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Victoria closed her eyes, struggling to regulate her shaking breaths in the dark. The Dauphine of Marrilossa belt had been furious with the Doctor’s investigations in his factory, and had apparently sentenced them to something called a reduction clamp.
What little she understood from the aghast Doctor’s explanations was more than she wanted to. It would be fatal, and painful, and leave very little remaining of their bodies.
She and her friends were separated, each shoved into a tiny chamber, no bigger than a cupboard. Jamie was still yelling something, but they must have knocked out the Doctor somehow- the last thing she saw over the shoulders of her own monstrous captors was his limp body, slumped in the guards’ arms like an old rag doll, as he was shoved into a container too.
Then the creatures shut the tube’s doors and left her in complete isolation. The guards didn’t bother to tie her down– there was no need. With so little room, she could barely move her arms to knock on the thick steel. She quickly ceased yelling, too- it was clear from the muffled, echoing quality of the sound that no one outside could hear her, and it made her feel even more choked and confined in the tiny space.
She waited in the dark of her cuddy, determined not to cry, not to give them that. That would be her prayer, if she had to- to die, she would do it bravely and properly- with grace. She would make her father proud.
She concentrated on that, and waited, and waited, but nothing came. Her eyes slowly adapted to the environment- the little slits of light between the metal seams, utterly invisible at first, now seemed to expand, and soon the empty black grew dim in the edges, more like a well-shuttered sickroom in the early morning. With no sign of the world, she couldn't guess how much time had passed. It could have been ages, or mere moments, but Victoria settled on ten minutes, probably. That felt both the most correct and least terrible.
Maybe the Doctor was already waking up, and soon his eyes will adjust too. Then he’ll pull them all out of this place, and expose the Dauphine, and stop the sickness, and they could go back to the new sitting room in the TARDIS with the music machine and the fireplace.
Maybe the Doctor was dead.
The image of his slumped head imposed itself on the forefront of her mind, and like a tentacled monster taking a ship, it sent out slimy tendrils of imagination: did she not hear a terrible bone-like thud just seconds before he fell? Did she miss by just a moment the last flicker of light in those kind eyes? Was Jamie, put in the first left pod, being- being, destroyed into microscopic things by this machine right now?
“Stop,” Victoria whispered to herself. She didn’t want to think these things, she didn’t want to see them, but they pressed against all the parts of her mind that were hers, that were real, and tried to pry control. Breathe, she had to breathe, she had to breathe slowly- that was how she had eased the pressure in her body, which weakened the pressure in her mind, but the images were now trying to plunder her memories and drown her under their fear and pain.
“No,” she muttered, and clutched to her own voice as something real, “for The Lord is my shepherd and I-” as if she had a right to that, straying girl, she hasn't been to church since- no, no, the tendrils were reaching into this place too. Her new life, her new life. She tried to remember the chant the Doctor had taught her in the monastery, struggled and couldn’t- she remembered the Doctor’s voice, remembered the relief, but the foreign words wouldn’t hold in her mind. The Doctor wouldn’t want her scared, the Doctor would tell her how to stop drowning, what to think to build a wall from these thoughts, build a good safe place for her own mind- The new sitting room in the TARDIS, with the magic lantern and the popped corn treats, where the Doctor showed her stories when she couldn’t sleep at night. A girl, scared in a thunderstorm, being held in gentle arms, her family joining around her. Jamie in the red felted blanket muttering some nitpick in the Doctor’s ear.
“R- Raindrops on roses and, whiskers on kittens,” she hummed.
A good place for her mind, and with the structure of the tune, with her making it Real, putting it in the real world in ways the slimy fear could not put its gifts, she was securing and fortifying her control again. She almost forgot about the concept of an outer danger, determined to win this internal battle.
“Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright red tea kettles and warm woolen mittens,” she sang, growing stronger each word.
“Brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my favorite things,” She imagined the things in her mind now, or the feeling of them. Mornings with the Venusian tea in the TARDIS kitchen, and pulling on funny boots made of a strange material with Jamie before traveling to a market in a purple swamp. When she encountered blanks in her memory of the words, she put new ones.
“Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels, pop rocks and hairclips and space fruits with noodles, beautiful winters that melt into springs, these are a few of my favorite things.” She was alone in the dark in a tiny box on a strange planet, but her body and mind were not her enemies anymore. She won’t shatter before harm even gets to her.
The machine gave her a frightened jump when it started buzzing, but she tried to sing over it.
“When the dog bites, when the bee stings-” the silly comparison gave her confidence, like she was chiding the grinding buzz for trying to be scary, like if she lied boldly enough she could convince herself and the machine- “When I’m feeling sad, I think of a few of my favorite things, and then I don’t feel-”
The round door creaked, and opened, flooding light into her eyes. The Doctor stood over her, undamaged besides the start of a black eye, and Jamie peeked from the side where he was holding the door’s handles down.
“Victoria! Are you alright?” Her friends helped her down, embraced her worriedly. She stood shakily on solid ground, and smiled at them, only barely tearfully.
“I- I’m, yes, nothing happened to me,” she said. “And you, are you alright? You looked half dead!”
The Doctor grinned weakly. “Only mostly knocked out, which means slightly awake,” he intoned playfully, and Jamie groaned and started to complain those weren't the words, and on they went. They would save those poor souls in the gas pit and the Dauphine would go to prison and they would go back to the TARDIS and have dinner with dessert- there was always dessert when they stopped an evil scheme- and if her nightmares came on, awake or asleep, Victoria could fight them.
And she won't be alone.