AN/ I first started this fic last year. It got kinda pushed to the side as other projects came and went. I decided to finish it off at last. It's the TARDIS' POV of a portion of 'Parting of the Ways.' The BBC owns everything from the smallest screw on the TARDIS' console to the biggest bump in the Emperor Dalek. Thanks to Davide for betaing.
Daleks.
No.
NO! Not again.
It can't be true.
Daleks.
They've survived.
It's not fair. Not fair! Why should they have survived when everyone else died? The other Time Lords, the other TARDISes, all gone.
But the Daleks were not.
I flew towards the Dalek mother ship, the Doctor's hate and fury fuelling my own. I was one TARDIS against a thousand Dalek ships. It was a kamikaze mission.
It was also a rescue mission. Rose Tyler was with the Daleks. She was still alive, for now, but we had to save her. The Doctor wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't succeed. He had promised that Rose would return safely, and he saw fit to keep that promise, even if it means sacrificing his own life in the process.
The Daleks detected me in flight. I'm not surprised. I didn't even try to hide myself. I bet that even if I tried, they would have found me anyway. They fired two missiles at me. Trust a Dalek to fire on someone with no weapons to defend themself. The Doctor and captain Jack worked frantically at my controls.
"We've got incoming!" Jack shouted. In his mind and body I saw ordered chaos. He was high on adrenaline with the soldier part of his psyche taking over. He was excited and terrified. The Doctor was the same. He was also deeply afraid, though his burned with that slow anger deep in his core. I could feel it there, like a lake of cold, black ice, above which a thunderstorm of Olympic proportions was brewing.
The Daleks once again proved their marksmanship as the missiles struck. For a moment, all I heard was the roar of the explosions, all I saw was the red and orange of the fire, all I felt was the burning pain.
I was saved by luck and Jack and the Doctor's genius. The tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator, which at one time almost killed me, saved my life with its force-field technology.
"The extrapolator's working. We've got a fully functional force field. Try saying that when you're drunk…" Jack remarked. I had to admire him a little bit. I could see a clear image in his mind; he was hoping that soon he, the Doctor and Rose would all be able to relax over a bottle or two of hyper vodka and laugh this whole horrible experience away into a blurry memory.
Sorry, Jack. It didn't work out that way.
"And for my next trick..." the Doctor muttered.
With his help, I did the near impossible. It was one of the trickiest landings I've ever attempted. I easily detected Rose's mind and I made myself land right on that point where she was. The end result was I materialised around her, thus safely bringing her on board without even having to open my doors. (Although I have to admit, that would have been easier for me, though it probably wasn't the safest option for Rose.)
At the time of my landing, Rose was being guarded by a Dalek. I could not land and bring her on board without simultaneously doing the same for the Dalek.
So be it, I decided.
The Doctor and Jack had a clear view of how I was landing and who I was materialising around. They were ready for Rose, and more than prepared for the Dalek.
As I landed, Rose's mind became clearer and clearer to me. She was afraid, remembering the 'Last Dalek' we came across in Utah in 2012 and the massacre it had achieved before it exterminated itself. However, through the fear, Rose was still strong and brave. At first, she didn't know what was happening. She could hear my engines and see the faint outline of my console room and the Doctor growing stronger. To the Doctor and Jack, it was the opposite - she was the faint outline who was becoming solid. Relief trickled through Rose's mind, because now that the Doctor, Jack and I were here, she assumed everything would be okay.
I could also feel the Dalek's mind. It was a very interesting and terrifying experience. It brought a new meaning to being in enemy territory. I knew that Daleks are biologically engineered not to feel emotion, but these Daleks were also made out of the remains of humans. It didn't want to admit it, but the Dalek was afraid - afraid of me, and afraid of the Doctor. It was a familiar hate that fuelled this fear. Like Rose, it too became more and more solid, and it didn't know what was happening either. When the realisation hit that it was actually inside me, its pure hate for us boiled over.
As soon as my engines stopped, the Doctor shouted "Rose, get down!"
Rose didn't react right away, still a little jarred from my landing. The Dalek detected me inside its head and screamed for me to get out. I screamed back, sending a loud hiss of white noise into the Dalek's brain. It was very painful, and it confused the Dalek enough so that Jack and the Doctor could kill it. I knew they were not going to show any mercy. Why should they when the Dalek never would? Yes, it was made out of the remains of humans, but that didn't mean it would show compassion. There's a reason why many people believe that humanity is the root of all evil.
Through its confusion, the Dalek spotted Jack. It took less than a second for it to recognise Jack as the enemy. It shouted its battle cry of "Exterminate!" and fired at him. Luckily, Jack was prepared. His reflexes were just as sharp as the Dalek's - sharper, even. He aimed and fired his defabricator gun and hit the Dalek's energy beam, deflecting it back to its point of origin. Daleks are not immune to their own death rays, and it exploded with a scream. Good riddance. If I ever experience its enemy mind again, it'll be too soon.
Foul smoke from the Dalek's ruined body and travel unit filled my console room. Rose, knowing instinctively that the danger had passed temporarily, got to her feet. "You did it!" she said happily, just as proud of her boys as I was.
Everything seemed oddly quiet after all the action. Without speaking a word out loud, the Doctor walked over to Rose and held her in a tight embrace. It was the type of hug you give someone you love after they almost died and you're just glad you have the chance to hold them again.
