Archive of Our Own ^beta

He wasn't there when it happened when the command deck all bit briefly was under siege. Ibrahim didn't see it with his own eyes. Ibrahim wasn't sure if that was better or worse to see it or be left to imagine it. Kate was hit so hard she fell to the ground–she got right back up that's what Donna told him. Because Kate was never one to stay down. Sometimes even when she should.

But he is here now, now when the bruise on her cheek was red with a hint of bluish-purple beginning to show. Ibrahim wanted to run his thumb over Kate's bruised flesh as if it would somehow magically erase the mark from her skin. It's almost an obsessive need, an impulse only kept in check because here and now he's not allowed to touch her, not allowed to show how much he cares about her.

If he let it show he's almost certain that Kate would call it quits. UNIT first, relationship second. She had been clear about that from the start and he'd accepted it.

They haven't had time with everything that has been happening to really talk beyond work-related things. He has no idea if she's okay or just pretending to be. Kate's greatest skill was convincing the world she was fine when she wasn't.

“You know she is fine,” Donna commented, voice low, giving Morris and Rose a look to make sure they were working and not goofing around. Gifted as they both were, they were still teenagers and the danger had passed. Sometimes it was easy for the pair when put together to go off topic–once solving who Jack the Ripper was when they were supposed to be decoding something about Stonehenge.
“The Commander is tough. We all know it. She's been through worse. One bruise won't kill her.”

“I know.” Ibrahim does know, she's been through worse, way worse and everyone looked at her like she was an indestructible God because of it. Never there to see the toll it took on her, because she never lets them. Donna was being kind, she was trying to be comforting and he knew it. More than one person knew about them and pretended not to, he knew that too and he was grateful for it. But right now, the only one who could reassure him was Kate.

It doesn't take long for Donna to leave him once she sees Morris and Rose lobbying chocolate buttons at each other. He was alone again waiting–it always felt like he was waiting for something. Aliens, monsters, to know if Kate was okay.

Time was funny when he wanted it to slow down it wouldn't, when he wanted it to speed up it wouldn't. It was an untamable beast, despite what the Doctor thought.

The hours tick by, slow like a group of snails in a race. Even when they are both eventually off shift–simply because the rules state unless a dire emergency they have to clock off–Kate doesn't go home, choosing to sleep on base so he does too. Ibrahim knew he shouldn't, never had before, but that obsessive need to know she was okay had grown so strong that everything else was trampled down. He isn't seen and should care whether he is or not, but he doesn't.

When he opened the door her back was to the wall and for half a second he saw her shoulders tense then relaxed when he said “It's only me,” while closing the door. For a moment he stood in darkness, facing aliens somehow felt easier than putting into words what he needed or wanted from her. If they were at home his or hers, usually hers they'd fuck until he was too tired to obsess over how she got hurt. But they aren't.

“Are you getting into bed or aren't you?” Kate asked, half asleep back still to the wall. “Lock the door, the last thing I need mid-emergency is someone bursting in here to tell me there is an emergency, to find us in bed together.”

“Whereas with the door locked it will raise no suspicions at all,” Ibrahim murmured, climbing into bed with her. It's much too small for two people. Designed to keep couples apart while on base. Not that it did. People who were flexible enough to fight were flexible enough to make use of the beds.

“You can always go back to your own bed.” They both knew there was more chance of him being beamed to Mars than there was of him leaving her.

After a while of shifting position, so he was lying on the mattress, and she was lying on him; there was silence as he touched her face gently, even in darkness Ibrahim knew where the bruise was.

“You know touching it won't make it go away,” Kate whispered, placing a soft kiss against his neck. He didn't need to see her to know she was smirking when he shivered, one kiss against his flesh and he melted. It wasn't natural the power she had over him, she could fix him or break with a snap of her fingers. “You couldn't have stopped it happening either. It's just one of those things.”

“I know, but it doesn't make me feel any better.” Everything Ibrahim felt was too big to put into words. Humanity's deepest flaw, in his opinion, was its inability to truly feel what others felt, words were never enough. His thumb brushed gently against Kate's lip once. “I just don't like it when you get hurt, that's all.” He doesn't say that she seemed to head towards danger like a fly goes to honey which was usually how she ended up hurt. It's one of the things he loved about her, it was one of the things that drove him up the wall with her.

“Sorry darling, but being with me unfortunately comes with the price of seeing me hurt,” Kate whispered softly. “Now I need to sleep. You better be as good as sneaking out of here as you were getting in here, come morning.”