Peyton spits an upsetting amount of blood from her mouth as she slides down the wall. "Doctor!" She cries.
For a second, she thinks he may not have heard her over the sound of the showering of blaster fire down an adjacent corridor.
"I'm a little bit busy here!" He grunts, shoulder deep into a maintenance panel in the wall of the spaceship.
Peyton splitters, dribbling more blood down her chin, as she looks up at the Time Lord who is ignoring the woman bleeding from the mouth on the floor beside him.
"Doctor!" She groans, a hand rushing to her abdomen where a concerning pain was blooming beneath her rib.
"Oh, if you're gonna bleed out, can you do it quietly? I am trying to save our lives."
"I am going to kill you-hoo-uuu..." Peyton realises the difficult way that exerting too much effort leads to the burnt and bleeding flesh of her side protesting against the movement. She closes her eyes tight as if that would help block out the sounds of blaster fire creeping closer. "Help me up!"
The Doctor takes his sweet time before Peyton is tugged upwards, arm pulled around the shoulders of the man just a few inches taller than her.
"Argh!" She cries, the force of being dragged down the corridor tugs at the hole torn through her side by a guardsman with half-decent aim.
"Could you be any louder, I don't think they quite heard you," the Doctor says through gritted teeth.
"They went this way!"
"Oh, good, they did hear you," the Doctor chimes, quickening his pace.
"Just get me in the Tardis, and then get rid of the terrorists," Peyton huffs before coughing so hard her vision begins to fade. "Doc..."
• • •
Peyton opens her eyes to see a white ceiling and a fluorescent light above her head.
"Morning," the Doctor says, sitting at the end of the hospital bed. He has a concerned look on his face and an open book on his lap, a bony finger holding the pages open.
"Morning," Peyton grumbles.
She tries to sit up and notices the wound in her side giving her very little grief, though a large plaster covers most of her side which limits her movement.
"You lost a lot of blood by the time we got to the Tardis," the Doctor says. "Passed out on the way, you're heavier than you look by the way."
"You trying to be funny instead of apologising?" Peyton glares, reaching for a glass of water that had been left on the table beside her bed.
"Apologise?"
Peyton takes a sip before answering, letting the cool water cover her throat. "You left me, Doctor, you ran off to do your own thing and on my way back to you, I got shot, I almost died."
"Yeah," the Doctor nods, looking away from her. "I was hoping you would just start regenerating on the way here, but I guess not."
"I guess not," Peyton mutters angrily.
"A long time ago you told me that you wanted me to stop treating you like a fragile little human. I didn't listen to you that day," the Doctor says quietly in his gruff accent. "But you were right. I just wasn't expecting loosening the reins to be this difficult."
"Doctor, are you opening up about your feelings with me right now?" Peyton tilts her head to one side, trying not to sound too sarcastic.
"Thought I'd give it a go," the Doctor mumbles, pulling something small from his pocket and fiddling with it between his fingers. "Don't expect it to be a frequent occurrence."
YOU ARE READING
The Time Lord's Apprentice
Fanfiction"But, you're impossible!" "Yeah, and the world is ending, I don't think now is the time." Peyton is an orphan, taken from her mother as an infant by the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. She is raised separately from other children because she is spec...