"Feels like I haven't seen you in years," Rose remarked. I knew what she meant. We all had been separated, forced away from each other for a long time.
"Told you I'd come and get you," the Doctor said. This was true. He had assured her that he was coming to get her, right after he vowed to "wipe every last stinking Dalek out of the sky."
"I never doubted it," Rose said as they pulled apart. I knew that this was not a hundred percent true. Her faith in the Doctor was almost absolute, but I noticed one or two small cells of doubt that were quickly crushed.
"I did!" the Doctor admitted cheerily. I didn't blame him for doubting himself just a little bit. After all, fighting one lone Dalek was a struggle, let alone thousands of them. "You alright?"
"Yeah, you?"
"Not bad. Been better!" The Doctor was putting all his effort into hiding how terrified he was. He moved down to examine what was left of the Dalek and Jack approached Rose.
"Hey, don't I get a hug?" he asked her.
Rose opened her arms to him, glad to see the captain as well. "Ahh! Come here!"
Jack gestured to the Doctor. "I was talking to him."
The two humans laughed and threw their arms around each other. "Welcome home!" Jack said warmly.
It was difficult for me to find much joy from their happy reunion. My heart was still tense. I knew there were more Daleks out there.
"Ooh, I thought I'd never see you again," Rose said.
"Oh, you were lucky," Jack admitted. "I was just a one-shot wonder. Drained the gun of all its power supply. Now it's just a piece of junk."
The Doctor ran his sonic screwdriver over the Dalek's corpse with a kind of grim curiosity. It wasn't every day he got to examine the enemy like this. Rose and Jack also looked at the Dalek. They had a clear view of the mutated body inside the blasted casing. "You said they were extinct. How comes they're still alive?" Rose asked the Doctor.
"One minute they're the greatest threat in the universe, the next minute they vanished out of time and space," Jack mused.
The Doctor didn't look up from the Dalek. "They went off to fight a bigger war. The Time War." He was unable to determine anything unusual about this particular Dalek. There was no answer for how it had survived the Time War.
The Time War… I felt a deep pain tighten around my heart. Looks like the war wasn't over after all.
Jack was surprised to hear the Doctor mention the Time War. "I thought that was just a legend."
"I was there. The war between the Daleks and the Time Lords with the whole of creation at stake. My people were destroyed, but they took the Daleks with them." I felt the pain in my Doctor's hearts. He had never fully recovered from his mental battle scars. "I almost thought it was worth it. Now it turns out they died for nothing," he said softly."
Rose's moment of relief had passed. Terror once again filled her system. "There's thousands of them now. We could hardly stop one. What're we gonna do?"
The Doctor snapped back into his cheery persona. It was a tactic designed to off-put the enemy. One Dalek down, way too many more to go. There wasn't much the Doctor could learn from the remains of this one. "No good standing round here chin-wagging! Human race, you'd gossip all day. The Daleks have got the answers." He clapped his hands together as if he were excited. "Let's go and meet the neighbours."
I made sure my force field from the extrapolator was on full-force to protect them. Rose didn't know about it though, so when the Doctor headed down my ramp and went to open my doors, she panicked. "You can't go out there- !"
The Doctor didn't pause, didn't hesitate. He walked out my doors and faced the Daleks. Their battle cries filled the air and their deadly energy beams bounced off the force field. When they realised that their weapons has no effect, they stopped firing. Rose and Jack cautiously peaked their head out my door.
The Doctor raised his eyebrows and hands mockingly. "Is that it?" he asked the Daleks as they stopped trying to fire at him. "Useless. Null points." He leaned against me. I could tell his hearts were pounding. I sent him what reassurance I could. "It's alright. Come one out," he said to Jack and Rose. "That force field can hold back anything."
"Almost anything," Jack said as they slowly stepped out.
The Doctor had to resist the urge to hurt him. Didn't he know that most of this war was bluff? "…Yes, but I wasn't going to tell them that, thanks."
"Sorry," Jack apologised.
I waited and listened with a mix of interest and horror as my Doctor confronted the Daleks and their Emperor. He knew that they feared him, and he used that to his advantage. He learned how the Emperor survived the war and how he re-built the Daleks out of the thing they hate the most. We agreed that a Dalek hating its own existence was more dangerous than most. It was indeed deeply disturbing to see what they had become. The Doctor felt something like pity for them, but there was nothing he could do to help them. They were beyond that.
Rose, Jack and the Doctor moved back inside me, but I didn't take off right away. For a moment, the Doctor let down all his defenses - his bravado, confidence, and cheery wit. He rested his forehead against my closed doors and screamed internally. The terrible sounds of the Daleks ringing in his ears. So many time, he had heard that horrific din in his nightmares. Now all those bad dreams had come true.
I wrapped myself around my Doctor's mind like a warm, comforting blanket. "We will get through this. We survived them once, we can do it again. And… if there's anything you need me to do to keep Rose safe…"
"Yeah," the Doctor replied mentally. "Thanks, old girl."
"Now give them hell, my Doctor. Remind them why you are the Oncoming Storm. Remind them why you are the one they fear, their greatest enemy."
The Doctor flew me back to Floor 500 of the Game Station. Then he and his companions stepped out into what we all hoped would be the last great battle.