Something About Stars (11/20)
Title - Something About Stars (11/20)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5 - Ch 6 - Ch 7 - Ch 8 - Ch 9
Chapter Ten
Brem stood and regarded the console of his TARDIS. He knew, unquestionably, what he needed to do. The problem was trusting it. The TARDIS would take him to the moment in time where he most needed to be; the problem was letting her.
Brem reached out, twisted some knobs and turned some dials, flipped some levers, took a deep breath, and brought his mallet down on the last button. The TARDIS jerked, and he grabbed onto the console to steady himself. Flights with the navigation set to “random” were always much less smooth than when he got to control and direct exactly where they were going.
The TARDIS landed with a crash that knocked him off his feet. He stood up and grabbed his coat and opened his TARDIS door, staring out at the planet. Cunodys was not in ruins. Indeed, it was a very pretty planet, covered in thick, blinding snow, with an impressively turreted city off in the distance. Brem stepped out of his TARDIS and locked it behind him, shrugging his coat on and looking around him curiously and wondering what he should do. Now that his TARDIS had taken him to this point in time, what was important about it? Was this when Athena had been spending all her time when she’d visited Cunodys? Was he supposed to go in search of her boyfriend? Strike out on his own?
He had thought, for some reason, that it would be obvious as soon as he let the TARDIS fly on her own, but now he was just as perplexed as he had been before getting there.
Until something fell from the sky.
It shot over his head, a streak of momentary gold, and he turned to follow its path, mouth open in amazement. Maybe, he thought, this “random flight” thing actually worked.
He watched the gold plummet, into a mountain range in the distance, and he raced into his TARDIS. “Alright then,” he said to the time rotor. “Show off your random skills again, and tell me where the thing landed.” Brem danced about the controls, spinning and clicking and pushing and pulling, and it was not exactly the best flight, what with the TARDIS struggling her way through the space. Brem wished he could help, but he had no real idea what had fallen from the sky, just that it was desperately important for some reason and he needed to find it.
The TARDIS crashed to a stop. Brem grabbed onto the console to regain his balance, then raced outside. The terrain was crowded with snow-covered rock piles, huge heaps of rubble, and Brem wondered if there had been an avalanche, as that was what it looked like to him. Avalanche or no, the important thing was that in front of him was a ditch hollowed out of the snow, steaming, as if it had been abruptly heated by something falling through the atmosphere.
Brem moved forward slowly, sonic screwdriver out. He didn’t think it would be dangerous, but who knew? After all, it wasn’t entirely clear to him how something falling from the sky could be connected to Athena’s time skips, but the coincidence was too strong to be ignored - especially as they seldom happened to Time Lords.
Brem peered into the disrupted snow, seeing nothing. He crouched, poking about with the sonic screwdriver, wondering what size the object had been. Not very large, to judge by what had streaked over his head, and that meant it would be harder to-
Brem froze, staring at the diamond his sonic screwdriver had knocked against. A diamond. He smiled. A diamond that must have just fallen in the sky. But what in the universe did a diamond have to do with anything? Even a fairly large, well-cut, high-quality diamond.
Curious, Brem reached out and touched it and-
There was noise noise so much noise shouts and wails and yelling and the sound of metal upon metal and-
Brem, gasping, dropped the diamond and scrabbled away from it. He was breathing so shallowly he thought his respiratory bypass was in danger of kicking in, and he forced himself to take a deep breath, to calm himself down. He stared at the diamond, looking completely unassuming. And yet his head was echoing with noise. The noise was throbbing through him. He’d never heard anything so loud, and it had all been in his head.
And so that had to be it. A diamond with some kind of…property he didn’t understand. Much like the time skips. Two incomprehensible things that had to fit together somehow.
Brem took another deep breath, steeling himself, and slowly reached over and firmly closed his hand around the diamond-
Noise noise shouting screaming crying desperate tears protests pleading metal explosion and whispers now, voices, voices, whispering, whispering, whispering, brightness, flashes, swirls of color, scattered stars, a burst of orange, glints of silver, Daleks-
Brem forced himself to let go of the diamond and found that he was sitting in the snow, one hand curled into it, its cold seeping into him. He wasn’t sure what he had seen or heard, couldn’t comprehend much of it, it had been constellations he didn’t recognize and voices he didn’t know, saying words he couldn’t make out, and there had been more of them than he felt his head could accommodate, they had pressed inside of him until he had felt in danger of losing himself in the melee, and the only thing that had made any sort of sense had been the Daleks.
Daleks, he thought, or, at least, tried to think, over the pounding of his head through him. Daleks. It had something to do with Daleks. He had to get back to his TARDIS, he realized. He had to get back to his TARDIS and wait for his head to clear so he could think.
