A/N: Finally finished with Chapter 3, hooray! And no, I still don't own anything except a lovely metal Dalek I made in chemistry class, and the Iaculi and Margaret.
Margaret shivered, the open, dim expanse of the hallway as menacing as a monster's mouth. Cool air whisked down the corridor, screaming as it passed. For consolation, she buried her face in the Doctor's shoulder, wrapping her arms tighter around him and whimpering just a little. The small girl hung off his back.
"Doctor, I'm scared," she whispered, her voice quavering and hoarse.
The Doctor patted her hair. "Shh, you're alright," he whispered. "You're absolutely remarkable, Margaret."
She truly is remarkable, he thought. Few little girls would have been brave enough to make it for so long in a place they didn't know. Must be that Donna spark in her.
He shook his head to clear it of the guilt accompanied by that name. Didn't want it on his plate, not when what he needed to focus on was getting a small dependent little someone out of a massive metal block.
"I'm scared, Doctor," she repeated. Her whisper was practically inaudible. "I don't wanna be here no more."
"We're not gonna be," he replied. "Not for much longer, we're not. I just have to find a way out."
The Iaculi stronghold was a labyrinth of metal and sodium lamps, greenish glows masking hidden passages and false corridors. Each pool of light felt like summer sun in comparison to the cold, dank shadows that followed directly afterward. The Doctor treaded lightly; the floor beneath his feet was thin as aluminum foil, and prone to moaning under even the slightest shift in weight.
He tried to recall the schematic of the stronghold, make a mental map, try to get out. If he had gotten in, how come he couldn't get out? Maybe it was the responsibility of having someone to save and protect.
"I miss my mummy," she sighed, as though to while away the frightening time. "I miss Great-Gramps, and I sort of miss Gran, but I really, really miss Mummy. Do you think she misses me, Doctor?"
"I bet she would," he answered. "You're not too easy to forget, Margaret."
"Okay."
More silence, coupled with the occasional squeak of the Doctor's shoes.
"Do you think we're gonna be okay, Doctor?"
"I know so, Margaret."
"Okay."
Cree-eeeeeek.
"Doctor, what's that?" Margaret whispered, suddenly horrorstruck again, squeezing him tightly.
"Just my feet, Margaret."
Cree-eeeeeek. Then the scream of metal on metal, then a constrained, hissing laugh, eerily loud against the silence.
"Doctor!" Margaret lost control of her whisper, the start of a shriek escaping her mouth before she cupped a hand over it.
The Doctor took Margaret off his shoulders, putting her on the ground quickly. His hearts raced, trying desperately to beat him apart. He knelt down in front of her and placed his hands on her tiny shoulders. "Margaret," he murmured. "Margaret, I want you to run. I want you to run to the nearest place you can find and wait there, hide. Wait for me, all right? I've got to get rid of these men and then we'll leave. We'll even celebrate Christmas, when we get out, all right?"
"Will you be alive?" Margaret's wide eyes began to pool with tears.
"I guarantee it."
"What's garran...garrant...what's that mean? Does it mean you're gonna die, Doctor?"
"No, that means I'm su…I'm going to live." The lie burned in the forefront of his mind, the swallowed "sure" feeling like a swallow of lead.
Margaret bit her lip, then rushed at him and hugged him. "I just don't want you to dis-appear like I dis-appeared Mummy."
"I won't." He tried to smile and hugged her back.
She drew back. "You promise?" She put her hands on her hips.
"I promise."
She nodded sadly before taking off, away from him, into the darkness, the soft padding of her footed pink pajamas disappearing with her.
He stood up, glancing around. There seemed to be some brighter, more natural glow at the end of the corridor. It seemed miles away, and besides, the Doctor reasoned to himself, they wouldn't just leave an easy exit open like that. Guards probably lurked in every shadow, every corridor within a hundred feet of that exit.
He felt around in his coat pocket for the sonic screwdriver, grasping it, then removing it from his pocket. Squinting, he scanned the voids with the sonic. Nothing. He slipped it back into its place. As he did so, the hissing laugh repeated, practically making him drop the sonic.
This is mental.
Where was the TARDIS when he needed her? All he wanted to do was whisk up the little girl, take her in his arms and into the warm enclosure of the bronze metal lining the TARDIS. He could take her back in time, erase her capture by the Iaculi, though it would be rather difficult to convince the desperate race to let her go.
The hissing laugh again. The Doctor jumped. The sound was becoming nails on a chalkboard, no, worse than that.
He couldn't stay there much longer. He had to get out, get away from the Iaculi, hopefully avoiding a confrontation in the process. The Doctor had certainly seen more vicious aliens before, but the Iaculi were notorious intergalactic extremists and radicals. If they thought that Margaret was a young Donna Noble, the most important woman in the universe just waiting to become such, they'd put up quite a fight and risk anything in order to keep her in their custody. He knew their population was dwindling, and that they were desperately in need of luck—any luck.
He just wished he could explain that a four-year-old girl wasn't quite the luck they were in need of.
"Lord Septhalos."
"Ah, Coluber. I see you have come empty-handed."
"The girl wasn't in her holding cell, my lord, or anywhere on the prison level."
"I wonder, Coluber, if that can be attributed to the innate ability of little girls to run away in times of strife."
"I'm sorry, my lord."
"Oh, enough with the 'my lord' business, I know you don't mean any of it sincerely. You're just here for the pay cut."
"It is a pretty large pay cut, my lord. Angisenerba was a fairly sized village. Before it was destroyed, of course."
"I suppose so. If only you could see, my slightly idiotic friend, the impact that finding the runaway Noble girl would have on history, and perhaps on Angisenerba. You won't get your stupid village or anything from it unless Miss Donna Noble can help us bring back our people and our planet. And the little Miss isn't going to do the Iaculi any good if she isn't here."
"Sorry, my—"
"Don't even begin."
"Sorry."
"Now, Miss Noble can't have disappeared on he own. She's much too small and stupid to have opened the door on her own. She must have had help, but whom?"
"I haven't seen anyone in the corridors, my…Septhalos."
"Don't get friendly with me, Coluber. Don't address me at all, if you must. But as I was about to say, you haven't seen anyone yet because you've only been on the prison level. If you were to, say, visit the other levels of the stronghold—"
"I was just about to do that."
"Don't interrupt, Coluber, or I will cut of your food and scale wax for an Earth-month's time. But if you were to visit the rest of the stronghold, I believe you'd come across someone. Someone whose name you should know very well. He's saved worlds, rescued people, but won't stand to help lowdown reptiles such as our dear departed Iaculi. Any guesses who he is?"
"…"
"Any guesses, I asked?"
"…"
"…"
"Pardon the colloquialism, Lord Septhalos, but…you have got to be kidding me."
"No, it's him."
"The Doctor?"
"Yes."
"Here?"
"Yes."
"Now?"
"Yes, Coluber, yes!"
"..."
"..."
"I guess I'll be off to check the rest of the stronghold, Lord Septhalos."
*Bonus A/N: I've been SO THOROUGHLY enjoying all of these R&Rs. Cough cough. Anyway, review, please. The fourth chapter is going to be in the works soon.
PS: Gold shiny stars go to those who have favorited/followed A Noble Little Girl, namely Bow to me Fools BOW I SAY (lol, best pen name), For You Blue, Ladybug Jess, LenkaJeneva, Inoue Orihime15, and Niki Shields. Thanks, you guys! ^^~