Chapter Text
It is obvious now—painfully, almost mockingly obvious—Kate thinks, the way it all began. How an ordinary week, neat and predictable as any other, tilted ever so slightly off balance and then slid into something feral and uncontrollable. It always begins like that when you work for UNIT, with the quiet illusion that the world is behaving itself. And this time, it had begun with a new recruit.
Colonel Ibrahim’s résumé lies on her desk far longer than it should, its crisp edges softening beneath the weight of her hesitation. Not because he lacks experience or because he is unqualified—on paper, he is exemplary, his record is clean, decorated, impressive in ways that should reassure her. But because he is too young. Too young to stand at her right hand as second-in-command, too young to understand what it truly costs to work for UNIT. Too young to have his life balanced so precariously on the edge of decisions she will have to make in seconds.
So Kate lets the file gather dust, telling herself she is being thorough, cautious and responsible. In truth, she is stalling—holding back the inevitable with the stubborn hope that time might slow itself if she refuses to move. She signs the final approval only a month before the world lurches off its axis and into an unreasonably self-righteous chaos of its own making.
“Ma’am, we have the Doctor and the TARDIS. I believe his former companion is with him as well. Donna Noble. They’ll be here in a few minutes,” the Colonel says, his voice calm, disciplined, betraying none of the awe that still clings to those names.
Kate allows herself the smallest breath at the mention—a fragile exhale she hadn’t realised she was holding. If there is a fire spreading through the world, they are at least a kind of rain. Yet, she feels adrift. Lost in a way she has not allowed herself to feel in years. She has spent decades fighting aliens—creatures from fractured dimensions, from nightmares that clawed their way into daylight. She understands invasion, understands survival, knows how to face the monstrous. But this time is different. This time, no foreign warships are hovering over London, no unfamiliar languages crackling over emergency channels. This time, she is searching for a way to defend the planet from its own reflection. And it might be the scariest thing she’s ever witnessed.
And, of course, she is far too lost in her own thoughts to notice the way the new recruit watches her—his gaze lingering a fraction longer than protocol requires. Too deeply buried in contingency plans and casualty projections to see the quiet vigilance in him, the way he tracks her movements across the command floor as though she is the one in need of protection.
So, Kate mistakes it for discipline and attentiveness. For the rigid focus of a soldier eager to prove himself. She does not see that he positions himself half a step closer whenever the alarms flare. That his eyes find her first in the room, measuring exits, calculating threats, mapping the safest route to her side. She is too concentrated on saving the world to realise that, too concerned with humanity as a whole to notice the singular, stubborn devotion standing just within arm’s reach.
And when the Toymaker’s song starts—when the world fades completely into laughter and malice and impossible angles—she has no time to think at all. One moment she is issuing orders; the next, she is weightless, flung across the room as though she is nothing more than a rag doll. The air leaves her lungs in a violent rush, the taste of iron sharp at the back of her throat, and for a moment, the world narrows to ringing silence and blinding pain.
She would tell herself later that she would have stood on her own. But it is Ibrahim’s hands that reach her first.
He is there before the dust has settled, before the echoes of cruel laughter have faded. He calls her “ma’am” again, but it’s softer somehow, anchoring to the present moment the way she cannot explain. And even then, even with his arm braced around her shoulders and his body angled protectively between her and the threat, she is too focused on regaining control to recognise what has already been quietly, steadfastly there.
She sees a soldier helping his commanding officer back to her feet. She does not yet see the man who would step in front of a god for her without hesitation.
Christofer Ibrahim had admired the Commander-in-Chief long before he even got a chance to stand in the same room as her. Before the interviews, before the transfer orders, and before his résumé ever reached her desk. To him, she had never simply been the head of UNIT, more a constant in a world that reinvented its dangers daily—a person who stood firm while the world around shifted. He had read the reports, of course, studied the debriefs, watched archived footage that most people would have found classified beyond reach. Calm in the face of invasion, steady under impossible pressure, a commander who did not raise her voice to prove something, because she never needed to.
He had expected steel, but he had not expected kindness.
He notices it first in small things: the way she lingers after briefings, waiting until the youngest officers file out before she leaves herself, the way she asks after families—actually asks, and remembers the answers—the way she thanks the technicians in the control room by name, even when the world is on the brink of catastrophe. In an organisation as vast as UNIT, that should be impossible. And yet, she knows them all.
“Good work, Roberts.”
“Get some rest, Alvarez.”
“Tell your daughter I hope her recital goes well, Chen.”
Not vague acknowledgments, not detached professionalism. Names, details, lives.
It unsettles him at first, how easily she carries that weight, how she can hold the fate of the planet in one hand and still make space, somehow, for the people standing beside her.
He begins to notice other things, too.
The way she stays long after she has dismissed everyone else, the corridor lights dimmed to night settings, her office the only one still glowing. He tells himself he is working late out of diligence, out of ambition, but more often than not, he finds himself glancing through the glass wall and seeing her there alone, jacket draped over the back of her chair, sleeves rolled neatly to her elbows.
She thinks no one is watching when she sighs. When her shoulders drop, just for a second, and the weight she refuses to show the world settles visibly across her thin frame. The sharp commander softening into something achingly human.
He looks away every time. It is not in his job description to notice these things. It is certainly not in his job description to feel the quiet, persistent pull in his chest when he does. He cannot explain it—not in military terms, and not in the language of duty or chain of command. Of course, it is his responsibility to protect her; she is his commanding officer and her safety is strategic, essential, paramount. But that is not what drives the instinct. It is not protocol that makes him adjust his position in every room so that he stands between her and the nearest exit. Not a regulation that makes him memorise the rhythm of her footsteps, the subtle shift in her breathing when she is exhausted but determined not to show it. It is something far simpler and far more dangerous.
The world is crueler more often than it is kind, he has seen that firsthand, has built his career navigating that truth. And then there is her—steady and compassionate in a place that devours softness whole. Incredible, he thinks sometimes, watching her cross the command floor. Not because she is fearless, though she often appears to be, not because she commands a room with a glance, but because in an age of hardened leaders and necessary ruthlessness, she has chosen to somehow remain gentle.
He does not fall in love with her in a single, dramatic moment; it happens in fragments. In the way she thanks him after his first successful briefing, as though he has done her some kind of favour. In the way she pauses to ask if he has eaten during a seventy-two-hour crisis. In the way she says his name with quiet certainty, as if she has always known it. And when the Toymaker throws her across the room, when he sees her body strike the wall with a force that makes his vision go white at the edges, something inside him settles into absolute clarity.
He moves without hesitation, and this time he thinks he understands why. Not because she is the Brigadier’s daughter, not because she is the head of UNIT, and not because losing her would fracture global defence. He moves because the thought of her breaking—of that kindness extinguished by something monstrous—feels unbearable. And when he reaches her, when he calls her “ma’am” just to feel her weight steady against him, he understands something he has not dared to articulate before.
He does not just serve under her; he believes in her. And if the universe insists on placing itself between her and peace, then it will definitely have to go through him first.