But Not Forgotten: Part Three
Part Three
The shotgun came as a bit of a surprise to Rory. While the Doctor hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with details about the angels, Rory had gotten the impression that they were more Up Close and Smitey in their fights, rather than being the type to dress like a lumberjack and haul around a shotgun. His grip tightened slightly around the Bowie knife he’d dug up from the TARDIS’ storage, the feel of it disturbingly comforting. Rory wasn’t to be fight any angels that day, but he also wasn’t ready to walk in to this unarmed. The plan was that the Doctor would serve as a decoy, getting all the angelic attention while Rory and Amy snuck about and rescued Donna, but Rory knew all to well how often things actually went according to plan.
The house was also a surprise. You just didn’t expect angels to hang out in little two story houses in the suburbs. Maybe fancy hotels in big cities, or big, fancy mansions in the middle of nowhere, or cathedrals. Something like that.
“Go,” the Doctor said, raising his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the glass patio doors as he flicked it on. They shattered impressively, along with the rest of the windows and the overhead lights, making the man with the shotgun scramble for cover before he got sliced to pieces by the glass. Amy darted out of the TARDIS, and Rory followed, moving fast and keeping low. Looking through the broken windows, Rory didn’t see anyone else in the house, but he knew that didn’t really mean much. The Doctor’s friend was in there somewhere, probably under guard, which was why Rory had the knife.
Rory had considered bringing a sword, but ultimately he’d opted for something easier to conceal in case they had to leave the Doctor; the Time Lord had impressed on Rory that getting Donna away from the angels was Priority One, no matter how.
The third surprise of the day came when Rory and Amy came around to the front of the house and found three men in dark suits there, standing too still to be human as they gazed up at a second story window, from which a young woman, also clad in an ill fitting dark suit, dangled. Whoever was inside the house was in the process of beating the woman about the head and shoulders with a broom, making it very hard for her to stutter out “Be not afraid!” before losing her grip and dropping to the ground, landing impossibly lightly on her feet.
“I’m not afraid! I’m bloody furious! You nearly set me on fire!” A table lamp followed the woman in the dark suit down, chattering on her head without doing more than making her MIB companions laugh.
“Why do they always blame me?” the woman whined as she brushed the bits of shattered lamp off her hair and ended up looking right at Rory and Amy. “Oh, you two. Get them!”
A night stand came tumbling out the window, succeeding in knocking the woman off her feet, as the three men in suits turned on Rory and Amy with cold eyes and stony faces. Rory stepped between Amy and the men black, Bowie knife at the ready. One of the men laughed, a low and awful sound, a slender silver blade appearing in his hand from nowhere. “The monkey thinks it’s going to fight us. Adorable.”
***
The man with the shotgun, the Doctor knew, was not an angel. But he did have the mark of one, like something pulsing beneath his freckled skin. The Doctor hadn’t seen anything like that since before the slaughter of the Nephilim. Under other circumstances, the Doctor would have been quizzing the man about everything, but Donna was far more important than the Doctor’s personal curiosity. By now, Am and Rory would be staging Donna’s rescue, either by leading her away or by carrying her out, if the failsafe had already kicked in.
The Doctor ducked behind the TARDIS as the shotgun roared. “Guns,” the Doctor muttered. “Always with the guns. Well.” He came around the other side of the TARDIS, destroying the shotgun with a well aimed beam from his sonic screwdriver. The man with the angel mark swore loudly as his weapon fell apart in his hands, throwing the remains away and pulling out the angel sword he’d had tucked into his belt.
The poor fool had no idea what his angelic lover had gotten him in to.
“You do not want to do this,” the Doctor said as the human stepped past the broken glass. He handled the sword like he knew that the pointy end went in to the other guy, but with no real finesse. He was probably more used to something meant for chopping.
“Oh yeah, I really do.” The smile on the man’s face was all teeth, with nothing even remotely kind behind it. This was a man used to violence, and the Doctor doubted anything he could say would convince him to stay his hand.
The Doctor had come here ready for a fight, and he was perfectly willing to give it. The last Time Lord had been about to take that angel sword from the human when the angel finally put in an appearance, arriving in a rush of wings, overcoat flapping. The Doctor narrowly avoided being impaled by the angel, and the angel narrowly avoided having a sonic screwdriver do horrible things to is insides. Time Lord and angel broke apart, eyeing each other, waiting for the other to make the first move and giving the Doctor time to identify who he was dealing with.
“Castiel,” the Doctor finally said calmly, but coldly.
“Doctor.” The blue eyed angel’s voice was just as arctic as the Time Lord’s.
“Janet! Brad! Rocky!” the human piped up in an exaggerated falsetto. Anyone else would have withered under the irritated glares of both Castiel and the Doctor, but he remained unrepentantly cocky. “Who’s the guy I’m about to kill, Cas?”
