Entre Eux

by kracken23

The Doctor and her Fam are enjoying a day exploring an abandoned moon, when they come across a scorned native species who has a vendetta against humans, and begins hunting them. T for blood and violence. Hurt/comfort, Angst and some fluff. There's a reason the Doctor always stands between her companions and the dangers they face...

Entre Eux = between them (or at least that's what google translate says; I do not speak french, but I hope google came through for me)

I hope everyone enjoys! Comments and constructive criticisms always welcome. Apologies for any typos/errors. DW and it's characters do not belong to me, I'm just a big fan.

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"No-no-no! Don't close-!" the door swings soundly shut, Graham's voice drops from excited to defeated as they all stare at the smooth, handle-less surface, "...the door."

"Ah." The Doctor states, and throws an apologetic glance to her companions for letting it shut behind her.

"It's metal," Ryan suggests, "Can you sonic it open?"

She nods affirmingly, "Absolutely."

They all wait in silence for a second or so before Ryan suspiciously asks, "You don't have your sonic, do you?"

She grimaces apologetically again, "No."

The men groan and roll their eyes. "Oi," the Doctor says indignantly, "Assistive devices don't upload here. How long have you been stuck in here, then?" She asks Graham, who had been missing since almost the beginning of their adventure.

"This is the only room I've been in."

Ryan criticizes, "You only made it one room?"

Graham nearly stamps his foot, "I told you when we landed I'm rubbish at these games. Unlike you, I spent my young adult life learning useful, real-world applications, not playing silly games."

"Well, that's me told, innit? Oh, wait, which of us is locked in a cupboard?"

"All of us, now!" Graham raised his voice and pointed his chin to the shut door.

"Boys!" the Doctor finally intervenes, "Not helping." She glances the older man up and down, "The door to this room opens and closes every fifteen minutes. What kept you?"

Graham huffs and brandished his right ankle, secured in a thick metal shackle and tethered to the wall, "The door shuts and the rope loosens so I can walk around, but when the door opens the damned rope retracts into the wall so I'm stuck stood here staring into the corridor, but not able to move. What good is being able to reach the door when it's shut and I'm chained up?"

The Doctor scrunches her eyebrows together and ran her hand across the smooth surface of the door. Her palm immediately catches against a small groove. She wedges her little finger under the groove and works a metal tool from its camouflage amongst the metal door. "Key." She says simply and tosses it to Graham, nodding to his ankle.

Graham looks supremely annoyed as he turns the key over in his hand and then bends to unlock his shackle, muttering, "Like it's obvious."

Ryan is holding back tears from laughter, "This is one of the kids' level rooms."

A metallic ping interrupts them, and a genderless voice comes across the intercom in a too-cheery lilt, "Attention competitors, your hour of play has come to an end. Please collect your belongings and exit the virtual reality."

Ryan and the Doctor's disappointed grumblings mixed simultaneously with Graham's sigh of relief as the walls began to dissolve and de-pixelate from around them, the VR game adjourning and revealing the Doctor, Ryan, Graham and Yaz standing on separate pedestals, encased in plexiglass. The casings hissed and squeaked open so that the group could step down. They all removed the simulation helmets they had donned, and were all chatting and abuzz with the aspects of the game each of them got to interact with, apart from Graham.

x x x

The Doctor had brought them to visit Welcenturia, a human-based colony moon that had been abandoned decades prior. The moon had been inhabited for nearly a century before the planet it orbited was fully terraformed. Once the planet was hospitable, the crowded, industrial settlers relocated. They left behind a well-developed moon which Yaz, noticeably unimpressed, compared to a post-zombie-apocalyptic world. There were homes and office buildings and shops and even a playground, all sat abandoned, sagging with rust and decay. It was admittedly haunting, the dark, grimy windows and building overtaken by vines and weeds; rusted vehicles similar to cars lined the cracking, cobbled roads. Everything looked like it was sagging under the weight of itself, sinking into the ground in slow motion, being digested, consumed by time and nature.

The group of travelers had come specifically for what might have been the most chilling of establishments; the abandoned carnival. The Doctor claimed it had one of the best virtual reality puzzle games 'this side of the forty-ninth century'. The carnival was industrial, with big, metal facsimiles of things the Fam recognized, like a ferris wheel that spun on a horizontal axis, bumper-cars in the shapes of saucers, booths of long-forgotten games of dried-up pools and broken throwing rings, flat and rotten balls used to knock down now-broken milkbottles, walls of empty shelves littered with aluminum darts. Everything was dim in color, missing pieces and spokes, covered in the same greenish-purple dust everything else was covered in, even hung in the air filtering everything through a thin, muted haze.

The Doctor proudly led them to the virtual reality game booth and enthusiastically powered it on with the wave of her sonic screwdriver. The lights of the massive simulator pedestals power on, and creak and groan in aged protest; eery chords of music stutter and start to crank through a somewhat blown speaker and a small, anthropomorphic robot at the counter of the booth starts to power on. She beams, "The majority of this is just bells and whistles. The real game is in the helmet, but how exciting does this all look?"

Graham unsuredly asks, "Er, Doc, this seems great and all, but why not bring us here at a time when, you know, it was a little less War of the Worlds?"

