Act the First: Dalek
Parts: 4
Word Count: 10,000~
Rated: T
Beta: JolinarJackson
Part Two
"So where exactly are we going?" Rose asked, trailing along behind the man who was probably Welsh and not English. He gave her one of those small smiles, before he answered with, 'to make coffee.'
And that was how she found herself sitting at a table in a rather impressive break room while the Welshman started a brew. Normally she would opt for tea, but she'd heard it wasn't quite that prevalent in America and he'd offered coffee so politely she would have felt like a cad demanding tea instead. Rose looked around the very clean white room, noting the refrigerator, microwave and stove were all shined to perfection.
"Quite a set up," she commented for lack of anything to say.
"One of the perks of working for the man who owns the internet, I suppose." The man responded affably. He didn't seem like a bad bloke, nice hair, cute bum.
"Why do you let him treat you like that?" Rose asked.
The man blinked in confusion as he set a cuppa in front of her and sat down across the table. It smelled heavenly, the coffee that was, though he didn't smell bad either. A nice aftershave, not applied too heavily like some men tended to do.
"Oh," he said as it registered, "You mean the 'English' comments?"
"Yeah, I mean, it's not only rude, he's wrong. You're… Welsh, aren't you?" Rose asked, the last bit a touch unsure. She didn't want to seem just as ignorant as van Statten or whatever his name was.
The man gave her another polite smile, "I am. Ianto Jones… you don't get much more Welsh."
It was her turn to smile, "No, I suppose not. Rose Tyler, by the way," she raised the porcelain to her lips and took a sip, "Gor Blimey! That's good!"
She blushed a little as Ianto chuckled. She hadn't meant to be that enthusiastic but, "I'm serious, that's really good."
Ianto's smile looked a little more genuine as he took a sip from his own beverage. Rose set her cup down and tried to school her features into a modicum of seriousness.
"You didn't answer, why would you let him treat you like that? It's not right."
The polite smile was back, but Rose sensed it wasn't aimed at her and was something like a coping mechanism, "Mr. van Statten doesn't respond well to those who speak up or resign…"
The implication hung in the air and Rose felt her mouth drop a little and she had to fight to compose herself. She should have realized, if he treated those currently in his employment as rudely as he did he certainly wouldn't treat those that left better. She hated to imagine what happened to those that were fired.
"O-oh, I see."
Ianto looked a touch uncomfortable, as if he had been at fault for the wave of awkwardness. He sipped at his coffee and then spoke up again, "Would you like to see some more of the artifacts?"
Rose beamed at him over her mug.
*~R~*
"My apologies for the mess," Ianto said as they stepped inside the room. Rose fixed him with a skeptic look and wondered what mess he could possibly mean. The folder next to the single hunk of metal on the table? What would he have thought of her flat with her mum's things strewn about and dishes piled up in the sink?
The rest of the room was carefully organized, file drawers lined the walls and there were both clear and opaque containment boxes that were obviously used for storage of the aforementioned artifacts. It was all clearly labeled and tucked away neatly. Rose turned her attention back to Ianto who was bent over to close one of the containment bins. He did have a nice bum, Rose observed.
"What's that?" She couldn't help but ask. Ianto was holding out what appeared to be a simple metal sphere.
He smiled at her, a surprisingly attractive and boyish smile, "Watch."
Ianto pressed a button and the sphere levitated almost half a foot before it began rearranging itself into something that almost looked like a vehicle. Rose stared at it in awe and excitement and she gently reached out to touch it. The device contracted back into the sphere within seconds.
"Brilliant!" Rose exclaimed, laughing, "What is it? Like some sort of children's toy or something?"
Ianto nodded, and then amended, "Well, I think so, at least. Hard to be certain."
Rose hummed in agreement and pressed the button again, delighted as it changed into a robot with slightly too long arms. She laughed again and looked at Ianto who now wore a distant expression on his face. "What?" She asked.
"Just imagining, I mean, I know it sounds daft, but…" Ianto hesitated, then he shook his head, "Obviously something else created this. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like out among the stars. The whole universe must be filled with life, life like ours with children playing with toys and yet so vastly different."
