Title: Baptised in Fire
Rating: K+
Disclaimer: None of it's mine.
Notes: Set before, and partly during, 'Rose'. He has regenerated, but he can't bear his existence.
He wakes screaming in the darkness.
Oblivion flees, and the vacuum is filled with grief and pain and rage.
He screams until his vocal cords are bloody and torn, and then he curls up around himself, trying to make himself so small that he doesn't exist anymore.
He shouldn't exist anymore. He doesn't understand, and he can't ask himself these questions or find the answers. He exists merely in pain.
Physical sensation returns first. The cold metal grill beneath him bites into his flesh, and the coolness seeps through his body, into his bones and his two hearts that are beating so sluggishly that it seemed as though he is near death, or in hibernation.
Later, he will not be able to decide between the two.
His nose itches, and he automatically swipes at it with his cold fingers, thoughtlessly. His fingertips linger for a moment on the new nose, but consciousness has not yet returned, and his arm returns to its previous position.
His foot cramps, and he gasps from the feeling and stretches his toes out, trying to stop the pain. Then his arm starts to ache; he shifts into a different position, and ends up on his back. His eyes open slowly, and he rubs at them to remove the encrusted salt from his tears. He stares at the ceiling, unable to comprehend what he is seeing.
Silence echoes around him and inside him, forcing more tears, but the storm passes quickly this time. Consciousness is slowly returning.
He sits up. The walls are changing. The room is dark, but lights flicker from time to time. Orange and green, changing the room into something growing.
The thought makes him flinch. Nothing has a right to grow anymore. Not now that –
He can't think further. Something stops him, a familiar touch in his mind, the only remaining mental companion he will ever have.
The TARDIS.
With a sigh he relaxes, and the familiar telepathic touch of his ship soothes his mind a little. She holds him without touch, gives him the comfort of a mother.
For a while oblivion returns – a more peaceful oblivion now, less war-torn. He has finished regenerating now, and not everything is back in place. He forgets, for moments. The memories and sensations are lost within his mind.
In this numbed, deadened state he stands up. The metal grill is harsh against the soles of his feet, feet that have never walked before, although his muscles know the movements. His clothes have burned with his last body, leaving him naked. There is no one to see, and he can't care. He has been baptised in fire, and it is fitting that he is reborn in only flesh.
His fingers touch the controls on the console gently, not altering the ship's course or trying to influence any destination, but learning the new controls with new fingers. There are calluses on his hands, and some small part of him finds that strange. He has never picked up a tool, never fired a weapon with these hands. This skin is new.
Something filters through the haze of his mind, and a new mouth forms an old world.
"Gallifrey."
It echoes in the control room, and then a beat of sorrow pulses back at him from the ship. He can't understand why, the implications unable to reach his shattered psyche.
But then another word, a shorter word, one that is filled with bitter hatred and loathing and fear and anger and –
"Dalek," he says, and the memories fill him and he screams again but only for a moment because he chokes on blood and falls to the floor and throws up.
All he can see are their gleaming outer shells, coppery-gold and oh-so-formidable, no matter how much people try to laugh at them. Marching onwards, thousands of them, legions upon legions, army upon army, not content until they have reached their goal of ultimate racial cleansing.
"I stopped them," he rasps, the words hurting as he forces them out. "I stopped them."
The TARDIS sends him a wave of comforting mental energy, and he pulls himself to his feet again. He shivers suddenly, and realises that he must find clothes. He wonders, almost absently, where the wardrobe room is at the moment, but then the mundane thoughts are swept aside.
"How am I alive?" he demands, his voice thin and crackly.
The console, fully formed now – if it can be called that, because he can see various parts that he's fairly sure shouldn't be there – lights up. Text rolls across one of the screens, and his stomach clenches at the familiar alphabet of his planet.
"Gone," he whispers. "They're all gone, all of them."
He doesn't know how he finds the wardrobe room, but clothes await him there. Plain clothes – plainer than anything he has worn before. Plain trousers and a selection of jumpers, identical except in colour. The jumpers hang off him a little – he smiles involuntarily at his ship's subtle mothering. She wants him to eat. He has not eaten in…too long, even without a regeneration.
Black boots encase his feet, but he feels lacking somehow. Unprotected, and he needs protection now. The universe is a cruel place, and he has finally learnt that lesson, that not everybody can be trusted, that best friends will stab you in the back. He has finally learnt.