"What?" she blows dust off one of the simulation helmets as it blinks to life. She shrugs her shoulders and lifts her hands up as if it were obvious, "And wait in a queue?"

x x x

The rusted, dilapidated biped robot was patiently waiting for them as they exited the game. "Congratulations, competitors!" it voiced with an out-of-tune speaker, "Thank you for playing AutoMechtechnic's Virtual Escape Rooms. Graham-Slam-fifty-nine," the robot turned jerkily to Graham, whose face turned a shade of deep red, not realizing the robot would say the username he'd come up with outloud. Ryan and Yaz gave each other cheeky sideways glances as the mouthed 'Graham Slam' to each other. The robot continued unhindered, "Personal best, one room complete. Please accept this consolation prize."

The robot's creaky chest opened and revealed a small, plastic, multicolored kazoo. Graham couldn't help but smile as he took the small toy from the robot's prize-collection cavity, "Oh, cheers."

The chest piece closed and the robot addressed Yaz, "Yazmanian-devil, personal best, two rooms and forty percent completion of the torsional puzzle challenge. Please accept this consolation prize." Yaz clapped a little excitedly as the prize chamber revealed a small, yellow almost-teddy bear. The soft toy was similar to a teddy, with the exception that its limbs came to soft, fabric points instead of paws, and it had three button eyes instead of two.

The crackling game robot continues, "Ryan-S-two-thousand, personal best, five rooms completed. Please accept this consolation prize." Ryan grinned happily, waiting for his prize, but scoffed to realize he got the same plush toy as Yaz, only in purple instead of yellow. He waved it carelessly, "What, I did more than twice the rooms she did, why did we got the same prize?" The robot ignores him and moves on to the Doctor as he holds his teddy bear up next to Yaz and mutters, "Could have at least been bigger or something." Yaz elbows him and tucks her prize under her arm.

"Doctor-comma-The, personal best, one hundred and thirteen rooms completed; dimensional folding challenge completed; pattern evasion challenge completed. Please accept this consolation prize." Ryan and Yaz are murmuring between themselves in awe about how much the woman had managed in their hour of play as the robot reveals her prize.

The Doctor pumps a fist enthusiastically into the air, "Yeah! I love a yo-yo." She had won a small collection of things: a small toy airplane, a cheap-looking plastic yo-yo, and a very ugly purple t-shirt with the 'AutoMechtechnic's Virtual Escape Rooms' logo across the front, which looked several sizes too big. She admires the yo-yo and admits, "Though, I've been trying for the kazoo for about a decade."

"Anyway," the Doctor pockets the toys and slings the t-shirt over her shoulder, "Thanks for the game!" She gives the old, decaying robot a faithful pat on the head before starting to walk. The others follow.

As they walk, Ryan asks, "Any other horror movie adventures today?"

"Just because it wasn't shiny, doesn't mean it was useless." the Doctor brandishes her toy aircraft, "Plus, it all works. Just needs a bit of T-L-C."

Yaz interjects, "He's just sour because he didn't get a bigger toy. Graham's not complaining."

Graham was actually very pleased with his kazoo, and was holding it between his teeth as they wandered through the rows of ramshackle carnival games. He blew a brief zzooo as Yaz made her point.

"Bah, Graham should be happy he's not still stuck in game," Ryan jests, playfully giving his step-grandfather a nudge, "I did do five rooms."

"So? The Doctor did a hundred times what you did, she's perfectly happy with her christmas cracker tat."

"Alright, enough you two," the Doctor finally says. She brandishes her sonic, "Want to see if the bumper-cars are up to snuff?"

Graham rubbed his hands together, "Now you're talking my language!"

As Yaz collected hers, Ryan's, and the Doctor's VR prizes and stuffed them into her rucksack for safekeeping (Graham refused to give up his kazoo, sticking it in his pocket and insisting he would treat them all to a ballad later), the group came upon the decaying pavilion, littered with spherical vehicles. The 'cars' looked more like metal Christmas tree decorations surrounded by a rubber inner tube than imitation cars, but beneath the rust-eaten shells and heavy layer of purple dust, each was its own recognizable bright color.

"Dibs on red," Ryan called, and walked over to the red car, awkwardly climbing in and adjusting his too-long legs. Yaz and Graham started to make their way to their own cars as the Doctor pried open the mechanical operator's box at the ride entrance, and started to use her sonic to convince it to power on.

The colorful lights of the pavilion blink on, and the venue starts to fill with the clicks and clonks of the machinery coming to life. The car Ryan is in trembles and then lurches forward unexpectedly. "Whoa," he says, grabbing the cartoonish steering wheel. The car lurches again, violently, and rocks from side to side. He knocks against the walls of the ride as he hollers, "Hey-hey-hey!"

Graham is standing a couple of cars away, and watches as Ryan's car starts to jerk several inches in every direction, "Doc! Hey, Doc, kill the ride, it's broken!" He points to his grandson with one hand as he waves at the Doctor, still at the ride's entrance, with the other. Yaz stops her forward progress into getting into the car, and climbs back out as she keeps her eyes on Ryan.

The Doctor scrunches her eyebrows together and wields her sonic screwdriver over the control panel. She hollers back, "That's not me, nothing's started yet!"