Holding his breath, he grabbed the diamond-
Yelling shouting wailing screaming whispers-
He dropped it in his pocket, relieved to not have to hold it again, and dragged himself to his feet. The world tipped sickeningly, and for a second he put his hands out, as if to catch his balance on a console that wasn’t there, and then he forced himself forward, shaking his head a bit, trying to get it to stop swimming and his feet to start walking. He focused on the TARDIS in front of him, stumbling a bit in his haste to get there. Cunodys, and the diamond in his pocket, and the visions of Daleks, made him anxious to be back in his TARDIS, to have the door closed and locked and get back into the Vortex and-
The pain in his side was so stunning and shocking and unexpected that he fell over. And, for a moment, he looked down at the sight of his own blood without understanding it. Then he did understand, and somewhere underneath everything, he found himself finding the strength to stand up, finding, somewhere, the ability to dash for his TARDIS. A life full of running, he thought, dimly, had maybe prepared him for just this moment. He could hear someone approaching him, coming after him; could hear the sound of some sort of laser gun going off behind him, just before he lunged for the TARDIS door, relieved he hadn’t bothered to lock it, and he tumbled through it and slammed it behind him.
The TARDIS was shockingly silent, except for the fact that he was breathing very loudly. He didn’t even try to catch his breath. His head was pounding and his side was throbbing and his hand pressed against his stomach was covered in blood and he staggered to the console and blinked his vision clear and set his coordinates.
***
Matt was sleeping. Athena laid on her side and watched him sleep. She had seen him asleep before-in her opinion, Matt worked far too hard, which resulted in far too much exhaustion-but she had never actually laid in his bed and watched him sleep, and this was better by far.
He was fragile-looking in sleep, she thought, not for the first time. She looked at the delicate crescent of his eyelashes against his cheeks, at the small jut of his lower lip, more pronounced now because he was not smiling or frowning, and Matt was almost always doing one or the other, which she loved about him. Except that he’d neither smiled nor frowned but had kissed her, and the thought was astonishing enough that she smiled widely at absolutely nothing in giddy delight.
She wriggled gently, trying not to disturb him, fitting her head into his gaps, the space left empty for her by the curve of his neck. He shifted a bit, enough to accommodate her, but he did not wake, and she relaxed against him and smiled again. She never slept with any of her boyfriends. She really wasn’t planning on sleeping now, she was not the least bit tired. But it was kind of nice to pretend.
She realized that she could hear his heart beating. She listened for a bit, to the steady single thrum of it, absorbing the fact that there it was, the earnest instrument keeping Matt alive for her. She knew there was more to it, of course, that every human being was a complex organism, that there were other parts of himself Matt could not have survived without, but to her, suddenly, at that moment, his heartbeat was everything. She wrapped her arms around him as much as she could and snuggled him closer, wanting to always be between his heartbeat and every terrible danger the universe had to offer.
She laid like that for a very long time, letting their timelines spin in her head, breathing and listening to his heartbeat. Eventually, she admitted she was bored. Maybe, she thought, she could fix them something to eat for breakfast or whatever meal it might be time for.
She slid out of his bed while he slept on, and grabbed his discarded shirt from the floor. It was a dark midnight blue, a color that suited him, and she noticed now that it had a cheerful, waving, pale pink penguin embroidered on it. She smiled, recognizing the logo as belonging to a company that wouldn’t be founded for a few decades yet. She pulled it on and buttoned a few buttons, hunted for her hair ribbon and pulled her hair back, and walked through his living room to his kitchen. As usual, his kitchen was poorly stocked, and she sighed. She contemplated getting properly dressed to go down to her TARDIS to get them proper food, but decided it was too much effort. She filled his kettle instead and set it on the stove, and, waiting for it to whistle, stood in front of his refrigerator examining his magnets, one of which was the pad that still held her scrawled note: “Thank-you treat in the fridge. -A.” She smiled, realizing he’d kept it.
“You got out of bed,” he said. His voice was rough and gravelly with sleep, and when she glanced at him, he was rubbing at his eyes.
“You kept my note,” she said.
“I did,” he agreed, solemnly, looking at her. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
“I am. Is that okay?”
“Oh, much better than that.”
“It’s a shirt from the future.”
“Yes, well, what’s the point of having all these time-travelers around if I don’t get some good gifts every once in a while?”
“You’re all dressed,” she said, walking over to him and wrinkling her nose.
He glanced down at the pajama pants and T-shirt he was wearing. “Well,” he said. “Not really. If we’re lodging complaints, you have your hair up.”
