eponymous_rose

Title: The Deepsky Atlas (7/?)
Author:

eponymous_rose
Word Count: 1,858
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Adventure, Humour
Characters: Fourth Doctor, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane Smith

Summary: For all the death and chaos, the world turns blithely on. An old friend makes an unexpected - and wholly uninvited - reappearance.

Part One: Circinus | Part Two: Caelum
Part Three: Eridanus | Part Four: Setus
Part Five: Dorado | Part Six: Leo

THE DEEPSKY ATLAS

 CHAPTER SEVEN

It was quiet when Harry came back to himself.

He knew because there'd been the infernal roaring in his ears, quiet and deafening all at once, and now it was gone he could hear his heart pounding fit to burst. It took him a few minutes to convince his stomach that being sick was probably not the wisest course of action - at least until he'd managed to get his bearings.

Distant thoughts filtered through to him, memories of being afraid for Sarah and the Doctor, of being afraid for his own life, of being afraid for the dying masses, for the blood smearing across the white robes, over and over and over-

There was a hand tight around his, squeezing the life from it. He glanced up, and Sarah was sitting beside him, and her face was like the robes, all white and streaked with blood.

"I say," he said, shakily, and made a valiant attempt to squeeze her hand. "Are you all right?"

She met his eyes, and she was crying, and he felt the fog lifting from his mind as he attempted to categorize her injuries: a gash along her cheekbone, already swelling with a bruise, and a bleeding nose. Like most facial injuries, it probably looked worse than it was, though there was always the chance she'd fractured some small bones. He fished in his pocket for a handkerchief and handed it over.

"Thanks," she said, and dabbed at her eyes, completely ignoring the blood on her face. He didn't press the issue; his hands were cold, especially the one she was still gripping so tightly, and he knew he must be in shock. His mind didn't seem to want to work properly, to make connections, and he was getting tired of losing track of what-

He sat up straight, took in the scene around them. An alcove, just out of sight of the altar - the one he'd hidden in when the killing had started - and there were smears of blood on the ground nearby. He couldn't for the life of him recall how they'd got there, and said so.

Sarah's eyes took on a worried cast, and he found himself understanding her annoyance at his own habitual concern. "I'm not made of glass, Sarah," he added.

"You saw something terrible," she said. Her voice was steadier than his, and that frustrated him more than anything else. "The Doctor said you'd-" She paused, looked away. "-you'd have trouble coming to terms with that."

"All right," said Harry, because it seemed reasonable enough - his mind felt as cold as his fingers, and thinking too hard about the blood on the ground, or what lay just round the corner, made the back of his neck prickle. Shell-shock, he reckoned, or some variation thereof. He'd be no help to them if he tried too hard to remember, let himself think about what had happened- "Where is the Doctor, anyway?"

Sarah sniffled, which set her nose to bleeding again, and pinched it with the hand holding the handkerchief. "He's talking to Caelum."

Caelum. Harry felt the shiver down his spine again, saw the red on white, and stood up, pulling Sarah with him. "Come on," he said. "I think I've got a thing or two to say to Caelum."

She planted her feet; she was squeezing his hand as hard as ever, and he stumbled with the force of her grip. "Harry," she said, softly and urgently. "Harry, the Doctor's told us to wait here. You know him; he won't let Caelum walk away. Not after this."

Memories, now, but dispassionate, unfeeling. He was distant, judging from afar. "I don't suppose he's given a rational explanation for that?"

Sarah shook her head, and he saw the tears starting up again. It took him a moment to realise that his own eyes were wet, had been for some time.

When Sarah spoke, her voice was strong, though she was swaying on her feet. "It's terrible, Harry," she said. "He really is mad. He needs to see that. But we shouldn't disturb them."

"What do you think the Doctor's doing to him?" Harry said, and they were silent for a moment, neither voicing the possibility that Caelum might hurt the Doctor, might kill him like the rest. It seemed impossible, after the glimpses of fire and thunder they'd seen.

"I'd say the Doctor's a force to be reckoned with," Sarah said with a weak grin.

"You know him better," Harry said, and asked the question they'd both been dreading. "Do you think he'll kill Caelum?"

"Of course not," Sarah said, so quickly that he almost believed her. But now he was remembering, and he could hear the fury, the cold hatred in the Doctor's voice. For all his distance and eccentricities, he valued life more highly than anything; and to have so many slaughtered mercilessly, unfeelingly-

"He wouldn't, Harry," she said again, and squeezed his numb fingers. "Caelum's mad; surely he can't be held accountable just because someone locked him in a lighthouse for ages!"

"No, of course not," said Harry, but the words stung in his throat. "The Doctor's probably figuring out the best way to help him, to get him to help us."

