Fight or Flight ( Doctor Who Fanfiction )

The Doctor's Wife

"And then we discovered it wasn't the Robot King after all, it was the real one. Fortunately, I was able to re-attach the head."

I leaned back and closed my eyes as I listened to him recount an adventure to Rory, who seemed unimpressed.

"Do you two believe any of this stuff?" Rory asked.

"We were there," Amelia and I answered in sync, both deadpan. The difference was, Amy wasn't known for being deadpan. Rory and I both took notice, hypersensitive to her moods. I almost stood up to follow her as she walked past the control deck and down the next flight of stairs, but Rory got up at the same time and I quickly sat back into my seat. Old habits.

Anyway, after our talk on Avery's ship, I could easily guess what was wrong. Neither of us were sleeping well, and we were both finding it difficult to be around the Doctor lately with the looming memory of his death following us like shadows: A darker version of this life hanging onto us, unreal and palpable at the same time.

He was still talking. "Omara wasn't there, actually. I believe she stayed behind at the bank to ensure..."

The story trailed off as he realized I was his only audience, and we locked eyes for a second.

"How's your head, Omara?"

I folded my arms. The few conversations we had recently were tense, formal, and centering mostly around my health. Gone was all the trust and ease from before America. Though it couldn't have been more than a few months, the memory of our picnic in the Andromeda galaxy felt a decade old.

Once again I was a detachable problem, a patient to be fixed up and sent on my way.

And I was back to giving him hell.

"Better than ever," I quipped, looking at him through deadened eyes that throbbed as badly as the rest of my head. "I can't even remember what pain feels like."

"Glorious," came his sarcastic reply. "Remind me to see you in the med bay later."

"Do you think you'll survive if I don't?" I barely held off a sneer, but it was clear in my tone.

"What was that?" Rory and Amy poked up from below the control deck to see what was going on.

"The door. It knocked." The Doctor approached the door with a hesitant cadence.

"Right. We are in deep space."

"Very, very deep. And somebody's knocking."

I frowned and stood finally, and blinked away a nasty headrush.

When he pulled the door open, a small white-glowing box floated before us innocuously.

"Oh, come here. Come here, you scrumptious little beauty," he goaded, and it did - barreling straight into his chest and throwing him to the ground.

When he rose, he looked at it in his hands like a poor man with a bar of gold.

"A box?" Asked Rory.

Amy took a hesitant forwards step: "Doctor, what is it?"

I couldn't recall the last time I saw him glow like this. He could barely tear his wide, gleeful eyes away. "I've got mail! " He leaped up to the console, twirling the box in his hands and pacing like an excited schoolboy. It was unnerving. "Time Lord emergency messaging system. In an emergency, we'd wrap up thoughts in psychic containers and send them through time and space. Anyway, there's a living Time Lord still out there, and it's one of the good ones."

"You said there weren't any other Time Lords left."

"There are no Time Lords left anywhere in the universe. But the universe isn't where we're going. See that snake?"