A/N: Hey everybody! My first fanfic publication of the semester—are y'all proud of me? University has really been kicking my ass as far as inspiration and motivation to write, so this is a huge freaking victory for me, heh.
This story takes place immediately after the Season 1 episode "Dalek." The title is meant to utilize the Latin root words: "Ex" ("out of") and "terminus" ("end").
Ex Terminate
As the final rays of evening sun faded, the last of their glow leeching out of the treetops and tinting the needles black, the little buzzing insects that who lived out their lives in the darkness poked heads out of holes, their compound eyes taking in the soft, deep, comforting tones of night. Small animals yawned and stretched and flexed their little claws, and wolves and owls and other predators drowsily opened their eyes, sniffing the air for the telltale scents of their unwitting breakfast.
But something else lurked in the looming shadows, something bigger and stronger and infinitely more dangerous. Something that, when the creatures of the night sensed it coming, made them scurry away and cower in their dens, fur standing up and all survival instincts screaming.
Every life in the forest knew instinctively to fear the Dalek.
Well, every life but one.
The Dalek had been wandering aimlessly for hours. The sunlight had burned into him in the strangest combination of joy and pain and sorrow and hope and a dozen other things that, until that day, the Dalek had only comprehended in the vaguest of theories. However, the influx of radiation had repowered his emergency teleport systems, and he'd found himself materializing in a forest before he was even aware he'd left Van Statten's catacombs. Now he had no idea where to go or what to do—or even where he'd materialized or what time zone he was in—so he was just drifting along, hovering over even ground and flying when it got too hilly.
Daleks exterminated other lesser species. But daleks were a group—they worked as a team, like thousands of cells forming a single, perfectly balanced whole. Daleks were soldiers, they followed orders, they… they… they…
They were gone.
The lie the Dalek had told Rose Tyler was the truth, after all. He was alone in the universe, and, as the Oncoming Storm had said, without orders, he had nothing, he was nothing. Perhaps his greatest foe had got it right after all… perhaps he should let himself be exterminated.
The night was darker than deep space, because thick, heavy clouds had blown in from the East, covering the sky and blocking out the stars and whatever moons this hellish rock had to offer. The glowing insects native to Earth were giving the Dalek lots and lots of space, so the only light was what he radiated from his eyestalk, sensor antennae and hover device. He didn't need the visible spectrum to navigate, of course, but it was just so different from the brilliant light of Earth's sun, and the contrast hurt somehow.
The Dalek wasn't sure how long he wandered until he heard the noise, but suddenly he became aware of something approaching him, shuffling awkwardly through the plant life. He knew it didn't have the power to exterminate him, and was honestly beyond caring if it did. He turned his head, shining the faint glow from his eyestalk in the direction of the interloper, wondering blandly what the wild creatures of the Earth looked like, and why this one was so incredibly stupid as to approach him.
A small, dark-colored limb emerged from the undergrowth, followed by a humanoid body about half the Dalek's height. The creature was robed in a simple one-piece garment, with long, thick fur, darker than it's skin, hanging in a matted tumble from the top of its head to the mid-joints of its upper limbs. Its feet were bare, rather than protected with the little armored bags that humans seemed to favor. Judging by the size, it was young—pre-pubescent—and its extremities and limb joints were leaking bodily fluids; the flesh appeared to have been scraped away roughly. It was dabbed all over with bits of soil and crushed vegetation, and clear liquid secretions coated the rest of it's skin, the front of its head in particular.
The little human and the Dalek stared at one another, neither one moving, and then the human began to make those odd human distress calls that had always confused the Dalek, because they were often too low in range and volume for other humans to detect—it breathed deeply but unevenly, drawing the atmosphere through its apparently clogged upper filtration system and occasionally making low keening noises. It appeared to be in pain—perhaps from the scraped flesh the Dalek had noticed earlier was a more serious form of damage than he'd thought. Humans were much weaker than Time Lords, apparently.
Suddenly, Rose Tyler's voice echoed through the Dalek's memory. 'Are you in pain?' It whispered. She hadn't had to ask that, she hadn't had to try and help him, but she had done, anyhow. Why?
