I guess I missed HIM too much:) Did you?
The Interlude
Wakey – wakey!
His eyes snapped open. Three things happened almost simultaneously. He tried to sit up, there was a searing pain in his throat and neck and a wave of shock streamed across his body.
Restraints.
But it meant he wasn't dead.
Surprise, surprise.
He slowly turned his head to the left, where, with a corner of his eye, he could see a movement. It was just a blur, but a blur in motion.
"Where, on earth, am…" He stopped mid-word with a little choking sound and involuntarily pulled a funny face as he swiped the tip of his tongue across his front teeth. They were unusual. No… They were new.
New teeth.
New Doctor.
Not dead. Just new. A new Doctor chained to the floor. In the dark. Always in the dark. Was there a single regeneration that didn't go wrong for him at some point? How very annoying! Or, actually – quite marvellous!
He gasped and a spiral of golden light escaped his mouth to disperse slowly in arid and cold air. The sensation was exhilarating – a new body, a new set of brain cells, new teeth, new eyes, new… everything. He wanted to laugh and jump, and run in circles, and celebrate. He wanted to do a million things at once. A rebirth in a new body was a stark reminder of death, cheated for now, but ever-present. It made him jittery. So many things to do. So many unfinished businesses. So little time. They were just chemicals going mad in his brain, confused by the regeneration process – all the happy endorphins and serotonins making him giddy – but it felt great. King of the world great.
Then the realization hit him. Rose was gone. The Daleks had won. The Earth was damned. He was a prisoner and the Universe was slowly rolling towards destruction. He had lost.
He was too high on neurotransmitters to actually feel sad about it, but he certainly could feel angry. There was plenty of adrenaline just waiting to be burned. He tore at his restraints.
"Daleks! DALEKS!"
"The prisoner will be quiet. The shouting will cease."
"Daleks!" the Doctor repeated, mad sparks in his bulging eyes. "You are a LAUGH! You hear me? A LAUGH!"
"What is the meaning of this comment?"
"You had me there, unarmed, alone, and you couldn't even kill me? Cowards! You lot, you are cowards! You are nothing like the Daleks I used to fight. You are their pale copies. You are a cosmic joke!"
Only one hateful shape emerged from out of the dark – a sort of a dull, military-dusty-khaki colour, the lens radiating blue light in the shadow. The Dalek moved closer and turned his eyestalk at the Doctor.
"The prisoner will restrain himself from further insults," it said in the screeching voice. "The prisoner will conserve his strength for the interrogation."
"Idiots!" the Doctor snorted. "There's nothing I will tell you."
"The Doctor's knowledge would drastically speed up the Daleks' conquest. The Doctor will disclose all his knowledge to the Daleks. The principles of time travel. The Time Lords' science. The knowledge of the future, of the universe, its civilizations, boundaries and treasures. With the Doctor's knowledge the Daleks will become invincible."
"Right, as if I would give you such an advantage," the Doctor giggled. "There is nothing you can do to make me speak. You have no leverage. With everything lost and gone, there is nothing you…"
"There is the world below," the Dalek interrupted. "The Earth."
"Ooooh…" the Doctor rolled his eyes. "Ooooh, that's rich, that… that is rich, Pepperpot. The Earth. That's rich." He pulled at the restraints with a sudden outburst of fury. "You have no right to even…"
Suddenly he cringed in pain and rolled his head from side to side, his eyes tightly shut. A stream of amber light escaped his lips again and hovered, trembling, in the air. The Dalek cautiously moved away.
The Doctor opened his eyes, but now he seemed confused. He blinked slowly and gasped for air.
"So you win," he whispered. "Oooo, fantastic!" He giggled again. "After all this years, all this struggle, all the deaths, the Time War ended here, and you've won!"
His clenched fists turned white, but he had a wide, manic grin on his face as he continued merrily: "Daleks! You've won! And now you want me to tell you about the universe? Now? At the end of all things?"
With a shake of his head he laughed aloud. "All right then. I'll tell you. I'll tell you about the world. 'Cause otherwise you'll never know a first thing about it. Blind little beasts in your horrible armours. Never able to touch, to feel, to enjoy. Poor old Daleks."