“This is the Doctor, Dean, and I doubt you’ll be killing him, today or any other.” Castiel’s eyes remained locked on the Doctor as he moved between the Time Lord and Dean.
“And you’re the one who kidnapped my friend,” the Doctor murmured.
“We did not!” Dean objected quickly, trying to push past Castiel, only to have the angel keep him back. The Doctor didn’t miss the suspicion that flashed across the human’s face, though.
“We didn’t,” Castiel agreed.
That was when something exploded in the front of the house, rattling everything as Amy and Rory came pelting around the side of the house. “Doctor!”
Two more angels appeared, dressed in what had been neat, dark suits until they’d gotten shredded and burned. One angel was still trying to put a sleeve out, in fact. Both angels had their blades in their hands, one turning and slashing out at Rory, who deflected the longer blade with his own knife. The other one advanced on Castiel and Dean, malice clearly aforethought.
“Ah, I see you lot are still engaged in your family squabbles,” the Doctor noted wryly.
“Raphael will be pleased,” the angel on Castiel said smugly, even as Rory continued to fend off his own opponent, ignoring the Doctor completely. “I’m going to bring him your wings, traitor.” Typical angel, so certain of it’s superiority, predicting victory far ahead of time. “And your little pet’s head!” Castiel’s opponent tried darting around Castiel to Dean, only to have his blade deflected with Dean’s stolen angel sword before Castiel grabbed the angel by the back of his neck and threw him away from Dean and towards the Doctor. The enemy angel stabbed blindly at the Time Lord, only to get a face full of sonic screwdriver, with the setting powerful enough to disorient even so powerful a being.
Of course, that would be the moment Donna Temple-Noble came pounding down the stairs, shouting, “That other nutter from the office just set the house on fire!” She stopped dead in her tracks even as the fire alarms shrieked and flames spread rapidly through the house, surveying the tableau they all made; the Doctor, the angels, Rory, Amy and Dean. For a moment, Donna’s eyes met the Doctor’s. For a moment, she almost remembered.
Then the failsafe kicked in, and the Doctor’s hearts broke as she collapsed. The angel that had tried to attack Castiel and had just been disoriented by the Doctor decided that this was the perfect time to go in and take Donna, while she was unconscious and helpless. But whatever may have been done to the house, the protections still held, and the angel disappeared with a scream in a brief flash of light, even as Dean raced past, calling Donna‘s name. Castiel rushed the angel Rory had been holding off from behind, driving his angel blade up from just under his brother’s rib cage, pulling it out and letting the angel in the suit fall to the ground, wings burning in to the grass as he died. The Doctor watched the ancient thing pass with what little pity he could spare.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence as Dean went back inside, grabbing the kitchen fire extinguisher along the way to push back the encroaching flames. Then there were sirens -- someone had called the fire department. Dean tossed away the extinguisher, realizing that there was no way to do more than delay the flames, and lifted Donna carefully, carrying her out to the back yard. “C’mon, Red, this is no time to play Sleeping Beauty!”
“We need to go,” Rory said urgently. “There were two more and I don’t know where they went.”
“Plus,” Amy added helpfully, “the house is kind of on fire.”
Castiel turned to the Doctor as he wiped blood from his blade, his face an expressionless mask. “I believe our interests here are the same, Doctor.” The last remaining angel’s eyes went to the TARDIS, and the Doctor nodded in reluctant agreement. Castiel turned to Dean. “Bring Donna, we need to leave. Raphael and his followers know about this place now, they can find it again.”
The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers, ushering Amy in before him, Rory following. Behind him, he heard Dean ask, “How the hell are we supposed to fit in there?”
In spite of everything, unseen by everyone, the Doctor smiled.
***
“Oh, Tahariel,” Nathaniel whispered as she pulled some of the fire away from the house. She turned the flames on the empty vessel of her fallen brother, burning it away to nothing. Harahel had been sent away, dispatched by the wards that had kept them from entering the house and just taking Donna, but he would recover, in time. Kutiel had run off when the house had caught fire and he’d been sliced by a lucky hit by one of the Doctor’s companions, the man called Rory, when he had made an attempt to take the woman Amy hostage. There was no doubt that he was already reporting this failure to Raphael; Nathaniel would have to work fast to keep Raphael from setting her on fire for incompetence.
She already had a new plan; Nathaniel liked to think that she was good at coming up with new plans in the face of the old ones falling apart like wet tissue paper. She’d thought to follow the Time Lord and his companions when Castiel had hidden Donna away, knowing that they would lead her to the woman. And now she had a new, better plan.
With a quiet prayer, Nathaniel flew away.
Father be with me, I need you now.