"ARE YOU IN PAIN?" the Dalek asked, wondering if things might make more sense if he tried it himself. Perhaps if he understood Rose Tyler better, he'd understand the difference she'd made in him, and know how to reverse it.
The little human shrieked out a much louder, much higher-pitched distress call, and stumbled back. Its foot caught in a tree root and it fell backwards with another sharp call. It sat there on the ground, rotating its body rapidly, eyes wide.
"Who's there?" It demanded in a treble voice. From the pitch, and the fur, the Dalek guessed it was female, although with human descendants it was challenging to tell for sure. "Who said that?"
"I DID," the Dalek clarified.
"Who?" The human asked again. "I can't see anyone—it's too dark."
"I SPOKE. I AM HERE," the Dalek responded, and the human's eyes fixed on his glowing antennae and eyestalk. It (she?) stood cautiously and approached the Dalek, peering at him from different angles.
"Hello," she finally said in a remarkably stable voice, considering all the distress calls she'd just been making, and how agitated she appeared physically. "I... no offense, but what are you, exactly? A robot?"
"I AM A DALEK," The Dalek replied automatically. But, was he, he wondered with a sickening mix of unfamiliar emotions.
"Well, I'm a human," she responded. "My name's Seina Rivera. What's yours?"
"DALEKS HAVE NO NAMES," the Dalek quickly explained. "DALEKS NEED NO NAMES. WE..." at the word "we" the Dalek found it challenging to keep speaking. There was no "we," not any more. Everything the Daleks were, everything HE was, was gone now. Swallowed up into the Time War. He couldn't even properly hate the Time Lords, as he should have done, because they couldn't even make it a real victory—they'd been wiped out too. It had all just been for nothing.
It shouldn't hurt this much. The Dalek had experienced enough physical pain to make him understand the helpless agony of fear, but this emotion was worse, so much worse, and so heavy; so, SO heavy. He was being crushed by the weight of it, darker than deep space, heavier than a planet made of diamond. He knew what it was—both because he knew that this was something the Supreme Dalek always tried to elicit in the Doctor and because Rose Tyler had been familiar with it. It was grief. And it hurt more than anything those human fools had put him through in that torture chamber.
"Is everything all right?" Seina Rivera was asking him. How long had he been silent, he wondered with little interest. Overhead, the clouds opened up, and cold rain beat down on the treetops, running between the leaves and branches, running down the Dalek's outer casing and soaking Seina Rivera quickly.
"Mr. Dalek?" She asked, leaning oddly to one side, only slightly—much as Rose had done when she'd been trying to assess the damage done by his torturers. Was it something human, he wondered? But no, he'd met plenty of humans, and so far the only ones to show this odd sort of mercy were Rose Tyler and this Seina Rivera. He shouldn't like it—it was something Daleks disdained. It shouldn't have alleviated a tiny portion of his overwhelming grief.
But it did.
Seina Rivera shuddered, rubbing her arms and huddling into herself to try and escape the cascades of precipitation. The Dalek's atmospheric equipment read a temperature of 13℃ and dropping. From his experience with humans, they experienced discomfort when their flesh was exposed to anything below about 18.3℃. For the first time, he wondered why she was out there without her species' typical protective gear.
"WHY ARE YOU HERE?" he inquired.
"I'm lost," she admitted after a pause. "I was hiding from Jordan and J.T.—they're these boys from my school." She paused again, twisting the hem of her garment in apparent discomfort, or perhaps apprehension. But apprehension wouldn't make any sense—obviously these other younglings wouldn't have followed her this far. "I ran for a long time, and then I took a rest, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I didn't know which direction was home, so I just guessed and started walking. My abuela is going to be so worried about me… I think I'm just getting further and further away because nothing looks familiar. When I saw light, I went for it. I thought maybe it was a flashlight from a search party or something."
The Dalek searched his memory banks, wondering how long human offspring survived without their parents before gaining the strength and judgement skills they typically acquired after their pubescent metamorphosis. Would Seina Rivera die if she did not find her way home? If so, why had she wasted precious minutes of her lifespan asking if HE was okay?
"Can you help me?" She added. "Do you know how to get back to Cottonwood Heights?"