As she finishes her last word, there is a high groaning sound of metal under a strain, and a section of Ryan's car suddenly crunches down into itself, like an aluminum can. He screams again, "Whoa!" and fights to stand up in the seat as the car bucks and jerks from side to side, another section imploding. The Doctor, Graham, and Yaz make a unspoken dash towards him; the car continues to dent and shrink and wrinkle, as if by a giant invisible hand, and Ryan leaps from the seat of the ride, landing ungracefully on the concrete beside the vehicle. Yaz is nearest to him and helps him to his feet as the car takes several more seconds to fold up and self-destruct, finally falling still once all that remains is a ball of twisted metal, nearly half the size of when it started.

The group stands speechless for a moment once it stops, before Ryan, wide-eyed and still catching his breath, threw a hand in the air, "Now what on earth was that?!" he leans around Yaz so the Doctor had a clear look at the somewhat-accusatory expression on his face.

Before she can respond, another car-a green one-suddenly lurches towards them about a meter. They all take a step back; it shudders and lurches again another meter. "Er, I think that's the end of our day at the carnival," the Doctor says, starting to walk backwards with her arms extended, herding her friends behind her as the car starts moving, scraping against the concrete as it starts picking up speed. They all wordlessly agree. In synchrony, they all turn and start to sprint, the sound of the car chasing them dying as it smacks into the guardrail surrounding the bumper car pavilion.

They keep running regardless, until they reach what must have been analogous to a Merry-Go-Round, but instead of horses, the ride was composed of ornate metal sculptures of an unfamiliar animal, stocky and three-legged. The ride was even more unnerving, as the rust and disrepair made the animals look like they were melting and suffering in their stationary positions. Graham leans forward as he tries to catch his breath, "Alright, Doc, alien bumper cars are a little more heavy handed than I'm used to."

"It was almost like it was possessed," Yaz added, smoothing her fly-away hairs into her braid.

"It was certainly bizarre," the Doctor admitted, looking back into the distance, at the barely visible peak of the bumper car pavilion.

"Bizarre? I almost ended up in a recycling bin." Ryan huffed, "I-"

The Doctor raised a hand and motioned for him to be quiet, she continued to look back at the offending attraction, squinting against the purplish haze the dust created. She muttered, "I don't think we're alone." She fishes her sonic out of her pocket and passes it over the space in front of her. Glancing at the diagnostics, "Hmm...unknown."

She lowers the tool and runs her tongue uncertainly over her lower lip. She then calls out into the ether, "Hello, there! Can you hear me? Can you come out, please?"

After a tense ten seconds or so of the group staring expectantly at the hazy, dilapidated arena of broken games and rides, something started to move from behind one of the booths…

It's a child...sort of, or at least whatever it was, it had a round-ish face and awkward lanky limbs like an adolescent does, in the throes of transition from babe to adulthood. She's shorter than all of them by over a head, dressed in a toga of earth-coloured linens, barefoot. She is a grey-brown colour, and covered in quills. The quills are the lengths of fingers, and cover the creature in a pattern similar to that of hair-her head, the back of her neck, her arms and legs, but spare her face, the palms of her hands, and her feet. On her hands and feet are four long digits each, and each of those sports a sharp, orange talon-like nail. Her eyes are small, and pale-orange, and dart back and forth inquisitively. Her mouth is set in a hard line, hiding binary rows of blunt, pale-orange teeth.

She walks closer until she is about five meters away, where she stops and continues to silently look from person to person.

The Doctor addresses her, "Hiya. I'm the Doctor, this is Graham, Yaz, and Ryan back there. We were just exploring your amazing set up." The creature just continues to look at them. She's not necessarily staring, but she takes paced glances of each face, no expression, no inclination of understanding or concern. The Doctor pauses for a second, but when it's clear they are at some sort of awkward stalemate, she adds with a little smirk, "I mean, could do with a visitor's center. You know, maps, coupons...a place to buy a fizzy drink…And you might want to get a maintenance man in to see to some of your rides. They're all quite dusty, and one in particular is a touch homicidal."

"What's your name, sweetheart?" Yaz speaks up.

The creature suddenly inclines her head, as if surprised. She speaks, in a quiet almost-purr, "Carric."

"Pleasure," Graham interjects, still uneasy as could be.

"You live here, Carric?" The Doctor asks.

Carric looks to the Doctor when she answers, "This is my home." Beside them, the carousel suddenly creaks, groans against its rusted parts, and turns half a revolution. Graham, Ryan, and Yaz jump a little and give the attraction nervous sideways glances, but the Doctor doesn't take her eyes off the young creature in front of her.

"You weren't part of the Apalacha colony, were you? The ones who've gone?" the Doctor asks, leaning forward in interest.

"I am Wyndorvian." The carousel turned again.

The Doctor looks between Carric and the carousel. "Do you have telekinetic abilities? I've not heard of your species before." While the Doctor admired the concept of the unknown, she was wildly unaccustomed to suffering from it.

"Only towards metal," Carric answered, and the carousel made a noisy, full revolution, "A nearly pointless ability before the humans came and brought it all with them."

"Did you have anything to do with the bumper car accident that just happened, Carric?" The Doctor's tone shifted ever so slightly, from guarded to defensive.

Carric did not answer.

"Where's the rest of your people? I've been here a number of times since the colonists left, I've never met your kind."

"You're not human." Carric said simply. "You never interested me before." She looks from Graham to Ryan to Yaz, her tone remained unchanged but Yaz could swear her eyes were becoming a deeper orange, the carousel was picking up speed beside them, "Today, you brought humans."

