Ayiana89: I'm glad you're enjoying it! Thank you for reviewing :)

Mystery Commenter: Good! And maybe... :P


The Doctor hadn't actually seen sweet Lynda Moss die, but he'd heard her screams. He had no illusions that her death had not been his fault. If he'd been faster, quicker to realize what was going on, he could have saved her. He held the same conviction for others he'd met who'd died shortly after meeting him. There was no doubt in his mind that they died because of him and it ate him up inside. He would never be able to drive away their names and faces, their screams as they died, but he doubted he would even if he had the ability. He'd killed them, he didn't want to disrespect their memory as well.

He could usually hold them at bay, but now they flooded into the forefront of his mind in tidal waves. He watched them die over and over and over, felt the sorrow and the guilt swallow him up like a hungry beast. He tried to apologize to them all, to say he had done the best he could, but the words died before they had left his mouth. So many faces, too many faces, all of them dead on his account.

And then he was seeing his enemies. They appeared in his minds eye as clear as though they were there. He saw the Slitheen, murdering a politician and stealing his skin for a suit to hide inside. They laughed as they did it. He saw Sontarans killing just for the sake of it. No reason, but pure sport. Cybermen came into his view; they stood over some poor soul as they tore out their brain, placing it into an empty metallic body and creating yet another soldier for their souless army.

And then the Daleks. He felt his rage and hatred boil at the sight of them, sickening him to the core. They came out in torrents from their ships, descending on planets like a plague and scourging their surfaces. In the distant he could see others approaching to fight them.

And he remembered what was happening.

The Doctor quickly banished the thoughts, grabbing them up and closing a door tightly to block them from Akdevor's prying eyes. He knew what had been coming in the distance. He'd almost allowed the door to the Time War to open. If Akdevor got into that memory, the Doctor wouldn't stand a chance. He returned from his mind with a gasp, allowing his dark, cold surroundings to sink in and register.

"Stop fighting me, Time Lord. I will break you eventually," Akdevor said, his black form taking on the grotesque shape of the canine Legion. "Why cause yourself more pain?"

The Doctor righted himself from where he'd been collapsed on his hands and knees, putting his back to the wall and leaning wearily against it. "You think... I'd make it easy?" he asked through heavy breaths. "You might know what I am, but you obviously don't know me very well."

"Oh, I know more about you than you'd like. For instance, I know this... face you put on is an illusion to your true self... Oncoming Storm."

The Doctor grimaced. He'd gone deeper than he had originally thought, but not yet so deep as to make a significant impression. Still, he used the conversation to his advantage, rebuilding the barriers of his mind as best he could. For some memories, he would have to start from scratch, their defenses having been completely demolished by the most recent attack. He would focus on those later. He needed to reinforce the memories that hadn't yet been reached.

"Oh, you heard about that?"

"This is not the only ominous name you have attained, as I understand it. But you choose the Doctor; the name of a healer. How ironic, considering the destruction that follows in your wake."

The Doctor made to reply, but could think of no retaliation. It wasn't as though Akdevor was wrong. Many of his enemies (and a few allies) had pointed out this fact to him. He had no argument for it. His head fell towards his chest and he swallowed.

"Will you not defend yourself?"

"Why? It wouldn't make a difference to you," the Doctor said, shifting to find a more comfortable position. His burns and cuts were starting to ache and sting, giving him little comfort in this brief break in mental attacks.

"So you agree with my assessment?"

"Almost. The problem with you is that all you can see is the negative. The universe is black in your eyes, nothing but evil. I'm one of those gray areas, I guess. Wherever I go, trouble seems to follow me and I do everything in my power to stop it. That's what I do. That's who I am."

"You know this as truth. Why then do you bring others along to share in your miserable fate? To suffer as you do? Surely someone as... how should I say... noble as you, would leave them behind and spare them such experiences?"

The Doctor felt his hearts stop at this. He remembered something a bride-to-be had said after she'd magically appeared in his TARDIS. Sometimes you need somebody to stop you. He hadn't been able to argue that point with her, but he knew that wasn't the only reason he brought along companions; why Jack and Martha were on this desolate planet, lost and blind. It was his loneliness. He had the whole of Time and Space and needed someone to share it with, someone to keep him company, someone to comfort him when things went wrong, someone to stop him when he went too far, someone to be there.

