Davros looked the Doctor up and down, and smiled subtly.
"You have changed again, Doctor," he said, his voice soft and subtle, menacing. It had been, the Doctor remembered, many years since that voice had plagued him last. The Time War had been Davros' chance to attempt to mess about with the Nightmare Child - about the nastiest anomaly in Stellar History; a sentient monstrosity that ate the nightmares of anything sentient near it. It had been dormant for millennia when Davros had messed about with it, an it had taken all the Doctor's ingenuity to prevent it from awakening - but not before Davros had flown straight into it's jaws. Apparently Dalek Caan had somehow circumvented everything it it's way to rescue it's creator.
"You seem to have trouble hanging onto a form," the mad Kaled scientist added, a comment which brought a sad memory to the Doctor's mind. Your appearance is as inconstant as your intelligence. Just another step on the road to the war.
"Yeah," the Doctor said, ignoring those thoughts and looking around at the Vault - interesting name, no doubt if e hadn't regenerated or had been more lucid he would have commented on it - from inside the containment beam. "One of those Dalek Grunts of yours managed a pot shot. Gotta congratulate you on that, by the way. Time was when a Dalek couldn't hit the side of a barn when they were in it."
Davros moved up to the Doctor slowly.
"Is it painful, dying and being reborn, Doctor?" he asked, softer still, almost as if speaking to a dear friend or love one. Oh save me, the Doctor thought, since when did all my old enemies go sentimental? The Master gives me bed and board for a year and now this... "Does the pain course through you, even now?"
The Doctor looked down at Davros, boredom in the young features. He tried to look cold - but he was still getting used to the new face so it came off as quizzically petulant. "What do you care?"
For a long moment, Davros was silent. "I am concerned, Doctor, that you will be… unfit," the scientist finally conceded, looking up at him with an expression closer to worry than the Doctor had ever seen.
"Me? Fit?" the Doctor snapped, suddenly feeling angry, and not understanding why. "Course I'm fit. Fit as a fiddle. Fit as a fiddler. Fit as ten fiddlers. Why do you care?"
"I want you to bear witness to my final victory," the Kaled said. "I do not wish you to be unable to witness it. For that to happen would be... disappointing. Your intelligence is, after all, one of few on a par with my own, and as such, only you can truly appreciate the mastery of my great triumph."
"You? Triumph? Ha!" the Doctor said, suddenly becoming animated. He looked down at Davros with barely concealed disgust. "You couldn't triump at stealing sweets from a child… argh!"
At this, the Doctor bent over slightly, his face contorted with pain. Both his companions called out to him, but he waved then off, and locked eyes with Davros. Then, slowly, he opened his mouth, and golden glittering energy exited it, like fairy dust sprinkled into the wind – and the Doctor smiled, coldly and disconcertingly.
"But... I'd hate to disappoint you. What is this triumph of yours then, Dave?" he asked.
Davros stared at him for a long moment, as if wondering whether he was sane. Then, finally, he told him.
Jack Harkness did not like having no control. Today was a day over which he had less than no control. He had nothing. No team. No anything.
But. He had his wits. His mind. It'd been a while since it had been those alone he had to go on, but he still had them.
He started by raiding the ship's stores; amazingly, the Doctor had a box, hidden away in a corner, with Cyber-rifles from the early Cyber wars (before the head-guns came into 'fashion', if you could say that about any Cyber weapon).
Jack tested them, and decided that, yes, they'd serve; they might just be powerful enough to crack open a Dalek. He then managed to find the Dalek wreckage he'd destroyed the last time he'd been on the TARDIS (not counting the little trip in the vortex) and made sure the gun worked well.
It did. He grinned.
Then he looked for a manual on how to pilot the TARDIS. He was less than successful at first, and when he found one, it was talking about a completely different console configuration. He swore, and started looking for the spare console room the Doctor mentioned before. Then, after another hour searching (during which he'd found a broom cupboard, three spare console rooms, including one that looked like a Victorian Mansion with a console in it) he found a spare console room with the configuration was the same as in the manual - the desktop theme described as "default". After a few false starts, the rotor started rising and falling.
