"My wrist is killing me," I said and moved my left hand away from where I'd been cradling it against my chest. I'd promised that if anything weird started happening I'd tell the Doctor immediately. His fingers hovered over my wrist for a few moments before he retracted his hand. I knew why he didn't want to touch me, but I still squeezed my eyes shut against the hurt that welled up.
"Let me just grab the sonic, okay? Don't move." He waited until I nodded before moving to the other side of the console. I followed his movement to distract myself from the pain when suddenly my vision went blurry. I opened my mouth to call out for the Doctor, but found myself bending over and vomiting a gelatinous, champagne coloured mixture with little bubbles onto the floor.
"Emma!" The Doctor cried as he spun back to face me as I my knees buckled, and I slid to the floor while coughing out the last remnants of the mixture from my throat. The Doctor took a step towards me before he stopped as the mixture swirled upwards off the floor to form a humanoid shape.
"I haven't been corporeal in a great many millennia. I'd forgotten the experience." The mixture announced after it had solidified into something that looked and sounded masculine. I blinked against the exhaustion that was suddenly weighing down my limbs and collapsed backwards onto the floor.
"Emma!" The Doctor shouted in alarm this time and I weakly rolled my head towards him. I'd managed to fall in such a way that I could still see the Doctor from around the other side of the console. I heard the alien tsk.
"Now Doctor. Don't go getting involved just yet." I heard a finger snap and watched the Doctor get jerked back against the metal barrier by his wrist. He struggled against whatever force was holding him before snapping his fiery gaze to the alien.
"Who are you!?" The Doctor demanded and the alien chuckled.
"There is no species left alive who remember my name, though I did leave my mark on history. I fathered what your kind called the Nightmare Child." The Doctor went pale at his announcement. I frowned as I tried to remember where I'd heard that name before when I realized that the Nightmare Child had been a combatant in the Time War.
"What do you want?" The Doctor asked coldly.
"Fear." The alien smiled calmly. "It's incredibly powerful and when I managed to infect you along with your precious human I suspected that I would be able to become corporeal again."
"I have seen so many things. So many terrible things and you went for Emma," the Doctor said, his tone somehow dark and sad all at the same time, and resumed his struggling against whatever was holding him against the barrier.
"At first it was because I was too weak to effect you. Humanity's brains are just so much easier to alter. But then I felt your fear when you couldn't access your pathetic telepathic communications." The Doctor's eyes flashed back to me and I could tell that he was panicking. I tried to give him a comforting smile even though I was laying at the feet of an alien who had been making me see terrifying visions and nightmares for the better part of two months.
"I knew I could regain my body the first time she screamed when you touched her. There truly is nothing sweeter in the whole universe than the terror of a Time Lord," the alien taunted dryly, almost as if he was bored.
"Then why are you still here? You got what you wanted!" I tried in vain to sit up as I realized that the Doctor's desperation and panic had manifested into anger. A desperate, angry Doctor never ended well for anyone involved.
"I have regained my corporeal form, but I'm afraid that my strength is still somewhat limited. I still require more fear. Or at least more than what you're currently feeling," The alien traced his hand across the top of the console. A cold, cruel smile crept across the alien's face.
"Can you hear her heart Doctor? The strain of the fear and adrenaline are causing her heart to fail. This last vision will kill her." He rapped one knuckle against the rotor and it shattered. I cried out in alarm and turned my face away as the glass sprinkled down around me.
I twisted back and the TARDIS was on fire and three Cybermen were staring down at me with instruments held in their hands.
"You will be upgraded," They intoned in synchronicity. I screamed and thrashed violently to try and get away from them, but one of the Cybermen were holding me down by the wrist. They repeated what they'd said, getting louder with each repetition as they lowered the instruments.
"It's not real! Emma it's not real!" I could hear the Doctor distantly, but it sounded like he was underwater. I twisted again and cried out as I felt an agonizing jolt in my left wrist. Suddenly like a bolt of lightening, I realized that that was the one common thing between all the nightmares and visions. There had always been something pinning my wrist in place.
I threw my right hand out beside me and groped around on the floor before my fingers wrapped around a large piece of glass from the rotor. I summoned all my strength and rolled over to stab the glass shard into the Cyberman's hand as hard as I could.
"EMMA!" The Doctor screamed as the vision snapped away. I blinked and registered the shard of glass protruding out of my forearm with blood welling around the sides as I subconsciously finished my motion and began pulling the glass out.
"No! Emma don't pull it out! EMMA!" The Doctor cried as dark spots began dancing in my eyes as the glass slid out of my arm and blood began spilling out.
"STAY AWAKE!" I could hear the Doctor's desperate voice as my head slumped to one side and the darkness overwhelmed me.
hr
I was jerked awake sometime later when the Doctor wrenched my left arm up in the air and slammed a hand on it while screaming out the TARDIS doors for Martha. I blinked up at him in confusion. He cupped my cheek in his hand.
"Thank you. Thank you thank you thank you," he muttered as I heard people rush in and the Doctor lifted me in his arms. The Doctor's 'thank yous' didn't seem to be directed towards me, they sounded like they followed bargains with the universe, the kind that started with I'll do anything if.
"Emma, I need you to keep your eyes open. Please show me your gorgeous green eyes," he begged softly as he ran down the hallways. I hadn't realized that my eyes had been sliding shut so I focused on his face and noticed the fact that he was crying.