He suddenly realized Akdevor had crept into his mind, and was viewing his thoughts with wicked fascination. He pushed him out weakly, like a child trying to shun away the parent. To his own surprise, Akdevor retreated, but he felt the pleasure oozing from him.

"You are quite interesting, Doctor," Akdevor said musingly. "You will be my favorite, I think."

"Fat chance," the Doctor spat. "We're just not compatable. I'd get on your nerves." The sound of his voice was disappointing, weak and hoarse. He had wanted to sound cheeky, but he was really too tired to pull it off.

"I think not. Now, I will leave you for a short while. I have other souls to torment besides yours, but not to worry. I will not to take long." He laughed maliciously and departed from the rooms, his black canine form morphing into a simple wisp and leaving as the door opened.

The Doctor felt his presence depart and heard footsteps as someone entered the rooms. He also heard a faint buzzing and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end as the room filled with electrical charge. He groaned and shifted again where he sat. His back was starting to hurt, and he was hoping to find a more comfortable position before his torture continued. He listened as the steps stopped a few steps in front of him.

"You're Silurian, aren't you?" the Doctor asked, trying for one to buy a little time and find out just how far gone these Legion creatures were.

The creature made no reply.

"I think you might have been a female. You sound too light to have been a male, but then you could have been a young male, I suppose. Or you were a thin-framed male. Like me. I'm a bit thin, if you haven't noticed. Really tall, really thin. Well, not sickly thin. More lanky, really. I rather like this look, though. My last regenerations had very big ears. They didn't even let me hear any better. Glad to be rid of those."

"Silence," the Silurian Legion hissed and pressed the metal rod against the Doctor's side, charging his body with electrical energy that shot through his limbs, making him convulse and cry out in pain. He collapsed to the floor, the relatively comfortable position he had found now lost. His muscles tensed as tightly as guitar strings, stars danced in front of his vision and his body screamed with the pain of what felt like thousands upon thousands of tiny, icy needles puncturing him all over.

And then it stopped, leaving him gasping for breath, his chest heaving and his limbs trembling fiercly.

"What... was your... name?" the Doctor coughed.

The Silurian Legion growled at him. He noted to himself that this Legion's voice did not sound like it was coming from everywhere, as the ones in the first town he'd come across had. This one had a mouth. Interesting.

"You wouldn't... happen to know what happened to Marcol, would you?" he asked, his voice cracked and hoarse. Needless to say, he wouldn't have objected to a glass of water.

"He will be Legion," it replied emotionlessly.

The Doctor looked in the direction of the door, aware suddenly of the distant, almost indescernable screams coming from that direction and realized with alarm that these were Marcol's. That's who Akdevor had gone to. He turned to the Legion Silurian.

"Leave him alone! Do what you want with me, but leave him be!" the Doctor pleaded with the dispassionate creature.

There was a pause. "You would trade your life?" the creature asked.

"Yes, yes, I would, now leave him be! Please, before its too late," the Doctor said desperately, becoming more and more aware of Marcol's cries. He could hear him crying now. Akdevor would have little trouble in breaking his mind.

"It is His will. He will be Legion."

"He doesn't have to be! He doesn't have to turn into you," the Doctor replied. He moved forward and felt the cord on his collar pull taut. "Look at yourself! Is this what you want to be? You had a name, a face, an identity and He just ripped it away! He's going to do that to Marcol unless I stop him. Please. Please stop him."

The Silurian Legion was staring down at him with its ghostly eyes. He wasn't connecting to it. At the next blood-curdling scream of agony, the Doctor lunged at the creature and put his hands at its temple.

It was indeed a girl, as he'd thought. She had been a soldier on a small passage ship, seeking for herself a new home. She had given up hope that Earth would ever be theirs again. The ship had come across a planet shrouded in black smoke and it had sucked them in. A few of the ships crew had died in the crash. They had been the lucky ones. The rest were taken to Akdevor's home and he set to the task of destroying their minds. She (he could not find her name anywhere) had been one of the first to be changed. He'd used her species' loss of Earth and a few family deaths to change her. Many people had lost family members in such a way, but none had to endure it as she had. Akdevor made her relive the deaths, over and over and over, sucking away any good thought she had like a leech until there simply wasn't any left. With nothing but pain remaining, she simply gave up, her last line of defense. This act left the souless shells. Most of the beings Akdevor changed chose this last act of self-defense, but some embraced the anger, pain and suffering that he left them with. These were the canine Legion. His elite. She was simply a worker drone.