His masters were experts in pain and killing, and he has learnt well. Learnt enough to destroy two entire species.
He leaves the wardrobe room and meanders through the TARDIS for long hours, no destination in mind, just seeing what has happened to his most faithful companion. Because even as he changed, so has she; no longer is she a zen-like place, or a gothic creation. She is organic now, in a way she never has seemed before.
The Time Lords, he knows, would have hated it with as much passion as they can muster – which was quite a bit, by the end.
He closes his eyes and leans against a wall, feeling utterly hollow. They are all gone now. None of them are left, there is an empty space in his head where they should be. Never before has he felt like this, not even when he was exiled to Earth, so many centuries before.
His sense of self is still there, however, which is some small comfort, in a way. He knows his other selves are out there – can feel their timestreams are normal. He has no idea how his history might have been rewritten – because it must have been. There is no more Gallifrey.
No more Gallifrey. The thought sends him crashing to the floor unable to breathe for long moments, until he is able to sweep that thought aside and concentrate on his past selves. He remembers interactions with other Time Lords, with Gallifrey, and is curiously unsurprised to realise that each encounter is as he remembers it from…
Before.
He is driven now, urged by something within him to find evidence aboard his ship of those who have travelled with him, and the TARDIS aids him in his quest. She has kept the rooms of those companions who had rooms, and now lights pulse along the corridors, leading him to the bedrooms and the memories.
He cannot bring himself to enter many of them. He merely stands in open doorways, casting his gaze over the things they left behind. Clothes, trinkets, books. There is a fur coat in one room that makes him smile, and a kilt in another that makes him flinch. A collection of knives makes him want to lash out at something about the injustice of the universe, and a regal outfit makes him wonder briefly if she would understand.
She would not. He moves on. A room full of skimpy clothes, a room that has little left in the way of personal effects. Sketches covering a wall, and a sewing machine and cloth, and a baseball bat and canisters of explosives, and suddenly he stops, palm flat against a closed door, tears in his eyes once more.
He will never travel with anyone else, he vows. He will never allow any more stowaways; never allow them to persuade him that they should travel with him. Never. All it brings them is death and chaos and destruction.
He goes to the medical bay of the ship, and manages to heal his vocal cords so that he can speak without pain. He makes sure his regeneration is stable as well, although he doesn't know why. He shouldn't be here – he doesn't want to be here. And although he will not kill himself – could not take that escape from this pitiful pretence of life – he will not safeguard his own life.
He returns to the control room, still feeling naked despite his clothes. He brushes his fingers across the console again, letting his faithful ship know that he is here, that he is alright.
That he will never be alright again.
The TARDIS is drifting through the vortex, and whilst he knows that he should emerge somewhere and some when, to see what damage the universe has sustained as a result of the Time War, he cannot quite bring himself to do that. Not yet.
He closes his eyes, leans heavily against the console as those last, fateful moments replay in his mind. The screams – and oh yes, there was screaming, both vocal and mental, and they all ring in his ears and make him want to scream himself, or cry, or both.
Exterminate!
He whirls around, half-convinced that the battle-cry was real, not a figment of his imagination or a particularly vivid memory. But no. There are no Daleks here, not aboard his precious TARDIS – the only TARDIS left, now.
No Daleks here, and never will be again, and that almost – almost – makes it worth it.
It takes him a moment to adjust to the newly-rearranged console, but soon he is controlling the ship, guiding her towards a point in time and space. She does not want to go, but he is firm.
This will not cause a paradox. He knows better than to reveal himself, but nobody will notice a police box in that era, and he needs to see, has to see…
It is dark when they land, and he knows from the date that soon – soon – the nearby school will finish for the day, and a young girl will walk a familiar route back to a junk yard and a time ship waiting there.
He watches her, making sure to stay hidden, and doesn't know who to send his thanks to when she is there, is real, is the same granddaughter that he remembers.
He sees her teachers following her, and swiftly returns to his ship. He will not risk damaging the timeline by staying here any longer.
After this brief visit, he allows the TARDIS to choose their destination, and they end up on Earth again, as so often before. He wanders through London, watching the humans as they go about their lives.
This is what he saved, he thinks. He saved this time, this Earth, these people. They will not know the Daleks, not know what it is like to be enslaved under that despicable race. This is why he did it.