“I always have my hair up,” she said.
“Not always,” he replied, and then, in delight, “You’re blushing!”
“No, I’m not,” she denied, although she was fairly sure she was.
“You are. It’s cute.”
“Stop it,” she said, and pressed her face against the soft fabric of the T-shirt covering his chest.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at her arms and kissing the top of her head. “I didn’t mean to make you blush. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever seen you blush before.”
She wasn’t sure she ever had blushed before, but she also wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that to him, so she simply breathed.
“Are you making yourself tea?” he asked.
“I was. Do you want some? I didn’t really mean to wake you, if you wanted to sleep longer-”
“You didn’t wake me. I’ll have tea with you.”
“You have no food, you know.”
“Well, you haven’t been to visit for a while.”
“I have Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge for you in my TARDIS.”
“Do you feel like going out to your TARDIS?”
“Not particularly.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good. Let’s have a cup of tea and go back to bed.”
She smiled against him. “I love you.”
“You’re just saying that,” he said.
She would have kissed him, but the kettle whistled, so she darted out of his embrace to pour them tea, Matt helping, retrieving mugs and teabags and sugar. Through silent agreement, they carried their mugs of tea into his living room and sat on his couch. Athena, feeling Matt’s gaze and anticipating his next question, made a great show of blowing on her tea.
“Tell me about the time skips,” he said.
She looked at him. He was holding his mug casually, his elbow propped on the back of the couch, half-turned to face her. She shrugged a little bit.
“Have they stopped?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Have you had one since you’ve been here?”
“No,” she said, honestly.
He examined her face for a moment, as if trying to ascertain whether or not she was lying, and then he nodded and took a sip of his tea. “What’s the plan, for dealing with them?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. Can we not talk about them? It’s been so nice to go so long without one, to not have to think about them. Can we do that for a little while longer?”
“Yes,” he agreed, and leaned over and put his tea down on the coffee table. “Will you promise to tell me if one happens?”
“Yes. Promise.”
“Good.”
She echoed his movement, putting her own tea down, and then snuggled into him. “Matt,” she murmured, “do you know your sweatshirt?”
“My sweatshirt? What?”
“Your sweatshirt. The time we went to New France, and-” Athena cut herself off abruptly, stiffening in Matt’s arms, because Brem, in her head, had shouted.
“And what?” said Matt. “Theenie?”
Brem wasn’t shouting. He was-He was-She had never felt or heard anything like it. She pulled back from Matt.
“Athena.” He grabbed at her hands. “Athena, breathe. You’re not breathing. What is it? Is it a time skip? My God, you’re shaking and you’re white as a ghost. Look at me and tell me what’s wrong. Athena.”
“It’s Brem,” she said, dazedly. “There’s something…something very, very wrong…”
“What? Theenie, what-“
“We need to find him,” she said, desperately, Brem’s panic in her head rising now within her. “We need to find him and-”
“Of course, we’ll-”
The unmistakable sound of a TARDIS materializing interrupted him. They both turned their heads, watching as the TARDIS blinking into existence showed herself to be red.
Matt let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Look,” he said. “He’s coming to us, see?”
Athena did not find this as reassuring as Matt wanted her to, because Brem in her head was still sending out such huge waves of panic that he was drowning out everything around her. She watched as Brem opened his TARDIS door, took an uncertain step into the living room, and promptly collapsed to the floor.
Matt leaped up immediately, racing over to where Brem had fallen. Athena followed him, forcing herself to move through her frozen horror. Matt was talking to Brem, his voice sharp, and now he was pushing Brem’s coat out of the way, and Athena could see that Brem’s T-shirts were soaked with blood.
She heard Brem mumble, “Daleks,” which managed to pull her attention away from the sight of his blood, and then he went utterly silent in her head, which was so terrifying that she made an involuntary noise.
Matt was pulling his T-shirt off, pressing it against the wound in Brem’s side. “What does it mean? ‘Daleks’? Do you know what it means?” He glanced at her worriedly.
The worry on his face terrified her even more, which she would not have thought possible. “Is he dead?” she asked, fearfully.
“What? No. Unconscious. Athena, I need you to get your father here for me.”
“He’s coming,” said Athena. “He can’t not. You don’t understand…In our heads…”
She heard her parents’ TARDIS materializing behind her, and she turned, in time to see her father march out the door. She had known he was called the Oncoming Storm all her life-she could not remember a time when her mother had not teased him about the nickname-but she had never understood it until that moment. She took an automatic step away from him as he swept over to Brem.
“What happened?” he snapped.
