First off, sorry if I made any of you feel guilty with the thing about reviews in the last AN. It was just kind of bad luck, I guess, since the chapter on which I was most looking forward to feedback just happened to be one that didn't get much. Not a big deal, and nobody's fault, and don't you dare feel the need to apologize. :)

Second thing: I just recently discovered the existence of review replies, so I will likely be utilizing that feature in the future. Many of you have made legitimate points that I should like to address directly, especially with these last few chapters, so that's handy. Very hopefully this one will clarify some things. Also, longest chapter so far! (Second time in a row I've said that.) Do enjoy.

The Doctor's breathing was normalizing, and while he seemed to still be working through… whatever had just happened, he was decidedly calmer after the initial shock of coming out of it. Donna gave him about half a minute before she started asking questions, and her first one was, "You felt it too?"

He tossed one hand up in a gesture akin to a shrug. "Well, 'felt' covers just a fraction of it."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. You all right?"

"Of course." He breathed out particularly deeply and deliberately, not for the first time. "Are you?"

"Yeah." She wasn't sure she quite believed him. She never could be, especially with that question. But he did seem to be "all right"—or something close to it, anyway. "Do you know what it was?"

He rubbed one hand down the side of his face, and as he did she went through a quick mental check of his symptoms. His skin was a normal shade, his hands were steady, his breathing was about under control, and his voice was regularly modulated—he was calm. On the other hand, he wasn't making much eye contact, he was speaking very quietly, and his movements were very sluggish. Whatever he had just gone through—because it couldn't have been just like what she had—it had taken a great deal out of him.

"Their trump card," he answered. "A demonstration—their best and simplest argument."

"They showed us their history?" she ventured, dubious but completely blanking on an alternative.

He grinned. "The craftsmen did, yes. They're… magnificent."

"But this lot—they haven't any senses. It wasn't their personal history. They couldn't have done all those things."

"No. But they've been inside the minds of those who could, who did."

She blinked. He started to continue, but she cut him off, working through it out loud. "They… The present craftsmen?"

He nodded.

"Showed us the past. But then that bit at the end, with nothing… the darkness. Was that…?"

Something in his face changed, and he said, particularly quiet, "That wasn't so much the past."

Donna breathed out, feeling a sort of tentative peace come over her as her suspicions were confirmed. In the pause, she realized that her surroundings were markedly quieter than they had been mere minutes before, and ventured a look around.

Unsurprisingly, most of the Upper Cirulians were watching them, with the majority of the movement in the crowd coming from the large lizards, still doing rounds. Most Upper Cirulians were speaking in hushed tones amongst themselves, while others were completely silent—but nobody looked quite like what Donna would call afraid. This was good.

The ones who weren't looking at her and the Doctor, however, were looking up and around. Involuntarily, she followed their lead.

The walls, previously obscured by hundreds of reptilian bodies, were now bare, and a small gasp found its way out of Donna as she stared up at them. They were riddled with the craftsmanship of decades of careful hands, sporting unnatural features of all varieties and functions. Most prominent was a system of ducts, originating at the area hundreds of feet above them where light found its way in—as would water during storms, Donna quickly realized. The ducts were carved into the cave wall and traveled gradually down and over, and Donna followed them with her eyes all the way until their final termination in a large and currently empty pool in the corner of the cavern. She couldn't make out all of its finer features, but she did know to look for a series of small holes in the lowest duct, above part of the pool and a small ramp carved from a boulder. She vaguely recalled seeing lizards and craftsmen alike climbing to the top of that ramp and drinking freely from the streams provided by the holes in times of heavy rain.

Countless sculptures such as the ones she'd experienced building were carved into the walls as well, and she didn't understand what a lot of them were. But many were quite clearly the same species as the grey, child-sized humanoids they had seen riding the lizards, and many were of said lizards. There were even a few of Upper Cirulians. Not all carvings were of the same style or scale, and some were cruder than others, but they came together in a way that made the cavern feel more like a museum than a simple underground dwelling.

