In Captivity
Somehow, they end up locked away together.
Some sort of alien with a thing for locking up humanoids and parading them in front of his important friends like a turn-of-the-century zoo. All cold and steel, including metal bars close together on the fourth wall.
The Doctor can read their sign, and he's quite sure that Tegan could too. If she would stop stomping around the cage, that is. Cage, the Doctor thinks. It's all beginning to feel all too familiar. I shouldn't think one should be so familiar with cages. Or ropes or handcuffs, for that matter.
He's leaning casually against the back wall to their cage, watching her pace between full yawns and disinterested glances at the dwindling crowd outside their new hovel.
"They're quite interested in you," the Doctor remarks, and he hears the crowd of creatures outside gasp at her violent turn in his direction.
Like a television drama, he thinks with an interior chuckle. Oh, she'll give them their money's worth, if that's what they've come for.
After all, their sign did read "Mating Couple in Captivity."
"How can you sit there and take this?" she cries, gesticulating widely. The eyes of the gathered crowd, six to a watcher, follow her arms like tennis volleys.
"What else would you have me do, Tegan?" He asks, folding his arms calmly in his lap. "The door is sealed on a timed release, and they've taken away all my interesting little bits and bobs to fiddle with such things. I'm afraid we're to do nothing until they open the door to feed us. Aside from entertaining our guests," he adds with a delighted little wave at their voyeurs. One of the younger creatures chuckles and looks away, its entire body flushing rosy pink.
"Rabbits!" She shouts, banging again on the door that led to the corridor they'd been shuffled through only an hour previous. "There's got to be something! I'm not just going to sit around and take it!"
"Don't worry about it," he urges, patting the ground beside him invitingly. "We've been in worse situations." He smiles, that pretty little lopsided thing he uses only for her. "Besides, I don't think I saw a single android. That's a relief, hmm?"
She doesn't agree. The crowd watches her back go stiff like a tree, arms crossed, brow heavy and furrowed, lip pouting out in their practiced routine. The Doctor's seen it all before, they can tell. His smile falls but not completely. It hangs on by the barest little tug, his eyes soft but firm, his head tilting at the slightest angle to set her off her stick-straight stance.
"Tegan," he says again, softer.
The crowd of aliens outside cry and clamor, frustrated by the lack of translation. If only they could understand the strange grunting language of these humanoids. These two were far more entertaining than the brooding ginger creature who did nothing more than sulk and stare, occasionally jumping at one of the smaller visitors and causing the poor thing to cry and run for its parents.
She takes her seat beside the Doctor, fuming and red-faced and absolutely refusing to communicate with him in any way. She tucks her knees under her and turns her back to him and ignores him like one ignores a bad smell. And he sighs, drums his fingers on his knees and they go into stasis.
Like the arguing, it's something they've learned. Prolonged exposure. Pavlovian response, almost. When she sighs and clicks her tongue in disapproval, his eyes move down to his feet. When he attempts to buck her up, an encouraging smile or remark about something small, superfluous, she sticks her nose up and doesn't even spare him a glance.
And, eventually, the crowd gets bored. Mating couple in captivity, indeed. Maybe the female wasn't in season. The creatures move on, purring in their own language as they slither on to the next diorama. The light is leaving the world, turning the sky above their enclosure to soft lavender.
"It's lovely," the Doctor remarks, leaning his head back against the cold steel wall to stare out at the sunset. His knees tucked up near his chest, his hair flattened against the wall behind him, his lazy eyes catching the last golden light of day.
Tegan glances up, doesn't catch his eye, hardly looks at the sunset. "I wonder what they've done to poor Turlough."
The Doctor scoffs, a smile turned up on his lips as he tilts his head against the wall to gaze toward her. "Don't be silly. Poor Turlough, I thought I'd never hear such a thing." He rolls his head back, staring at the sunset once again. "No, he's fine." A light chuckle. "Perhaps they've put him in the petting zoo."
"I don't think it's very funny," she protests, and the last straggling visitors strolling by their cage give them interested glances.
"We'll be out of here by morning," he assures her in as easy a voice as he possesses. "I promise you that, Tegan."
She doesn't bring up the old jabs about Heathrow. It's been too long a time between them to bring that up again. He knows that she very well could, and it's almost as if his eyes lingering on her are asking her to, asking her to call him out in front of these six-eyed watchers.
But she doesn't.
The gates close at dusk, and the ambience of a city street is finally turned off the loudspeakers around the enclosure. The glass domed ceiling far overhead sparkles with the last of the light, and, very suddenly, the world is dark and quiet.