The Doctor unconsciously inched her way between Yaz and the cold stare Carric was giving her. She asks again, "Where's your family?"

"They killed them. First, for fear; then, for fun. We had never seen metal before, we didn't know..." the creature says, "The humans thought we were attacking them, but it was often just accidents. Even after we learned how to control the ability, the slaughter of my species became a sport," As she speaks, the roof of the carousel abruptly sinks, the support post in the middle bends and the ride begins to fold in on itself. "The humans came, and destroyed everything. They built their cities, had their fun. And they took our lives."

Suddenly, Yaz gasps. Her hands go to her throat and she takes a shaky step back.

"Yaz!" Graham is closest to her, and grabs her arm to support her. His young friend hacks and coughs and claws at her own neck. Graham can see the silver chained necklace she was wearing had gone taught-twisted and was tightening around her throat. He immediately tries to untwist it to relieve some of the pressure as she starts to choke.

"Carric, stop it now! She's done nothing!" the Doctor wheels around and panickedly points the sonic which was still in her hands at Yaz. The clasp of the necklace comes undone, and Graham yanks the jewelry away. As Yaz coughs and rubs her throat in relief, the Doctor turns back to the creature, "These people are innocent."

"So were mine," the mounds of tangled metal scrap around her quiver and crunch, the carousel curls up into a giant ball of shrapnel. Bits of metal start to swirl around them in the air.

The Doctor spins on her heels, herding the others, "Run!"

They all take off and start to sprint, ducking and swerving as shrapnel and mechanical parts start zinging past, imbedding themselves into nearby structures.

"Split up, get to the woods," the Doctor directs, "I'll try to slow her down."

"The TARDIS is the other direction!" Graham argues.

They are hailed with aluminum darts from one of the games, which rain down and bury themselves in the ground as they run.

"In the heart of an industrial city," the Doctor explains, "Get to the woods, away from where she has ammunition she can telekinetically crush you with. We'll lose her and then double back for the ship."

The three obediently continue forward, and the Doctor skidded to a halt and turned around. She found her way back to Carric, who was simply walking between the rows of decomposing carnival games.

"Over here!" the Doctor calls and waves her arms, trying to get the creature to give chase between two booths.

Carric pauses, looks down the alleyway, and calmly states, "You're not human, you do not interest me."

"Oh, come on. My people weren't exactly saints either. Give me a go!" she urges.

The roundish young face simply looks a little annoyed, she waves a quilled hand lazily, and the infrastructure of the booths in front of the Doctor collapses. The Doctor instinctively ducks down, but once the noise settles, she is left facing a heap of collapsed carnival stalls blocking her way forward, and no Carric in sight.

She turns and starts running the other way…

x x x

The Doctor, having lost track of everyone, found a bit of scaffolding partially surrounding an unfinished building, and scaled it. She scans the remains of the carnival, the surrounding buildings, and the empty field beyond it that led to the small forest of dense, purple-tinted trees. The field is bathed in light and tall golden grass. On the grass she spots the seemingly-floating torsos of her friends, separated by at least fifty meters a peice, sprinting for the treeline.

Her heart sank as he hit the ground. In the periphery of her vision, Yaz to one side and Graham to the other, they disappeared into the forest, slipping between the trees and foliage at surprisingly the same pace. But equidistant from them, right in the middle, the Doctor watched Ryan stumble. Perhaps over uneven ground, perhaps over his own two treacherous feet, but he tripped and he fell and she watched as the waist-high grass seemingly swallowed him whole.

He rolled and scrambled with his hands for anything to help him back to his feet. The Doctor could see Carric, like a predator singling out the lame from a herd, start to approach him.

The Doctor leapt from her vantage point and began to sprint towards them.

Carric is quiet, and deliberate, advancing almost slowly. Ryan doesn't turn to look behind him because he knows she's there, and instead clambers to his feet. Once he's there, he doesn't run, he doesn't even bother to squat down behind the tall grass for cover. Instead, he stands and, still facing the treeline only thirty meters away, takes a deep breath.

Carric was a little more than a dozen meters away from him when she slowly raises her arm, the motion coinciding with the appearance of a length of bar of metal levitating menacingly in front of her, parallel with the ground; from a distance it looked something akin to an nocked arrow.

As Ryan turns and he recognizes the scene in front of him, the familiar grey-blue blur of the Doctor skids to a stop in between him and his would-be hunter. The Doctor is facing Carric, so he can't see her face, but he can hear the serious, almost-parent-like rebuke in her voice as she quietly says over her shoulder, "Keep going, Ryan." He felt like a child who had been caught out of bed at night, "Do as you're told."

She is an arm's length in front of him, and blocks out the view of Carric completely.

Ryan had never been any sort of clairvoyant in any other aspect of life, but in this instant, he didn't budge. Something deep and sharp inside his gut had him anchored to the spot; he had to stay. He mutters, "No."

"I'll handle this-"

"Doctor," Ryan pleads.

"Ryan, go. Now. I need you safe." She takes a small step towards Carric, who had stopped advancing.

"Stand aside. You do not interest me." Carric says, squinting her eyes. There was something dangerous about how she had stopped approaching, how she was simply stood there without a menacing grin or evil laugh or mastermind fury. She was calm and she was indifferent, and it was scary. Like a country plain before a cyclone touched down.