He was on his way.
The concept that the Kaled scientist explained in chilling, scientific detail, was quite terrifying.
A Reality Bomb.
The culmination of centuries of thought and planning, now made real. A weapon to destroy all creation. A power to set the greatest of minds (in the mind's own opinion) above all other things; to destroy what the Gods had made would make him more powerful, surely? That was the theory. The Daleks had been essays in the craft, experimentation in the great design for destruction. War upon the Thals? Pfft. Conquest of the lesser species? A footnote. The Time War itself? Nothing more than the opening paragraphs of the great opus that Davros had created. Nothing compared to the power, the glory, the beauty of a universe of trillions upon trillions of life forms destroyed by the genius of one man.
Davros was insane all right.
The Doctor listened as Davros outlined the annihilation of the cosmos in glorious detail. He listened warily but intently. Rose Tyler's eyes widened in horror as the clues she had observed in a dozen universes came together. Donna Noble, although not understanding half of the science, understood the principal of "universe dying" and the rest was just noise to that single concept.
"Now…" Davros said, looking intently at the Doctor, whose face was unreadable. "Tell me Doctor; speaking as men of intellect and science rather than as mortal enemies; what do you think of my plan?"
The Doctor, casting off morality (oh, it almost felt too easy) and thinking in pure science, scratched his chin, and he looked up at the ceiling, as if thinking about the ceiling very carefully; it was (if one was to take the observation at face value) the most fascinating ceiling in the universe. "Well," he said at last, looking down from said ceiling (actually rather a boring ceiling - having only needed three seconds for scientific consideration of Davros's plan, the Doctor had actually found himself engrossed in wondering just how good a ceiling the ceiling was), "It's clever, I'll admit that. The morals of it aside, the actual science is sound enough. Why you'd want to wreck the whole cosmos when all that would be left is the Daleks though…"
"And what would be wrong with that?" Davros countered. "Daleks – when not engaged in war – are logical creatures. Knwloedge and wisdom are their only concern. They seek to understand the universe, unimpeded by the creatures that surround and infest it."
"Those creatures," the Doctor said, a hard edge entering his soft voice, "have as much right to exist as you, and certainly as much as the Daleks. And tell me – exactly how much knowledge would there be to learn if everything in creation was annihilated? What universe would be there to understand?"
Davros smiled.
"Only the knowledge of what exists beyond creation, Doctor," he said softly. "Beyond."
Beyond creation? The great unknown? The Doctor had wondered; was that not merely the void? But what if...
He did not allow those thoughts to continue but Davros smiled.
"As a man of science, I knew you would understand," he said.
Davros had left them alone after that. The Doctor looked over at Rose, who kept throwing him sideways glances but never met his eyes. He was worried now; why wasn't she talking to him, or looking at him? It wasn't like before. She knew about regeneration. This shouldn't have been the issue. An issue. At all.
He wondered briefly if the vague idea involving the hand that he had had would have worked. Then he dismissed it – too many consequences; if someone had touched it, it would have sprouted a completely new, half human version of himself (metacrisis, very complicated, very dangerous, "avoid at all costs," thank you Delox) and the person who had touched it might have died. Plus, he reflected, Ten might not have been sensible enough to leave someone in the TARDIS to press the HADS. He might've been bowled over by Rose's return, plus Jack being there. The old team back together again.
Not that she was giving the new Doctor much reason to be bowled over, so that might help. It was a worry. So, now, he decided to try and solve his problem.
"So…" he began, throwing a sideways glance at Rose before looking at Donna. "New me. What's the verdict?"
Rose threw him a filthy look, knowing his game (she'd spent too long with him not too) but Donna just looked puzzled.
