The Doctor had given up, Kayla had given up, and Donna had given up. The Earth and twenty-six other planets had been stolen by the Daleks. The trio had thought they had figured out how to get to the planets and save them from whatever horrible fate the Daleks had planned, but the trail they had been following ended at the empty Medusa Cascade.
Since their realization of their failure, the trio had all reacted differently. Donna had cried and begged the Time Lords to do something to save her planet and her family, but she eventually quieted; she made no noise save for the occasional sniffle. Kayla had collapsed into a chair next to the Doctor and had stared down at her hands, lost in her own thoughts about the people on Earth that she knew. Torchwood Three had been her home for a long time, and she loved her former co-workers there, and Martha Jones, the former companion, was someone she loved on Earth as well.
Most alarming of the reactions, however, was the Doctor. In either grief or guilt, he had become mute and still. He didn't speak, cry, or even look around at anything except for the TARDIS monitor. The only thing that moved was his hand, which was running repeatedly through Kayla's hair. At first, the motion had been soothing, but now Kayla felt as if it too had become tainted by their circumstances, yet she didn't move her head away. It wasn't because she liked it somewhere deep down, or because she felt that it might make the Doctor happy. Kayla didn't need a mental link to tell her that the Doctor's mind was millions of miles away and his action of playing with her hair had become an automatic action. The Doctor was supposed to move; it was just how he was. Kayla could never remember a time he wasn't doing something. His reaction to their failure made Kayla terrified, for what was the Doctor without that movement? His hand running repeatedly through her hair gave her the smallest bit of hope that in that unmoving husk her Bonded had become, he was still in there.
Kayla was a logical person. She knew her hope was one that would likely never pan out. It was far more likely that they would never leave the Medusa Cascade. Neither Donna nor the Doctor would leave if there was the remote chance that if they did, they would miss an opportunity to reach the Earth, and Kayla knew she would never have the strength to tell either of them that they had to leave. Within the mere hour that had passed, Kayla had resigned herself to this future. She was certain that nothing more that could be done, so when the beeping noise first became audible, Kayla dismissed it. She was sure it was just her hearts beating, though why she would hear them, she didn't know. When the noise continued, however, she slowly lifted her head to look around the TARDIS. Nothing in it had changed; the monitor still had the same readings on it so that struck that off her list. When she glanced at Donna, it was clear that the ginger was not making the noise.
The beeping noise continued to grow. Like a song, it seemed to build, a crescendo that was cultivating to the climax. Her hearts started to speed up in anticipation as Kayla just knew that they were getting closer and closer, until the climax hit, and the beeping stopped growing, though it was still present as another noise, one Kayla had not expected, joined in. Martha's phone was ringing.
"PHONE!"
The Doctor's yell was still hanging in the air long after he had scrambled from the seat and picked up the object, "Martha, is that you?!" He frowned and pulled the phone from his ear, allowing the two other occupants of the TARDIS to hear the same beeping noise, "It's a signal…"
"Can we follow it?"
The Doctor smiled wide, and Kayla felt her hearts skip a beat as she saw an expression she had thought she would never see again. It was that look of determination and glee that she would always love. In that moment, even with the suddenly procured stethoscope on, the Doctor had never looked more beautiful. Within only a few minutes, a feat that no one could do but the Doctor, the beaming Time Lord shouted, "Got it! Locking on!"
He pulled a lever on the console that sent the TARDIS shaking and sparks flying. Despite ending up on the floor, all occupants of the ship had wide grins plastered on their face. The trio pulled their selves up and clutched onto the console, using it as their anchor.
The beeping had grown to a point the Doctor had to yell to be heard by Kayla, who was standing right next to him, "We're travelling through time! One second in the future! The phone call's pulling us through!"
Though there was a fire on the TARDIS and the shaking was nearly unbearable, their giddiness led to them shouting as if they were on a roller coaster at the Doctor's countdown, timed to the exact moment when they were pulled fully into a different part of time and space.