"We'll get out of here," Sarah said. "We'll sort out this time distortion, figure out who all these people were, set history back on track. And then we'll get back to the TARDIS."

"Oh, the TARDIS," said Harry, unable to suppress a wistful sigh. "Never thought I'd miss the old danger-to-life-and-limb so much."

"I know what you mean," said Sarah, smiling. She winced at the motion, and cupped the handkerchief to her cheek as though registering the injury for the first time.

Harry felt a chill run down his spine as he tried to piece together what had happened and came up with missing sections. "Look, what happened to you back there? You and the Doctor look like death warmed over."

She snorted, which probably wasn't doing her bleeding nose any favours. "You're one to talk." He rolled his eyes, and she nudged him with her elbow, grinning cheekily. It was so very nearly normal, except that her hand was still tightly gripping his, and neither of them was talking about the blood on the altar. "Some great creature with fangs and teeth and fur. You know, the usual sort that lives in caves and secret passages."

"That's all we need," said Harry.

"I quite agree."

They both spun round to see the Doctor leaning against a wall nearby, his brow furrowed in thought. The end of his scarf was red where it had trailed through the streams of blood on the floor, and the front of his shirt and coat were torn to ribbons. He looked, for once, utterly exhausted; Harry had trouble reconciling this tired face with the one that had grinned across the TARDIS console at him so many times.

"Doctor!" said Sarah, but neither of them quite knew what to ask first.

"Caelum's gone off to give the bodies a proper burial," said the Doctor. "Some pledge of honour."

Harry felt his hands tightening into fists, and wrenched away from Sarah's grip. He wanted to say something deep and stirring about justice, about responsibility, and some part of him even wanted to rail at the Doctor for bringing them here, for playing as though it were all some grand adventure.

The Doctor looked up, looked right at him with a coldness in his eyes, an expression so profoundly alien that the little part of Harry's mind that still comfortably denied the existence of Time Lords curled up in a ball and hid away.

He found himself looking at Sarah, instead, and she had such resignation on her face that he knew she'd seen this before; she'd seen this before and still she travelled with him. But, for all that she'd witnessed horrors, she'd lived past them, and could stand at Harry's side and smile and make jokes and hate that he called her 'old thing'.

Very slowly, Harry felt his hands relax, felt the muscles loosen. "It's a sort of justice, Harry," said the Doctor.

The cold was fading fast from his fingers, from his mind. "He did it to protect me," Harry said at last, and felt himself shaking with the sheer force of the admission. "One of them came at me with a knife, and Caelum just-"

"It's all right, Harry," the Doctor said, and smiled, and suddenly his eyes didn't seem quite so cold. "It's all right now."

Sarah patted his shoulder, and he took her hand back in his. "Honestly," she said, and her grin beneath the mask of blood was like an ember in the ashes. "From the way you were carrying on, you'd think you were responsible."

"Now!" said the Doctor, as though that settled the matter. "I believe you'd just made an excellent suggestion, Harry."

"I had?" Harry said, and Sarah snickered at his incredulous tone of voice. "Of course I had," he amended quickly.

"You thought that a great creature with fangs and teeth and fur was all we needed," the Doctor clarified.

"Oh," said Harry. "Well, I thought I was being sarcastic, but I suppose it was possible I was being terribly clever instead."

The Doctor grinned. "I think," he said, "that we could learn rather a lot from our friend in the caves."

"Friend," Sarah said, her voice again muffled by Harry's handkerchief. "Funny sort of friend."

"He seemed reasonably intelligent," the Doctor said. "And besides, it was his conversational acumen - or rather, his longwindedness - that gave me enough time to get to you."

Sarah shrugged, conceding the point. "All right, then, Doctor. But supposing he isn't ready for a nice chat, considering you clouted him with a rock when last we met."

"Oh," the Doctor said, "I'm sure he'll be willing to let bygones be bygones."

"We'll be the bygones," Sarah muttered, "if he catches up with us."

"What a terribly astute observation," said a quiet, cultured voice. They all jumped - Harry was beginning to wish people would stop sneaking up from behind, or at least get into the habit of knocking before pouncing on them - and turned.

Fur. Teeth. Claws. The creature reached halfway to the ceiling, and stood on limbs that looked rather like tree trunks, solid and stocky.

It had four eyes, and managed to pack rather a lot of malevolence into its multifaceted glare.

"Hello again," it said, and Harry resisted the urge to look around for the source of the gentle voice - after all he'd seen, a great beast with quiet, precise speech was just implausible enough to make sense. "I get the distinct impression that this time I'll kill you slowly, and properly."

"Isn't that nice?" the Doctor said with a grin. "I do so hate leaving a job half-finished."

"For all that fools and half-wits have never agreed with my digestion," the creature said, agreeably, "I imagine you lot will go down a treat."