She was laughing. He couldn’t hear it until now, taken away in bloodlust, but he listened now to her. It wasn’t an evil or contemptuous sound. Sapphira laughed with pure, innocent amusement. It was the last thing he expected in a moment like this.

“What’s so… funny?” The Doctor mumbled slowly.

“Oh, Cera… Oh, Seraphim!” Sapphira said, ignoring his words. “Your sharp wings are not enough. Are you my guardian or my sinner? Who will you send now? For I am still unclean and the burning coal sits in your blood!”

Unfazed by this rambling, the Doctor was at first dismayed by his actions, but then pleased. It was the very first time he had personally taken a life. It was exhilarating, and he needed to process it but that instance was not now. With his body trembling from the exertion, he shuffled slowly towards Sapphira, the knife glinting dully with blood in his right hand. He grimaced as pain set into his old bones, but the sight of Sapphira vulnerable and helpless before him could only make him grin. Miss Cera Foley was not the only one he would suffer for today.

He cursed, stumbling over the decapitated head and lunging at Miss Lindsey in the exposed EMS chamber. In that moment he was so entirely giddy with adrenaline, so consumed with his vengeance, because life was a miserable sickness; it was a futile clawing against mortality and a fucking agony to endure. He was finished with it, tired of it all, and after this final act he would be at ease.

The knife came whistling down. He had her in his sights. It was finally, finally…!

No. Not a single chance.

His body was shaking uncontrollably, and he furrowed his brow with desperate confusion. The dagger should have been in her chest. He should be watching the vigor drain from her eyes. For years he imagined this moment, to watch her soul die, to Feel euphoria beyond the known definition. Something was wrong…?

It was the shock that disoriented the Doctor. The adrenaline dammed away the pain but it could not save him. A warmth bloomed in his chest. He looked down, mouth agape.

Sapphira’s eyes were wild with the opposite of death. They saw things beyond reality. The monitors sprawled across the table flashed and fizzed sporadically and somewhere someone was screaming like a madman. There were whispers in her ear, whispers of heaven, enticing words, sweet lullabies. The world around her was bright, a thousand suns burning her eyes, burning her skin, which appeared to bubble and pop with oozing, emerald fluid. The Doctor was not a man but a machine, a hellishly constructed metal humanoid gnashing at her body with a razor-lined maw. The back of its metal skull was exposed and a heptagram hung suspended within, spinning in its center, whirring and howling like a klaxon.

It was all a vivid hallucination, but the blade she had twisted around and sunk into the Doctor was not.

And then the world was silent, save a faint ringing in the ears. The momentary delusion began to dwindle, like goosebumps fading into the skin. Sapphira was stunned first by the overwhelming hallucinations and then their sudden absence, staring in shock at the man who hung over her.

He emanated a lengthy groan. The Doctor was suspended over her by the knife that she held into his chest. His breath was grating, and she realized she had collapsed his lung. “You… you robbed me,” he said hoarsely.

She knew what he was referring to. “I robbed you of nothing, Doctor.”

“Genesis!” he coughed. “Project Genesis. It was meant to be the start of something noble. And you destroyed it.”

“I saved a man’s life,” Sapphira whispered. Her emotions swelled. The memory of that time made her sick. “I saved him from you.”