Part Four
The shotgun came as a bit of a surprise to Rory. While the Doctor hadn’t exactly been forthcoming with details about the angels, Rory had gotten the impression that they were more Up Close and Smitey in their fights, rather than being the type to dress like a lumberjack and haul around a shotgun. His grip tightened slightly around the Bowie knife he’d dug up from the TARDIS’ storage, the feel of it disturbingly comforting. Rory wasn’t to be fight any angels that day, but he also wasn’t ready to walk in to this unarmed. The plan was that the Doctor would serve as a decoy, getting all the angelic attention while Rory and Amy snuck about and rescued Donna, but Rory knew all to well how often things actually went according to plan.
The house was also a surprise. You just didn’t expect angels to hang out in little two story houses in the suburbs. Maybe fancy hotels in big cities, or big, fancy mansions in the middle of nowhere, or cathedrals. Something like that.
“Go,” the Doctor said, raising his sonic screwdriver and pointing it at the glass patio doors as he flicked it on. They shattered impressively, along with the rest of the windows and the overhead lights, making the man with the shotgun scramble for cover before he got sliced to pieces by the glass. Amy darted out of the TARDIS, and Rory followed, moving fast and keeping low. Looking through the broken windows, Rory didn’t see anyone else in the house, but he knew that didn’t really mean much. The Doctor’s friend was in there somewhere, probably under guard, which was why Rory had the knife.
Rory had considered bringing a sword, but ultimately he’d opted for something easier to conceal in case they had to leave the Doctor; the Time Lord had impressed on Rory that getting Donna away from the angels was Priority One, no matter how.
The third surprise of the day came when Rory and Amy came around to the front of the house and found three men in dark suits there, standing too still to be human as they gazed up at a second story window, from which a young woman, also clad in an ill fitting dark suit, dangled. Whoever was inside the house was in the process of beating the woman about the head and shoulders with a broom, making it very hard for her to stutter out “Be not afraid!” before losing her grip and dropping to the ground, landing impossibly lightly on her feet.
“I’m not afraid! I’m bloody furious! You nearly set me on fire!” A table lamp followed the woman in the dark suit down, chattering on her head without doing more than making her MIB companions laugh.
“Why do they always blame me?” the woman whined as she brushed the bits of shattered lamp off her hair and ended up looking right at Rory and Amy. “Oh, you two. Get them!”
A night stand came tumbling out the window, succeeding in knocking the woman off her feet, as the three men in suits turned on Rory and Amy with cold eyes and stony faces. Rory stepped between Amy and the men black, Bowie knife at the ready. One of the men laughed, a low and awful sound, a slender silver blade appearing in his hand from nowhere. “The monkey thinks it’s going to fight us. Adorable.”
***
The man with the shotgun, the Doctor knew, was not an angel. But he did have the mark of one, like something pulsing beneath his freckled skin. The Doctor hadn’t seen anything like that since before the slaughter of the Nephilim. Under other circumstances, the Doctor would have been quizzing the man about everything, but Donna was far more important than the Doctor’s personal curiosity. By now, Am and Rory would be staging Donna’s rescue, either by leading her away or by carrying her out, if the failsafe had already kicked in.
The Doctor ducked behind the TARDIS as the shotgun roared. “Guns,” the Doctor muttered. “Always with the guns. Well.” He came around the other side of the TARDIS, destroying the shotgun with a well aimed beam from his sonic screwdriver. The man with the angel mark swore loudly as his weapon fell apart in his hands, throwing the remains away and pulling out the angel sword he’d had tucked into his belt.
The poor fool had no idea what his angelic lover had gotten him in to.
“You do not want to do this,” the Doctor said as the human stepped past the broken glass. He handled the sword like he knew that the pointy end went in to the other guy, but with no real finesse. He was probably more used to something meant for chopping.
“Oh yeah, I really do.” The smile on the man’s face was all teeth, with nothing even remotely kind behind it. This was a man used to violence, and the Doctor doubted anything he could say would convince him to stay his hand.
The Doctor had come here ready for a fight, and he was perfectly willing to give it. The last Time Lord had been about to take that angel sword from the human when the angel finally put in an appearance, arriving in a rush of wings, overcoat flapping. The Doctor narrowly avoided being impaled by the angel, and the angel narrowly avoided having a sonic screwdriver do horrible things to is insides. Time Lord and angel broke apart, eyeing each other, waiting for the other to make the first move and giving the Doctor time to identify who he was dealing with.
“Castiel,” the Doctor finally said calmly, but coldly.
“Doctor.” The blue eyed angel’s voice was just as arctic as the Time Lord’s.
“Janet! Brad! Rocky!” the human piped up in an exaggerated falsetto. Anyone else would have withered under the irritated glares of both Castiel and the Doctor, but he remained unrepentantly cocky. “Who’s the guy I’m about to kill, Cas?”