It is in a charity shop that he finds what he needs, before he even knows that he needs it. A battered leather jacket, creased and marked and just what he needs. He needs some protection, some armour to keep him safe, keep his vulnerabilities hidden deep inside.
He finds the money for it in his pocket, and he puts it on and feels…not contented, not satisfied, because he will never fully be able to feel those things again. But something inside him is more at ease now than before.
Clad in his armour, he returns to the TARDIS and pauses when he sees a flashing light on the console. His ship has detected something, something that isn't right.
Does he want to investigate, to help if necessary?
He hesitates. That belongs to his old lives, that need to help, to meddle and interfere and protect the natural course of history. He has changed now, changed so much.
But not that much, he decides, and traces the anomaly. He recognises the patterns being emitted from a nearby department store – there is a transmitter on the roof, boosting the signal from somewhere.
"Autons," he murmurs, and remembers his other encounters with them. He checks the TARDIS databanks, and flinches at what he finds. Their feeding grounds have been destroyed as a result of the Time War. Of course they have come to Earth in this century, it would be perfect for them.
But he will stop them. They do not belong here, and he will stop them by any means necessary.
First to take out the transmitter, he thinks, and goes to create a bomb. He uses the formula created by an old companion, but makes sure it will not explode prematurely by not using her fuses. He hides it in his jacket and makes sure his sonic screwdriver is in his pocket – a sleeker version than the old ones, created during the last days of the Time War after his last one was destroyed by the Daleks.
He makes sure the shop is closed and empty before he enters, and he gives each floor a cursory once-over to make sure no innocent bystanders will get killed. He ends up in the basement and stumbles over a corpse – a man, wearing a badge that says he is 'chief electrician'. He winces – the Autons have already claimed a victim – and then hears someone talking around a corner.
He approaches cautiously, not sure what to expect, and then he sees mannequins walking, making to attack a young woman, and he makes one of the split-second decisions that, he suspects, will become part of this new him.
He takes her hand; she looks up in surprise.
"Run," he said, with a grin that feels oddly out of place on his face. He pulls her out of the way and through a door, and then they are running, and something clicks into place and he feels better than he has so far in this body – not right, because that will never happen again, not for him – but better.
When they are in the lift she pelts him with questions and demands and rationalisations, and he finds himself smiling, enjoying the banter until she asks him about Wilson. Chief electrician.
"Wilson's dead," he tells her, and exits the lift.
"That's not funny!" she tells him, and he can't agree more, but there is nothing he can do. He can't bring the dead back to life, no matter how much he would like.
More questions, more demands, and he grows a little weary of it, and ushers her out of the building to safety.
"Don't tell anyone about this, because if you do, you'll get them killed," he instructs her. He isn't joking, but perhaps he is exaggerating a little. He closes the door, and turns to go to the roof and destroy the transmitter.
But something makes him pause, and he opens the door again.
"I'm the Doctor, by the way, what's your name?" he asks.
"Rose," the girl says uncertainly, looking at him as if he is mad. Perhaps he is.
"Nice to meet you, Rose," he says, and he means it. "Run for your life!"
He likes her, he decides as he makes his way up to the roof. He will never see her again, but he likes her. Something about her reminds him of who he used to be, and others he travelled with. She has a sharp mind, and the potential to be more than her life so far. He sees this in her as he has seen it in so many others.
No, he tells himself sternly, as he sets the timer and places the bomb against the transmitter. No, he would not do this again. He has promised himself, no more companions and no more heartache. He can't afford it. Not any longer.
Later – minutes, days, hours, he doesn't care – he finds himself standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, offering the universe to this girl and hoping and praying and silently begging that she will say yes, that she will come with him, because this young human, this being that is as a child to him in years and experience, has made him feel something else.
Something other than pain.
She says no, and he thinks for one nonsensical moment that his hearts have stopped again, that the force of her answer will send him into regeneration again. He steps inside the TARDIS and closes the door. Starts the materialisation sequence, and drifts aimlessly in the vortex.
He closes his eyes and remembers people he once knew, people who are no more. It is better this way, he tries to tell himself. She would only get hurt, get killed if she came with him.
The TARDIS seems to mock him, her lights flashing at him. He swallows and reverses course, back to London only a few moments after he left.
"Did I mention," he says, poking his head out of the door, "it also travels in time."
The smile she gives him makes him feel alive for the first time in this regeneration, and he knows he has made the right decision.
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