For a moment, the Dalek sifted through possible options. Daleks did not help. But then again, it wasn't like he had anything better to do. It was almost humorous—he had nothing at all in the universe to do, save helping a little human child find her way home.
"THERE ARE HUMAN LIFE SIGNS TO THE SOUTH-WEST IN EIGHT POINT THREE ONE KILOMETERS. ORIGIN: HUMAN. ALSO, THE ATMOSPHERE CONTAINS A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF CARBON DIOXIDE AND OTHER EMISSION GASSES. DESIGNATION: HUMAN SETTLEMENT." How far could human children travel without transport, he wondered? If she could cling to his outer shell, he could transport her that way, but he wouldn't be able to fly fast without crushing her, and he didn't have enough energy for another teleport—even if she could survive it without a capsule. Could she walk so far? She'd obviously walked a long way already; well, she'd gotten this far out.
"Which way is that?" she asked quietly. He could see the slight alterations in her face—the human defect of "hope" was draining away, replaced by a blank sort of despair. Liquid accumulated at the corners of her eyes, confirming his interpretation. Presumably, 8.31 kilometers was much too long of a walk for a human of her age, size and level of fatigue.
"IF YOU ELEVATE YOURSELF AND PERCH ON THE STALK OF MY EXTERNAL INTERFACE, I CAN TRANSPORT YOU," he found himself offering.
"Could you?" she exclaimed in relief, and stumbled forward. At the last moment, the Dalek remembered that he'd have to take down his shields or she'd run into the defense field. She tried to climb up the spheres of dalekanium, but her feet were too wet and cold to generate the necessary friction, and she slipped several times. The Dalek had to use his levitation engine to lift her. After some initial surprise at suddenly being weightless, she grabbed hold of his gun and maneuvered herself to sit on it, wrapping her arms around his upper dome and gripping his left antenna. He chose not to move her to the other side—there was no reason he'd need to use his gun.
"Thank you so much," she all but sobbed as he levitated half a meter off the ground and began to fly towards the signs of habitation. He kept the speed down—around 8 kph, a slow run for a human, according to his database. He didn't want the air pressure to blow her off. Homo Sapiens were even more fragile than Time Lords. Why so many species were content to exist with their outer flesh as their first line of defense, rather than having a protective shell or something less flimsy than the garments they used to cover themselves, he would never understand. His own polycarbide casing could withstand radiation, pressure, impact… hers could be crushed by the gas mixture that she needed to breathe.
"AT OUR CURRENT VELOCITY, WE WILL ARRIVE IN THE HUMAN HABITATION IN THIRTY-NINE HUNDRED, EIGHTY-EIGHT POINT EIGHT RELS."
"Um… how long is that in minutes?" Seina Rivera asked blankly.
"SIXTY-SIX POINT FOUR EIGHT MINUTES," he converted instantly.
"A long trip, then," she murmured. "So, tell me about yourself. Where are you from, exactly?"
A long pause followed while the Dalek searched for any reason not to tell her. It was perfectly safe—there was no one left for him to betray, no matter what he said. But that thought brought back all the heaviness from which he'd only just distracted himself. He didn't know if he COULD talk about it. But Daleks were stronger than that—they didn't let paltry things like this overwhelm them. Did they? He could talk about it, he decided. Even just to prove he wasn't so weak.
"MY PLANET IS CALLED SKARO," he began. "THE DALEKS WERE CREATED BY DAVROS, A VERY LONG TIME AGO." He fell silent for a moment, wondering how long it had been. He'd spun wildly through the time vortex, and he'd never had a point of reference for Earth to begin with. "CENTURIES, AT LEAST," he finally specified.
"So, Davros is like, your dad, then?" Seina Rivera asked.
"HE IS OUR CREATOR," the Dalek responded.
"But he didn't name any of you?" she checked.
"NO," the Dalek confirmed.
"But why not?" She asked.
"WE ARE A COLLECTIVE," he said, finishing the sentence he'd been unable to say before. "WE EXIST TOGETHER—WE ARE AS ONE. NOT ONE DIFFERS FROM ANOTHER."