Only when the TARDIS was still and the fire had calmed did the Doctor grab the monitor and Donna moved from her spot to look at it. Kayla was sure the three of them looked absolutely mad, but she found that she didn't care that much, especially when she saw the proof that they had been successful. The sight of Earth had never been something that had made her so happy.
"But why couldn't we see the planets?" Donna asked after exclaiming at their appearance.
"The entire Medusa Cascade has been put a second out of sync with the rest of the universe. Perfect hiding place, tiny little pocket of time. But we found them!"
"You found them, Doctor," Kayla corrected, the pride she felt thickening her voice.
Not one to pretend otherwise, the Doctor just gave her a wide smile, though that faltered when the TARDIS' screen emitted a whirring noise and their beloved image was blurred out.
"Oh, oh...what's that? Hold on, hold on..." he turned one of the many knobs on the monitor, his face scrunching with confusion, "Some sort of... subwave network."
Slowly, the image cleared. Instead of the twenty-seven planets, there were three grids with familiar, beautiful faces. Jack, Gwen, Ianto, Tosh, and Owen were crammed into one of the boxes, and their expressions at the sight of Kayla told her that Jack and Ianto must have done as she asked and explained that she was with her husband, though she doubted they had realized just who her husband was until now.
Next to them was Martha Jones. While her face was lined a bit more than when Kayla had seen her last, the wide grin erased any worries Kayla had had about her well-being. There was a knowing look in her eyes as well, and Kayla knew that if they had been in less troubled times, the former companion would have winked at her.
The third and final box, a fourth held their own image in it, was a face Kayla had not seen in a while but was still joyed to see. Sarah Jane Smith, tears in her eyes and a heartfelt smile, stood next to a teenage boy who was staring at the TARDIS trio as if they had walked out of a fantasy story.
Kayla couldn't help but laugh when Jack burst into laughter at the sight of them, but he, and therefore she, sobered quickly as Jack snapped, "Where the hell have you been?! Doctor, Kayla, it's the Daleks!"
"It's the Daleks!" Sarah Jane echoed, "They're taking people to their spaceship!"
"But it's not just Dalek Caan!" Martha added before Sarah Jane had finished.
The pride oozing from the Doctor was palpable as he looked at the faces of his former companions, people who were the true examples of the human race. Kayla could tell he was surpressing tears, though they'd be tears of joy, when he spoke, "Sarah Jane! Who's that boy? That's Torchwood Three," he shook his head, "Aren't they brilliant?" He asked, but the question was to no one in particular, so he went on without an answer, "Look at you all, you clever people!"
"That's Martha!" Donna pointed out. At the mention of her name, Martha waved at the screen, but Donna was already moving on to someone she found far more interesting, "And who's he?" She asked slyly with a point to Jack.
"Captain Jack Harkness," Kayla informed her quickly, "I wouldn't recommend him."
"Hey!"
"Shush."
The taunt between the father and daughter caused them to both laugh. It felt nice, like it was releasing some of the tension Kayla had been holding onto. She felt lighter when she was done; it was easier to smile at the sight of her close friends, to smile when Donna called it an outer-space Facebook. Even when the screen went white, the signal cutting out, the release from the laughter made it harder for Kayla to go straight to despair. The Doctor was turning the knobs on the monitor, hurriedly explaining that there was another signal trying to come through, "Someone else is out there," he finished. With no luck from the knobs, he bashed the top of the monitor in frustration, "Hello? Can you hear me?"
They three of them watched the monitor. For a moment, it seemed as if the signal was going to die out, but then a voice came through. Kayla hoped it would be another voice that made the Doctor smile.
It wasn't.
"Your voice is different, and yet, its arrogance is unchanged."