“I have no idea,” said Matt, looking up from where he was applying pressure. “How much blood can y’all lose? Because he’s losing buckets here in front of me, he’s going to bleed out on my damn living room floor unless you know how to do something that I don’t.”
Someone’s fingers curled into hers, and Athena looked over to find her mother standing next to her, and Athena wondered if she looked as starkly terrified as her mother looked.
“We need to get him into the TARDIS,” said Dad, springing into action. He lifted Brem as if he were still nothing more than a baby, and Athena tried to remember the last time she had seen her father carry him that way. Dad leaned over, whispering something into Brem’s ear, and Athena wondered what it was, and whether Brem, so silent in their heads, could hear it.
“What happened?” gasped Fortuna, and Athena realized she hadn’t even heard her TARDIS arrive.
Athena shook her head, because she still had no idea. The three of them trailed behind Matt, Brem, and Dad into the TARDIS, which had moved the infirmary into the space normally occupied by the kitchen. Matt and Dad laid Brem on the examining couch, and Dad raced over to a cupboard, throwing it open and rummaging through it.
“This,” he said, tossing a vial to Matt, who caught it reflexively. “The needles are sterilized. Inject him with three milligrams of that.” Dad’s voice was muffled, his head back in another cupboard. “It’ll coagulate the blood, slow the bleeding.”
Matt was already moving, grabbing a syringe and measuring out the liquid the Doctor had given him and pulling Brem’s arm out of the sleeve of his coat and pushing up the sleeves of his T-shirt so he could stick it into his arm without preamble.
Dad had shed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and was now bringing Matt a variety of supplies. “I understand our biology,” he said, laying them out. “I can knock him out and keep him under safely. Our anatomy’s the same as a human, basically, except for the second heart.” Dad paused in his monologue to peer at Matt. “Do you know about the second heart?”
Matt nodded.
“Okay.” Dad continued, laying out the supplies. “I’ll help you. We’ll get in, figure out how bad it is, and fix it.” Dad paused and surveyed his supplies and ran his hands absently through his hair, then looked at Matt. “Right?”
Matt nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Whatever that magical formula was, it worked. I think we’ll be okay, now that you got the bleeding to stop.”
“What did he tell you happened? Did he say?”
“He said ‘Daleks.’”
Dad frowned and looked at Brem. “Did he? That doesn’t make any sense. It wasn’t a Dalek who did this, he’d be dead already.” Dad walked over to the wound, which was clearer now that it had stopped gushing blood, and his frown deepened. “This was a gun. A sonic blaster. Why would he tell you it was Daleks?”
Matt had moved over to the infirmary’s sink, was washing his hands. “He was in bad shape when he showed up, maybe he was delirious.”
“Help me,” Mum said next to her, softly, and then moved toward Brem.
Athena and Fortuna, not knowing what she meant, exchanged a look, then followed her. She was tugging at the coat sleeve Brem was still wearing, and Athena understood then: She wanted his coat off him.
“Try to jostle him as little as possible,” she said, as they attempted to wriggle the coat off of him.
“What are you doing?” Dad asked, sounding annoyed.
“I’m taking his coat,” Mum said, firmly, her voice trembling with tears only the tiniest bit. “You’re going to need to undress him anyway to work, and he loves this coat. I’m going to clean it for him. He loves this coat,” she repeated, and then sniffed.
“Right,” said Dad, after a second, and helped them pick Brem up ever so slightly, so they could pull the coat out from under him. It was odd and disconcerting that Brem did not respond in the least, not even a flickering of consciousness, and Athena thought of Matt’s alarm over the amount of blood he had lost. Or, rather, she tried not to think about it.
They managed to get Brem’s coat off of him, somehow, and Mum said, “We’ll bring you tea.”
“Can I have coffee?” asked Matt. “If you have it? It’s the middle of the night for me, I’d rather have coffee.” He was studying the instruments her father had laid out for him, barely looking up, and Athena knew he was focused and that he had to focus and that he had to save Brem’s life but she would have liked it if he could have looked at her and smiled and then she would have felt like it was going to be alright.
“Coffee,” said Mum, Brem’s heavy velvet coat cradled in her arms. “Yes, I’ll bring you some.”
“Oh,” said Matt, vaguely. “Maybe a shirt, too?”
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Ten, Rose, OCs
Spoilers - Through the specials.
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids, they're all mine.)
Summary - Four Time Lords and a Bad Wolf human, gallivanting through time and space. What could possibly go wrong?
Author's Notes - Huge thanks to Kristin and chicklet73 , who talked through plot points. Special thanks to Kristin for coming up with the title. And even more thanks to jlrpuck and c73, who so graciously beta'd.