Rose studied him, feeling a connection to his heartfelt words, "I don't think that's daft at all."
Ianto seemed uncomfortable again and Rose felt like she had somehow intruded on his personal thoughts. She pressed the device again, turning it back into a sphere and handing it to him.
"So, if you're so interested in aliens… why aren't you down there with the live one?" Rose challenged, her voice playful despite her innate curiosity to learn more about whatever the Doctor was looking at.
"You mean the Metaltron?" Ianto asked, roused from the slightly melancholic mood he'd slipped into.
Rose quirked an eyebrow, "'Metaltron'?"
Ianto went sheepish, "That's what the others call it. Mr. van Statten keeps it secret, but I… took the liberty of patching through the CCTV."
Roses' eyebrows raised again and a wide grin broke out over her face. Apparently there was more to Ianto Jones than smart suits and polite manners, she liked it. "Can we see it? The 'Metaltron'?" She almost laughed over the name.
The Welshman went to the computer and started typing furiously until a video feed popped up. Rose stepped closer and Ianto moved back to let her.
It was a hulking thing, bound in chains. It looked… honestly it looked like a salt shaker with a stick jutting out at the top of the dome. It was copper-colored with strange bulbous protrusions on its lower half. Then she noticed the plunger and the whisk in place of where limbs might have been found.
"Is that it? That big… pepper pot?" She asked, dubiously, pointing at the screen.
"Yep." Ianto replied.
"It's not doing much," She commented, a few seconds before a man in a bright orange hazmat styled suit entered what must have been the Cage van Statten kept mentioning.
"Yeah, it sits there most of the time," Ianto explained as he put away the metal plaything and then walked back over. A frown graced his features as he saw the man, he reached over to close the window but Rose stopped him with a hand on his wrist.
"What's he going to do?" She asked needlessly as the man began doing something that caused the creature to emit a metallic sounding screech. It was absolutely horrid and conveyed a pain that was easy to understand as it echoed. "Ianto, what's he doing? He's torturing it! Where's the Doctor?"
"I don't know," Ianto said honestly.
"Take me down there now!" Rose demanded, shouldering passed him in her haste. Ianto followed swiftly on her heels. Good.
.[D].
The Doctor breathed heavily, his bare chest heaving with each inhale and exhale, as the pain finally subsided. There was a living breathing Dalek and no one was going to stop it. Henry van Statten thought he could keep it locked away and maybe he could have if he and Rose had never come here. It was awake now. It would come for him following the primary directive of all Daleks.
Exterminate.
They would all die if van Statten wouldn't change his mind. Goddard. Simmons. The clever young man they'd met in the office. Rose. God, not Rose. Not wonderful, brilliant, fantastic Rose Tyler.
He couldn't let that happen.
{-I-}
Ianto flashed his clearance badge at the security officers who had always been a bit too quick to point their weapons for his taste. Rose hardly seemed to notice them as she barreled into the room. She only slowed when she caught sight of it, silent now that Simmons had gone.
"Careful," He warned as she stepped nearer. Ianto followed despite his instincts screaming to stay away. He'd seen what it could do, and that was enough for his survival mechanisms to kick in.
Rose was only a foot or two away when she started trying to communicate with it, "Hello?"
She was treating it like a child, her voice soft and coaxing, and for all they knew it was a child. Ianto frowned at the thought, he may not have cared for the Metaltron but the thought of it only being a child that they tortured day in and day out did not sit well.
"Hello, are you in pain?" Rose persisted, clearly fighting down a swell of emotions, "My name's Rose Tyler, I've got a friend; he's called the Doctor. What's your name?"
"Ye-es," a metallic voice said, stretching out the word and warping it. Ianto looked on in shock. It was talking! The Metaltron was talking! All of Simmons' drilling and grinding at the metal plates for nothing. All it needed was a kind voice.
"What?" Rose asked, confusion coloring the word.
"I… am in… pain."
Ianto dared to get closer, to hear the creature better.
"They tor-ture me," the Metaltron continued, its speech slow and tinny, "And still they fear me."