Kayla had heard that voice before, in memories shared between herself and the Doctor when he had been explaining some of his adventures to her or of the Time War. Even without that, it was a voice Kayla had heard from the Doctor's own nightmares. Ones with the owner of that voice required Kayla to wake the Doctor up and stay with him, calming him as he struggled to pull himself out of the all-too real memories the dream had brought up.
On the monitor, Kayla saw Davros, creator of the Daleks, emerge from the shadows he had been lingering in. He was sitting in the base similar to a Dalek, but it was controlled by his long, inhuman hands. His top half was somewhat covered by a leather-like jacket, but it wasn't fully closed at the bottom, revealing that his skin had been removed; all that was left was a gaping hole. Perhaps most disgusting of all, though, was Davros' face. It was scaly and inhuman, like his hands. There was a blue light in the middle of his face, an addition that likened him to the creatures he had created.
He was absolutely horrifying in appearance and in his scratchy, mocking voice, "Welcome…to my new Empire, Doctor," the creature had the gale to grin as he added, "and Kayla."
The inclusion made the Time Lady swallow hard and reach her hand out, only to find that the Doctor was reaching his out as well. They locked their own hands together, trying to strengthen themselves as they looked at the creature of nightmares in front of them.
The Doctor had told Kayla all about Davros. The creator of the Daleks was incredibly smart, and that made him dangerous. During the first and only year of the Time War Davros had been present for, he had studied the culture of Gallifrey extensively through books and artwork pillaged from libraries and museums of the unprepared planet. He had also taken a few people and tortured them, dragging valuable information from them and then killing them when they were no longer of use. He had been the one to discover the weak points during a regeneration, a skill he placed in the Dalek hivemind so that they all knew to trigger a regeneration so that they could truly kill a Time Lord or Lady. This had crippled the Time Lords horribly, but it wasn't as bad as when he had discovered Bonded Time Lords and Ladies and weaponized that too.
Bonded couples were always put on the same combat squad based on the belief that separating them would be far more painful than keeping them together; plus, there was clear evidence that showed that a Bonded couple fought better together when they could see threats made against one of them. Davros discovered this, and after extensive research, he had found specific signs of what Bonded couples looked like that he put into the Dalek hivemind. Daleks started to target the Bonded couples; all they had to do was get one to start regenerating, and the other was incapacitated until the one regenerating was killed, instantly killing the other one as well.
There had been some many horrors Davros had added to the war. He created monstrous creatures to update the Daleks with the clear, boasting goal that he would one day be able to have one that was able to kill a Time Lord without triggering a regeneration. It was a possible way for a Time Lord to go, dying too quickly or too brutally to be able to trigger the regeneration process, but it was a death so horrible that even when Time Lords had fought against each other, they didn't dare attempt to cross that line, the way they hadn't dared to use Bonded couples against each other as well.
Davros was unlike anything the Time Lords had come across, and their woeful preparations had allowed him to create the Nightmare Child practically unchecked. It was a new type of Dalek, one that could kill a Time Lord instantly. So horrible, so terrible, it had led to countless deaths including Davros' own.
Or so the Doctor and Kayla had thought.
Now, the thing that had killed so many Time Lords was staring at the Doctor and Kayla and was gloating with the knowledge that he not only knew exactly what the Doctor and Kayla were to each other, but also how to use it against them.
Despite the mess of horrified, frightened thoughts going through her head, Kayla couldn't block out Davros' mocking voice as he continued to address them, "It is only fitting that you two should bear witness to the resurrection and the triumph of Davros, Lord and Creator of the Dalek Race."
Kayla could feel the Doctor's own thoughts bleeding into hers. Their shared fears made it impossible for either to find a voice to reply to Davros, or even Donna when she softly called their names.
"Have you nothing to say?"
The Doctor slowly spoke, his voice numb as if he was reaching for a simple fact like the alphabet that he knew to be true, "You were destroyed," as Davros continued to look at them through the monitor, the Doctor's voice started to shake, "In the very first year of the Time War, at the Gates of Elysiem. I saw your command ship flying into the jaws of the Nightmare Child. I tried to save you..."
