Still You
By Laura Schiller
Based on: Doctor Who
Copyright: BBC
For quite a while after the evacuation, there was no time to do anything but survive. They had found the empty solar farms all but ruined. The frantic activity that went into rebuilding them – and trying, under Nardole's direction, to make them defensible just in case – was a welcome respite from the terror that had sunk deep into their bones.
But the Cybermen did not come. Weeks passed, and then months, whch became a year. It was not in human nature to remain in pure survival mode for so long. Most of them had better things to do.
Still, many of them – including Nardole - had nightmares.
When he woke up one night, he found Hazran sitting by his bed. The lamp she had placed on his nightstand cast gentle shadows over her hard, battle-worn face; or perhaps it was just the look in her eyes.
He sat bolt upright, fumbling for his glasses.
"Haven't you heard of knocking?" he snapped.
"I did knock, several times," she said matter-of-factly. "You didn't hear me. You were screaming."
"Ugh, again?"
She handed him the glasses, and he jammed them onto his nose. He didn't need them exactly, but some habits were hard to break.
"Would you like some water?" she asked. "Or something stronger perhaps?"
"Oh no, thanks. I'm fine now, really. Perfectly fine. Just embarrassed."
He tried to speak lightly, as if he'd been caught dancing to out-of-date music or something equally silly, but the truth was that he still felt half-caught in his nightmare.
He could hear the faint squeaking of his joints as he moved, feel the vibration of the machines that regulated his body. When he blinked, he could still see the laser beam shooting out from his own forehead, straight to the heart of someone he cared about. Sometimes it was Professor Song or the Doctor, sometimes Bill or his long-lost family on Mendorax Dellora, or Hazran herself. Every time, he could see the outline of their skeletons as they fell.
His own bones were made of steel. He wondered how they would look when targeted by one of those beams.
Hazran shot him a stern look. "Stop that," she said. "You've nothing to be embarrassed about. You're the bravest man I've ever known. If anyone's earned the right to have nightmares, it's you."
Nardole, suddenly, did not know where to look. If he were still organic, he would have gone beet-red. She never spoke to him like this in the daytime. They always talked about practical things, like farming, community gossip, or Nardole's plans to build their own space shuttle and evacuate the ship for good. Nothing personal. Not since those first days.
I'm not human, he'd told her.
I'll try anything once, she'd retorted, with a smile that reminded him of River.
He didn't feel brave. He felt as much of a coward as he ever had.
Which was why, when Hazran touched his hand above the blanket, he pulled away as if her skin had burned him. (In a way, it had. She'd left a trail of heat there, like electricity, but subtler. Sometimes he still wondered how in the universe the Doctor had managed to rebuild his body so precisely.)
She stood up, smoothed the skirt of her simple brown dress, and shook her head.
"You know, if you're not interested in me, just say so," she said, "And I'll leave you alone. There's no need to act as if I'm carrying a plague."
She was trying to speak with her customary briskness, but it sounded wrong. Nardole realized, with a powerful jolt to his circuits, that she actually cared.
They had been through hell together. They had trained people for battle and watched them die. They had left the Doctor and Bill behind to sacrifice themselves, and led a traumatized group of survivors to a makeshift new life. Whatever adventurous impulse might have prompted Hazran to flirt with him when they first met, it had become more than that now.
He looked up at her, with her smooth black hair tied in a bun, her black eyes with the premature lines around them, her practical dress, the hard-earned strength and grace of her body. She was beautiful in her plainness, like a Japanese rock garden he had seen once with the Doctor. The more he looked, the more there was to see.
But would she still like him if she knew the truth?
"It's not like that," he said, bracing himself. "You should know I'm a cyborg."
"You're - " Her eyes widened.
"Yep." To demonstrate, he unscrewed his left hand and waved it at her sarcastically. "Hi."
She gasped.
He waited for it – the horror, the disgust, the headlong flight out of his room and possible return with the rifle he had once modified for her.
