mellaithwen

Title: Sense Failed in the Mortal Strife

Author: mellaithwen

Rating: PG

Word Count: 1, 020

Warning: Spoilers for Midnight only.

Disclaimer: Title from Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti. Doctor Who belongs to the BBC :) any mistakes are mine.
Summary: 'Midnight' episode tag. The Doctor is left alone in the darkness.

And still to come

The worst part and you know it.

There is a numbness in your heart.

And it’s growing.

--The Shins.

*-*-*

The Doctor is left alone in the darkness. It edges in so slowly, so cunning and sly that he doesn’t even notice until it’s too late.

“Do we have a deal?”

No, no, no, NO!

“Oh look at that, I’m ahead of you.”

He can’t breathe. He can’t move. He can’t scream. He can’t whisper or beg. He can’t see. And he can’t...he can’t...he can’t save himself.

“I think it’s moved, I think it’s letting me go. Yes, it’s me, I’m coming back. Listen it’s me! Look at me, I can move. I can feel again. I’m coming back to life. And look at him. He can’t move. Help me, Professor. Get me away from him, please.”

Help me....please.

Fear is a pair of cold hands each clasped around his heart, squeezing, squeezing. Nails like shards of diamonds pressing deep and blackness pooling, spreading...draining.

*-*-*

“That’s how he does it. He makes you fight. Creeps into your head and whispers. Listen. Just listen. That’s him. Inside.”

Throw him out, get rid of him now, you can do it

“What sort of a man are you?”

Cast him out into the sun, and the night, do it, do it now

“Get him out!”

Faster that’s the way you can do it

“Throw him out! Just do it!”

The emptiness, the midnight sky

“I want him out!”

Allons-y.

Blinding light shines through the cold darkness. He grabs a hold of it. Yearns to be saved from drowning, to be pulled out of the night. From black to grey to pink spots dancing across his line of vision.

Agony as he’s ripped from it, from him, from her, from whatever it was. From a brand new being torn to pieces by fear of the unknown. There’s a burning in his soul, left behind...treads...prints...stains.

The Doctor crawls away; falls forward, drained and violated. Used...and he’s still stuck there, in the tiny compartment with them. Scavengers tearing at his limbs, dragging him backwards...

“It’s gone,” he says, desperately trying to breathe for himself.

“It’s gone,” he mutters and no one says a word. “It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone...”

Silence.

“It’s gone, it’s gone, it’s gone.”

He repeats, he repeats, he repeats.

*-*-*

“I said it was her.”

The first words he hears out of the fog, out of the vice, out of the darkness. The same voice that screamed, shrill and loud, for him to be thrown out into the extonic sunlight...to burst in rays that strong, that bright...

It wasn’t her. It wasn’t Sky. It took her and it nearly took The Doctor too, but neither of them was to blame.

His silence speaks volumes.

*-*-*

He doesn’t move but they all do. They pick themselves up off of the ground. They straighten the creases in their clothes; take deep breaths as they shuffle back to their seats quietly. Their heads are bowed, eyes downcast, jaws steeled lest they feel the urge to scream.

But he can’t move...no, he can, but he won’t. Doesn’t need to. Doesn’t want to.

“Biff, is he…?” he hears Val whisper, the strain of fear trickling through once more.

“I don’t....”

“No,” Jethro says. “He’s just...”

A pause, a sigh.

“How would you be?” He hisses, a monotony of ‘don’t be stupid, Jethro’ controlling his acid-tongue. He turns away from his parents and stares at the Doctor instead. He looks like he wants to apologise, or explain, even though he can’t even…begin to…

Instead, Jethro moves down the aisle and sits as close to the door as he can. His father follows, but merely watches his son glare at the walls. The mother is silent. The Professor and his student too.

Sky and the hostess are gone.

*-*-*

Three minutes the voice—voice, not his, not hers, faceless, taking, stealing, burning, and it’s—the intercom, he reiterates.

That’s what’s telling them that rescue’s on the way. Three minutes. Three desperate minutes. It’ll be over soon and once he’s outside he can breathe again.

One two three four five six.

Breathe.

It’s gone.

I...I…I…I...

It worms in, crawls and wriggles and forces its way in and airs gone, oxygen’s gone, gone, gone.

Gone.

But he’s still here. Still alive. Surrounded by more humans. Breathing hard and fast and filled with suspicion and paranoia.

His mind wanders to their arms on his skin...numbed...

They’re swarming bees and sting, sting, sting. Panic, panic, all around. His fingers creep into his hair and he tugs to remind himself of the feeling. His hands shake. He thinks stop, and they do.

For a little while.

No one will look at him, and he won’t look at them. He stares at spilled peanuts, crushed and broken on the ground... ‘Some products may contain nuts.’...dragged across the floor, because they were dragging him. Out, out, out. Dust along his suit, the dust of the driver...the mechanic. Dust, dust, dust.

“The Knight’s bones are dust, and his good sword rust. His soul is with the saints, I trust.”

Coleridge’s words spring to mind and he thinks that earlier he might have said them aloud.

He might have whispered it to Didi, and see her smile. Or frown perhaps. He’s sure she’d know the poem at least. He’s sure she’d know the Romantics. He’d have muttered it to be coy, or ironic, or poignant. He might have said it to Donna and her reply would have been enough to calm his frantic heart.

He won’t now. Donna isn’t here and The Doctor’s alone with his judge, jury and almost executioners.

He tries not to think.

“The hostess...” he finally wonders aloud for all of the conversations he’s been having in his head. “What was her name?”

No one knows.

*-*-*

His hands are shaking again.

Didi hands him his stethoscope from its discarded spot in the corner and he looks up at her. He thinks how smart she is, and how clever and how quickly she was willing to kill.

He looks away and she places the item on the floor. He can already hear his heart’s skipping beat after beat after beat.

Knock, knock...

“Knock.” He whispers as rescue arrives.

…Knock.

-fin.