The icon was created by swankkat , commissioned by jlrpuck for my birthday.
Prologue - Ch 1 - Ch 2 - Ch 3 - Ch 4 - Ch 5 - Ch 6 - Ch 7 - Ch 8 - Ch 9
Chapter Ten
Brem stood and regarded the console of his TARDIS. He knew, unquestionably, what he needed to do. The problem was trusting it. The TARDIS would take him to the moment in time where he most needed to be; the problem was letting her.
Brem reached out, twisted some knobs and turned some dials, flipped some levers, took a deep breath, and brought his mallet down on the last button. The TARDIS jerked, and he grabbed onto the console to steady himself. Flights with the navigation set to “random” were always much less smooth than when he got to control and direct exactly where they were going.
The TARDIS landed with a crash that knocked him off his feet. He stood up and grabbed his coat and opened his TARDIS door, staring out at the planet. Cunodys was not in ruins. Indeed, it was a very pretty planet, covered in thick, blinding snow, with an impressively turreted city off in the distance. Brem stepped out of his TARDIS and locked it behind him, shrugging his coat on and looking around him curiously and wondering what he should do. Now that his TARDIS had taken him to this point in time, what was important about it? Was this when Athena had been spending all her time when she’d visited Cunodys? Was he supposed to go in search of her boyfriend? Strike out on his own?
He had thought, for some reason, that it would be obvious as soon as he let the TARDIS fly on her own, but now he was just as perplexed as he had been before getting there.
Until something fell from the sky.
It shot over his head, a streak of momentary gold, and he turned to follow its path, mouth open in amazement. Maybe, he thought, this “random flight” thing actually worked.
He watched the gold plummet, into a mountain range in the distance, and he raced into his TARDIS. “Alright then,” he said to the time rotor. “Show off your random skills again, and tell me where the thing landed.” Brem danced about the controls, spinning and clicking and pushing and pulling, and it was not exactly the best flight, what with the TARDIS struggling her way through the space. Brem wished he could help, but he had no real idea what had fallen from the sky, just that it was desperately important for some reason and he needed to find it.
The TARDIS crashed to a stop. Brem grabbed onto the console to regain his balance, then raced outside. The terrain was crowded with snow-covered rock piles, huge heaps of rubble, and Brem wondered if there had been an avalanche, as that was what it looked like to him. Avalanche or no, the important thing was that in front of him was a ditch hollowed out of the snow, steaming, as if it had been abruptly heated by something falling through the atmosphere.
Brem moved forward slowly, sonic screwdriver out. He didn’t think it would be dangerous, but who knew? After all, it wasn’t entirely clear to him how something falling from the sky could be connected to Athena’s time skips, but the coincidence was too strong to be ignored - especially as they seldom happened to Time Lords.
Brem peered into the disrupted snow, seeing nothing. He crouched, poking about with the sonic screwdriver, wondering what size the object had been. Not very large, to judge by what had streaked over his head, and that meant it would be harder to-
Brem froze, staring at the diamond his sonic screwdriver had knocked against. A diamond. He smiled. A diamond that must have just fallen in the sky. But what in the universe did a diamond have to do with anything? Even a fairly large, well-cut, high-quality diamond.
Curious, Brem reached out and touched it and-
There was noise noise so much noise shouts and wails and yelling and the sound of metal upon metal and-
Brem, gasping, dropped the diamond and scrabbled away from it. He was breathing so shallowly he thought his respiratory bypass was in danger of kicking in, and he forced himself to take a deep breath, to calm himself down. He stared at the diamond, looking completely unassuming. And yet his head was echoing with noise. The noise was throbbing through him. He’d never heard anything so loud, and it had all been in his head.
And so that had to be it. A diamond with some kind of…property he didn’t understand. Much like the time skips. Two incomprehensible things that had to fit together somehow.
Brem took another deep breath, steeling himself, and slowly reached over and firmly closed his hand around the diamond-
Noise noise shouting screaming crying desperate tears protests pleading metal explosion and whispers now, voices, voices, whispering, whispering, whispering, brightness, flashes, swirls of color, scattered stars, a burst of orange, glints of silver, Daleks-
Brem forced himself to let go of the diamond and found that he was sitting in the snow, one hand curled into it, its cold seeping into him. He wasn’t sure what he had seen or heard, couldn’t comprehend much of it, it had been constellations he didn’t recognize and voices he didn’t know, saying words he couldn’t make out, and there had been more of them than he felt his head could accommodate, they had pressed inside of him until he had felt in danger of losing himself in the melee, and the only thing that had made any sort of sense had been the Daleks.
