Manifestation
Part 2
By Bex
Grace fled from the Valeyard through gallery after gallery, feeling oddly exhilerated. All she had to do was to stay ahead of the madman pursuing her until she either found museum security, or her way back to the Doctor to warn him. She sprinted past several goggling fellow patrons, left them behind. Coming to a choice of doors, she took the right-hand way. The museum was like a maze. All she had to do was to stay on the move...
"Grace!" a voice echoed somewhere nearby. "You can't hide from me! Where are you?!" Angry. Imperious. Demanding.
Of course I can, you moron, she thought, resisting the urge to tell him so, since it would immediately give her position away.
She stole to the next doorway and carefully peered around the corner. No one in sight. She sidled out into the next room , over to the doorway in the opposite wall, stuck her head out--
Oops! The Valeyard was standing in the next room, his back turned to her. She pulled her head back, heart hammering, and snuck very, very quietly back the way she had come. Another door led to a hallway that connected to another wing.
Looked good. She trotted easily down it. It was rather dimly-lit. Well, her pursuer was way back there behind her, so--
She rounded the corner into the next wing and ran smack dab into the Valeyard's arms.
Grace shrieked in sheer surprise as he grabbed her. "How did you get here?! You were way back--" She shut up and tried to twist out of his grasp as she had earlier.
Unfortunately, unlike last time, she was the one caught by surprise, and he yanked her close. God, he was strong. Like the Doctor could be sometimes, pulling her up and away from some danger...
"Grace," the Valeyard muttered, his dark eyes glittering. "Do you believe me now?"
"No," she snapped. "You're just yet another maniac that the Doctor had the misfortune to meet once, come to do the 'wreaking vengeance' thing. It's not as if I haven't seen it before."
"Yes you have, haven't you? Why do you do it, I wonder?" He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. "Why do you travel with him?"
Grace glared up at him. "None of your damned business." A few moments passed, as they stared at each other.
She found herself answering, after all. "Because he asked me. Twice."
"You're quite easily bought, then. Flattery, a sop to your ego, and you follow someone you barely know."
Grace bristled. "He saved Earth. And then came to help me, when one of the maniacs I mentioned kidnapped me. After all that, I'd say it's safe to say that I knew enough about him to make that decision!"
"I see. So, you went with your special new friend..." He released her chin, and his hand made its way to the back of her head, where it began to stroke her hair.
She closed her eyes and shuddered, then opened them again. "Stop it!" she demanded from between clenched teeth. "Stop it. Stop it."
The hand froze. "Do you believe me now?" he inquired mildly.
"Sure," Grace said carefully. "Now why don't you let me go, and we can talk about this--" The next instant she gasped as his arms tightened around her. She stood, crushed up against him, her eyes wide.
"Y-you've made your point. I told you believe you," she said shakily.
"No, I don't believe I have," the Valeyard said amiably. "You're uncomfortable enough to say what you think I want to hear, but you don't really feel it, yet."
Grace's eyes flicked to glance up at him. "Then what do you--"
"Want? For you truly understand what I am. I'll know it when I see it."
Grace's eyes moved back and forth desperately. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a fellow patron pause in the entrance to the gallery. Even as her mouth was dropping open to shout, the stroller quickly walked on past the doorway.
I don't believe it, she thought in chagrin. He probably thought we were--
"We do make quite the couple, don't we?" the Valeyard murmured into her ear. "Beauty and the Beast..."
Incensed, Grace raised her right foot and stamped down viciously on one of her captor's feet. He drew in his breath with a hiss and staggered back a step, but didn't let go. She struggled wildly, but his arms were like iron.
"No, Grace," he said softly, calmly. Somehow that was worse than his earlier anger had been. She'd at least managed to twist around so that she was facing away and didn't have to look at him. Surely someone would come across them and see that she was in trouble--
But the museum, at least this wing, was now curiously deserted.
Perhaps the Doctor had finally finished looking at that holo-thingie and come looking for her...