"What happened? Where'd Mister Fear Bubbles go?" I asked slowly.
"Mister Fear Bubbles?" A male voice asked.
"He was made of bubbles," I explained and leaned my head against the Doctor's shoulder. He shrugged harshly and I mumbled in discomfort.
"Eyes open Emma please I am begging you," the Doctor said. I frowned before I caught sight of my arm slung over the Doctor's shoulder with blood still steadily trickling from it.
"Oh," I stated dumbly as he set me down on a stretcher in the infirmary. "I guess time energy can't exactly save me from blood loss." The Doctor's shoulders stiffened even more somehow as a cool hand grasped my arm and removed it from his shoulder.
"Martha Jones! I didn't see you come in," I said as she assessed my arm and gestured to Mickey for the suture kit.
"Wait its Smith, now isn't it?" I shook my head to clear the fog that was clouding my thoughts and Martha gave me an amused smile.
"He's told you about me then?" She asked.
"All good things I promise. He said you were brilliant." She laughed at that.
"He says that about all the companions," Martha pointed out.
"Touché," I giggled and the Doctor made a disgruntled noise.
"She's got you there mate," Mickey said and clapped a hand to the Doctor's shoulder.
"That's because all my companions are brilliant," he muttered as Martha started cleaning my wound. I flinched and hissed at the sting and the Doctor immediately started fluttering around me. I shifted so that I could look at Martha.
"Make him leave," I whispered. Martha blinked at me in confusion. "He'll hover and get in your way."
"Mickey, take the Doctor and start cleaning up the console room," Martha said and the Doctor started making protesting noises immediately. "I'll come and get you as soon as I'm finished." He nodded before he leaned forward, cradling my face in his hands before he kissed me fiercely.
"I love you." I smiled and ran my fingers clumsily through his hair with my non-injured hand.
"I love you too. Now go get the Old Girl all spic and span again." I nodded towards the door. "And don't even think of changing the desktop feature." He smiled, straightened up and squeezed Martha's shoulder.
"Take care of her, please." Martha nodded at him and he swept his gaze over me.
"I didn't think he'd ever get over Rose," Martha said after he'd left and she'd started to work again, looking rather shell shocked. I suddenly remembered that Martha had come right after Rose, and had dealt with a deliberately oblivious Doctor.
"I'm sorry, that was probably really cruel of us," I said and squeezed Martha's forearm weakly before I covered my mouth to hide my yawn.
"No, it wasn't," she said softly before gifting me with a smile. "Go to sleep Emma. I'll make sure he doesn't panic."
When I woke up Martha was gone and the Doctor was curled up next to me playing with my hair.
"Hey." He pressed a soft kiss to my forehead when he noticed I was awake. I smiled back.
"Hey. Where are Martha and Mickey?" I asked while shifting my left hand so I could look at the bandage on my arm. He skimmed his fingers along the outside of the bandage gently.
"I took them home," he said simply.
"Already?" I asked. He chuckled softly and cuddled closer to me.
"Emma you've been asleep for twelve hours."
"Oh." I pouted slightly. "I wanted to swap stories with Martha." The Doctor laughed at that.
"Next time. She said to pick her up in about a week or so to let her have a look at the stitches." I tilted my head to look up at him and twined my fingers in with his.
"So, are you going to tell me why you look like you're in the middle of a self-inflicted guilt trip?" I asked gently. His hand squeezed mine fiercely.
"I thought you were going to die." He paused, as if he was fighting back tears. "I thought you were going to die in the middle of the TARDIS while I was completely helpless. He said your heart would fail and I knew he was right because I'd been watching you get more tired and pale." His voice caught and he pressed his face hard into the top of my head. I squeezed his hand back as tightly as I could while wishing that I had the strength to drag him in front of me so that I could properly see his face.
"Then I watched you stab yourself with a piece of glass. I thought you were going to bleed out and I was still stuck on the other side of the TARDIS and all I could do was scream for you and hope you'd wake up." One of his tears hit my cheek and I reached up slowly with my bandaged arm and thumbed them away while making soothing noises.
"Okay I'll take that as half of the guilt trip. What's the rest?" I asked after I gave him a few moments to take a few shuddering breaths.
"I got angry Emma. A kind of angry that I haven't been for a very long time. I was so angry that I broke his telepathic hold over me and then I made sure that he would never ever effect anyone ever again." I gave him a small grin and nudged him gently.
"Don't make me guess please. Besides we're on a roll here," I said.
"I threw him into a black hole. He'll be slowly torn apart until the universe burns out," he said darkly. "He wanted the terror of a Time Lord and I gave him all the anger of one."
"So, you feel guilty because I almost died, which was not your fault, and because you got angry and lost your temper when some fearmongering alien being was threatening us?" I asked, ticking things off my fingers as I went. He smiled and chuckled softly.
"It sounds so minor when you put it like that," he said.
"That's what I'm here for. You do big picture and I look for smaller things to help you out." I leaned in to him gently and he took that as a cue to wrap himself around me even more than he already was.
"I love you. And if you want I will tell you that every hour of every day until the universe burns out," he promised. I smiled.
"Once a day is just fine. Baring any near-death circumstances," I said.
XXXXX
And there you have it!
I'm so excited that we've finally reached this point because as I said earlier this is one of the first adventures that I ever planned for this story. This one just seemed to have a lot of potential.
Thank you again for all the continued support I love all of you!