"But you're the one helping me," she said softly. "Not the other Daleks—you. I'd like something to call you."
"THERE ARE… NO OTHER DALEKS," the Dalek responded after a moment, and to his shock and shame, his voice trembled and broke. How pathetic. Daleks were tougher than that.
"But I thought you said…" she trailed off in confusion.
"NOT ANYMORE," the Dalek said, regaining control over his voice. "NOT SINCE THE TIME WAR. ALL OTHER DALEKS PERISHED. I AM…" he stopped, unwilling to risk his voice breaking again.
"The last one left," she finished for him, voice unnaturally grave for a youngling her age.
"CORRECT," the Dalek confirmed, elevating a bit higher now that he was certain the child had a firm hold and wouldn't go slipping off.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, voice slightly distorted with that odd human distress call. The Dalek said nothing for a while. The child was exerting more pressure around the Dalek's dome; he couldn't fathom why. The rain dwindled and finally stopped. A few final drops fell from the leaves overhead, and when even they stopped, the last wisps of cloud drifted away, letting the light of the crescent moon illuminate the forest.
About halfway through the trip, the Dalek sensed Seina Rivera's grip on his antenna loosen, and her body relax. Her breathing grew deeper and more even, and he assumed she was in standby-mode; sleep, he thought it was called. He glided steadily through the night air, letting her recharge as humans did. She seemed well-balanced enough.
As they drew closer to the signs of habitation, the Dalek began picking out more specific life readings. They were approaching a transport pathway, so there were some humans very, very close. The urge to default to exterminating them was almost completely overpowering. At the best of times, he'd have trouble controlling it, but he'd spent years chained up in Van Statten's torture chamber, having humans alternately try to drill or saw through his armor or use electricity or heat or whatever other means they had to simply try to cause him as much pain as possible.
Now, flying through a human forest, feeling the presence of so many other humans nearby, it was almost like the cracks and gouges in his armor hurt his physical body, and the muscle memory of other torments flared up with such intensity that it was only his own stubbornness that kept him heading in the same direction. He had decided to take Seina Rivera home, and he couldn't shoot his gun with her sitting on it—not without changing his mind.
Then, as he grew acclimated to the closeness of the human life signs, he found himself focusing more on Seina herself, as she leaned against the dome of his armor. He started to wonder how many more of these human creatures might be like Rose Tyler or Seina Rivera. What if most of them were like that? He should have wanted to kill them anyway, but people like that were… they were like light in a universe of impenetrable darkness.
He needed that light today—he could not bring himself to hate it.
It was a while later that he heart it—the heavy beating of propeller blades against Earth's lower atmosphere. That sound… he'd heard it once before; the tiny airships that the humans called "choppers" had landed all around him as he lay in the wreck of his ship, injured and alone. They'd taken him away in one and locked him in Van Statten's vault. Terror coursed through him, and he instinctively pivoted his head to direct his eyestalk towards the far-off vehicle, which was, in its defense, apparently just passing by, and ignoring him completely.
The Dalek did not realize his mistake until a rel too late. Dislodged when the dome she'd been leaning on twisted beneath her, Seina Rivera slid down his outer shell, bouncing off a protruding sphere of dalekanium and hurtling diagonally towards the planet below, falling into a wide river with a loud splash. Either the impact or the temperature change clearly jarred her out of standby-mode, because she immediately began to flounder around in an apparent attempt to keep her breathing intakes above the water's surface. However, it seemed that human younglings were not born with the innate ability to swim, and she was quickly submerged.
The Dalek plummeted to hover above the river, attempting to lock onto her with his levitation circuits, but he kept scooping up water; his precision was off from years of disuse and abuse and general lack of maintenance. How long could humans go without oxygen? Their cardiovascular systems differed widely from Time Lords, so he had no point of reference.
"SEINA RIVERA!" he screamed as loudly as his speakers could blast. If she could get nearer the surface and he could get a visual on her, he thought perhaps he could use his levitation circuits without coordinates, like he had when he'd initially picked her up. But her life signs were drifting away from him, and she was about two meters down. The river, swollen from the spring rain, had a strong current that was pulling her under. If his cursory analysis of the human respiratory system was correct, she would drown in less than 200 rels.