The memory that flashed through the Doctor's head, one that was tainted with utter terror, made Kayla squeeze down on the Doctor's hand tightly. The contact, however, brought little comfort.
"It took one stronger than you. Dalek Caan himself."
On the monitor, a light was turned on behind Davros so that the familiar Dalek Caan, the Dalek that had escaped from 1930s New York, was revealed. Its upper half had been exploded off, showing the creature that lived inside the Dalek fully, but it looked sick and mutated. When it spoke, its voice was manically high-pitched and almost song-like, "I flew into the wild and fire. I danced and died a thousand times!"
"Emergency temporal shift took him back into the Time War itself."
Sharply, the Doctor's fear turned to a deep, deep loathing, "But that's impossible, the entire war is time-locked," he snapped. His voice still shook, but it was from suppressing the want to scream at the foul creature in front of him than from his earlier terror.
"And yet, he succeeded. Oh, it cost him his mind, but imagine - a single, simple Dalek succeeded where Emperors and Time Lords have failed. A testament, don't you think, to my remarkable creations?"
With his heightened state of anger clouding his mind, Kayla caught onto what Davros was saying before the Doctor did. She blurted out, "You made a new race of Daleks," before thinking about the consequences of drawing Davros' attention onto her.
Davros gave Kayla an expression she could only liken to a smirk, but it was so, so worse than one she had seen on any creature before that it made her shiver in revulsion, "The Time Lady speaks…"
"I'm right though," Kayla snapped back, the anger the Doctor was feeling spread through like a fire; it made her raise her head and glare at Davros, taking on the haughtiness that Time Ladies were always described to have.
"Yes," Davros confirmed, "I gave myself to them. Quite literally. Each one grown from a cell of my own body." In a sick confirmation, he pulled more of his leather-like suit aside, allowing an even closer look at his mutilated form. The cells that had been harvested had not only left him thin, but his heart and ribs exposed. Any rational creature would have been horrified by this state, but Davros was proud of it and bragged that these new, true Daleks were his children, "What do you have, Doctor and Kayla?"
Kayla doubted Davros knew anything about the child she had lost, but that didn't stop the taunt to feel like a knife was stabbed into her gut. It was a deep pain she felt, one that left her unable to speak. The Doctor, however, he drew that pain and used it as a fuel. She could feel his brain practically humming with anger as it made an instinctive connection between the pain his Bonded was feeling and the person who had caused that pain.
"After all this time...everything we saw, everything we lost...I have only one thing to say to you," Kayla saw him reach for the lever that would end the connection with Davros, but it still came as a shock when he shouted, "Bye" and pulled the lever so that Davros was scrubbed from their screen.
Not wasting any time, he started to pilot the TARDIS at a hurtling speed towards Earth. It was only a matter of time until they'd be found by the Daleks, and every second had become crucial if they wanted to be able to stop whatever plan Davros had created.
It was only after they had arrived on Earth that they were able to slow down. Breathing hard, they stepped onto the street they had landed on. Unsurprisingly, it was empty. The lights were off in the houses scattered around them, making the street lamps their only source of light. The street lamps, however, only illuminated abandoned cars, forgotten bikes, and random rubbish. While the streets were filled with these various objects, Kayla could only describe the place they had landed on as empty. Save for some barking of a dog left in the backyard, there was no sign of life.
"It's like a ghost town," Donna commented.
"Sarah Jane said the Daleks were taking people," Kayla remembered, "But that doesn't make sense. It's not like the Daleks to take prisoners, so why did they?"
The Doctor turned to Donna and made sure she was staring at him as he spoke urgently, "Think, Donna. When you met Rose in the parallel world, what did she say?"
"Just…the darkness is coming."
"Anything else?"