Daleks, he thought, or, at least, tried to think, over the pounding of his head through him. Daleks. It had something to do with Daleks. He had to get back to his TARDIS, he realized. He had to get back to his TARDIS and wait for his head to clear so he could think.
Holding his breath, he grabbed the diamond-
Yelling shouting wailing screaming whispers-
He dropped it in his pocket, relieved to not have to hold it again, and dragged himself to his feet. The world tipped sickeningly, and for a second he put his hands out, as if to catch his balance on a console that wasn’t there, and then he forced himself forward, shaking his head a bit, trying to get it to stop swimming and his feet to start walking. He focused on the TARDIS in front of him, stumbling a bit in his haste to get there. Cunodys, and the diamond in his pocket, and the visions of Daleks, made him anxious to be back in his TARDIS, to have the door closed and locked and get back into the Vortex and-
The pain in his side was so stunning and shocking and unexpected that he fell over. And, for a moment, he looked down at the sight of his own blood without understanding it. Then he did understand, and somewhere underneath everything, he found himself finding the strength to stand up, finding, somewhere, the ability to dash for his TARDIS. A life full of running, he thought, dimly, had maybe prepared him for just this moment. He could hear someone approaching him, coming after him; could hear the sound of some sort of laser gun going off behind him, just before he lunged for the TARDIS door, relieved he hadn’t bothered to lock it, and he tumbled through it and slammed it behind him.
The TARDIS was shockingly silent, except for the fact that he was breathing very loudly. He didn’t even try to catch his breath. His head was pounding and his side was throbbing and his hand pressed against his stomach was covered in blood and he staggered to the console and blinked his vision clear and set his coordinates.
***
Matt was sleeping. Athena laid on her side and watched him sleep. She had seen him asleep before-in her opinion, Matt worked far too hard, which resulted in far too much exhaustion-but she had never actually laid in his bed and watched him sleep, and this was better by far.
He was fragile-looking in sleep, she thought, not for the first time. She looked at the delicate crescent of his eyelashes against his cheeks, at the small jut of his lower lip, more pronounced now because he was not smiling or frowning, and Matt was almost always doing one or the other, which she loved about him. Except that he’d neither smiled nor frowned but had kissed her, and the thought was astonishing enough that she smiled widely at absolutely nothing in giddy delight.
She wriggled gently, trying not to disturb him, fitting her head into his gaps, the space left empty for her by the curve of his neck. He shifted a bit, enough to accommodate her, but he did not wake, and she relaxed against him and smiled again. She never slept with any of her boyfriends. She really wasn’t planning on sleeping now, she was not the least bit tired. But it was kind of nice to pretend.
She realized that she could hear his heart beating. She listened for a bit, to the steady single thrum of it, absorbing the fact that there it was, the earnest instrument keeping Matt alive for her. She knew there was more to it, of course, that every human being was a complex organism, that there were other parts of himself Matt could not have survived without, but to her, suddenly, at that moment, his heartbeat was everything. She wrapped her arms around him as much as she could and snuggled him closer, wanting to always be between his heartbeat and every terrible danger the universe had to offer.
She laid like that for a very long time, letting their timelines spin in her head, breathing and listening to his heartbeat. Eventually, she admitted she was bored. Maybe, she thought, she could fix them something to eat for breakfast or whatever meal it might be time for.
She slid out of his bed while he slept on, and grabbed his discarded shirt from the floor. It was a dark midnight blue, a color that suited him, and she noticed now that it had a cheerful, waving, pale pink penguin embroidered on it. She smiled, recognizing the logo as belonging to a company that wouldn’t be founded for a few decades yet. She pulled it on and buttoned a few buttons, hunted for her hair ribbon and pulled her hair back, and walked through his living room to his kitchen. As usual, his kitchen was poorly stocked, and she sighed. She contemplated getting properly dressed to go down to her TARDIS to get them proper food, but decided it was too much effort. She filled his kettle instead and set it on the stove, and, waiting for it to whistle, stood in front of his refrigerator examining his magnets, one of which was the pad that still held her scrawled note: “Thank-you treat in the fridge. -A.” She smiled, realizing he’d kept it.
“You got out of bed,” he said. His voice was rough and gravelly with sleep, and when she glanced at him, he was rubbing at his eyes.
“You kept my note,” she said.
“I did,” he agreed, solemnly, looking at her. “You’re wearing my shirt.”
“I am. Is that okay?”
“Oh, much better than that.”
“It’s a shirt from the future.”
“Yes, well, what’s the point of having all these time-travelers around if I don’t get some good gifts every once in a while?”