The Doctor holds her ground, "I can't let you hurt them." Staring down the blunt, rusted end of the levitating metal pipe, to Carric's defeated, empty gaze, the Doctor would not move. She was between them, exactly where she was meant to be. It was simple. Over here is what was hers, and over there was the threat, and she would not move. There was once upon a time, where she wasn't between them, and it had cost her Bill. She refused to pay that price again.

The spines framing Carric's face stand a little more erect as she growls, "Humans are a wicked thing, I will stop their savagery."

"Listen to me. You can't control other peoples' actions," the Doctor implored, "And believe me, sometimes I wish you could. What you can control are your own reactions. We are responsible for how we respond to adversity," she dared to inch a half-step closer, "I'm sorry the humans you knew did what they did. You have every right to be angry. What you don't have," she squared her stance, "is the right to be cruel.

"Please, Carric, hurting them, it's not justice. You're letting hatred beget hatred, and it won't make you feel better."

They stare tensely at each other. The wind moves through the far-away trees, brings the Doctor's blonde locks around her face, and the golden grass bows a little. Despite the Doctor's terse baby-steps forward as she spoke, they still are seven or eight meters apart. Carric stands with her fists clenched by her sides, her head slightly inclined in thought, the rusted metal bar still floating gently and menacingly in front of her.

The Doctor opens her mouth to speak, but is immediately cut off. Carric hums, "I don't want to feel better."

And then she feels suddenly like she's been punched. The Doctor accidentally makes a strange noise-not one of pain or despair, but rather surprise. At least, she thinks she's made a noise. She did not hear the noise herself, only felt the air leave her body, as everything was drowned out by the roar of the breeze in her ears. It was the same pleasant, placid breeze that had been blowing all day, but suddenly it was deafening, overbearing, overpowering, pushing her back a step, pushing her down so that she sinks beneath the horizon of the grass.

The sound of the breeze is drowned out by a loud buzzing, and Ryan's scream. He might have been screaming words, but their definition was lost to her. She can't see him, and she can't see Carric, she can only see the golden reeds of grass reach and stretch up around her as she drops first to one knee, and then she finds herself folding; folding in and down and smaller, like how a newspaper could become a crane or a boat or a hat, she folds. She's taken on a shape she's never been before, and it's strange because she did not think she would ever become two-dimensional but with how close the roots of the grass were now to her face, she could only assume she had become like the Boneless, a matter of scenery.

She stays like that for nearly an entire second, flat and elsewhere. And then she inhales.

Reality crashes back down around her in heavy, drowning waves. I don't want to feel better, Carric had said, and flicked her wrist; the enchanted metal bar shot forward and pierced through the Doctor's middle, just below her last ribs. The Doctor's hands had come up automatically and wrapped around the end of the bar where it protruded from her body. She falls to her knees and Carric attempts to manipulate the metal weapon to continue through and pierce Ryan as well, but the Doctor does not yeild her grip, and sinks all the way to the ground with it. Carric sighs, annoyed and now weaponless, but starts walking calmly towards Ryan, shuffling by the body of the fallen woman, still clinging to the bar so that Carric could not reuse it. Ryan looks to the part in the grass the Doctor's body had disappeared into, and then to the approaching creature. He screams, wordlessly, in anguish and in fear, and he has no choice but to turn and run the other way.

The Doctor trembles as she clutches the bar, now unnecessarily as Carric disappears into the woods, forgetting her and following her friends. She feels an alarming warmth start to spread underneath her, and she shivers. The grass sways above, like a lullaby. She involuntarily shuts her eyes...

x x x

Ryan can't be sure where Carric ended up, only that he was ninety-nine percent sure she wasn't following him anymore. He runs in a daze, in circles and spirals, just like his mind and his gut. He felt simultaneously ill and numb; was the Doctor alive? Did Yaz or Graham see what happened? Was she still alone?

He had to go back.

And he does. He turns and does his best to orient himself back out of the woods and towards where the Doctor fell. It takes him, if he had to guess, about an hour to make it back to the meadow. The light of the day is changing, becoming softer as the evening draws closer, and the gold of the grass shimmers like a liquid. Coming upon the clearing, Ryan finds himself squatting and awkwardly walking like a duck through the reeds, just in case Carric was near.

Ryan finds the Doctor. He is not relieved. He's not immediately sure if she's alive. She'd laid in the dirt, curled up on her side, curled around the length of metal she'd been impaled with, her hair covering her face. The small amount of golden grass that had been flattened beneath her was dark and wet. Ryan is scared to touch her.

He whispers as loudly as possible, "Doctor? Doctor, can you hear me?" but she doesn't stir. He can see that she's breathing, but he still grabs her wrist and feels for the thrum of a pulse. She's cool to the touch, and he wonders if she's normally that temperature. "Doctor, please. I-I don't know what to do."

It occurs to Ryan that he is clueless. Where could he go? Could he carry her? Where were the others? What happened when night fell? He contemplates just staying there, knelt beside her until either she awoke, Yaz and Graham resurfaced, or Carric doubled back and killed him. He can't stay there. Could he take her to the TARDIS? He had a suspicion that Carric was lying in wait amongst the metal city, knowing that their ship was sat in the center of the main road.

He needed to find Yaz and Graham, but he could not leave the Doctor.