"Oh, he won't be coming for you," the Valeyard said smugly into her ear. "You see, he's left you to me."
Grace's head jerked involuntarily to the side. He was reading her mind!
"Grace, you can't escape this. You deserve to know the truth about the Doctor -- and your place in his life."
"I already know the truth about him!" she snapped. But her words rang hollow now -- a dull horror was growing in her, settling on her heart like an increasingly heavy weight.
The Valeyard laughed softly. "You know next to nothing -- merely what he has permitted you to see. And you interpret what you perceive by your limited human intellect; I suppose you can process only the barest bit."
She wriggled angrily. "What, the 'We humans are so primitive' insult? That's something else I've heard before!" she said raggedly.
"That doesn't make it untrue," was his mild reply.
She twisted again. Her responses were increasingly visceral; she couldn't help it. If she had to be trapped here next to this monster for much longer, listening to his lies, she'd--
"Oh, it's obvious he is very fond of you," came the voice softly into her ear. "Rather like a pet. Or a clever child. Someone to bounce ideas off of, to show things to, someone to keep the TARDIS corridors from echoing too emptily."
Grace shut her eyes. It wasn't like that. It wasn't. He'd asked--
"I am not a 'pet'," she insisted. "I went with him as a friend."
"Yes; you keep mentioning that. Just...friends. How long did it take for it to become obvious that you would never be more than that? Or is there still a little corner inside you that hopes, even now? Poor little human. It must be so...frustrating for you..."
Grace's eyes snapped open. She stood completely still, staring straight ahead.
"Perhaps you think he's never noticed. He has. He just doesn't care."
Grace stood frozen to the marrow, gripped with the kind of shock that comes when one's worst insecurities are dragged out to thrash in the unexpected light of day.
Behind her, the Valeyard leaned forward to whisper once more into her ear in that obscene parody of intimacy. "So you see, my dear, you are what the average sentient being would describe as a fool. Leaving behind your life on Earth to run along behind him like a little puppy... He'll be only too glad to let you continue, you know; let you fritter your pitifully few years away."
An icy calm had descended over Grace -- there was scarcely anything worse he could say to her now. "Are you quite finished?" she asked very quietly.
"That all depends. Do you believe me now?"
"It hardly matters, does it? Whoever you are, you obviously want to drive a wedge between us."
This time there was a little hiss of displeasure from her captor. "My, you are a stubborn one," he muttered. "Like so many who have traveled with him."
"Yeah, well, call me unreasonable, but there's something about being grabbed by a stranger that doesn't make me conducive to taking what they say for granted." She paused. "And you've just used up all your ammo."
There was a silence. Then he said thoughtfully: "As much as I hate to admit it, you are correct. Clever...little...human." He let go of her, and she staggered forward, turning quickly to stare at him. He wasn't even looking at her; he was deep in introspection.
Grace shivered a little. For all her scorning of his claims, the way he'd just tuned out did remind her of the Doctor...
She should be leaving now, while he was distracted. He was bound to do something horrible to her and the Doctor now that his first plan had failed. She should go, and warn the Doctor that yet another villain had resurfaced, claiming his due...
Instead, she took a tentative step nearer, peering at his shadowed face, wondering what he was thinking. The Valeyard suddenly looked up, and she jerked back, startled. His eyes narrowed. "Still here? Haven't you ever heard that ancient human expression 'Curiosity killed the cat'?"
Grace looked at him warily.
"Since you're obviously not going to listen to me, go back to your Doctor. Go and tell him about your little adventure; I'm sure he'll listen very attentively. GO!!"
She jumped, then deliberately folded her arms, holding her ground. "Or what? You'll kill me? I think if you were going to do that, you would have already."
He glared at her. "You would be wise not to presume so much," he insinuated darkly. "Or to push me."
"The way you pushed me?"
His eyes narrowed again, his mouth curving in a thin smile. "It's all true, you know. Though you obviously can't face the reality."
