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awindylife-writes · 7 months

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This Time Around (Chapter 10 rewrite)

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, (here) (ongoing)

Relationships: Third Doctor x reader

Summary: The Doctor and you talk in the infirmary. There are a lot of feelings on both sides, not all of them pleasant. He stands with you through the storm.

Warnings: Mentions of injuries and physical violence, but nothing graphic.

Author's notes: What can l even say. This took so much from me, and l'm immensely proud of it. I'm going to carry this project through, l just don't know in what timeframe. I hope you enjoy:))

(The concepts of bond-mates and visible personal timelines belong to @inthisformiambadwolf.)

The Doctor held you. It was a world where nothing could hurt you, nothing could reach you. A world of open peace and gentle comfort. There was time to stay still.

He held you. Everything that was were the two of you. You could breathe, you could find your feet again. You knew where you stood, and you didn't stand alone.

He held you. You saw him, you'd let him come closer than you had ever allowed anyone to be. The trust you had in him was bigger than you, and you were safe.

The awe of this place never left you. You felt the Doctor like cool raindrops on your skin, the mountain wind in your lungs. Something wild, rebellious, rushing, velvet to the touch. You were allowed to hold him.

You could have sung from the joy of looking at this person who meant the world to you.

He was different. Ten was a colossal storm, a swirling galaxy, so vast compared to you. Three was a giant too, but smaller. You could just see the beginnings, which branches of his personality would grow and what he would grow into. His underlying edge would sharpen, temper shorten, ego grow; kindness would spread out into a world of its own, permeating his every part...

You wanted to know him now. You needed to know him now. God, you could just glimpse where his thoughts wove themselves in the distance, where his memories compiled, where his dreams hid far, far away...

But you couldn't look that deeply. You didn't have his permission and there wasn't time for that. You had too much to do, too much to find out, too much you didn't know about the place you'd found yourself in.

A breath. Gentle and careful, you started to pull back, untangling your thoughts from his.

He loosened his hold on you in turn.

You had dropped your shields when you'd clung to him in your panic. Now was the time to put them back up, so you brought the firm layers forward one by one, shutting the Doctor out with a stab of regret.

You hoped you would come back to this place. You hoped you would be allowed to hold him like this again.

When you opened your eyes, you had a moment to appreciate just how beautiful this version of him was, in private and up close. (He wasn't Ten and you'd deal with that train of thought later. But.)

Another wave of awe crashed over you. He was the Doctor, new, teasing, breathtaking and you wanted to look forever. Inside and out. Trace the lines on his face, cup his cheeks, how did his lips feel? Was his white hair as soft as it looked? Just how deep was that blue in his eyes?

There was so much to discover it made you greedy. Your hands itched to reach out, hold, explore. You thought about the rest of his body for two seconds max and there was that familiar heat already. Just looking at him made your nerves spark.

It's you, it's you, it's you... How could you resist this?

Then his eyes opened too and he smiled softly.

It snapped you back into your body. Reminded you that you were exhausted like a wrung out cloth, dirty along with greasy hair, aching all over besides your throbbing temple, and a stranger to him.

Alive, you were alive.

You couldn't help but smile back.

When he pulled away, the Doctor let go of your cheek and your hand, leaving the cold behind. You felt a pang in your chest at the loss.

Still, what he'd given you was enough to go on.

"Thank you," you murmured from your beating human heart.

He shook his head with gentle eyes. "There's nothing to thank me for." His eyebrows pinched together just a little, but you didn't notice it when you looked down at your lap.

His new face was distracting and you had to get a hold of yourself if you wanted to carry a coherent conversation.

"I think there is," you quietly countered.

For a moment, you saw your stinging wrists wrapped in gauze. Tired, aching hands. Blood and dirt under your broken nails. They reminded you of what you were capable of, and your sore shoulders relaxed.

You raised your eyes again and began with a tentative smile, shrugging. "Where do we start?" Your hands leaned on the edge of the bed so your scabs smarted, but you were glad and brave and open.

You saw stubble, a glint in his eyes and his lapel had a muted red edge. You'd missed looking at him. There was so much you wanted.

The Doctor loved the sound of we when it meant the two of you. Cocking his head, he gave you a warm smile. "Well, perhaps you could tell me your name?"

Oh, that hurt.

But it was kind of ironic too.

When you told him, he repeated it to taste it in his mouth. There were so many questions left there. When did we meet? Where? How much sugar do you take in your tea? Do you even like tea? Where did you grow up? What date is your birthday? Who the hell caused those bruises? May l hold you?

You let the way he said your name reverberate through your bones. You loved how it sounded in his voice.

Wait, does he know...? It wasn't like your marriage bond was a blinking ad sign, you had to be completely sure. "You-- You do know who l am to you, right?"

