People, I am disappoint. Are you not entertained?! Continuing quote from Lord Byron's Manfred.

oOo

Though thou seest me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when in that secret dread
Thou hast turn'd around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot,
And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal.

.

He comes to a halt, panting, a few feet from the exit. There's no door and he can see a bare, blank room, with a few cold, neon lamps and pieces of machinery scattered across the floor. A light like that of a spotlight is shinning at something out of his field of vision.

There's a sudden loud bang, hollow, the sound of metal violently hitting metal, and he jumps.

There are more ominous metallic, clanging noises, some quieter than the first, but always harsh. He takes a few steps back without realising it. A steady scraping, grinding noise starts coming from the room, and he's suddenly very reluctant to go inside.

He looks around and he notices a small door, hardly larger than that of a broom cupboard, a little to his right. Bigger on the inside, he thinks, and glancing back at the room in front of him, opens it, squeezes himself through, and closes it behind him. The sounds from the room are mostly muffled and he turns around.

It is indeed bigger on the inside, an empty, drab grey place with echoes of green in the long shadows.

"Nice of you to drop by".

Well, maybe not so empty after all.

You don't approach him. A box-like protrusion emerges from the wall near you, about a foot from the floor, and you sit uncomfortably on it, hands clasped together in front of you. You peer into one dark corner and take in the man sitting in a completely out of place plush armchair. He's leaning forward, smiling, a Panama hat balancing on one knee. The pullover with the red question marks he wears under the off-white jacket is unmistakable.

He almost expects a table with a chessboard to be symbolically placed by his side, but there isn't one.

"Oh, I prefer other games now; hopscotch, for instance." He is no longer smiling. "But would you like me to get one? I am the schemer after all. The manipulator. The ruthless one".

The way he rolls the last "R" seems to fill the ensuing pause with irony.

"I'd say destroying Skaro, for example, falls under 'ruthless', pretty much, yes".

(He's on shaky ground, he doesn't want to go there. He knows where it will lead. But if he can convince just one of them not to condemn him, all this might just be worth it.)

The other's face is framed in shadow, his expression difficult to read.

"Would you say it was morally wrong?"

"No", he admits with a sigh.

"Of course not. It just seems… too much; and was a bit sudden, wasn't it?"

(He too is slightly Scottish, you had forgotten that)

"Speaking of Skaro, this was a bit sudden too–"

"Yes, yes, yes, and it was too much, and morally wrong, and I shouldn't have done it, right?" He gets up and starts pacing up and down again, trying to keep the trembling out of his voice.
(Fight. Fight back).
"Spare me, 'Ka Faraq Gatri', 'Bringer of Darkness', 'Destroyer of Worlds'. It's all well and good when you want to sound impressive, to scare away the monster aiming a gun at your face or at the Earth. But certain actions that you did, plans that you started, awarded me those names, you know."

"You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies", he quotes.

"Yes. And keep fighting these enemies too long–"

"And 'the abyss gazes also', I know." The voice is loud, angry and relentless now. "But if you are trying to put the blame on me, it seems it kept gazing, Doctor, long after I had stopped, long after I had recoiled".

He comes to a halt and looks away at the outburst, but the other calms down unnaturally fast and his face splits into a half-smile once more.

"Let's be what you want to believe I was not. Straightforward, just, fair. What did I do?"

He's staring fixedly at the door, wishing he hadn't come in after all. "You destroyed Skaro."

"Yes. And what did you do?"

"You know", he growls. It feels as if his insides are slowly turning into ice.

"Hm… Yes, of course, quite similar situations, aren't they?" he asks pleasantly, as if he really has to think about it. "Tricking a mass murderer to save the universe from a horrific weapon; running away from a lost, still innocent ten-year-old, begging for help in the middle of a war zone. Who knows what will become of him after that. Oh wait; we actually do, don't we."

(An endless tide of purposeful, conquering hate, hate for all life, death and destruction reigning supreme, always death, the creation in the image of the creator. Death that might have been averted).