"True?" Grace retorted. "It's true we're not the same. I don't know what or even how he thinks; I'll probably never understand that. But I do know how he acts. Here's another 'human expression' for you: 'Judge a man not by what he says, but by what he does."
The Valeyard stared back at her, his face expressionless.
"And he's done some very nice things for people." She shook her head slightly. "Look, I don't know about all the things he's done in his past, and I'm not one of you 'Time Lords', so I don't know what he'll end up doing in the future. But I do know what he's doing now. I've been able to help him hold back death. On such a grand scale." She took a deep breath and looked the Valeyard right in the eye.
"It has been a privilege."
The Valeyard stared back at her, his face expressionless.
"Goodness knows he can be impatient, and arrogant, and flakey as a croissant. But," and here Grace's mouth curved into a smile, "I kind of like him just the way he is. Even if we're 'just friends'."
The Valeyard stared back at her, his face expressionless.
"Why are you trying to hurt him? What did he ever do to you?" she asked, her face creasing in incomprehension.
He let out a sudden, sharp laugh. "Nothing. And everything. I keep telling you, but you refuse to believe me, so..."
There was something familiar about that weary frustration, Grace noted uneasily. She hadn't believed the Doctor's explanation of who he was when she'd first met him, either...
If what he claimed could possibly be true -- God, the monstrous implications. Was it really any more difficult to believe this 'Valeyard's' claim than in the existence of a two-hearted alien with thirteen lives?
She suddenly found herself stepping back away from him. A smile was forming on his face -- not a happy smile, but a bitter, self-satisfied smile. "You're starting to believe me now, aren't you?" he said.
Those dark, dark eyes, the sardonic cruelty, so unlike her friend. And--and yet--
"But how could such a thing come to be?" she almost whispered.
"I won't bore you with the technical details. Suffice it to quote the Doctor himself: 'Ten million years of absolute power -- that's what it takes to be really corrupt'. I was created to be a short-lived tool, designed to be destroyed when my usefulness was ended."
"Why?! And surely the Doctor didn't have anything to--"
"Oh, the Time Lords who created me intended for me to destroy the Doctor -- to prosecute, convict him, and ensure his execution. During his sixth incarnation," he added, seeing Grace's confused expression. "I was drawn forth from his future to destroy his past."
"My...God," she said, finally. "Did the Doctor know wha-- who you were?"
"At the end, yes. We battled in the Matrix, and I would have been utterly destroyed, had I not taken possession of the Matrix Keeper's body."
She stared hard at him. "You killed him, is what you mean."
"I didn't ask to be created, but I will do whatever it takes to survive now. I wouldn't expect a human to understand that," he said shortly.
'...in the struggle for survival, there are no rules...'
For Time Lords, apparently not.
"The Doctor didn't have anything to do with your creation. Why did you try to kill him? And why are you bothering him now?"
The Valeyard's face twisted. "Don't be so obtuse! Must I spell everything out for you?! I am what I am, because of him!"
Grace glared. "That is such a cop-out."
"A cop-out," he repeated, flatly.
"Is that all you can do, follow him around? Who's the 'puppy' now?"
His voice dropped down to a sinister murmer. "You have been traveling with the Doctor for too long -- you like to live dangerously."
Grace wasn't as impressed as she had been earlier. The whole situation was taking on a surreal quality, anyway. "What, for telling the truth?"
"What do you know of the truth of what I am?" the Valeyard asked pointedly.
"You seem to blame the Doctor for your existence. Why are you trying to get to him through me, instead of confronting him directly?" She paused meaningfully. "Are you...afraid of him?"
The Valeyard's expression twisted into what Grace realized was amusement. "Rassilon's Sash! I begin to see why the Doctor likes you humans so much -- so very clever." He reached a hand into his robes and yanked out the staser. "Since you are so very clever, so right about me, you shall accompany me. Let's go see the Doctor."
Grace gulped. A little too clever for her own good, this time. "You can't threaten me! I've been dead before--"
"How nice for you. But if you annoy me any further I will use this, and you wouldn't want to miss the big confrontation, would you? Now move."