-REMEMBER ME-
PART II
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Answers
I follow Tragalade out of the hall, into a smaller hallway.
He's silent as we walk, waiting to speak until we are in a safer place. Just as I would do. So instead, as we walk, I observe.
Tragalade does indeed walk with a heavy limp. I assume it must be a prosthetic that he now walks with. His footsteps are uneven, the left foot landing more heavily than the right.
"The Great Beast destroyed the hunting party—and all were slaughtered save one. Tragalade."
"Your leader?"
"Yes—a great man. He slew the Beast, but at a great cost to himself. The beast took a leg from him for his trouble."
What must it be like, I wonder, to live without a limb? To know that you will forever be handicapped? That you can't just use up a bit of regeneration energy to grow it back? It must be terrifying.
You would know, whispers a voice in the back of my head, one I haven't listened to in a very long time.
That door must remain closed.
I can't close it fast enough, the memory flooding through before I can slam it shut. I can't help but feel the pain as though it was yesterday, my hand automatically reaching for my leg, the leg that always hurts the older the regeneration gets, that always hurts in those moments before I die. The reason for the cane. The reason for the limp.
WHAM. I can't close that door in my mind quickly enough.
My secrets best remain secrets, from everyone. Including myself.
For the first time, I begin to wonder what this Great Beast might have been, to kill a whole hunting party and take a leg from the only surviving member? And how exactly did Tragalade slay this terrible monster?
Tragalade opens a door off the hall and we go down another hall, this one shorter, and with two armed guards standing on either side of great golden doors. Tragalade dismisses them with a flick of his fingers.
"Personally," he says as the guards march away. We go through the doors, and Tragalade closes it tight behind him. "I'd prefer that I'd not need guards. But the reports of spies are increasing, and I never know whom to trust."
Tragalade takes a ring of keys from his belt, and he unlocks the door. It has several locks, and takes several minutes for him to unlock all of them.
"Except you, Doctor," he says. "You, I can always trust."
"Yes, people do seem to trust me, apparently. I've no idea why. Perhaps I've just got one of those faces. But then, I do get the occasional person who doesn't trust me at all, so there goes that theory. Now tell me, how exactly do you know me?"
Tragalade is silent, opening the doors instead. It opens to an office, very golden and shiny with a big, cluttered wooden desk in the middle, with comfy chairs. Tragalade shuts the doors behind us, locking them securely, and takes a seat behind the desk. I don't sit, but observe everything, looking around the office for anything out of place. A clue, a hint, anything. Tragalade does not stop me, but watches, with an amused smirk on his face.
"We are secure, here. No one can hear us in here."
"Good, clever."
"Don't you want to know how I know that it is you?"
"Good question, I don't always look the same. How do you know it's me, when, indeed, I've never met you before in my life?"
"I've met you before, but you haven't met me yet. You will, but not until you wear a bow tie."
"A bow tie? A bow tie? That's not enigmatic at all! Why would I trust you? Why should I trust you?"
"Because this is where you're heading, where you've always been heading, is Trenzalore. Your future. Your very dangerous future."
"So tell me."
"You know that I can't."
"You're right, you can't tell me that, so tell me something else, tell me something important, how did you really lose your leg?"
Tragalade smiles.
I stare at him intensely, both of us locked in a battle of wills. Which one of us will blink first?
Then Tragalade laughs.
"You are clever, aren't you, Doctor?"
I continue to glare at him as he continues to laugh.
"I thought you'd get there eventually, but not quite that quickly!"
"Dust!" I say.
"What?" says Tragalade.
"Dust," I say, swiping at a curious patch of dust over a picture of what I assume is Tragalade's family. Not touched. Not for a very long time. But still on the wall. While the shelf is perfectly dusted. "Dust never lies."
"I'm sorry, I don't understand."
"Tell me," I demand.
"It has to do with the war," he says cryptically.
"No, no riddles, just tell me."
"This war, this war is bigger than any one on this planet realizes."
"Is that so?"
"Yes, Doctor."
"How?"
"All in good time, Doctor."
I glare at him, and throw myself in a chair, crossing my legs and glaring at Tragalade.
"So, how did you lose your leg?"
"I did not lie, there was a Great Beast. But it is not the one that is painted on our Walls of History."
"Then what was it?"
"A monster unlike anything of this time or place."
"Tell me what it was."
"What do you know, Doctor, of the Daleks?"
My chest fills with dread. Not them. Not here.
"That's not possible."
"It is, Doctor. It's what took my leg."
"Daleks do not dismember people, they exterminate people!"
"They do have a tendency to do that, don't they?"
"What-?"
And then, it all seems to click.
"No," I gasp. "The Daleks wouldn't let anyone just walk away, unless they had…unless they had a use for them."
"I'd prefer that I'd not need guards. But the reports of spies are increasing, and I never know whom to trust."
Spies.
Puppets.
"I never made it out alive from there, Doctor. I was EXTERMINATED."
I jump out of the chair as if I'd been electrified, as Tragalade stands, and I watch in horror as he stiffens, with a horrible grinding, mechanical noise. Then his forehead breaks apart, and a blue Dalek eyestalk emerges from the hole left.
"And you, too, Doctor, will be EXTERMINATED!"
"No!"
The Dalek puppet raises it's hand, and the whisk emerges from it, aiming straight at me. I cut it for the door, fumbling for the sonic.
I'm never going to get out of here in time, I know that much. I can't find the sonic. Damn bigger-on-the-inside pockets.
"EXTERMINATE. EXTERMINATE!"
PEW!
~Run, you clever boy, and remember me.~