“This is the Doctor, Dean, and I doubt you’ll be killing him, today or any other.” Castiel’s eyes remained locked on the Doctor as he moved between the Time Lord and Dean.
“And you’re the one who kidnapped my friend,” the Doctor murmured.
“We did not!” Dean objected quickly, trying to push past Castiel, only to have the angel keep him back. The Doctor didn’t miss the suspicion that flashed across the human’s face, though.
“We didn’t,” Castiel agreed.
That was when something exploded in the front of the house, rattling everything as Amy and Rory came pelting around the side of the house. “Doctor!”
Two more angels appeared, dressed in what had been neat, dark suits until they’d gotten shredded and burned. One angel was still trying to put a sleeve out, in fact. Both angels had their blades in their hands, one turning and slashing out at Rory, who deflected the longer blade with his own knife. The other one advanced on Castiel and Dean, malice clearly aforethought.
“Ah, I see you lot are still engaged in your family squabbles,” the Doctor noted wryly.
“Raphael will be pleased,” the angel on Castiel said smugly, even as Rory continued to fend off his own opponent, ignoring the Doctor completely. “I’m going to bring him your wings, traitor.” Typical angel, so certain of it’s superiority, predicting victory far ahead of time. “And your little pet’s head!” Castiel’s opponent tried darting around Castiel to Dean, only to have his blade deflected with Dean’s stolen angel sword before Castiel grabbed the angel by the back of his neck and threw him away from Dean and towards the Doctor. The enemy angel stabbed blindly at the Time Lord, only to get a face full of sonic screwdriver, with the setting powerful enough to disorient even so powerful a being.
Of course, that would be the moment Donna Temple-Noble came pounding down the stairs, shouting, “That other nutter from the office just set the house on fire!” She stopped dead in her tracks even as the fire alarms shrieked and flames spread rapidly through the house, surveying the tableau they all made; the Doctor, the angels, Rory, Amy and Dean. For a moment, Donna’s eyes met the Doctor’s. For a moment, she almost remembered.
Then the failsafe kicked in, and the Doctor’s hearts broke as she collapsed. The angel that had tried to attack Castiel and had just been disoriented by the Doctor decided that this was the perfect time to go in and take Donna, while she was unconscious and helpless. But whatever may have been done to the house, the protections still held, and the angel disappeared with a scream in a brief flash of light, even as Dean raced past, calling Donna‘s name. Castiel rushed the angel Rory had been holding off from behind, driving his angel blade up from just under his brother’s rib cage, pulling it out and letting the angel in the suit fall to the ground, wings burning in to the grass as he died. The Doctor watched the ancient thing pass with what little pity he could spare.
For a moment, there was nothing but silence as Dean went back inside, grabbing the kitchen fire extinguisher along the way to push back the encroaching flames. Then there were sirens -- someone had called the fire department. Dean tossed away the extinguisher, realizing that there was no way to do more than delay the flames, and lifted Donna carefully, carrying her out to the back yard. “C’mon, Red, this is no time to play Sleeping Beauty!”
“We need to go,” Rory said urgently. “There were two more and I don’t know where they went.”
“Plus,” Amy added helpfully, “the house is kind of on fire.”
Castiel turned to the Doctor as he wiped blood from his blade, his face an expressionless mask. “I believe our interests here are the same, Doctor.” The last remaining angel’s eyes went to the TARDIS, and the Doctor nodded in reluctant agreement. Castiel turned to Dean. “Bring Donna, we need to leave. Raphael and his followers know about this place now, they can find it again.”
The Doctor opened the TARDIS doors with a snap of his fingers, ushering Amy in before him, Rory following. Behind him, he heard Dean ask, “How the hell are we supposed to fit in there?”
In spite of everything, unseen by everyone, the Doctor smiled.
***
“Oh, Tahariel,” Nathaniel whispered as she pulled some of the fire away from the house. She turned the flames on the empty vessel of her fallen brother, burning it away to nothing. Harahel had been sent away, dispatched by the wards that had kept them from entering the house and just taking Donna, but he would recover, in time. Kutiel had run off when the house had caught fire and he’d been sliced by a lucky hit by one of the Doctor’s companions, the man called Rory, when he had made an attempt to take the woman Amy hostage. There was no doubt that he was already reporting this failure to Raphael; Nathaniel would have to work fast to keep Raphael from setting her on fire for incompetence.
She already had a new plan; Nathaniel liked to think that she was good at coming up with new plans in the face of the old ones falling apart like wet tissue paper. She’d thought to follow the Time Lord and his companions when Castiel had hidden Donna away, knowing that they would lead her to the woman. And now she had a new, better plan.
With a quiet prayer, Nathaniel flew away.
Father be with me, I need you now.
Part Four