Another unwelcome emotion blazed through his mind—this time, one with which he'd had years to familiarize himself: fear. Every dark, heavy thought that had tormented him had been suspended, if only a little, by the kindness of Rose Tyler and Seina Rivera. Rose Tyler was with the Oncoming Storm, so he had best steer clear of her. What if they were the only ones—the only two kind humans in all of the universe? What if he was about to go back to being alone and helpless and in pain, with no hope of relief?
If Seina Rivera died…
He plunged into the river, increasing his lights to maximum and frantically propelling himself in the direction of her life signs. The dense material disagreed with his rocket boosters, which made his progress terribly slow, and water began to pour into the inner chamber through all the cracks in his armor. Now Seina Rivera wasn't the only one in danger of death, he realized frantically as he drifted towards the pulse and heat signature of her beating heart.
"SEINA RIVERA!" He called again, his speakers' range and volume diminished by the rushing river. His mind cast through a billion combinations of density, current, inertia, velocity and every other factor he could think of in order to come up with the soonest possible intercept point, and he angled himself towards where the final equation pointed him.
His inner chamber was half full, and the levels were rising frighteningly fast. He'd never really thought about drowning, but with half of his sphericals* already submerged, it was beginning to be something he'd have to comprehend. The need for carbon dioxide was already making his whole body burn—he wasn't biologically endowed with very big reserves, so the cells in his lower body would begin to starve themselves in perhaps thirty rels. Not to mention the radiation damage he'd sustained from his impulsive exposure to the sunlight just that day. Everything hurt, so much.
Just when he was starting to get dangerously woozy, he spotted her, still doggedly trying to flounder her way towards the surface. He propelled himself towards her, but his vision was blurring. His body was shutting down to protect itself from its inability to metabolize, but he couldn't go into low-power mode right now; they'd both drown.
"GRAB HOLD, SEINA RIVERA," he choked out with effort, and her fingers scrabbled against his sides for a moment until she was able to wrap them around his external interface. "ASCEND, ASCEND, ASCEND," he groaned to himself as he did just that—or tried to. The pressure from the current wouldn't have bothered him on a normal day, but his systems were so low on power that he had to fight for every centimeter he gained—and he was still filling up with water.
By the time they broke the surface, all of the Dalek's sphericals were submerged, and he could hardly see both through the water and the dizziness. He maneuvered them to the shore and dropped down roughly, depositing Seina Rivera on the ground harder than he'd intended. She fell backwards and rolled, laying on her side and coughing up the water that had accumulated in her lungs. The Dalek quickly tried to vent his inner chamber, but he couldn't get a pressure seal, so the ventilation system just tossed the water around and aggravated his aches further.
He cried out—a strange, strangled, muffled sound that he'd never heard a Dalek make before, and made a snap decision to turn off the ventilators. The water was draining slowly out through the cracks by which it had entered—the only way he could speed it up was by opening his casing.
Seina Rivera heard the cry and scrambled to her feet as soon as she could breathe again.
"What is it, what's wrong?" she exclaimed in concern before dissolving into another wet cough.
Water rather than the usual pressurized gasses sprayed out from the seams as the Dalek unsealed his armor. Slowly the front panels moved upwards and to the sides, and the last of the river splashed down his sides and onto the hard ground. He gasped for breath, opening his sphericals to the maximum, against all his instincts that told him to curl up and protect himself because he had no armor now between himself and the outside world.
After a long few rels, he regained his equilibrium, and slowly opened his eye, which he'd reflexively squeezed shut as he fought to breathe.
"Are you… okay now?" Seina Rivera asked him, standing in front of his open casing with her head angled like she had before when she'd asked that question. Most other species were repulsed by a Dalek's true form, but she didn't look afraid.
"Yes," he replied, his voice sounding odd and weak without his speakers.
"Good," she said with a shaky laugh. Somehow he guessed that in this case, laughter didn't mean happiness or humor. "Thank you," she added, taking a step closer so she was leaning up against the base of his armor. "You saved my life."
The Dalek wasn't sure what to say to that. The action was shameful to his kind, but it was natural for creatures like her to see it as a positive thing, he supposed.
