"It's not," said the Doctor. "It can't be, and it's not. The shape of the Dalek is the shape of the Dalek, not"—
"Time does grow strange as the shape approaches," said Davros. "Humans becoming Daleks and Daleks becoming men. Two warrior races blending into one. But we know, do we not, on which side the coin will land?"
"You're wrong," said the Doctor. "You've got this wrong, you have to have"—
Davros was no longer listening to her, once again caught up in his own explanations.
"A people whose anger is so great that it seeps through time, fracturing possibility itself!" he crowed. "Whose power to transform has transformed my
world, such is the level of their rage! You must know I saw much through my devices. Scattered through realities that will not be. As they guided that power through every possible future, it was not the Daleks whose shape I always saw."
He looked straight at the Doctor without ever opening his eyes.
"Tell me. The civilisations at the end of time. The last orders. Who were they? Not my creations, and not my people. Men, Doctor. And women too, of course," he cackled, "for I have told you I am not a bigot. I simple believe what I always have. That peace demands the rule of a single race. But when it comes to which race that may be… it is possible that my view may now have changed."
The Doctor's face turned to pure terror for a fraction of a second, then flicked back to what it was before. But Davros has seen, and they both knew that he had. It was an act after that, even more than it had been before.
"People aren't the Daleks," said the Doctor. "People hate the Daleks! They're... they're everything they fight against—"
"Oh, they despise what the Daleks are; how they behave. But I do not think they would mind if they were to become the Daleks. For every creature in the sky to make way for a universe made only for them and their kind. So many humans want for so much, do they not? As their future collapses, their hope fades away. Yet there is so much out there that can be taken. It might only take a small push to lead the way."
"Exterminate," said the Doctor, barely managing to breathe. "You think they'd exterminate everything just for hope?"
"Oh, they would feel guiltier than my creations; they would weep for it. They would disguise the truth of what they really are. But as for what they would do" — he smiled —"I think it would be much the same."
He looked up to the Doctor with respect, and for all she knew it might not even be feigned.
"I confess I thought your love for the human race a weakness," he said. "But now I know you saw what I could not! Blinded by the pride in my own creations. It is not through anger that a species will endure! Nor certitude, nor clarity of purpose. It is denial. To be able not to see the extermination they enable— that is how the truly strong survive. We were not so different, in the end. You saw they were the image of your own."
He waved his hand absently to take in the rows of corpses.
"Everyone who inspired me is here, assembled in this theatre. Yet only the greatest of them has survived. You have challenged my greatest error, Doctor! There was never any need to make the Daleks. But at least there is still time to make amends."
Better not to plead for the human race, the Doctor thought. It was no use, once Davros got like this.
"I don't know how closely you've been watching your machines," she said, "but humanity's on its own now, and it's not exactly at peace. You think all that'll just change if they wipe out every other creature in the universe?"
"Oh, there would have to be changes. Rationalisations. Perhaps you would also look away. But that would not mean you would have no part to play."
The Doctor looked at him with wild eyes, genuinely stunned at what he might be saying.
"I did not bring you so far just to talk," he said. "I did it to make you an offer."
"Oh God," said the Doctor. "No. You can't mean"—
"Join me, Doctor!" Davros cried. "As scientists! To bring peace to humanity forever; to save them all for good! One swift strike against the universe," he whispered, "and you will be more than worshipped. You will be their hero, to the end of time. And you will know that they will still be there, until the last star has gone out in the sky."
The Doctor laughed at that, that same loud laugh of someone finally giving into insanity.
"You know," she said though the laughter, "it's funny. However much I questioned you; the things you said and did. The one thing I always thought was true was that you actually understood me"—
"Oh, but I do," said Davros. "How you have saved the world you love again and again, and how now you are beginning to lose. Tell me, if you were to die," he said, waving his metal hand, "is there the slightest chance that the Earth would survive?"
"What I am offering you," he went on, "is the chance to save it forever. No more alien invasions or things from the depths of time! Only that world saved, forever, by the hand of a woman they love! I wept, did I not, to think that we had not fought on the same side? But now we can, Doctor. Now we can fight together forever"—
With an apparently great effort he opened his eyes, to look his friend and foe in her terrified face.
"I have seen your choices through my many machines. You have sacrificed so many others to save that planet. But there is no shame in it, or in this decision now. It is but a step on a road you are already travelling. Seize it, and the human race will remember forever."
He stretched out his metal hand, inviting her to take it.
"They will always mark the day we stood side by side," he said.