The flattest surfaces of the walls also bore paintings—again, some better than others, but all were clearly the result of days of collecting materials to make paints and brushes, and lovingly plotting every single brushstroke. Even the simplest was far more beautiful than anything Donna could produce. The subjects of the paintings were more varying than those of the sculptures, and Donna couldn't identify most of them, but, based on what information she had garnered about these creatures, she guessed that a lot could be labeled concept art of projects that, for one reason or another, had never come to full fruition.

The hushed words "Donna, it's so beautiful" came to her, and she turned around. The Doctor was looking up as well, his eyes shining, his mouth stretched out in one of the hugest smiles she'd ever seen anyone produce. It was a look of such genuine awe she almost wasn't sure what she could possibly say in response.

So instead of responding, she struggled to her feet, turned to face the Upper Cirulians, and said in the most commanding voice she could muster, "So how many of you are still looking to kill the creatures whose memories you just lived through?"

It was enough. Every single one of them was silent now, just watching her. The newcomers, none of whom seemed to still be holding onto their weapons—she could read the confusion clearly in their eyes, but most of all the guilt. They very much reminded her of children being reprimanded for jumping to conclusions.

There was silence behind her as well. She turned slightly, just to check on him, and found the Doctor was still on the cave floor, staring up at her with large eyes. When they met her own, he smiled, and gave her an encouraging nod.

Already feeling far more prepared for this than she had seconds before, she turned back to the crowd. "Right, so. Part one, with all that madness happening at once—we all saw it, felt it… sensed it, right?"

A large fraction of them nodded. The rest didn't seem to be disagreeing.

"It was their memories, wasn't it?" came a voice, and it took Donna until it resumed to locate the speaker—sure enough, the young Cirulian she'd spoken to a few times already. She was looking back and forth between Donna and the Cirulian sitting right next to her, seeming shocked at her choice to speak up, as she continued, "They showed us their past. Many years of development, of work. To produce all this," and she nodded in the general direction of the creations that surrounded them.

"Exactly," Donna said quietly, smiling; and then, realizing she definitely had to give it a little bit more oomph if she wanted all these creatures to hear her, "That's exactly right. They knew we were coming," and, pointedly, "they knew all of us were coming."

A handful of the Cirulians dressed for war looked down in shame.

"And they let us. Welcomed us, even. So they could show us this. Their history, what they do down here. They've taken a lot from you… but now you get to see what they've been doing with it. It hasn't gone to waste. It came into worthy hands."

"What about the bit at the end? The darkness?" came another voice that had finished talking before Donna could identify who was asking the question.

"That, yes. Well… firstly, just imagine if that were it. If that were all you—we—had experienced the entire time. I would have gone mad. It was so close to nothing, but there was something prodding at the edges of the darkness that… well, that I don't know how to explain. But we all felt it." The faces before her registered recognition, but she saw very few nods; they were hanging on her words, waiting for an explanation. "It was maddening. Because we're used to so much more input. But the craftsmen? Little blokes we saw earlier? That's all they've ever known." The majority of the pairs of eyes locked on her were gradually widening. "They do have one sense, as I know you're aware, and I'm no expert on it, but those whispers we all felt I'm sure would carry meaning if we were receiving them through the right lens. They have the capacity to think, and communicate with one another. They just can't feel, or hear, or see, or smell, or taste. This man, the Doctor"—and she stepped aside, affording them all a clear view of him, but all he did was continue to watch her intently—"he was going to be the one to change that. But he spoke to them and instead of ignoring him and just doing what they always do, they facilitated this meeting, led us to this place—they're why any of us has a clue what's going on here! That is not the way of simple creatures only out for their own interests. They're creative, they're intelligent, they have profound depth that they conceal in these caves and keep to themselves because they know how dangerous it would be to reveal any of this to you. Until now. They're taking an enormous risk here. How you proceed is your choice."

She stopped, taking a deep breath and remembering why she'd always gotten low marks in her speech classes back in secondary school. She wasn't sure whether she'd covered everything that needed covering, whether the message had gotten through, whether her listeners in the back had been able to hear her.

After a few seconds of quiet, and shortly after these worries passed through her mind, a voice came from the back, hoarse and breaking, but strong: "If they're so bloody intelligent, that only makes what they've done to us all the more unforgiveable."