The Doctor grinned so wide it reached his dazzling eyes, and nodded. "I do."

That made you smile truly, you let out a relieved breath with a soft, "Okay."

Your curiousity woke. "How did you find out?"

"Ah..." His forefinger came to rub his jaw when he pressed his lips together, sheepish. "I accidentally brushed your hand when l came to see you. With that activation energy, our marriage bond was strong enough to circumvent all the temporal interference that stood in the way, and l knew," he shrugged.

Marriage bond. Our marriage bond. His awestruck joy lit him up like a sun. He wanted to cup your cheek again, but only his eyes stayed on you.

"Good," you nodded, certain. "I don't know what l would've done if l'd woken up in this..." Remembering you were in a room, you looked around despite your pulsing temple.

Curtain dividers on both your sides, around the edge you could just see neat beds parallel to yours, a writing desk with a chair by the wall... Was this a hospital?

"Where even are we?" You looked up at the Doctor again, eyebrows raised. "When are we?"

Your choice of words made him shake his head with a quirk of a smile. "These are UNIT headquarters, 1982, and--"

"UNIT." You grinned, incredulous. "I landed at UNIT of all places in the universe. Seriously, UNIT?!"

The room you saw was much more interesting now. You'd gone from a level 8 industrial planet to the 80's take on UNIT.

With all that looking around, you didn't notice the Doctor hadn't glanced away from you from the moment he'd pulled back. He knew this very much counted as staring and he didn't want to be found out.

It was just...

There was an expanse in your eyes, a vastness deeper than any sea and freer than any sky he'd ever seen. He didn't want to stop looking. He considered how to tell you, he thought of what he would give only to have the freedom to look at you. Just look at you for however long he wished.

Cocking his head, he managed a kind, "I'm as surprised as you are, my dear."

Your heart skipped a beat at the pet name. You knew this regeneration of him had spent most of his time in the 70's and 80's, mostly involuntarily, and you could see how their way of speaking had rubbed off on him. Proper British accent and everything. You couldn't wait to hear more.

"I mean..." You tried to focus back on the topic and amended with a slight smile, "It's as good a place as any, l'm just..."

A sigh escaped you as the situation fully sank in.

UNIT.

1982.

Paradox.

"I don't know how l got here." Eyes closed, you rubbed your face with your palm while careful of your scabs. "Didn't mean to," you mumbled and dragged your hand down your face, drained.

The Doctor frowned as he cocked his head, imploring you to go on.

Your hands swung out in an 'l don't know' gesture. "l was locked on the TARDIS, the future one, but l was so tired."

Looking down at your lap, you remembered the stitches on your smarting temple and laughed. "And bleeding. And, like, the command centre was on fire, so," you shrugged, shoulders protesting, "I probably didn't check the landing fix again, l just jumped."

The refinery switch boards had flamed so hot you'd feared your face would be burned.

"But after that..." Your brows furrowed when you tried to look at the hazy past.

A cracked helmet. Monstrous fire. Noise.

That's it.

"l don't even remember leaving, or materializing..."

"No?" The Doctor looked you over, inquisitive.

Your gaze was back on him when you shook your head. "No."

A corner of his mouth pulled up as he tucked his hand in his pocket. "That's odd, since you landed in my laboratory, recognized me, and only then passed out."

A smile overtook your face at that, wide and warm as your cheeks heated up. Well, of course l did.

"Makes sense to me," you shrugged. "l'd know you anywhere."

You didn't need a bond to recognize him. You'd spent weeks, months, years drawing closer to him and bringing him close to you. Years in which the two of you had made a home in each other, secret by secret, shame by shame. Your bond was just its door.

And that was the crux of it. He was your Doctor, but younger than you'd ever seen him, new and tantalizing, there for you to come to know him all over again. You wanted to look at him forever, to ask him a million questions, laugh with him, run with him, fight him, hold him, you wanted time.

You wanted to kiss every wrinkle on his face.

The Doctor felt how your look reached for him, open, content and impossibly soft. It made him falter because everything he was turned forward to run to you.

There was something he'd been starving for. It made him feel the air around him, inside him, it enveloped him like the walls of a home and he was understood.

More. Only more of this. Please. He'd just discovered that he could breathe.

Oh god, you were staring--You're a stranger, a familiar stranger, even if he knows about your bond!

You snapped out of the reverie, grasping for straws, "And-- And, my manipulator was broken too! So..."

You went on with an awkward smile, "It's not all my fault..."

The Doctor blinked a bit dazedly, nodding with a frown, "Right," but you realized that your salvation wasn't on your wrist.

"Wait... Um, where is it?" You looked yourself over, then focused on him, "Do you know...?"