"Doctor, I...I'm gonna lift you, alright? I'm gonna be as careful as I can." He says tentatively, as if she might spring up and give him permission, which she doesn't.

He moves slowly, maneuvering her first into a semi-seated position, and then fully into his arms. He doesn't touch the metal bar, doesn't even really look at it, even though once she's in his grasp it sticks up almost level with his nose.

She doesn't move or make a sound, but her face is tense and unrestful. Ryan looks down at her, pale and uncomfortable, and holds back tears as he starts to stagger towards the trees.

x x x

"I feel a little silly," Yaz admits, looking down at the schematic she had drawn in the dirt.

"It's a brilliant plan," Graham encourages.

"Sure, but the Doctor has probably already stopped Carric. I'm just wasting our time." she says sheepishly. She and Graham had found each other nearly an hour prior when they both stumbled upon opposite ends of a cemetery, obviously built by the human colonists judging from the headstones and religious idols. They had settled on taking shelter, though quite macabre, in one of the small concrete mausoleums, figuring they would be able to hear anyone approaching. The structure was bare, overrun with weeds and dirt, and in dire need of some caretaking. As they waited, Yaz revealed her own little plan to stop Carric that she had thought of while running for her life.

"Still an excellent idea. I especially like my role."

Before they could continue, the soft crunch of slow-approaching steps starts growing louder. Yaz immediately starts to stand, but Graham grabs her forearm. She hisses, "It could be the Doctor, or Ryan."

"Or it could not be," he whispers back, "Be careful." He would be the first to admit that Yaz was quite clever, but her quick thinking could sometimes lead to too-hasty decisions.

She set her mouth in a hard line, but conceded and made her way to her feet much more slowly, keeping crouched and near the wall of the mausoleum as she tip-toed towards the door.

The shuffling noise comes to a halt as Yaz peers through the crack of the wooden mausoleum doors. She scans the cemetery by the inch by inch she could. Behind her, Graham whispers anxiously, "Anything?"

It was shabby headstone after headstone, "I don't..." Yaz pauses. There. Just beyond the steps of the crypt, Ryan was standing, drenched in sweat and heaving to catch his breath, looking nervously around the cemetery. "Oh, my god," Yaz mouth goes dry, because in Ryan's arms is the body of the Doctor.

Yaz flings the heavy door of the mausoleum open and flits down the steps, Graham follows.

Ryan initially jumped at the sound of the crypt door swinging open, but his shoulders sag in relief as he recognized Yaz and Graham emerge, he exhales, "Oh, thank goodness."

"What happened?" Graham asks when Yaz falls speechless.

"I-she-" he struggles to answer.

Yaz's hand comes up to cover her mouth as she starts to understand what's in front of her.

Ryan stands awkwardly with a wide stance, hunched forward and stiff, he trembles a little, and he cradles the Doctor close; the Doctor is pale, her jaw set and face locked in an unconscious grimace, and jutting from her belly is a two-foot metal rod. Her hands are relaxed, but still loosely wrapped around the rod where it meets her body, in such a way that it takes several seconds for Yas to realize it was stuck in her instead of just being held there.

Graham is the one to make the next decision, "Get inside, now." He gestures to the mausoleum and starts leading them inside. It takes a second for Ryan to start walking again, he's exhausted and sore, all of him aches, and he staggers under the weight of his friend. Eventually, he teeters inside.

The floor of the mausoleum is filthy; decades of dust and dirt laid thick, only disturbed where Yaz and Graham had been sitting earlier, but Ryan has no choice, and with the help of the others he lays the Doctor down. It takes minutes, as his muscles are locked, curled around her for the past hour, and Yaz and Graham find themselves manually moving his arms for him. They're careful, mindful of the metal bar and how they oriented the Doctor on the concrete. Graham has the foresight to work her arms out of the sleeves of her coat before they lay her down. Yaz lifts the back of her shirt, relieved that the rod does not transverse all the way through her, but it came close; while the rod does not stick out from the woman's back, the Doctor's right flank was covered in a inky black bruise, surreal to the point that it looks like the Doctor had leaned in paint.

They lay her on top of her coat.

Ryan finds his voice, "She was protecting me." He looks devastated.

She's soaked in blood, so is Ryan. The dark material of her shirt hides it well.

Yaz tears through her rucksack and produces the purple t-shirt the Doctor has won earlier during the virtual reality game. She swallows hard and tentatively wraps the shirt around bar, pressing it lightly to the Doctor's abdomen. The Doctor makes a small noise.

"Doc, you hear me?" Graham tried immediately. She doesn't respond. He looks to Yaz and Ryan, "What now?"

x x x

Night comes before the Doctor wakes. Her companions sit in a ring around where her body lays, taking unspoken turns holding her hand.

When she opens her eyes, the sky is closer than before. Closer? No, that wasn't right...Darker. It was nighttime, and it was darker. The mausoleum is dark, but not pitch black, the stars in the sky are near and bright, and bathe the moon in pale light, still distorted and purple from the dust that covers everything.

She blinks dazedly against the purplish haze, and involuntarily groans. She's cold and uncomfortable, laid too long on the concrete floor. Something just below her chest burns and pulls, heavy and keeping her from drawing a deep enough breath. It's terrible. She lifts a leaden, uncooperative hand to find what was keeping her from breathing. A sudden heat engulfs the hand, moist and almost too warm.