A physical pang shot through Donna the instant she registered these words. A moment of confusion passed then, as the voice was somehow familiar, but not familiar enough to place before she followed the wave of turning faces and located the speaker.

He was on his knees, eyes locked on her, wide with anger, and blinking rapidly. Donna saw no weapons on him, and though he was admittedly rather far off to be able to distinguish this, she suspected the lizards would have taken care of most weapons while they'd all been… incapacitated. The few remaining ones she'd seen since then seemed to have disappeared to the same place.

"Ilseg," she said, holding her hands out unconsciously in a pacifying manner. "They want to negotiate."

He rose to his feet, not breaking eye contact with her, and the Upper Cirulians nearest to him automatically scooted away, giving him room to step forward. "An enemy country cannot inflict crippling disabilities on a neighboring country's citizens over countless years and then expect to make peace while continuing to do the evil they've been doing all along."

"Those involved in a war have to make difficult decisions," came a voice from behind Donna. She turned just in time to see the Doctor stumble on his way to his feet, and almost unconsciously reached for him just in time for him to grab her outstretched arms and stabilize himself.

"You okay?" she asked quietly, leaning in as he did.

"Sure," came the reply. "Feels like my feet were asleep."

She straightened up so that he could, and though she didn't detect much more danger of him crashing into the ground, leaning on her shoulder seemed something he was willing to do at the moment. "Ilseg," he said, projecting his voice again, and said Cirulian continued to approach them slowly, "here's the bottom line: they're intelligent, you've seen that firsthand, and they want to make peace. That will require some cooperation on the part of your people. I know it's hard to let go of the past; believe me, I get it. But you have to."

Ilseg was close enough now that Donna could see how much his feet were dragging with every step he took, his clenched and shaking fists. He came to a halt between them and the crowd, the majority of whom were now talking quietly amongst themselves and no longer paying undivided attention to the spectacle before them. "How could I?" Ilseg rasped, voice low, and Donna suddenly noticed one more thing that his new proximity made rather clear: the large tears trembling in his dark eyes.

He turned those eyes back and forth between the Doctor and Donna, and seemed to be genuinely looking for answers as he asked, "How could they?" A tear finally escaped his eye and began to travel down his cheek, leaving an impressively wide trail. He rubbed at it unconsciously, continuing unsteadily, "I understand what you're saying. You tell me they know the toll they've taken and they want to stop. But then how… how could they have done this in the first place? How could they make the decision to do this to us, to me?"

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Donna noted with interest that no human could produce this many tears in such a short amount of time. At the forefront of her thoughts, however, was a slowly growing realization, put to words when the Doctor said next to her, voice carefully modulated but obviously sincere, "I'm sorry. Ilseg, I'm so, so sorry."

Even through his tears, the Upper Cirulian scowled. "You don't know. You don't know anything."

"I know enough," the Doctor said softly, "to recognize the signs of a father who's lost a child."

More startled by the weary note in the Doctor's tone than the deduction itself, Donna snuck a sideways glance at his face. It was an expression she'd seen before—an old pain buried deep within himself being brought very nearly to the surface but not enough to be detectable by anyone who didn't know to look, manifesting only in a dull glint in his eyes. Her mind leaped immediately to Jenny, but it went so much deeper than that.

"Donna, I've been a father before."

She realized she was staring, and at the same time noticed the purposeful way the Doctor was not looking at her; he'd realized too. She returned her attention to Ilseg, or at least tried to, and succeeded enough to become aware that he was speaking, his voice so soft, but breaking only on occasion.

"I tore apart the caves looking for her," he was saying, almost too quietly for Donna to hear. "And when we found her, she was on her stomach on the ground, her arms and legs flopping around weakly, fingers grasping for anything to hold on to… She used to dance. She moved with such grace. She couldn't anymore." He swallowed. "The surgery was quick, and when the doctor came out, he looked so grave I was sure he would tell me that she was effectively lost.

"As it turned out, she retained a weak grasp on her sense of touch. This was a small comfort. The creature that had taken everything else from her was incinerated before I thought to ask about it. I would have gladly taken part in its destruction, given the chance."