Ianto looked down out of guilt. He had feared the creature, though it had done nothing. The man it had killed had probably been out of defense. He realized he might have done much the same had he been in the same position. Anyone would were they thrust inside a small room and experimented on endlessly.
"Do you fear me?" It asked.
Rose shook her head, "No."
The eyestalk, or what Ianto assumed was an eyestalk given the shape and the glowing blue light, lowered in a very human expression of despair. Ianto felt his throat tighten with something like remorse. Even if he hadn't been the one to hurt this creature he had done nothing to stop it either. He had put his own life ahead, justified his inaction with the memories of all the others who dared have thoughts. Who spoke up against wrongs.
Henry van Statten was a monster, but Ianto Jones was a coward. He went through his life in the background, never daring to be great, never risking anything. And he knew why. Suddenly he felt almost overcome with the discontentment of how he'd lived to this point. Of how much he'd shied away from in the twenty-three years he'd lived. He had sworn to put the past behind him and yet it tempered everything he did.
The masks he wore… The shadows he made his home…
And Rose Tyler, a young girl, who couldn't have been more than twenty, stood bravely trying to help a creature she knew nothing about, other than its victimization. She stood head and shoulders above the rest with her genuine morality and righteousness. A beacon that humanity was not solely comprised of the selfish and the cowardly.
"I am… dying." The strange grating voice clashed with Ianto's thoughts and brought him back to the room.
"No—No, we can help," Rose insisted, concerned.
The eyestalk lifted some, "I welcome death, but… I am… glad that before I die, I met a hu-man that was not afraid."
For some reason Ianto would swear red flags were raised in his head. That sounded too manipulative. Too much like the creature was trying to evoke sympathy, perhaps it was paranoia but those words circled in his mind as he tried to fathom what the creature wanted. Ianto pushed down the feeling, he was probably reading too much into it.
"Isn't there anything I can do?" She asked. Ianto drew closer until he was standing next to Rose, she looked to him, her warm brown eyes soft and almost ready to cry.
"My race is dead," the Metaltron revealed, eyestalk dipping again, "I shall die a-lone."
Rose bit her lip, and before Ianto could fully process what she was doing she reached out and gently rested her hand on the domed portion of the creature.
"Rose! No!" Ianto cried out ripping her hand off the metal and pulling her away. She was hissing in pain and staring at her hand in horror, but Ianto only felt relieved it hadn't been worse.
"Collecting material! Extrapolated! Initiate cellular regeneration!"
Ianto stared, gobsmacked, as the Metaltron shouted, its speech speeding up in what he might have termed excitement in a human. He could feel Rose clutching his sleeve as he unconsciously pulled her closer to his chest. They were both backing toward the door to the Cage.
Rose flinched as the chains snapped and sparks went off, the light of which was near blinding and the noise almost deafening.
Simmons stormed in barking, "What the hell did you do?" before haughtily marching up to the creature with his drill. They both watched nervously as the Metaltron lifted up its plunger-like appendage.
"What'cha gonna do?" Simmons demanded, hands idly resting on his equipment, "Sucker me to death?"
The limb extended, latching onto his nose and mouth. His screams were muted but the sounds of the bones in his jaw being crushed were incredibly loud. Rose gasped and fled into the monitoring station. Faintly he could hear her cries for help, shouts for the security officers to do something, but he felt paralyzed. Rooted to the spot as the smashing of bones dragged on endlessly while the muffled shouts of agony faded from existence.
"Ianto! Get out of there!" Rose shouted, suddenly back and pulling on his arm.
When Simmons fell to the floor, a sickening 'pop' resounding before the low thud of flesh against concrete, Ianto finally found the ability to run.
.[D].
The worst ofthe Doctor's fears were realized as the claxon sounded. His head felt heavy and his entire body ached, but he would sooner die than do nothing. He wouldn't do it for this Henry van Statten. He would do it for his people. For the innocent people here. For Rose Tyler.
He lifted his head, blue eyes piercing and daring van Statten to refuse.
"Release me if you want to live." The Doctor commanded, his voice only tinged with the weariness he felt seeping into his marrow and mingling with the dread already present.
He would end this. Here and now. The final battle of the Time War, the last Time Lord and the last Dalek.