"No, no, be still," it's Yaz, come to life from staring at the floor and she catches the Doctor's wandering hand in her own, keeping the Doctor from touching the bar. Yaz's familiar face floats above her, joined by the floating, disembodied heads of Ryan and Graham, as Yaz reassures, "It's alright."

The Doctor looks from face to face, her breath quickening as she realizes how uncomfortable she actually is. She tries to swallow, the saliva thick and sticky, and she forces a half-smile, "You lot look awful."

Graham drops his head in his hands in a brief wave of relief, and Ryan can't help but chuckle.

The Doctor manages to raise her head a little, and glance down, despite Yaz's nervous attempt to keep her from doing so. "Ah," the Doctor scoffs, "A souvenir." She stares at the rod a moment, then looks around the crypt, "Where are we?"

"A mausoleum." Yaz answers.

"Little preemptive as I am still breathing, but I appreciate the sentiment," she jokes softly, lowering her head back down. Graham is the only one who chuckles appreciatively at the macabre humor. She squeezes her eyes shut and mutters, "Wow, tough crowd."

"How are you cracking jokes right now?" Yaz asks sternly.

Her voice is weak and her eyes are still closed tight, but she answers, "Thought it was dead funny."

Graham snorts again, earning a warning look from Yaz.

The Doctor continues, now serious, "Yaz, can you remove it?"

"Now you're having a laugh," Yaz rebukes.

"It's okay," the Doctor reassures, "It knocked one of my kidneys around, which is a shame because I really liked this set...but it didn't do any catastrophic damage."

"How do you know?" Ryan finally speaks up.

"'Cos I'm still me. Trust me," she begs. The pressure the bar is creating is almost unbearable. It's something other than pain, she feels like it's crushing her from the inside out, and the minute movements it makes when she breathes scrapes at her organs.

The humans nervously look to one another, and eventually scoot in closer, kneeling around her. Yaz nods and stumbles through a set of directions, "Alright, er, I'm gonna...gonna pull the rod out. Graham will apply pressure once it's out. Um, Ryan, you keep her still, yeah?"

The Doctor nods in approval and picks her head up once more. As Graham's hands hover above the base of the bar she says in an accusing tone, "Is that my VR prize t-shirt?"

Yaz rolls her eyes and gets ready to grab the rod as she dismisses, "It was ugly, anyway, Doctor. On three, ready?"

Ryan gently presses her shoulders down, his face coming close, "Maybe don't watch?" She had her moments of impermeability, where she was tough and unfazed and not bothered, but Ryan could see by the way she was flicking her eyes back and forth that this is not one of those moments. She was scared, and that was fine.

She nods in quiet agreement, settling to look past him and stare at the ceiling. She hears Yaz, "Okay, one, two…"

'Three' doesn't come, instead Yaz grabs the bar and yanks it free from her body, Graham's hands immediately scrunch the partially blood-saturated t-shirt against the now-open hole in the Doctor's abdomen. The Doctor makes no noise or movement, but she goes from pale to grey, and her vision blinks out for a second or so.

So must her hearing, because Yaz's voice slowly evolves in her ears, overcoming a high-pitched ringing, "—to focus. It's all over, look at me."

When she does blink and her vision comes back, Yaz is above her again, face still consumed in worry. She whispers shakily, "Ah, much better."

Yaz's worry devolves into annoyance, and she discards the metal rod behind her somewhere with a loud clatter.

The Doctor shudders, and forces, "Okay team, back to work. Anyone see where Carric went?"

Ryan pats the Doctor's shoulders in relief and sits back beside her head, "I think she's in the city, waiting for us to try to get to the TARDIS."

"Well that's a shame, cos that's where we need to get," Graham interjects, nodding to the Doctor's belly, still bleeding with disturbing warmth against his hands. He reluctantly applies more pressure, and she accidentally lets a groan slip. He looks at her sadly.

She takes one of her own bloody hands and pats his arm with a strange fondness. It does anything but reassure him. The Doctor was not affectionate, at least not in commiserating touches or doting words, so when she pats his arm with her icy fingers, he feels panic.

Graham swallows hard, "Good thing Yaz has a plan."

The Doctor lay there, unmoving, her eyes closed, but still listening as Yaz described her plan. It was...good. It would work.

Ryan readily agreed to the role Yaz offered him. It's the first time the Doctor interrupts, "You're sure, Ryan?" She doesn't seem to realize how deep the question cuts, doesn't occur to her that undermining his decision to distract Carric makes him feel inadequate, like he needed to be saved...again. He knows she doesn't mean it like that, but still.

"You became a kebab saving me earlier," he answers, "My turn to play hero."

She doesn't argue or retort, just continues to lie there, eyes closed. She was pallid, but shiny with sweat. She shivered continuously, despite being wrapped in both her coat and Graham's jumper. She was getting weaker, it was obvious.

Yaz bites her lip, "Okay, let's do it."

Ideally, they would wait until the sunrise, but with the Doctor's condition insidiously worsening with each passing moment, the sense of urgency was becoming more and more palpable.

x x x

When she opened her eyes again, Graham was a giant. Well, at least from her angle, Graham looked like a giant.