"And what a surprise, he's a little bit miffed when he finally figures it out. I hardly think a nice apology card and a cake will manage to change his disposition. Well, you never know…"

He collapses back down on his makeshift seat, looking away.

"I fully intended to kill him, you know."

("Have pity on me!"
"I have pity for you! Goodbye Davros. It hasn't been pleasant.")

At the memory, a choking sensation climbs up your chest as it never has before; because now it's all on you, you started it all, you never had the right to do such a thing after that, you can't leave me! You promised. You said I had a chance –

"I had though the universe had had just about enough of him. I regretted that it didn't work." The other laughs bitterly. "The one time I did not show him mercy… and he still survived. But 'survival is just a choice', isn't it?"

(He buries his face in his hands, tasting bile in his throat. Did he do that too? Is there anything, anything in all this that isn't his fault?)

"He decided he was going to live. And he lived. He always lived, and the Daleks lived… and everyone else died."

You glance at him through reddened, blurry eyes; he's gazing at the floor, sorrow plain on his face. Then with a tremendous effort, you get up, force open the door –you ignore the disturbing sounds which you hid from earlier that instantly attack your ears– and stagger out, to the corridor, towards the room without a door.

.

.

The instant he steps out, there is a final, loud, clanging noise and then silence. Well, not quite. He can hear footsteps inside the room, a laboured breathing. His own breath is dying in his throat and his head is burning and his stomach is wracked with icy waves of pain, but he clenches a fist and takes a determined step forward.

He trips over something and almost falls flat on his face. A knee and a hand break his fall and the worst is avoided. He's trying to get up, perplexed and annoyed, when he notices the impossibly long, twisting, multi-coloured scarf. Oh.

He had been unable to pay the slightest attention to anything except the room before him. (It's becoming increasingly difficult to pay attention to things in general, really). But now changed shapes and colours, images that had gone right over his head, seem to slowly settle down behind his eyes. Slowly, reluctantly, he turns around, still half kneeling on the floor.

He's there, of course he is. Behind you, a little to your left. At some point –you can't pinpoint exactly where– the corridor gradually changes into a familiar, wider, dark grey space. He's not supposed to be alone, but there he stands, tall and thin and a mass of curls, his face intense and concentrated to the point of anguish, bent over the two wires. He's holding the blasted, infernal wires and oh, how you hate him. Passionate and irrational and completely unfair, it rises and burns your throat. Because couldn't he, damn him, couldn't he have chosen a different metaphor?

'If someone who knew the future', indeed.

He gets up, pushing the end of the scarf carefully out of the way. The other doesn't seem to notice. He does notice however, that his past self's hands are trembling slightly.

And ashamed, filled with pity, you turn away, you head to the room, because he shouldn't have had to feel like this, because he and all the others shouldn't have had to suffer for it after all that he managed to do, because how could he have known?

"So you think I had the right, after all?"

He stops and turns to the man. The brown head is still lowered, but he could swear that he felt the huge, pale eyes noticing his movement. Come on; it couldn't be that easy, could it?

"I don't know."

(His voice makes a sharp contrast to the usually imposing, wise tone of his predecessor; as deep as his, but hoarse and tired.)

From the room comes the sudden sound of something heavy crashing to the floor and he flinches. Just leave him be, carry on. But it bursts out of his lips, lost, breathless and desperate.

"Did– Did I?"

The other one raises his head now and looks at him seriously under the wild curls, as if to examine every inch of that distant, wretched future which has a void filling its lungs.

"What? Have the right? To do what you did?" The somber aloofness now seems to hide a vicious, mirthless smile, a distorted echo of his ever-present manic grin. And maybe just a hint of contempt. "I don't know, Doctor."

The last word is emphasised in a way that almost makes the title an insult. The younger man suppresses a sigh and forces his gaze back to the wires, his face grave with quiet, righteous anger.

"But you certainly had a duty."

He doesn't speak or move again.

You can hear him breathing though, and isn't it funny, you think as you walk like a robot, pale as a corpse, towards the room, isn't it funny that the dead one can do it, and the living one cannot?

.

(to be continued...)