You had subconsciously reached for your neck.

Empty neck.

"Key-- !" Your ears rang. Horror rose like bile in your throat.

"Doctor, they TOOK MY KEY!" Your eyes stung with tears, you'd lost it, you'd lost it no matter how hard you'd tried to hold onto it, your thread leading home was gone because you'd been careless--

"No, no-no-no, l have it!"

He hurriedly pulled your glinting key from his pocket to show it in his palm. "I have it, look!"

You snatched it from his hand, lightning-fast, and gripped it as tightly as you could because you needed the pain from the cut in your palm to believe it was really there.

Your eyes shut against the swell of tears. You clutched your necklace like a lifeline in a seastorm, taking measured breaths.

It had been a mess of an uprising, and you'd kept your key hidden. From that market place to the stale shafts, the cells, the bright and sterile meeting room and the command centre of hell, you had guarded it. Never spoken of it, but had checked again and again if it was still there, as if it would have vanished like a wonderful dream. Your key was home and promise and love and the mere thought of losing it made you sick.

He'd kept it safe.

Your stinging eyes opened. "Thank you." Your murmur was more fervent than you'd meant it to be. You were so thankful it almost hurt.

The Doctor shook his head with a crease in his brow, lost. His answer was a soft murmur, "Again, there's nothing to thank me for."

He couldn't understand why you'd be grateful for so little. Worry was born like a cobweb in the corner of his mind at your repeated thanks for his care.

You pressed your lips together, attention still on your clasped hands. "I'd beg to differ." A quiet opposition.

Your eyes were watery but you raised them to his. Strained, fierce, your voice betrayed your pain, "If they'd taken it, or if l'd left it there, l'd never forgi-- !"

"Where is 'there'?" the Doctor demanded as he stepped towards you. The sight of tears in your eyes had snapped something in him. "Where did you run from?"

He wanted to hold you in his arms, make sure that you were with him, safe and whole.

Your mouth opened, but you faltered.

Your blurry gaze dropped down to your aching hands again and you rubbed your eyes. "No. No, it's not important," you shook your head with vigor, "I'm not--"

You wouldn't drag that burning wreck into this blue day. Not now. Not yet.

It wasn't that you were sorry for it. It had hurt, sure. Volonel IV had pounded you with its fists and its loneliness. But when you turned your feelings over like cards on the table and looked at them before you, you just couldn't find regret there.

You knew you would've done it again. Differently, perhaps, but...

Those people had needed help, and anything was worth the way Sava's mechanical pupils had widened when she'd realized that there was hope.

You just knew him. The Doctor always took responsibility for what he did and often also for things that weren't his fault. He put his needs aside to help others and he always thought he should have done better. You didn't want to explain what had gone wrong, the complexity of it all, if he'd just blame himself on principle.

And his resentment of his other regenerations would come up one way or another. He'd met himself, just once since you'd started travelling with him, and it had taken the two of them exactly three minutes and a half to start verbally tearing each other to bits. You'd managed to stop them; but now your body weighed you down, your head throbbed and you thought you'd just cry if you had to counter him.

You would have to remember everything for that.

You couldn't do it now, not when the two of you were still at the start (and why did he leave me, why the hell did he have to wander off and leave me-- running, can't breathe, cold, the cuffs slice your wrists, they are BEATING you, please, l can't, please NO, stop, STOP, STOP-- rushing, smoke sears your throat, your eyes burn, get out, run NOW, you're going to die-- )

"Please," the Doctor pulled you out of it. Of course he did.

How rare it was for him to say that word.

When you looked up at his face again, his wrinkled frown and his sky-blue eyes made your chest tight. You'd managed to stop your tears from falling but your nose was full now.

It was all you could do to look back. Not budging, but not unmoved either.

He tapped his thigh with his knuckles. Something rolled in his face, stepped back but magnified.

He spoke in a murmur. "I-- l won't insist that you tell me," he nodded, "but l'd very much like to know who did this to you."

Who did this to you. You heard a familiar anger in his words, like magma under thin ground that was writhing for the surface to crack.

It was so much like him, it soothed you. You were tied to this place with that mooring line.

Looking down at the key in your hand, you turned it in your grip as you swallowed. "I got out of there, there's no point getting into it now." Ask me again later, and you'll have it. Soon.

His shoulders gave in. He sighed, then nodded. "Alright."

You didn't know how to read him yet, you tried to look for signs that he'd heard what you'd implied. You opened your mouth--

A throat clearing behind you, "l hate to interrupt--"

Your whole body flinched and your head whipped around to stare at the stranger. In the same half-second, the Doctor turned so he was in front of you, partially hiding you behind him.

Neither of you noticed.

Dr Richards did.

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