Instead she took several calming breaths, looked closely at his two hands (attached and unattached), and said: "Well, that explains a lot. Like where the oil bottle disappears to, or why you kept triggering that metal detector we tried to set up near the elevator. I was wondering when you were going to tell me."
Nardole dropped his hand on the floor in shock. It rolled under the bed.
"You knew?"
"I guessed."
"And it doesn't … it doesn't frighten you?"
"Why should it? If you were going to upgrade us, you would have done it already." One of those mischievous smiles tugged at the corner of Hazran's mouth. She spread her arms wide, as if presenting herself as a target. "Here I am, at your mercy."
"Don't even joke!" Hazran being upgraded was too horrible an idea to think about. "Can't you see … ? This is what my nightmares are about."
"Oh." A gradual understanding shadowed her face.
He stared down at the exposed wiring in his wrist.
"This is … I am living proof of how pervasive it is, the mindset that led to the Cybermen being built. Even the Doctor isn't immune to it. He's the one who repaired me after my old master cut off my head. He was so scared of death at the time that he'd do anything, even rebuild a person from scratch like a broken tractor. He forgets that there are worse things than death. Sometimes I wonder if the real Nardole died a long time ago, and I'm just what's left."
He knew he was doing the Doctor an injustice – his Time Lord employer had gone to extraordinary lengths to save him – but he couldn't help it. It was how he felt. This was just the first time in centuries he had said so out loud.
Hazran sat perfectly still for a long time, hands clasped in her lap, listening to him with the intense focus she brought to everything she did. Her black eyes were as deep as the vastness of space outside the ship's hull.
"If I remember correctly what you and the Doctor told us," she said, "The Cybermen have something in their helmets that cancels out their individuality. They forget the pain they're in, but they also forget who they are, isn't that right?"
"Yes … why?"
"If someone offered to install that on you," she gestured to the top of his head, "Would you accept it?"
"Absolutely not!"
He'd rather live in constant agony than forget the brilliance, courage and compassion of his friends. Neither did he want to forget how he himself had changed, from Professor Song's useless burden to Hazran's trusted second-in-command.
"Neither would I. You see," she smiled, "That's the difference."
And he did see, in a way.
He knew she couldn't forgive herself for every one of her people taken away by the Cybermen. That pain was what made her fight so hard for those who remained. It had made her stronger, smarter, and most importantly, it had opened her heart. She loved her people like a mother, though she rarely showed it. Without that pain, she would not be the woman he admired so much.
"Now hold out your arm." She stooped to pick up his detached left hand from under the bed and began screwing it carefully back onto his wrist. "Stop me if I'm doing this wrong."
"No, ah, it's fine."
"There."
Once the hand was fully connected, sensation returned to it in a rush. He was more intensely aware of her touch than ever – and she wasn't letting go.
"Nardole, I … I don't see a machine when I look at you."
"What do you see?"
"I see an engineer who can fix anything he sets eyes on. I see a friend who makes me laugh at the end of a long day. I see a leader who is patient with adults as well as children, and thinks fast in a crisis. I see a man who gave me hope."
She patted his hand once, then let go. "So if you don't need anything but friendship," she said, her voice falsely bright and cheerful, "A friend is exactly what I'll be."
"Now wait just a minute!" he blustered, the words pouring out despite himself. "When did I say I wanted nothing more? I never said that!"
"No?" Halfway out the door, she froze.
"For your information, Hazran Clearsky, when I'm working in the fields and you show up, my productivity drops by at least 20 per cent because I can't stop looking at you! A human, no less. You turned my whole universe upside down. It's very unsettling."
The Doctor, he realized, had been a terrible influence on him when it came to courting women. That speech couldn't have been less appropriate. He wanted to sink into the wooden floor of his cabin.
But when Hazran turned around, she was laughing, and not maliciously, either. She looked … happy. Happier than he'd ever seen her.
"You sweet, ridiculous man," she said. "Scoot over, would you?"
Disinclined to waste time, as usual, she climbed into bed beside him and switched off the lamp.