Until We Burn | Dr Who

Chapter One Hundred and Ten: The Faces Watch

TW// Injury detail

—

We walk back to the Tardis in silence, just him and I again. I still keep alert, scanning our surroundings. The Doctor promises that we will look again tomorrow and I know I shouldn't trust him, but I can barely think of anything else.

I slump onto the jumpseats and he joins me, a hand resting on my thigh, smoothing over the fabric of my trousers and easing the jumping of my leg. "You were right," he mumbles after a long, uncomfortable silence.

My breath hitching, I look to him in confusion. "What?"

He sits back, slouching, stripped of his usual confidence. "I've grown too detached. I haven't tried hard enough to understand the reality for the people he hurts. I've— I've become so used to travelling, just solving the problem and moving on. It's rare that I get to see the fallout." Then he looks to me, his eyes softening with overwhelming affection and guilt. He cups my cheek, stroking his thumb over my skin. "But suddenly you were there, fighting through the aftermath, living from day to day... and I didn't know how to fix it. I just want you to feel safe again. But I hope you understand, too. If there's another way to stop him, I'll take it."

"I know." Sighing wearily, I tilt my head slightly, enough to press a kiss to his palm. "And I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been so harsh. You're not like him."

He smiles sadly. "But I am. We're two sides of the same coin, always have been. I try to do better, though. That's all I do, just keep trying, fulfilling that promise."

"What promise?"

"'The Doctor'. That name, my name. I chose it for a reason, I fight to live up to it every day, to be what people need me to be."

He doesn't intend for it to hurt but it does. Just to hear the way he speaks of himself is like a knife to the heart. "As long you don't forget the other name you have to fight for. Because if you do, there's no point, not to any of it."

"What name is that?"

I speak his own in the softest whisper, drawing him into my embrace. I have only said it once before, when I took my vows and bound my soul to his forever. "Never forget that name. No matter what. He is you, just as much as the Doctor."

His lips linger against mine, bargaining time away for just another moment to feel our closeness. A second kiss warms my forehead. "Go, get some sleep if you can. I'll be there in a bit."

I shouldn't believe him but the thought of resting, of just holding him tonight and letting this mess wait until tomorrow, is too much to refuse.

I do sleep for some time. Until the nightmares come and I scream myself awake again, only to find the mattress cold beside me.

Wiping the cold sweat from my brow, I get up and grab a dressing gown from the chair by my side of the bed — although it rarely stays my side, the two of us moving so much in our sleep, shifting positions, waking in a pleasant tangle. Padding along the corridors, I have to keep up a mantra under my breath, "It's real, it's real, it's real." I'm only half-certain.

Through the doorway up ahead, I can see the Doctor moving around the console room. Something is wrong. His body is doubled over, his hand clutching at his side. All caution leaves me and I run to him, catching him just as he starts to fall. "Inara," he groans. "Sickbay. Sickbay, now."

Carrying him there without a word and setting him on a surgical chair, I make hasty work of unbuttoning his suit and shirt, pulling the stained t-shirt up and over his head. The source of the stain stops my heart. Several bullet wounds scatter his side, and another slowly blotches the material of his trousers.