Chapter 13. Thanks for sticking with this so far. Couple more chapters to go!
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The Doctor and the Angels - chapter 13
Martha stalked slowly along the corridors. She'd turned in the opposite direction to the way they'd come in and the CCTV cameras had shown her enough to know where the fewest Angels were. She had her mirrors but was avoiding having to use them; the less the Angels were aware of her presence, the better. Finally reaching the room she was headed for, she backed her way in through the door.
"Hello, Martha Jones;" she'd been expecting the voice, but nevertheless she almost leapt out of her skin.
"Doctor!"
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The Doctor surveyed the huge pile of necklaces they'd created. Each was fashioned from part of a wire coat hanger, a piece of mirror, and whatever had been available to stick the two together. The hangers were bent at an angle so that when hung around an angel's neck, they would prop the mirror in front of its face, forever freezing it in front of its own reflection. The items looked shoddy at best and the Doctor harrumphed uncomfortably. He glanced over at the Brigadier and for once they were on the same page. Leaders both, they knew they had to be positive for the sake of the others. That said, of course, the 'others' consisted of two highly intelligent doctors and a journalist with the keenest of instincts. There would likely be no fooling any of them.
"Well then." he said, rubbing his hands together. "Shall we go and get on with it?"
He grinned widely across at Sarah who sent him a look of affectionate amusement.
"Ready when you are, Doctor."
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Martha fiddled with the security monitor in the tiny surveillance room and swore as it fizzed to nothing with a tiny pop. The Doctor - her Doctor, not that he belonged to her as such - pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the screen, bringing it back to life with an odd hum that it had never had before. It was working at least, and Martha flicked through the feeds again until she found the view of the corridor outside the main control room, waiting until the people she'd left behind emerged.
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Downstairs, the tiny group had taken armfuls of mirrors, hanging them over their forearms. The Brigadier had little faith in this plan; it was as makeshift as they came. On the other hand though, this kind of ingenuity had got him out of tight spots before, and he was far too long in the tooth to write off a valid plan of action. As far fetched as it may seem, it was a plan at least, infinitely better than no plan at all. The Doctor turned the door handle and made to step out into the corridor. On impulse Alistair snaked out a hand and gave Liz's arm a reassuring squeeze. She looked at him curiously.
"I'm sorry," he muttered under his breath, "for dragging you into this. I should never have…"
Liz turned to face him fully.
"Alistair. I didn't have to come." She didn't elaborate further, but she didn't have to. She looked determined and he twitched a smile at her, feeling an inkling of that same pride the Doctor so often felt in Sarah Jane.
Half an hour had passed and Martha looked helplessly at the screen as the Doctor and his entourage of humans worked tirelessly; the cameras feeding the CCTV continued to wink on and off, and while it was clear they were making headway - the number of angels adorned with a rigid necklace propping up a mirror in front of their faces rose steadily - it was obvious every time the cameras came back on that the battalion was slowly advancing. The number of angels able to move gradually fell, but there came a point when, in spite of being spread out over that floor of the building, they were quite obviously surrounding the small team.
"I just wish I could help." Martha said plaintively.
The Doctor shook his head.
"You know you can't, Martha. I would have remembered you being there. Don't forget that that's me down there."
"It really is, isn't it?" Martha asked with wonder in her voice. She glanced over at the Doctor, who was watching himself on the screen with a far away look in his eyes.
"Should you really be here? Two versions of you in the same time and place - doesn't that make time go…. 'poof', or something?" she illustrated her point with a snap of her fingers.
The Doctor shrugged a shoulder with his characteristically over-casual air, throwing and catching the sonic screwdriver in one hand.
"Wobbly wobbly… timey wimey…" he trailed off. "It'll be fine."
"Will it?"
"Of course. I was here before, remember? I would have remembered if time went 'poof'."
"Seriously though, aren't you itching to go and deal with this?"
"I am dealing with it!" he countered with an indignant gesture at the other him on the screen.
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They'd come up with a sort of tag team approach. Taking turns to do the looking, as it were, three of them would keep their eyes on the Angels, while the other two hung the necklaces on them. It was oddly like handing out medals at the Olympic games, Sarah mused, and made herself smile at the thought. Her blood was pounding with nerves and the whole operation seemed balanced on a knife edge. Between them they only had ten eyes, and they had to blink often enough for the Angels to keep advancing. So far they'd been fairly evenly matched, but they were definitely coming faster, and that meant at some point they would be outnumbered…and then what would happen?
The Doctor watched her, as always. His attention was never fully focused on the task at hand - it didn't need to be, of course, such was the vastness of his mind - but he'd never had a companion who took up such a significant percentage of his mental capacity in quite the same way before. The Brigadier could look after himself, what with his silly guns and bullets. He cared about Liz of course, and he even had a grudging fondness for Harry, not that he'd ever admit it. But Sarah Jane had burrowed under his skin. Even now, he realised with a start, he ought to concentrating on these Angels and here he was, thinking about her again. He silently chided himself and squared his shoulders, touching the Brigadier on the arm to indicate he was ready to exchange places. The Brigadier pushed the dozen or so mirrors hooked over his arm back above his elbow and stepped back to let the Doctor go ahead.
"Over to the left," he barked, "two of them."
"Got it!" Sarah called and he watched them carefully as she stepped up, a mirror-necklace in each hand, and hung them around the Angel's necks, arranging them so they hung correctly.
"Done!" she called and he went back to sweeping the corridor ahead with his eyes.
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Upstairs, the Doctor watched Sarah on the screen.
"She was so brave," he murmured with a hint of wistfulness.
"She still is, Doctor." Martha reminded him.
The Doctor looked away and she saw a bitter look cross his face.
"Everything was simpler back then."
Martha attempted to lighten the mood.
"Your fashion sense certainly wasn't simpler. Look at that scarf! What on Earth were you thinking?"
"Scarves are cool." the Doctor said with a sulky hint of defiance.
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At the junction of four corridors, the team finally found themselves in real trouble. They stood, back to back facing down the three halls they hadn't been down yet. Harry stared hard in one direction, his eyes aching with the effort. There were six Angels in his eye line and no matter how hard he tried he could not keep his gaze fixed on all of them.
"Doctor?" he pleaded, "what now?"
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Martha clutched at the Doctor's arm.
"Doctor, if you knew exactly what was going to happen…"
"Yeees?" he drawled with raised eyebrows.
"Why didn't you tell me there were so many Angels? And," she continued accusingly, "why didn't you tell me that half my team would be taken by them?"
The Doctor looked at her seriously.
"I couldn't risk you trying to change things. I'm sorry."
Martha bit her lip and held back tears.
"They lived good lives, all of them. I checked." the Doctor ducked his head to try and catch her eye and smiled sheepishly. She took the peace offering and sent him a watery smile back.
"Thank you."
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Liz gnawed on her lip with the effort, winking one eye after the other, watching the Angels. Her eyes began to tear and her vision started to obscure; through the haze she could see them coming for her. She reached blindly for the Brigadier's hand and found his fingers, squeezing them hard; surprised and yet not surprised at all when he returned the pressure.
The Doctor, standing in the middle of the group, wrapped an arm around Sarah's shoulders, pulling her back against him.
"Brace yourselves, everybody!" he boomed, raising the sonic screwdriver above his head and pointing it at the light above his head.
"When I give the word, everybody blink. Now!"
As the others closed their eyes, he pressed the button. There was a bang and a huge flash.
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Upstairs, the monitor went black again.
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