C3 – The Western Legion
The Doctor was on the move again. He could never sit in one position for more than five minutes.
Amy glanced blearily up. Beside her, Rory let out a gentle snore. She checked her wristwatch in the light of the flickering bulb overhead and realised she'd slept through the night.
"Morning," the Doctor greeted brightly, rooting through a chest of drawers in the corner of the basement.
Amy stretched and made her way over to him. "Any ideas yet?"
"Nope." He was still unbearably cheerful, even in the face of such danger.
"Do you think our captors will send us breakfast?" she asked hopefully. She'd been promised a romantic dinner on the balcony of a ninety-three-storey six-star hotel overlooking a peach-coloured centaur-filled forest that stretched right around the diameter of the planet. And they ended up here, of all places.
"Ah, I wouldn't get your hopes up."
Amy heard Rory getting up behind her, and after a minute or two, felt his hand slip into hers.
The Doctor finished hunting through the drawers and moved onto a large cabinet, continuing his search.
"I may have . . . uh . . ." the Doctor trailed off. Amy had never seen him lost for words before; it was an odd experience.
"Spit it out," she insisted.
"Let's just say our captors may not give us any more food after this morning's incident."
"What?" Rory demanded. "What do you mean, this morning's incident?"
"Well, I simply told them I prefer my eggs sunny-side up to scrambled, and they seemed to take that as an insult. I mean, I don't object to scrambled or anything – I was just expressing my opinion. In fact, I once met this wonderful young lady who cooked eggs that were truly remarkable. Portugal, I believe it was. Either Portugal or Dublin. And on a Sunday, of all days! Nothing spectacular ever happens on a Sunday, everybody knows that. Though there was this one time when I met this chap called Walter . . ."
"Doctor!" Amy interrupted. "Let me guess, they took all our food away and told you they wouldn't bring any more?"
"To summarise events, yes. That is an exact summary of what happened. As a summary. Isn't that a funny word, summary?" He wrinkled his nose, almost completely obscured by the shadows of the corner he was in. "Summary, summary, summary."
"Doctor!"
A pause. Then, quietly, cheekily, "Summary."
Amy sighed, ignoring him. "What are you looking for?"
The Doctor beamed so widely that even in the folds of darkness, Amy caught a flash of bright white teeth. "The men that captured us, did you notice anything . . . different about them?"
Amy chewed on her bottom lip as she tried to remember. Beside her, Rory's forehead was creased in thought.
The TARDIS had materialised is a dingy old room at the worst possible time.
Just as a hard-core drug deal was going down between two major gangs. The visiting gang can scarpered immediately, catching sight of the word 'POLICE' on the 1960's phone box, leaving just the other gang and the three intruders.
"Their tattoos, Amy!" the Doctor emphasised after a while. "They all had the Western Legion's tattoo!"
"I'm sorry, what?"
He looked exasperated in the dim light. "Time Agents? No? The Western Legion is basically a group of Time Agents gone rogue. The air tastes like 2011," Amy filed this confusing statement away for analysing later. "So I'm guessing there are about two hundred of them running around. Trust me, you don't want to get on their bad side. But for now . . . I'm looking for . . . aha!"
From the depths of an old wooden tallboy, he produced a small leather device which he quickly strapped to his wrist.
"Come on, we haven't got much time."
Amy exchanged a glance with Rory, who was looking even more baffled than usual (he wasn't a morning person).
"Okay, what do we do?" she asked, getting straight down to business. She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.
"Grab onto my arm and hold on tight, no matter what." He stepped over to them, fiddling with the strange device.
Amy frowned as she noticed something she hadn't before. It had been too dark, but now . . . "Doctor?"
He ignored her. "Argh! Half the buttons are missing! We could end up halfway across the universe!" He zapped it a few times with his sonic, but to no avail. "Guess we'll just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best!"
She wasn't listening. Rory had noticed too. The Doctor's left eye was encircled with a reddish purple, and just below it on his cheekbone sat a second bruise.
Searching for the right thing to say, she eventually cracked a weak – and inappropriate, with hindsight – joke. "Guess you really wanted those eggs sunny-side up, huh?"
He glanced at her, silent for once. He looked hurt that she'd said such a thing, and she winced. Why had she said that? Desperate to comfort him – she hated seeing her Raggedy Doctor in pain – she reached out towards the bruises.
The Doctor flinched away, an expression on his face she'd never seen before.
She didn't like it.
"Hold on tight." His voice was a tad lower than usual.
Amy dropped the subject, clinging onto the Doctor's scrawny forearm with one hand and Rory's with the other.
The Doctor pressed a button, and they were gone.