Hesitantly, Seina Rivera reached out a hand and rested her palm against the side of the Dalek's head. His tentacles twisted nervously as his nerve endings screamed in shock, trying to decide how to register this sensation. It wasn't like the tortures created by the humans, or the feeling of drowning, but it was so surprising, so foreign, so alien that his mind could barely comprehend it.
For the first time in his life, the Dalek had actually been touched. He might have been the first one in history to ever have been touched with kindness, in fact. Daleks did not touch one another, and opened their armor around other species only when somehow forced to do so. He didn't know what he thought of it, although after several rels he decided that it didn't hurt, as such. She wasn't covering his eye or his sphericals, and there was no impact or temperature extreme or penetrating tool of any kind. He'd seen humans do this often—prolonged physical touch was, he'd gathered, a sign of affection.
"Can I give you a name?" she asked after a long pause.
"For what reason?" The Dalek asked, genuinely confused by the change of subject. How could she think straight while touching him? He couldn't. Then again, her species did it so often, perhaps it wasn't so jarring for her. Her front finger was gently rubbing back and forth across the top of his head. Oddly enough, it had a calming effect.
"Because," she answered. "I think you ought to have one. I think that… having a name means that you're special. You're important. So… can I?"
The Dalek considered that. Daleks didn't have names—that was presumptuous. It was against their way of life. But with every Dalek exterminated but him, what was the Dalek way of life? Did it matter anymore? Daleks didn't have conversations with human younglings, and they certainly didn't like being… petted, he realized after searching his English dictionary for half a rel.
"You may," he responded finally. It didn't harm anything, having a little human child attach a word of specification to him.
"Okay!" She exclaimed brightly. "How about… Teddy?"
"I have no preference," the Dalek answered honestly.
"Teddy it is, then," she decided. "My friend's mom was looking at baby names online—she says it means 'protector.'"
"Daleks do not protect," the Dalek protested out of habit
"But you do. You are—right now," Seina Rivera argued.
And Teddy found he couldn't deny it.
"My ventilation systems are fully vented," he announced after a moment. Apparently guessing his intent, Seina Rivera withdrew her hand and stepped back, out of the way of his armor closing. Strangely, he missed the feeling of her hand on his head once it was gone.
"WE ARE LESS THAN A QUARTER KILOMETER AWAY FROM THE HUMAN SETTLEMENT," he added after his armor was closed. "IT IS TO YOUR LEFT."
"Okay," she said. "I think I can walk the rest of the way. Is it… that way?" she asked, pointing—in completely the wrong direction.
"YOUR OTHER LEFT," Teddy corrected, firing up his hover mechanism and circling her to chivvy her in the right direction.
"Heh, I knew that," she responded, sticking her tongue out in a gesture he believed signified impudence. "I was just testing you."
"THIS STATEMENT IS FALSE," Teddy accused, and Seina laughed—this time certainly in humor, and reached up a hand to take hold of the barrel of his gun, much like the way humanoids held hands.
"Come on, Teddy," she chuckled. "Let's go home."
A/N: And that's it, folks! Off into the sunset.
I have this idea that Seina grows up with Teddy as her best friend, although how she gets a robot of death from outer space past her abuela is anybody's guess. Seina eventually gets a doctorate and works in medical research. Teddy assists her, since he, as a Dalek, is a genius, and can analyze chemical compounds with a hundred times the speed and accuracy of a human.
Seina is killed in a collision with a drunk driver when she's 28, and Teddy uses his own dalekanium and other resources to turn her into a Sentinel (I don't know what they're actually called—those humans-turned-Daleks that we see in the Dalek Asylum and the Papal Mainframe and other episodes) but with her human mind dominant, rather than waiting in the wings. Eventually, they meet the Doctor again, who has to come to terms with the fact that there are literally two Daleks who heal people—and one of them is a bona fide doctor. It kinda' blows his mind. But all of that goes beyond the scope of this oneshot.
*Sphericals are like holes in the skin that insects breathe through directly, rather than having lungs. In my head canon, Daleks have them too—mostly in their tentacles.
Thanks for reading this far!
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