"What you on about, new you? It's still you, innit? Just with a new face. Like plastic surgery." The look on her face made the Doctor want to laugh. Plastic surgery.
"Best way of describing it I ever heard," the Doctor said. "Instant plastic surgery. Jordan would love it."
Rose smirked. The Doctor noticed immediately and clapped, laughing as well.
"Was that," he asked, "a smirk?"
"No," came the answer at once, Rose's sullen face returning.
"I think it was," the Doctor smiled. "I think you smirked. I think you're cheering up!"
"No, I'm not," she said, looking at him. He looked at her, his smile fading.
"Oh, c'mon," he said. "What have I done now? It's me, isn't it? Me, the Doctor, Time Lord, TARDIS… ringing any bells?"
"But you're not really," she cut in. "You're… not really him."
"Of course he is," Donna cut in. "He just 'ad a face lift."
"It isn't just that," Rose snapped. "It's your personality. You're… weird. You've got a bow tie on, and a tweed jacket, like some kinda... nerdy... freak thing," she finished lamely.
"'Nerdy freak thing'?" the Doctor said, looking insulted. "Nerdy freak thing? You travel the universe with me, see sights no one else ever sees, and not only do you come out with that bigoted tripe but you actually can't even string a decent insult together? I mean, blimey!" he said, slapping his forehead. "did you spend time with an army of chavs in that parallel world? Delinquent chavs who think the height of insulting someone with Ginger hair is to call them Ron Weasley? Which by the way makes no sense as an insult because Ron Weasley is a famous book character and the actor who plays him is incredibly rich and... Sorry, what was I saying?"
"Something about chavs," Donna supplied helpfully.
"Yes chavs!" the Doctor said. "The point being, you're better than insults, Rose Tyler!"
"You're wearing a bow tie," Rose insisted. "I mean that's just sad."
"Bow ties are cool," the Doctor countered, his face looking more than a little miffed. "And it isn't like I didn't change before."
"Yeah, but that was from big ears to the hottest model in the catalogue," Rose muttered. Donna heard this, and then she snapped.
"Hang on – you've seen him do it before, and you're still going on about it?" she said, confused now to high heck. "Did it not register the first time, or was he just too sexy for complaints back then?"
"It isn't like that…" Rose said, but then the Doctor snapped.
"Oh I bet it is." His eyes were cold now. "You cross dimensions – probably with some kind of primitive device to literally rip them open, that Earth could do no better – then complain when I perform a natural function of my biology!"
Rose glared at him. "I didn't like it before, either."
"That was understandable," the Doctor said. "Big ears didn't explain well enough. Pinstripe and converse was too enthusiastic on arrival…"
"You even talk about them as if they were different people!" Rose interrupted. "This isn't the Doctor I fell in love with! You aren't the Doctor I fell in love with!"
"I am the Doctor," the Doctor said. "And I change. I told you that before. You understood that. I was dying, I regenerated. I can't change back. Old ground!" he shouted, exasperated. "Tell me what the problem is with that!"
Rose looked at him, her eyes welling up.
"You gave up on me before as well," he added softly. "That hurt me, Rose. I thought you would have known that. Don't you think that this hurts? That not believing me hurts?"
"Don't you think him dying hurts?" she snapped back.
"But he didn't die!" Donna put in. "That's him there, in the tweed thing!"
"But it isn't!" Rose shouted. "And that is the point! My Doctor's dead forever, AGAIN! I'm never going to see the man I love again! And all I have now is a weirdo who thinks a bow tie is the height of fashion!"
"If I might interrupt," a smooth, augmented voice put in. And the three time travellers looked upon Davros, watching them with a grin upon his wrinkled face. "Doctor, much as your petty personal affair do not interest me," the creator of the Daleks added, "might I direct your attention, to the first tests of my reality bomb instead."
A screen opened up, and the Doctor looked up, along with his companions.
And the test began.