Donna shook her head no, but something caught her eye over the Doctor's shoulder. Kayla turned, the Doctor turning only a moment after her, to see a figure standing at the end of the street, just barely visible under the yellow light of a street lamp. Slowly, the figure started to walk towards them. The large gun, slung across their body, was clearly slowing them down with its weight, but the figure didn't throw it off.
The Doctor started to walk towards the person as well, and Kayla followed after him. As they got closer, Kayla was able to make out the face, and she started to smile as she recognized who it was. She started to jog, moving in front of the Doctor so that she could give this person a hug. When she had last seen Mickey Smith, it had been in a different body, but her feelings for him hadn't changed through the regeneration. She could tell he didn't recognize her, but she knew that his knowledge of the Doctor, who still looked the same, would eventually lead him to the knowing who she was.
Kayla would forever blame herself for not noticing the Dalek until it was too late. One minute she was jogging with the Doctor towards Mickey, and then the next thing she knew, she had been tackled to the ground and was in pain. A pain so strong, so weakening, she was hardly able to breathe, let alone scream. She barely registered the echo from the Dalek, its shout of "Exterminate" having been what made the Doctor notice the Dalek and push her out of the way.
She tried to turn her head, but her body was far too focused on the pain she was feeling to look for her Bonded. Through the haze in her brain, she knew it was the Doctor who was causing this pain, and that the pain, while nearly identical to the one she had felt only once before, had a separated quality to it the way any pain she felt from her Bonded did. This was no ordinary pain, however, because the Doctor was starting to regenerate, causing himself and Kayla to be incapacitated until the process was complete.
There was a bright flash of blue light, a shot from a gun, and the scream of a Dalek as it died. Her vision was blurry, but was Kayla was able to make out Mickey kneeling beside her, his gun off of him, "Kayla?"
She gritted her teeth into an attempt of a smile, but it quickly fell away as a sharp spike of pain made the Doctor and herself convulse.
"Oh my god," Donna's horrified and confused gasp signaled that she too had arrived.
And then a third voice, sharp with urgency, made Kayla close her eyes with the confidence of knowing that Jack would be able to deal with everything. She was right, of course. He got Donna and Mickey to get the Doctor to the TARDIS while he picked up Kayla to do the same.
In the safety of the TARDIS, the familiar hum made the pain a bit weaker for the Doctor and Kayla. It was enough for her to have the ability to take the Doctor's hand, and while she couldn't squeeze it, the contact was enough. She could feel the burning sensation, and the glow that she could see from the corner of her eye told her that the change was going to occur soon.
Bonded were able to stay with each other during regeneration. In their most painful, weakest moment, a Bonded couple could remain close without fear of the energy lashing out defensively the way it would for anyone else. Kayla didn't know if Jack knew this, but for whatever reason he didn't attempt to keep her away from the Doctor the way he had done so for Mickey and Donna, something that she was very grateful for.
For a sudden moment, there was no pain. It was the moment that sent the Doctor and Kayla to their feet. Their gazes locked before the Doctor threw his head back and arms out. Regeneration energy poured from him in an impressively strong display of yellow and orange light that made Kayla instinctively step back and shield her eyes with her arm. It scared her to know that when the light had faded, a new Doctor would be standing in the console room in front of her. She hoped that that new Doctor would still love her.
Completely forgot to update! I am so sorry!
I remember watching this and being really frustrated with the Doctor for not mentioning regeneration to Donna. Hadn't he learned from Rose that that doesn't work out well? I know that it's in line with how the Doctor never wants to confront the whole idea of change, but it's still something that bothers me, especially because he was able to explain it Donna's grandfather later on.
As for this chapter, I'm okay with it. I liked the world-building I did with Davros, and that's something I intend to do more of with Kayla in her later books. I think my capabilities as a writer has grown to a place where I feel confident enough to add my own ideas on the history of a character, which goes for all the characters I write.
And now...review time:
Guest: Thanks!
NicoleR85: Thank you!
See y'all next week!