"Ilseg," the Doctor interjected, but his tone was mild.

The Upper Cirulian didn't look apologetic, but he continued, slowly and carefully, "She was still there, and I could still hold her and comfort her that way, and she would hug me back, but… it was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. She couldn't get around on her own. She couldn't watch the sunset. Taste food. Smell the flowers in her garden. Listen to music, hear my voice, or even her own. She had a cane to help her navigate, keep her from colliding with things, but even then she could not hear warning shouts, and… and I would try to communicate to her that I didn't want her going anywhere unaccompanied, but she never quite understood, and… I could never find it in myself to deny her this modicum of independence when she could do so little else. Sometimes she'd try to dance, but she would crash into walls and fall and she broke a couple of bones this way, and she'd cry and cry for days afterwards."

Donna could see where this was going, and her nose was already prickling in anticipation.

The Doctor's weight disappeared from her shoulder as he tentatively stepped away. Her hands went out again as a precautionary measure, but he seemed to be perfectly steady on his own. "The hill," he said quietly.

Donna's mind immediately went to the only clear view she'd had of the sprawling community—and the enormous hill into whose side it was built. In some places it had appeared so steep so as to be unclimbable.

Ilseg rubbed one hand down his face angrily, and Donna noted the spots of moisture forming at his feet. Words appearing to fail him, he nodded.

The Doctor, on the other hand, was ready to spew long tirades even at his very worst moments. For a moment he said nothing, only standing still and watching Ilseg, but Donna knew it was coming. And to be fair, Ilseg's original question was still up in the air.

"What we have here," the Doctor began, "is something very evolutionarily unusual. These creatures' intelligence has expanded faster than many other aspects of their being—and with that, their consciences. The craftsmen never did the stealing, never directly hurt your community. Some of them never even knew what had to be done to supply them with the necessary tools for what they do, but most did. And for many hundreds, maybe even thousands of years, they were perfectly willing to continue doing what they did, even if it meant hurting the likes of you."

Donna herself had just about lost the ability to listen to long explanations like this anymore. She could only imagine the trouble Ilseg was having, until she took a good look at him, and realized that he was, in fact, listening intently.

"But in recent years, and especially strongly in the last few generations, they have actually come to realize that the species from whom they take these basics of life are at least almost as intelligent and emotionally complex as they are. And let me tell you, the guilt has been killing them. Now, as a space traveler I can tell you that in most cases where multiple intelligent species are evolving in the same environment, their habits and abilities change with their morals. If living means doing terrible damage to another species, nature finds another way for them to live. But this lot? They've evolved intellectually too fast for their necessities of survival to keep up. They've never had senses at birth, only a colony that would find a way to supply them with senses. Now they want out. But nature is, as it sometimes does, holding them back."

When it became obvious that the Doctor was finished for now, Donna felt the need to add, "Now that he's here," and she nodded towards the Time Lord at her side, "they're taking advantage of the opportunity to try to overcome nature."

"Making themselves vulnerable," Ilseg interjected, a tiny dry smile curving his mouth through his bitter tone. "Asking for our help."

The Doctor returned with a smile of the same variety. "I believe we've said that once or twice, yes."

Ilseg ran a hand through his thick black hair, closing his eyes. Donna could read resignation in his shoulders, but his face told a different story. She returned her focus for a moment to the crowd he stood in front of; many animated conversations were obvious, but she saw about as many tears. Many Upper Cirulians were sitting still, alone in a large crowd, staring at nothing. In a great deal of those who fell into the latter category, she saw Ilseg.

His eyes were still screwed shut, and he was unconsciously playing with his long fingers. Donna noticed a few lizards not too far off, watching the three of them, obviously sensing something important was going on.

The Doctor whispered, "Given a way to ensure no one else would ever go through what you and your daughter did, would you do it?"

The Upper Cirulian's eyes opened and locked with the Doctor's. They stared at one another for several seconds. Finally, Ilseg's shoulders drooped, and he said, suddenly sounding exhausted, "We need to get everyone back to the community and tell them what we've seen."