He pulled away, his breath shaking. He hadn't expected it to exhaust him so much, but then he'd been through a lot that day. He also hadn't expected to see as much as he had. He had thought she would be hollow, and he could simply implant a thought into her mind that would save Marcol. He could not have anticipated finding the real her, buried deep within, but accessible, if you knew how to do it.

The Silurian Legion stumbling backwards, holding her head as though in pain, but making no sound. She continued to stumble until she hit the opposite wall with a thump. Suddenly she cried out. "No! My head! Get out, get out, get out!"

The Doctor listened and suddenly realized with horror that he'd brought those memories to the surface. She was experiencing them all over again. He tried to get up and reach her, to help her, but the cord pulled him back with a grunt. "Come here," he said. "Let me help you."

She shook her head violently, banging it against the wall behind her alarmingly hard, the sound of her skull against its hard surface echoing through the room.

"Stop! Let me help you!" the Doctor called desperately to her. He realized with dismay that she was not listening, and he would have to reach her from where he was. This was more tiring than making a physical connection first, but he didn't see that he had much choice. He braced himself and entered her mind.

He came into a hall lined with hundreds of doors, finding her sitting with her knees tucked under her arms as she sobbed. He knelt down beside her and hugged her gently.

"It's alright

," he soothed to her. "I'm not going to hurt you. No one's going to hurt you."

"Who are you?" the Legion part was gone. He had reached her.

"I'm the Doctor. What's your name?"

"Amara... Please, make it go away,"

she begged through her sobs. She looked up at a room at the end of the hall, where great puffs of black smoke was working its way steadily towards them, opening a few doors and then firmly closing others.

The Doctor looked at the girl and then at the black smoke of Akdevor approaching, wondering whether or not Akdevor was capable of leaving pieces of himself in the minds of his victims, or if this thing before him was just a manifestation of what he'd done to the Silurian girl. Either way, she needed his help. He turned to her. "It's alright, Amara. If you want me to, I think I can help you come back to yourself. Otherwise, I can shut that thing away so it can't hurt you anymore. It's up to you."

She looked up at him through tear-stained eyes uncertainly. "What will happen if you fix me?"

"You'll be yourself again. He won't have control over you anymore."

"And if you shut him away?"

"You'll go to sleep."

"Forever?"

"If that's what you want."

She looked at the black monster coming steadily towards her, reaching wispy tentacles outwards for her. She then looked at the Doctor. "I don't know if I could survive..."

"I could block it all out, but I'd need you to do something important for me first." He felt guilty for using her, but he was out of options and quickly running out of time.

"What?"

"Do you know where the TARDIS is? My big blue box?"

She nodded.

"Tell them where it is and to get it first. Do you know where my sonic screwdriver is? The little silver tube you confiscated from me?"

She nodded again. "Take that to them and tell them to put it on setting 35 and use it on the TARDIS."

"And if I do this, I will be myself? And I don't have to remember all of this?"

"Yes."

"Why can't you make me forget now?" she asked desperately, grabbing the sleeve of his jacket as though clinging to it for dear life.

"I'm too weak right now. Just being here is difficult. Please, can you do that for me?"

She paused, flicking frightened glancing at the black monster that the Doctor realized appeared to be approaching, but never actually getting anywhere. That was interesting and he made a note of it for later reference. Finally, she nodded her consent.

He closed his eyes and put his hands to her temple. Within moments, he was brought back to reality, his head absolutely pounding in pain. He collapsed weakly to the floor, lying with his head propped uncomfortably against the wall. He heard the Silurian Legion moving, but her steps were different. It had worked. She opened the door, hesitated and then ran out. At least, if all else failed, he had saved someone. He could still hear Marcol screaming, though it was becoming quieter and farther between. He was just about gone, he concluded with dismay. I'm sorry, he thought, shutting his eyes as though to shut out everything that was happening.