“You’re all dressed,” she said, walking over to him and wrinkling her nose.
He glanced down at the pajama pants and T-shirt he was wearing. “Well,” he said. “Not really. If we’re lodging complaints, you have your hair up.”
“I always have my hair up,” she said.
“Not always,” he replied, and then, in delight, “You’re blushing!”
“No, I’m not,” she denied, although she was fairly sure she was.
“You are. It’s cute.”
“Stop it,” she said, and pressed her face against the soft fabric of the T-shirt covering his chest.
“Sorry,” he said, rubbing at her arms and kissing the top of her head. “I didn’t mean to make you blush. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever seen you blush before.”
She wasn’t sure she ever had blushed before, but she also wasn’t sure she wanted to admit that to him, so she simply breathed.
“Are you making yourself tea?” he asked.
“I was. Do you want some? I didn’t really mean to wake you, if you wanted to sleep longer-”
“You didn’t wake me. I’ll have tea with you.”
“You have no food, you know.”
“Well, you haven’t been to visit for a while.”
“I have Thhhhhhhhhhhmyrian fudge for you in my TARDIS.”
“Do you feel like going out to your TARDIS?”
“Not particularly.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not particularly.”
“Good. Let’s have a cup of tea and go back to bed.”
She smiled against him. “I love you.”
“You’re just saying that,” he said.
She would have kissed him, but the kettle whistled, so she darted out of his embrace to pour them tea, Matt helping, retrieving mugs and teabags and sugar. Through silent agreement, they carried their mugs of tea into his living room and sat on his couch. Athena, feeling Matt’s gaze and anticipating his next question, made a great show of blowing on her tea.
“Tell me about the time skips,” he said.
She looked at him. He was holding his mug casually, his elbow propped on the back of the couch, half-turned to face her. She shrugged a little bit.
“Have they stopped?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Have you had one since you’ve been here?”
“No,” she said, honestly.
He examined her face for a moment, as if trying to ascertain whether or not she was lying, and then he nodded and took a sip of his tea. “What’s the plan, for dealing with them?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. Can we not talk about them? It’s been so nice to go so long without one, to not have to think about them. Can we do that for a little while longer?”
“Yes,” he agreed, and leaned over and put his tea down on the coffee table. “Will you promise to tell me if one happens?”
“Yes. Promise.”
“Good.”
She echoed his movement, putting her own tea down, and then snuggled into him. “Matt,” she murmured, “do you know your sweatshirt?”
“My sweatshirt? What?”
“Your sweatshirt. The time we went to New France, and-” Athena cut herself off abruptly, stiffening in Matt’s arms, because Brem, in her head, had shouted.
“And what?” said Matt. “Theenie?”
Brem wasn’t shouting. He was-He was-She had never felt or heard anything like it. She pulled back from Matt.
“Athena.” He grabbed at her hands. “Athena, breathe. You’re not breathing. What is it? Is it a time skip? My God, you’re shaking and you’re white as a ghost. Look at me and tell me what’s wrong. Athena.”
“It’s Brem,” she said, dazedly. “There’s something…something very, very wrong…”
“What? Theenie, what-“
“We need to find him,” she said, desperately, Brem’s panic in her head rising now within her. “We need to find him and-”
“Of course, we’ll-”
The unmistakable sound of a TARDIS materializing interrupted him. They both turned their heads, watching as the TARDIS blinking into existence showed herself to be red.
Matt let out a breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. “Look,” he said. “He’s coming to us, see?”
Athena did not find this as reassuring as Matt wanted her to, because Brem in her head was still sending out such huge waves of panic that he was drowning out everything around her. She watched as Brem opened his TARDIS door, took an uncertain step into the living room, and promptly collapsed to the floor.
Matt leaped up immediately, racing over to where Brem had fallen. Athena followed him, forcing herself to move through her frozen horror. Matt was talking to Brem, his voice sharp, and now he was pushing Brem’s coat out of the way, and Athena could see that Brem’s T-shirts were soaked with blood.
She heard Brem mumble, “Daleks,” which managed to pull her attention away from the sight of his blood, and then he went utterly silent in her head, which was so terrifying that she made an involuntary noise.
Matt was pulling his T-shirt off, pressing it against the wound in Brem’s side. “What does it mean? ‘Daleks’? Do you know what it means?” He glanced at her worriedly.
The worry on his face terrified her even more, which she would not have thought possible. “Is he dead?” she asked, fearfully.
“What? No. Unconscious. Athena, I need you to get your father here for me.”