Someone in one of the far cages is crying. A little girl. She hasn't even learned to talk yet. Tegan can see the way the Doctor's mouth turns down as he just sits and listens to the nighttime cries of the caged humanoids all around them. As he is, where he is, he can't do anything for them. And it's breaking his hearts. Listening to that little girl cry, the emptiness of the night moving in around them and the drifting, unanswered cries for help, the Doctor can do nothing.
She shifts her knees, her legs quickly falling asleep, and tilts herself to face him. His profile is dark blue against the black night outside their cage.
"Sorry," she says at last. "You were right."
He's not looking at her. He keeps his eyes on the space outside their cage. But he smiles. She can see it even in the darkness, by the stars.
"About what?"
He's so damn frustrating sometimes. Egotistical, childish, know-it-all. But she'll let him have that. She hasn't been exactly helpful recently.
"We've been through worse."
She thought of Adric. Of too many misadventures, of androids and poisoned rats and maniacal Timelords, but mostly of Adric.
His smile falls, just the smallest bit, and he lowers his head away from the wall. He tries a chuckle, something with only half of one of his hearts. "A small victory on my part, I suppose."
And he's done it again. Without even trying, he's made her feel sorry for herself, embarrassed, some sort of instinct kicking up in her to make things better. To mend. She didn't remember having that instinct before she met the Doctor. Before she'd accidentally wandered into a police box and met a strange man all teeth and curls.
And then she'd met him again. And she's sure that she liked this one infinitely better.
"Now, don't make that face," he interrupts.
Tegan hasn't even realized she's made a face. It's worry, consternation, something she's grown so used to that she hardly realizes when it's come up again. She's tempted to cover that face with both hands and disappear.
He won't have any of that. She falls easily against his shoulder, his arm wrapped softly around her back, keeping her close. Reminded. Warm. They're so much warmer together than the cold air of night in the enclosure. Both heartbeats thrum in her ears. Like a sound she's somehow familiar with, beating out of synch with her own. Like a cold night wrapped in too many comforters in her tiny bed, eight years old and staring out at the snow coating the twilight purple landscape outside her window.
"I'll make things right," he tells her, his voice stirring in her hair. "Don't you worry, Tegan. In the morning, we'll take our captor by surprise when he comes to feed us, free poor Turlough and nip back to the TARDIS like nothing ever happened."
Like nothing ever happened. Like his fingers weren't running tiny trails across her waist, his forehead hadn't touched hers and stayed there, perfectly contented. Like her voice hadn't been frightened away by their sheer proximity.
"What about everyone else?" she asks, completely off subject for a reason.
His fingers stop their circling at her hip for an instant. "Hm? Everyone--ah." His hand goes lax, flat on her waist. "Of course. There's no reason for anyone to be kept here. Why shouldn't we look into setting them free as well?"
She hears him smile, feels the muscles in his face tug back, just so much.
His breath in her hair, in and out with low, calm puffs. The smell of her; not that sterilized soapiness that humans seemed to love, slightly unclean, like she were worn in. A bit like a bed still clinging to its owner's sleep, sheets half rumpled as you tumble out.
"Thanks, Doc." She's not sure what she's thankful for. Surely there was something.
His laugh hums through his chest under her ear. "You're quite welcome, Tegan."
They go silent as they listen to the burbling of the little girl stuck somewhere out in the enclosure, afraid and alone and trapped on an alien planet to be stared at by paying customers. The Doctor holds Tegan tightly against him, more, he realizes, for his own comfort than for hers.
"Tegan," he begins again quite suddenly only five minutes later.
But she's asleep. He supposes it's better that way. Whatever he'd had to say couldn't have been that important anyhow. Some silly thing about her eyes.
When the morning comes, Tegan wakes to the sound of the Doctor knocking the skull of their captor against their finally-opened door, and the six-eyed alien crumples to the ground, unconscious. He raises his eyebrows enthusiastically at her and grins; that childish, silly, boyish grin. Then, purloined key ring in hand, he bounds out into the corridor. They free the girl first.
AN: Hello again, Whodom! Since my Valentine's Vignettes, I dipped my toes into the Five/Tegan fandom and I really couldn't help myself. I love these kids! Of note, I'm also posting all my Doctor Who fiction over on www . whofic . com, under the same name. If traffic there on these fics is better than traffic here, I might just end up moving all my WhoFic over there instead. Anyway, let me know what you think, leave us some love, and STAY AWESOME!!