Continuing quote from Byron's Manfred.

OoO

And a magic voice and verse
Hath baptized thee with a curse;
And a spirit of the air
Hath begirt thee with a snare;
In the wind there is a voice
Shall forbid thee to rejoice;
And to thee shall Night deny
All the quiet of her sky;
And the day shall have a sun,
Which shall make thee wish it done.

.

It's like he has entered the stage of a particularly troublesome, absurdist theatre production.

Neon lights shine dimly from a high-tech, futuristic wall in the back and the floor is littered with dark shapes he can't quite make out. Some of them look like tools and he walks carefully, trying to avoid another fall. Others tower over him. A warmer, yellow light shines from above like a spotlight at something behind a wooden, dilapidated bookcase which is half covered with a sheet. Another wall, straight ahead of him, is a stunning imitation of the design of his TARDIS's first console room, white and minimalist and filled with roundels.

Near a corner with a similar structure, a small form is crouching on the floor beside a chair and an elegant sculpture, head leaning on a roundel as if sleeping. Too small for any of his previous selves. Or any adult, really.

A terrible suspicion runs through you, please not him, please not him, it can't be him–

He takes a step backwards and bumps onto something. He turns and he's face to face with a Dalek eyestalk.

Two thousand years of horrible experience (liar, you liar, you can't really remember, can you) kick in and he freezes on the spot, his mind racing, ready to duck, ready to reach for a weapon that isn't there, there's nothing, he's at point-blank range, completely defenceless, ready to hear the harsh, staccato, electronic scream, to perhaps see the blinding, blue-white flash of the death-ray, instant death if you're lucky, but they often dial their guns down to the lowest possible setting that would kill, you'll die slow, you'll die in agony, you hope like hell its fear of you is greater than its hate–

It all runs through his head in a millisecond and he has half-raised a useless arm defensively, completely out of reflex, when he notices that the blue light of the eyepiece is dimmer than it should be. He steps to the side quickly and it doesn't follow his movement. And as his own vision adjusts, he sees the large crack across its midsection, a gaping hole where the gunstick should be. Most of the base is missing, the rest sitting on a tall, aluminium crate.

"Don't worry, it's been neutralised".

He turns around just in time to see a sledgehammer coming down on a vaguely Dalek-like shape, standing just where the spotlight is shining. There's a small explosion and a figure wearing a black leather jacket moves casually forward to examine the smoking wreck, the tool dragging behind him. He kneels down, the buzz of a sonic screwdriver is heard, and after a while a hand withdraws holding the mangled remains of the mutant inside.

His ninth self turns his back on the casing and throws the dripping mass of tentacles on the floor, an expression of great disgust plain on his face.

"This one too. Don't try this with a normal sledgehammer though, it won't work".

He wipes his hands and sits heavily on a chair beside the bookcase, leaning an elbow on the workbench in front of it.

You look around carefully and you realise that most of the dark shapes are bits of destroyed Daleks. None of the noise seems to disturb the boy that is leaning against the wall of the TARDIS, quite still. You tear your gaze away and take a few steps towards him.

"Um, really not my business, but… what are you doing?"

"Let's call it damage control, Doctor", he smiles, but it's clear it takes effort on his part. In front of him, lies a dismantled Dalek casing. He picks up a piece, holds it up to the light, and laughs that unnerving laugh that has no real joy or warmth in it. "Just like a human tank, isn't it? Except what's inside is trapped, really. And if you think about it, it didn't ask to be there in the first place. Or to kill".

(Was that pity in his voice? He looks so forlorn without a pink-and-yellow human by his side.)

"Of course, you never have the time to think about it. Too busy trying to hit the eyestalk so that it won't destroy your planet. Still," he looks at the older man, "it's a thought."

(What would he have done? What would he, especially he, have done if he had found himself on that battlefield? What about you, Doctor? What the hell are you changing into?)

He walks towards him and leans heavily on the table, as far away from the other man as he can. "I'm sorry that I abandoned Davros to die", he says bluntly. "Really. I trully am".

"No you're not. You didn't".

He ignores your puzzled expression, picks up a gunstick from the mess of parts in front of him, and casually points it at your face. You can't suppress a slight flinch, but you refuse the urge to tell him to aim it somewhere else, and stare him down. You won't look away.

"You didn't abandon him to die; he lived, you knew he lived. You abandoned him to become the one he became".

(His face drains of what little colour it had left and he does look away.)

"Oh, doesn't it make you wonder?" His voice is aggressively cheerful. "Why don't the Daleks have eyes? Real eyes? Why shouldn't they? This doesn't look remotely like the real thing, nice blue, yes, but still", he continues, pointing at a discarded eyestalk with the gun. "Why are they created without hands?" He waves his own free hand in the air, clenching and unclenching his fingers. "It's certainly not practical for most tasks; the Cybermen do have them and use them quite efficiently. And here we have the 'supreme life-form' running around with a sink plunger. It doesn't make much sense". He puts down the gun.

"Unless of course the designer, the maker, still finds them scary for some reason." Real eyes manage to lock onto real eyes and he shrugs. "Perhaps subconsciously".

Every bit of cheerfulness, no matter how forced, is gone from his face, his voice.

"How scared must you be to seal every one of your own kind inside a tank?"

Your hands are clenched fists on the table, knuckles white. You lean on them to the point of pain; your legs are not to be trusted. He crosses his arms and looks up at you. The façade is slipping, you can see the sorrow and anger he always hid beneath.

"In many respects, things would have been better if you had actually killed him." He looks down again, to fiddle with a cracked luminosity discharger. "Or you could have saved him; shown a little bit of mercy, saved a soul. And maybe… maybe prevented everything. All of it."

(He abruptly straightens himself and rubs his numbing fingers. Hollow. He wants to stop thinking, he wants everything to stop, please stop.)

Then he remembers the child and he turns around. He hesitates for a second, not knowing what to do –he's ridiculously slow these days– not wanting to ask. And he heads towards the small, hunched form, as if hypnotised, without saying a word.

"Davros made the Daleks", calls the voice behind him. "But who made Davros?"

(It doesn't stop you. But what you hear in the tone, the inflection, the tranquil fury that's seeping into the words, is an echo of years long gone:

"Then what should I do?"
"All right, then. If you want orders, follow this one. Kill yourself.")

And it's frankly disturbing how appealing the idea is beginning to sound, even for him.

.

(to be continued...)