, inspecting the flashing blue light. "This is my sonic screwdriver. Nifty little piece of technology." He set it back down on the table. "Remember when I warned you in the pub, and said I had a Sam-tracker?" Sam nodded, realising that had only been hours ago, not the days it felt. "Well, my handy-dandy screwdriver here is preventing the Ma'ark from tracking you. We should be safe until morning, at the very least."
"So the Ma'ark are really from outer space?"
The Doctor gave Sam a curious look, as if he couldn't quite work out the point of the question. "Yes. I thought we'd been over this already. Aliens come from outer space."
"Doctor, don't talk to me like I'm an idiot," Sam shot back. "I know aliens are from outer space. I want to know which planet the Ma'ark are from."
"This tiny place called Kowaric, a long way from here," the Doctor said, his mind turning to stars and constellations. "Terribly overpopulated."
"And you come from Gallifrey, yeah?"
"Yeah."
"So does that make you Gallifreyan?"
The Doctor's face fell ever so slightly as he saw the Citadel in his mind's eye, all the visits he'd made to his home world, both good and bad and the final atrocities of the Time Lords. "Pretty much, yeah," he replied softly. "Though I'm technically what you would call a Time Lord."
"Time Lord," Sam repeated, liking the sound of it. "And what do Time Lord's do? Do you build cities, wage war… what?"
The Doctor considered his answer carefully. "We… watched," he said at last, deciding that was the only word for it. "We styled ourselves as impartial observers who could see the whole of time and space. Always watching, but never interfering."
"You're not being very impartial right now," Sam pointed out, "What with taking my side instead of the Ma'ark's."
The Doctor sighed. "I know. I never was content just to sit there and watch the universe pass me by. There was so much injustice out there, among the stars, but the rest of the Time Lords weren't doing a thing about it. All of our power, going to waste.
"I did the only thing I could. I stole a spaceship and ran away. Never stopped, really." He looked over at Sam. "Well, here I am, saving you. Are you glad I did?" Sam remained silent, desperately wanting to know more, but worried that if he spoke up, the Doctor wouldn't tell him anything else.
He watched as the alien's eyes softened, a deep sadness lurking in their depths. "But they're gone now," the Doctor murmured so softly that Sam had to strain to catch his words. "All of them; every last one."
There was a long silence before Sam spoke. "What happened?"
The Doctor took a deep breath before continuing. "There was a war. A Time War. The Last Great Time War, in fact. My race fought the Daleks, and … both sides committed terrible atrocities. But everyone lost. Everyone. The Time Lords, the Daleks, gone. I thought it just might have been worth it, to save… I don't know. I just don't know." The rest didn't need to be said.
The Doctor silently leant back in his chair, turning his eyes away from Sam and towards the ceiling. Despite the number of years that had passed, the Time War was still a hard topic to discuss with anyone – so why had he gone and told a human he'd known for a few bare hours all about it?
Before he could think of a justifiable reason, the ceiling tore upwards with a roar of explosive force, and rain streamed into the warehouse. The Doctor didn't need a second look to confirm that all five of the Ma'ark were coming in through the roof and he acted fast, grabbing his sonic with one hand and Brittany's foot with the other. His companion had been instantly awake the explosion had ripped through the night, and was therefore unsurprised to find herself being dragged off into the darkness.
Sam was slightly slower to react, but as soon as he caught a glimpse of one of the insectoid aliens he vaulted over the back of his chair, and sprinted after the two time travellers. That extra second was enough for the Ma'ark however, and something heavy slammed into Sam's back, sending him crashing to the concrete. Claws tore at his spray jacket and he desperately tried to fend them off, but found that rather hard to do while pinned to the floor, unable to move. The Doctor was shouting, probably something important, but he couldn't quite make it out. Then, there was a sharp pain in his shoulder and he tried to cry out, but the words stuck in his throat. Alien hands clutched at his jacket and it took him a moment to register that he was no longer touching the ground. It was not until he spotted Brittany and the Doctor staring up at him that he realised how high he was being carried.
Then, everything faded to darkness.
