Title: Heart in A Cage
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Mick St. John
Fandom: Doctor Who/Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Table: slash_me_twice
Prompt: 21, Cage
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor or Mick St. John, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

Mick looked up as the Doctor entered the library of the Tardis, feeling at a loss for words. Ever since he'd been able to read that letter the Time Lord had written him about what had happened in that interstellar bar, he'd felt guilt weighing down on him.

It was a heavy burden to carry, knowing that he'd killed someone who might not have done the Doctor or himself any harm. But that man would have done him harm, Mick reminded himself. He would have stabbed him, just as he had his first victim.

Still, it was hard to get used to the idea that now, he had killed on another planet, as well as on Earth. He'd done it to protect himself and his lover, yes, but did that make it right? He couldn't be sure, not when he had so many advantages over the man he'd killed.

He had vampiric strength and speed; that man -- or whatever species he might have been, though he had looked human -- was no match for him. He had been able to snuff out that life as easily as drawing in a deep breath, and he couldn't help but feel guilty.

Mick didn't know what to say; he averted his eyes from the Doctor as the Time Lord sat down beside him and took his hand. But he looked up quickly as the other man squeezed his hand gently and began to speak, his words soothing to Mick's ears.

"I know how you're feeling, love. But you can't keep some unwarranted guilt bottled up inside forever," the Time Lord said, his tone soft and gentle. "Let's talk about what happened, Mick. Unburden your heart. Let out the feelings you're trying to hold back."

"I can always unburden my heart to you, can't I?" Mick murmured, feeling gratified for the Doctor's presence. "When I was on Earth, I never had anyone who'd let me do that. Even Josef wasn't somebody I could talk to about things that made me feel guilty."

Josef had always felt that Mick shouldn't feel guilty about taking lives, he thought with a sigh. His former lover had insisted that it was their nature, and that Mick shouldn't feel badly about something that it was, after all, only natural for him to do.

He had meant well, Mick told himself, but Josef had been one of the people who'd made Mick feel as if he had to keep his heart in a cage, never letting himself feel the things that he knew he should feel, and never letting him hold himself completely responsible for his own actions.

He didn't have to cage his heart with the Doctor. He could be entirely honest about how he felt; he could unburden himself and cleanse his soul. He'd never been able to do that while he was on Earth; he'd always kept those feelings of guilt locked within him.

""Of course you can," the Doctor replied, squeezing his hand gently again. "Mick, I know you feel guilty about taking a life. But honestly, you shouldn't. Everything pointed to that man coming after the two of us next. You could very well have saved both of our lives."

"Yeah, but does that make it right?" Mick asked, his heart in his words. "I took a life, Doctor. Not only on my own planet, but out here in the universe. I didn't have any right to do that. I'm faster and stronger. If wasn't fair of me. He didn't stand a chance."

"No, he didn't," the Doctor agreed, his voice still soft. "But, Mick, I really do think that he was going to turn that knife to either you or me within the next few seconds. Yes, you took a life -- but he would have taken one of ours, or at least have tried to."

"That's true," Mick said thoughtfully, sighing and shaking his head. "I know that I shouldn't feel so guilty, Doctor. When it's a 'you or them' situation, you have to take the offensive. If I hadn't broken his neck, there was good chance he could have hurt you."

"I knew you wouldn't let that happen," the Doctor told him. "Mick, I trusted you, even in the midst of what was going on. I wish it hadn't happened, and I wish that you hadn't had to be a part of such violence. But sometimes it's unavoidable, when it springs up around you."

"I think we're both just trouble magnets," Mick said with a wry laugh. "Sometimes I felt like trouble used to follow me around on Earth -- and it's the same way out here in the stars. And from what you've told me, it does the same to you. So we must be a better match than we thought."

"I think we're a marvelous match, by any standards," the Doctor said with a soft laugh. "Vampire and Time Lord might be an odd combination, but I think that our unique abilities make us suited to each other. And there's one little fact that you've overlooked, Mick."

"What's that?" Mick asked him, returning the gentle squeeze to his hand. The Doctor could somehow always manage to make him feel better about everything; even Josef had never been able to take his heart out of the cage it was always kept in and let it fly free.

"We love each other," the Doctor said softly, his voice barely a whisper. "That's the most important thing of all, Mick. It doesn't matter if we're a perfect match, or if we have to work at our relationship. We love each other, and nothing else really matters, does it?"

"No, it doesn't," Mick answered, feeling as though his heart was overflowing. His heart had definitely broken free of the cage he'd always felt that he had to keep it in; even the guilt that he still felt over taking that man's life in the bar couldn't hold it back.

His heart had always been kept in that cage, even when he was a human. No one had ever set it free before; even his love for Coraline, which he'd known for a long time wasn't really love, but only obsession, had never made his heart fly in the way that loving this man did.

This was where he belonged, Mick told himself, where he'd always been meant to be. It might be a little strange to think that he was in love with an alien, and that he was traveling in space and time, but the fact that he was a vampire seemed strange, too.

"I've always felt guilty about being what I am," he said, his words coming out slowly. He had to think about what he wanted to say before he let the words out; he had a feeling that these might be some of the most important words he'd ever spoken to anyone.

"But with you, it's different," Mick continued, the words coming to him more easily now. "Everybody else I've known since I've been a vampire has always made me feel like I needed to keep things hidden, to keep my heart in a cage and not let my feelings out. To stay in the darkness."

The Doctor nodded, his dark eyes sympathetic. "I understand that, Mick," he said softly, "From both sides. You couldn't very well go around betraying what you were to everyone around you, but you felt that you couldn't keep your feelings about it a secret."

Mick nodded, releasing his pent-up breath in a heavy sigh. "Yeah, exactly. And I always felt like I was in a cage myself, not just my heart, but all of me. Now, I'm out of that cage. I can be who I am, what I want to be. I feel like I can finally breathe."

"I hope you'll always feel that way with me, love," the Doctor whispered, squeezing Mick's hand yet again. "I don't ever want to keep anything about you caged, Mick. Particularly not your heart. I want you to feel free and happy, not caged and chained."

"I know you do," Mick told him, his voice catching in his throat. "And even though some other people have loved me in the past, they could never give me that kind of freedom. They might have wanted to, but I don't think they really knew how. But you do."

"You set my hearts free too, you know," the Doctor said, his dark gaze riveted on Mick's face. "You do as much for me as I do for you, Mick. Maybe you don't realise it, but I've never really been able to give my hearts to anyone, either. You're the first person I've felt free to do that with."

Mick almost felt as though his heart was bursting out of his chest; he hadn't known that, in over nine hundred years, the Doctor had never fully given those dual hearts of his to anyone. Being the first person that he'd done that for was an honor.

He wanted to put that into words, but he couldn't. All he could do was lift their entwined hands to his lips, kissing the Doctor's slender fingers as their gazes met and held. He was sure that his gesture said all that he felt without any words being needed.

His heart would never be kept in a cage again, he vowed to himself. Now that the Doctor had set it free, it would stay that way -- and he would never have to feel that he couldn't be who he truly was. Not only his heart was free now, but soul as well -- and they would stay that way for all of eternity.

***