“He’s coming,” said Athena. “He can’t not. You don’t understand…In our heads…”
She heard her parents’ TARDIS materializing behind her, and she turned, in time to see her father march out the door. She had known he was called the Oncoming Storm all her life-she could not remember a time when her mother had not teased him about the nickname-but she had never understood it until that moment. She took an automatic step away from him as he swept over to Brem.
“What happened?” he snapped.
“I have no idea,” said Matt, looking up from where he was applying pressure. “How much blood can y’all lose? Because he’s losing buckets here in front of me, he’s going to bleed out on my damn living room floor unless you know how to do something that I don’t.”
Someone’s fingers curled into hers, and Athena looked over to find her mother standing next to her, and Athena wondered if she looked as starkly terrified as her mother looked.
“We need to get him into the TARDIS,” said Dad, springing into action. He lifted Brem as if he were still nothing more than a baby, and Athena tried to remember the last time she had seen her father carry him that way. Dad leaned over, whispering something into Brem’s ear, and Athena wondered what it was, and whether Brem, so silent in their heads, could hear it.
“What happened?” gasped Fortuna, and Athena realized she hadn’t even heard her TARDIS arrive.
Athena shook her head, because she still had no idea. The three of them trailed behind Matt, Brem, and Dad into the TARDIS, which had moved the infirmary into the space normally occupied by the kitchen. Matt and Dad laid Brem on the examining couch, and Dad raced over to a cupboard, throwing it open and rummaging through it.
“This,” he said, tossing a vial to Matt, who caught it reflexively. “The needles are sterilized. Inject him with three milligrams of that.” Dad’s voice was muffled, his head back in another cupboard. “It’ll coagulate the blood, slow the bleeding.”
Matt was already moving, grabbing a syringe and measuring out the liquid the Doctor had given him and pulling Brem’s arm out of the sleeve of his coat and pushing up the sleeves of his T-shirt so he could stick it into his arm without preamble.
Dad had shed his coat and rolled up his sleeves, and was now bringing Matt a variety of supplies. “I understand our biology,” he said, laying them out. “I can knock him out and keep him under safely. Our anatomy’s the same as a human, basically, except for the second heart.” Dad paused in his monologue to peer at Matt. “Do you know about the second heart?”
Matt nodded.
“Okay.” Dad continued, laying out the supplies. “I’ll help you. We’ll get in, figure out how bad it is, and fix it.” Dad paused and surveyed his supplies and ran his hands absently through his hair, then looked at Matt. “Right?”
Matt nodded again. “Yes,” he said. “It’ll be fine. Whatever that magical formula was, it worked. I think we’ll be okay, now that you got the bleeding to stop.”
“What did he tell you happened? Did he say?”
“He said ‘Daleks.’”
Dad frowned and looked at Brem. “Did he? That doesn’t make any sense. It wasn’t a Dalek who did this, he’d be dead already.” Dad walked over to the wound, which was clearer now that it had stopped gushing blood, and his frown deepened. “This was a gun. A sonic blaster. Why would he tell you it was Daleks?”
Matt had moved over to the infirmary’s sink, was washing his hands. “He was in bad shape when he showed up, maybe he was delirious.”
“Help me,” Mum said next to her, softly, and then moved toward Brem.
Athena and Fortuna, not knowing what she meant, exchanged a look, then followed her. She was tugging at the coat sleeve Brem was still wearing, and Athena understood then: She wanted his coat off him.
“Try to jostle him as little as possible,” she said, as they attempted to wriggle the coat off of him.
“What are you doing?” Dad asked, sounding annoyed.
“I’m taking his coat,” Mum said, firmly, her voice trembling with tears only the tiniest bit. “You’re going to need to undress him anyway to work, and he loves this coat. I’m going to clean it for him. He loves this coat,” she repeated, and then sniffed.
“Right,” said Dad, after a second, and helped them pick Brem up ever so slightly, so they could pull the coat out from under him. It was odd and disconcerting that Brem did not respond in the least, not even a flickering of consciousness, and Athena thought of Matt’s alarm over the amount of blood he had lost. Or, rather, she tried not to think about it.
They managed to get Brem’s coat off of him, somehow, and Mum said, “We’ll bring you tea.”
“Can I have coffee?” asked Matt. “If you have it? It’s the middle of the night for me, I’d rather have coffee.” He was studying the instruments her father had laid out for him, barely looking up, and Athena knew he was focused and that he had to focus and that he had to save Brem’s life but she would have liked it if he could have looked at her and smiled and then she would have felt like it was going to be alright.
“Coffee,” said Mum, Brem’s heavy velvet coat cradled in her arms. “Yes, I’ll bring you some.”
“Oh,” said Matt, vaguely. “Maybe a shirt, too?”
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