She had a set of watery memories of being passed between Ryan and Graham as they took turns carrying her through the woods. She was somewhat grateful for being so disoriented, because being carried was absolute agony. And now Yaz and Ryan were gone, she could just sense it. She was laid on the ground, her head resting on Graham's knee as they hid, concealed behind the counter of one of the carnival booths. Looking up at him, he looks as big as a building, and she snorts at the notion.

The noise makes him aware that she was awake. He looks down at her and whispers, "Alright, Doc?"

She runs a sandpapery tongue over dehydration lips, and exhales, barely audible, "Others?"

He whispers back, "The kids are saving the day. The old coots are hiding. You and me are the old coots, by the way." He is sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, leaning against the backboard of whatever game still stood, his arm extended and still lightly pressing the wad of cloth to her wound.

There was a sudden sound of crashing and bending metal. Graham snaps his head up, but he can't see over the counter of the booth, and he and the Doctor rely on the sounds of action to assume what is going on.

There's running feet against the dirt walkway, and Yaz's voice, "Here-here-here!" More crashing.

Ryan's voice apperates, further away and echoing, "No, over here! Leave her alone, I'm over here!" Something heavy and metal collapses.

A series of snapping noises.

The keening of metal under strain.

Ryan's voice, "Yaz, watch it!"

From a similar direction, Yaz's voice, "Now, Ryan!"

Several heavy clatters, and electrical zip-zip-zip, and an inhuman, pleasureless laugh.

"It's not working," Ryan calls, and then there's the sound of something softer than metal skipping across the ground.

Graham eases the Doctor's head down, moves her hand for her to take over where his was covering her wound, and starts to scramble to his feet. "Wait, Graham, help me up," the Doctor orders unconvincingly.

He's on his knees as he shakes his head, "Stay put."

She grabs his wrist before he rises, the meek grasp distracting him enough to look down at her look of desperation, "Graham. Get me up."

It's against his better judgement, but he much less gently hooks her arm over his shoulders and hauls her dead weight to her feet. For the first time that night, she makes a definitive scream of pain, drowned out by the screeching and garbled sounds of the carnival games being destroyed.

Heaving for breath, supported almost completely by Graham, the Doctor looks over the booth counter. Ryan is nearby, on the ground, one of his arms pinned beneath an unrecognizable scrap of metal as he frantically tries to free himself. The majority of the booths are destroyed now, almost everything a gleaming tower of scraps. Beyond him, under the AutoMechTechnic's Escape Rooms attraction sign, is the form of Carric.

Carric is faced the other way, walking towards Yaz, who is trapped between two metal pillars. In the grey of the night, there is a nick in one of Yaz's eyebrows, leaving a shiny dark train of blood running down her face as she fights against the squeezing pillars.

Carric is wearing one of the VR simulation helmets—if all had gone to plan, Ryan would've have shoved it on her head as Yaz distracted her—she had tried to tug it off immediately after casting Ryan across the ground, but it yanked her quills painfully in the wrong direction. She left the helmet alone and instead turned her attention to crushing Yaz between the uprooted metal pillars.

The Doctor tries to call out to Carric, to stop her, but she has no voice.

The pillars moan and creak as they press even more together, making Yaz scream in between them.

Zzzzzzhhooooo!

Carric gives pause and turns to see Graham, one hand pressing the Doctor to his side, one holding the Doctor's arm in place over his shoulders, leaning sloppily over the counter of the booth with his little plastic kazoo clenched between his teeth.

Carric sucks her teeth, annoyed, and turns towards Graham and the Doctor; behind her the pillars relax enough for Yaz to extract herself.

The Doctor mutters, "See?" She weakly raises her free arm, "Couldn't do that with a yo-yo ."

The sound of the sonic screwdriver in her hand is like music in her roaring ears. The lights on the simulation helmet Carric is wearing come on, and she freezes. Carric stops walking, her features going slack as the simulation turns on. Somewhere behind her from a pile of scrap, the disembodied voice of the game's now-destroyed robot crackles, "Wel-crrrr-come, compet-compet-competitor-or!"

Yaz shakily helps free Ryan, and helps him to his feet. He shakes his tingling, bruised arm, and immediately moves to pick up the Doctor, who was slowly inching closer and closer to the ground, despite Graham's best efforts to keep her up. Once Ryan has the Doctor in his arms, Graham inspects Yaz's eye, who with a blackening eye and swollen neck from earlier, looked like she'd lost a boxing match. She high-fives Graham regardless, "Flawless plan, right?" She smiles.

They all throw weary glances toward Carric, who is stood frozen, staring blankly as she is lost in the virtual reality. After a somber moment, Graham gently urges, "She won't be in there forever." But nobody moves right away.

Ryan finally asks, "We all have that goofy look on our faces when we were playing?"

"You definitely did." Yaz replies quickly.

There's a beat and then everyone breaks into a laugh, even the Doctor, who chuckled painfully and quiet.

As they start to shuffle out of the carnival, towards the TARDIS, the Doctor whispers jokingly, "I bet I could win the kazoo before she gets out."

Graham groans and takes her hand, presses his toy kazoo into her palm, "For the love of god, just have mine. And the next time we do a carnival, we'll deal with the crowds."

She smiles and raises her eyebrows, her head rocking gently back and forth with Ryan's steps. Yaz rubs her eyes in frustration as the Doctor asks Graham, "Did you just agree to a 'next time'?"