"Where do we start, though, eh?" he asked, staring fixedly at the metal shape in the gloom. "Gallifrey? The Earth? The lights of the Medusa Cascade? It's a big old thing, the universe, and it is old, so old, so vast, so great… And now it'll all be just… Dalek… Now it'll all be just soulless and pointless, and dead!"
He squirmed in pain again, his eyes increasingly glossy and distant.
"A sudden storm over a Scottish loch?" he whispered, his voice breaking in pain. "Black clouds rolling across the sky; menacing and scary? The colour of the light as it vanes just before the outpour begins, when sunrays are pure silver against the darkness? A second sun rising in the south over the fields of silver grass and over white-trunked and blue-leafed trees? A new star being born out of the gases and dust of creation, swirling the matter around it in a gravity field and in turn giving birth to little whirlpools that soon will become planets and moons? The first Olympic Games? The hunting season on Varthavallis, with all court moving out and into the jungle, in a great procession of colour and sound? The Fifth Symphony of Wolfgang Amadeus? Mona Lisa? The Sunflowers? The great Avvis sculpture in the Capitol, reflecting the light seeping through the Dome? Forget-me-nots by a little stream? Hmmm? Hmmm? Will you even understand, Dalek? Will you know what it meant? Will you care?"
He choked and coughed, twisting in his restraints. The Dalek shifted uneasily, apparently confused.
"Not much time," the Doctor gasped. "The regeneration… failing… All systems… failing…"
"What is the meaning of this?" the metal creature asked shrilly.
The Doctor looked at him with his new, large, brown eyes, full of sadness, and anger, and loss. "There's this little moon circling a gas giant of Haeron system; and at night the whole sky seems to be falling down on you; yellow and ochre and brown, like a dessert," he began purposefully. "The gravitational pull of the planet sways the moon's ocean so that its waters wander around the globe, and if you observe from the distance, the moon looks like a teardrop – because the water peaks like a mountain. The only intelligent life are Spckree – very much like tiny shellfish – and the water carries them up and down; and when they travel up and reach the gravitational peak – they call it elevation – they believe that their gods communicate with them, speaking to them from the 'pale waters' in the sky."
"The pointless prattle will cease!" the khaki Dalek shouted.
"The Seven Gardens," the Doctor continued. "They are seven planets settled by the Abicchi, and they're great gardeners – green fingers of the universe. The Ampla, the one closest to the sun, the temperatures reaching 600 degrees Celsius during a day – they planted fire ferns there – and they real fire, living…" he halted and moaned in pain. "...fire… ooooh, it's really bad… No, really, it is."
He blinked dazedly. "What's your name, then? Hmm? A designation? A number? Anything that makes you an individual, a you?"
"The Doctor will be silent!" the Dalek uttered frantically.
"Aaaaah!" the Doctor yelled, tensing and arching his body as much as tight chains allowed. "Not much time… Can't stay… so… what else would you like to know? 'Cause, see, I can't control… Sorry, must daaaaaash…!"
His body relaxed and he fell back limply; his eyelids closing slowly over his unfocused eyes.
"Doctor?" the Dalek said whirring in spot, uncertain and confused. "Doctor?"
There was no answer. The Time Lord lay motionlessly, and only shallow breathing confirmed that he was still alive. The Dalek watched him for a long while, its eyestalk moving up and down the limp body, the iris of the lens opening and constricting slowly. Finally it whirred fully open and the Dalek moved away from the Doctor. It sent a signal and waited for an answer from the upper level of the ship. When the answer came, a holographic screen opened in the air, above the Doctor's unconscious body. The Emperor of the Daleks looked down from his monumental exoskeletal armour.
"Is the Enemy dead?" a powerful voice asked.
"The process of regeneration seems to be disrupted," the khaki Dalek answered. "The Doctor's organism is failing. His mind is corrupted. Is the project to be terminated at this point?"
For a long while the yellow eye of the Daleks' god scrutinised the Doctor's pathetic shape. There was no emotion in that constant stare; it was just watching, calculating, deciding life and death. Or there seemed to be no emotion.
"No," the Emperor said finally. "The Enemy lives. For so long he had been mocking us, defying us. But the Daleks' time has come at last. We'll let the last of the Time Lords live. We'll let him watch. We'll let him witness the true Dalek's glory. Daleks reign supreme!"
"Daleks reign supreme!" the khaki Dalek repeated shrilly.
The screen disappeared and the darkness fell over the unconscious Time Lord.
To be continued...
