There’s some pretty messed up stuff in my files that has to do with Doctor Who. Lots of angsty stuff which needs lots of trigger warnings about self-hate. But this is the first time I’ve tried it with the Eighth Doctor. (Ten is so the king of angst…)
This is the result of things like Ten being angsty, me writing a script with Eight, weird things happening to Eight (1996-2005 was a very experimental era for Doctor Who allright, because there was no TV show running, just novels and an audio drama series), Eight getting whumped (IN CANON!), etc…
Blend it all for thirty seconds and then pour it all out on paper. That’s what this is.
I hope you enjoy… I don’t know if anyone will even relate… I don’t know if any of my followers even know the Eighth Doctor… or Grace Holloway… but this is AU since Grace decided not to travel with the Doctor. (Also, she’s a copyright problem… it’s complicated.)
Anyway, enjoy…
If you can…
*sinister laughter*
This I Beheld (Or Dreamed It In A Dream)
Grace blinked. Where was she? She couldn’t tell. Wherever it was, it was white, all white, too bright for her eyes to ever adjust… It wasn’t the light. There was no light. No darkness, either. Just white. It might have been black or gray, come to think of it. It was simple, blank space, a psychic blank space—now where had she heard that before?
But there were messages, too. Writing, all over the four square walls. The floor, also, the ceiling too. There were no doors or windows; no furniture. Just messages.
HELP ME STOP ME SAVE ME PLEASE PLEASE
Over and over again.
HELP ME STOP ME SAVE ME
Grace blinked. It was all the same thing, somehow.
HELP ME STOP ME SAVE ME PLEASE PLEASE FORGIVE ME CONDEMN ME HELP ME PLEASE
The messages were not, so to speak, in contrast to the walls, just as the walls were not any color, not even white or black, just mental blank space. Pure information, sorted by her mind into this form as her brain strove to make sense of the extra-sensory data. This whole room wasn’t real, it was a simulation she had made for herself.
HELP ME STOP ME SAVE ME GRACE GRACE GRACE PLEASE LISTEN I’M TRYING TO TELL YOU JUST LET ME KNOW I NEED TO KNOW I NEED YOU I NEED YOU I NEED YOU
Grace blinked. Her mind was no longer assailed with the extra-sensory data, free to let her back into her own body, into what her senses were telling her. The Doctor stared back at her, his face pale, looking like one of those kids who’d been pulled off the street still trying to shake off the effects of a bad trip…
Was that all that had been? A bad trip?
Their hands were still linked, the cuts in their hands bleeding into each other, the obscene men who had forced them into this for the sake of their vile religion still lingering around the edges of the gray cell. Grace blinked, more slowly than before, her eyelids drifting closed and then open again. She saw the flash of recognition in his eyes.
Faster than human eyes could follow, with literally inhuman strength, the Doctor flipped the table over, heaving it through the mass of their captors and into the opposite wall. He gripped Grace’s unwounded hand firmly, his still slick with blood, and pulled her from the room before the men could react.
Grace gently wrapped the Doctor’s cut hand with gauze, despite the fact that it was already scabbing over by the time they got back to the TARDIS. She got up to put the medical kit away, but he snagged her sleeve neatly between two fingers. His blue eyes were mildly curious, completely guileless. “What did you see?” Grace shook her head and kept her mouth tightly shut.
Say what you might about secrets among friends, she thought. But she was too invested in the Doctor to tell him everything.
The Upstairs Archives 