The Saxon Chronicles, Part I:

Archangel

by excentryke

word count: 1276

Harold Saxon breathed in deeply, holding the form of his beloved wife. He could smell the scent of her hair, so intoxicating for a human’s that despite himself he had fallen in love with this strange little creature who was now pressed so closely against him. He could feel her shudder as her eyes took in this harrowing sight before them as the entire earth was destroyed. But in this brief moment he did not care that his dreams had finally been realized, that he had overcome the Doctor and partially suppressed the sounds of the beating drums inside his head with the screams of the dying. Instead he was mesmerized by the smell of her light perfume and the soap of his wife’s skin. Despite himself and his triumph after so many long months on earth he nestled his face into his wife’s hair and closed his eyes. When he was this close to her he could almost forget that beating of the drums, and when her eyes inevitably held his for a few moments while they were truly one in the half-dark all sound would briefly melt away and he thought he was dying for even his two hearts would stop beating.

As he stood there briefly, losing himself as the world was torn apart beneath their hovering feet, he mused that he must have loved her from the moment that they had first kissed as man and wife. He had chosen her from all the women of Great Britain to be his bride because of her sweetness and goodness of heart, combined with a dormant sense of ambition he could sense when she thought no one perceived her small actions. She was beautiful by earth standards and he knew that once they were married he could amuse himself with her in his new role of intimate husband without any difficulty. However, even he was surprised with how quickly he was able to ingratiate himself with her family. Within a month of having met her he had led her down the aisle, this English beauty whose simple regard could be purchased with handsome good looks, a powerful and thoroughly respectable position of cabinet minister and the revitalization of her father’s position with his appointment as dean at one of the colleges at Cambridge. He had bought himself invulnerable respectability with his human bride in white silk and her bouquet of pale flowers. As he looked at her during this odd earth ritual, he smiled to himself knowing how that insect – Chantho – had wanted such a life with him as he was going to embark with Lucy during his short stay on earth.

In that brief instant between his vows, worthless as he thought them as they were hardly binding even by human standards as Harold Saxon was a fabrication, he briefly let his cool veneer slip and he smiled as he thought of the wretched Chantho and her weak, clinging devotion for an even weaker man who could no longer remember his own name. With that grin, that manic smile he would only permit himself to use when he w as completely alone, a glint of madness came into his eyes as he thought of how he had killed the wretched Insectoid – the last of her worthless race. He could hear the harsh tapping in his mind, the three successive pulses beating in his head, and the madness only increased written so clearly upon his face in the small little church where Lucy insisted they be married, quietly and respectably, away from the bright flashes and harsh noises of the press that she would soon enter as Mrs. Harold Saxon.

An abrupt silence brought him back to his senses as the small congregation waited for him to kiss his human bride. They had all mistaked the grin on his face as a groom’s, happy to be marrying the woman of his dreams. He quickly rearranged his features and looked down into his young bride’s eyes and realized that she had seen him, his true identity beneath that of Harry Saxon. She had seen and in her eyes and her kiss were neither confusion nor the weak unquestioning love of a half-slave, but a recognition of the man with whom she intended to spend the rest of her precious days of life, so short and few before she would wither with the rest of her race.

In that moment he knew that he adored her despite himself and that night when he held her helpless in his arms, her soul bared to him, he found that he was making love to the fragile creature, so young and so pure, hardly knowing this one body that time and space had given her. And he worshipped every contour of her skin, every wisp of hair that fell loosely about her face, each of her small gestures revealing her inexperience with men. He found himself being gentle with her, patient as she learned and discovered every inch of his form which was still so new to himself. Then he had slowly taken both her hands and placed one over each of his two beating hearts and in the darkness told this child who he really was in the hushed darkness of their wedding bed before passionately making love to her once again.

He could see the fear in her face the next morning when she awoke and realized that his confession had not been a dream. Quietly, her hands once again resting on his alien hearts, she asked him what his name had been when he lived among the stars. And kissing her gently he had whispered it against her mouth and she had whispered it back timidly. As he drew away from his bride whom he now loved so dearly, he assured her that she could still call him Harry. He was still her Harry. He always would be that man whom she had loved in the night and in that moment he knew that he would, and he would find a way to keep her with him for the remainder of time, his beautiful angel who knew him and loved him.

From that moment he never stopped holding her close. It had taken him nearly a year to be assured that this small child could truly love him as not only the calm Harold Saxon but as the dangerously insane time lord. He knew from their first night together he could not keep any secret from her and told her all his plans for earth and their life together beyond it, trying to displace the lingering sadness that would occasionally cross her face when she thought of how he had ensnared her, the perfect bride for his future task of enslaving her race. However, since she first saw him, hiding beneath the persona of the human politician she had known and loved him although she feared the raw potential of his mind, and he loved her even more for it, holding her ever closer to him in the darkness.

Breathing again he could almost imagine her sweet mouth against his and could sense that she loved him. He drew her slightly closer to himself and opening his eyes looked out at the falling demons from the sky. How beautiful he found this new world he was building, the recreation of everything his people had lost in the great Time War, and yet it could never compare with the simplicity and maddening beauty of his young wife within his arms, his savior from insanity that plagued him and the beating of the drums – his archangel.